Religion American Style

[ysengrin]

Maha has up the latest installment of The Wisdom of Doubt (the whole series can be read here, and it's well worth reading).

You may remember the Georgia congressman who sponsored a bill providing that the Ten Commandments would be displayed in Congress and in federal courthouses. Then when he was interviewed by Stephen Colbert, he could name only four of the Commandments, barely. I assume this wasn’t just an act. [...]

The statistics [only 40% of Americans can do better than Congressman Westmoreland] suggest that more people "believe in" the Ten Commandments than actually know what the Ten Commandments say. And I don’t care what religious tradition you call your own; just "believing in" something that you don't practice or understand or follow is crap. [...]

I think many Americans regard the Ten Commandments as something like a tribal totem. They want it placed in institutions of power, like schools and courthouses, as a symbol of their tribal dominance. Think of it as territorial marking. And this is just as true of the hard core fundamentalist as it is for the "cultural" Christian who has read most of the Left Behind books but doesn't know the Beatitudes from spinach.

Comments

[thewerewolf.livejournal.com]

It's been noted that America is different than many other countries in that it's 'myth-based'. Most other countries have myths, but they're just that - stories we tell from the past - but in the US, these seem to become weirdly integrated with active culture - and get modified over time to suit the current need.

A beautiful example of this is the famous painting of George Washington raising a toast to the founding fathers after signing the Declaration of Independence. In the original version, he's holding a wine glass and there's a bottle of wine on the table next to him.

By the early 1800s, alcohol had fallen out of favour as something 'nobel people' drink, and a new version of the painting was done - removing the glass and the bottle - but otherwise leaving it exactly the same as before - which puts Washington's hand in this very strange position - as if he were holding up something, but with nothing in his hand.

Similarly, the mythos around people like Washington and Jefferson and so on seems to detach them from reality - turning them into mutable ideals that can be manipulated easily to sway the public. (Washington never had slaves... he never told a lie...)

In the same way, I've noticed far more of a tendency in Americans to confuse the symbol with the thing the symbol represents. The flag comes to mind on this one. The notion is that the flag represents freedom - yet disrespecting it - or worse, damaging it in protest - is something people want legislated against - denying the very freedoms it is supposed to represent.

In the Iraq situation, I regularly hear people attack any criticism of the invasion by transferring that criticism to the soldiers being there which is defended because they're their 'defending our freedom'. But there's no evidence that's true at all. It's a shortcut thinking process that bypasses the real issue by linking it to a symbolic issue that's hard to deny - clearly, if this were a war where Iraq had attacked the US directly, having soldiers there would be completely justified and criticising the soldiers who are fighting for Americans' freedom and safety would indeed be ungrateful...

Except that's not at all what happened.

But in their minds - that's exactly what happened.

The Bible and the 10 Commandments ARE, for most Christians, tokens. Most have very little understanding of what's in them. I keep hearing from Christians who tell me that when someone dies, they become angels - or are 'going to a better place' or to 'heaven'. Thing is - that's not in the Bible. That's TV and movies.

To them, these are icons - symbols of THEIR faith.

Which is why, to be honest, they have no place in courts. The courts aren't there to impose one religion's concept of justice - that's a clear violation of the protection against a state mandated religion.