I've just come over from Robyn's blog, my head still reeling from her excellent but very scary post about how, when she was ten,
"… my church decided to host a kind of party to purge the youth in the congregation of their wicked, wicked, trashy, Hell-bent rock and roll records. The Devil's music. Everyone was encouraged to bring in their filthy trash and smash the vinyl up front by the podium. Each teenager was allowed to give testimony before smashing up their collection, with shards of black plastic spraying all over the floor. Amen."
Wow, Robyn!
Other than the fact that the way you were treated would count as child abuse over here, your post really brought back to me the feeling of stupefied disbelief in the UK after Lennon pointed out that The Beatles were probably better known than Jesus (which - given the huge chunks of the planet that are not Christian fundamentalist was probably right) and the Bible Belt began the Great Beatle Burning.
We looked on with jaws dropped in incredulity at our first sight of a fundamentalist "Taliban" at work. It was brought home to the whole world, gaping in front of our TVs that the US religious right were truly and spectacularly insane.
And that something had gone very, very wrong deep in the heart of America.
These were not simply cultural philistines, but overtly racist, too. As Robyn's sister wrote: "All the missionaries called it the Fertility Beat - just like the natives in the jungle. You would have thought we were going to get pregnant just listening to it."
This at the time those good ol' boys the God-fearing, white-supremacist KKK were blowing up black churches and killing children. Only a few years before, black men had been lynched for so much as looking at a white woman; now they were being beaten and murdered for simply registering to vote.
I wonder what it would be like even now for a black guy in say Selma, Alabama to walk the street arm in arm with a white woman … Or a same sex couple to walk the street at all … Or a pinko fag Marxist like me … What the fuck are they scared of?
Because it is ignorance and fear that drives them.
In a country where church and state are supposedly separate, the Republican party is the voice of the religious right and we have Patrick Henry College grooming bigots, racists, sexists, homophobes and fundamentalist extremists for government office. Fucking scary.
Robyn reassures me that most American Christians are as alarmed at this fascistic mob as the rest of us; they give true Christians a very bad name indeed.
She is right of course, but nice people worshipping in a nice church does not exciting TV make (just look at "Songs of Praise" … Yikes!), and outside the States all that the rest of the world sees on the news and documentaries are the extremists … the disgraced TV evangelists who screw around or who put the "con" in congregation or (gasp) come out as gay; the white supremacists, the bigamists, the bigots, the risibly oxymoronic "Moral Majority", the creationist nutjobs, and just lately cute little girls posing in GOD HATES FAGS tee shirts …
Actually, over here that's simply an anti-smoking slogan as a "fag" here is merely a cigarette (from "faggot", being a stick used for firelighting). How it became twisted to mean a gay man is beyond me. And what the fuck's wrong with being gay anyway? Hey ho.
So anyhoo; enough ranting and offending people for today … well, for this morning, at least.
Here's a question for the colonials amongst you:
What's it really like there now?
16 comments:
Scary. Not because there are people like that in this country---as you point out, they've always been here---but that they have the political power to force their views on the rest of us.
I do know that there are perfectly good Christian people in this country. I work with many of them, Robyn is one of them, I count some among my family. But the overall face of Christianity in America would make me shun the label, even if I was one.
Even in the liberal hotbed of Massachusetts, it's still a scary, scary world here.
Brrrrrrrrrr …
Whats religion like in my country? We have Fred Nile who is the religious ranter involved in politics and we have the minority cultural ratbags, the muslims, the stupid shiek who just pisses everyone off. We get our fair share of festival of life door knockers although they all seemed to have realised this street in going to hell.
Australia is pretty laid back, people who go to church go to church and the rest of us think what a waste of a day off as we sit back and watch V8 supercars on sundays or go to the football.
I don't believe religion has a place in politics or should have a voice anywhere except for sundays and only for those who choose to hear it. People who burn books in the name of god should start with their own books, religion has caused some of the bloodiest moments in history.
And completely unrelated, I fixed the blue.
Cheers, Kate. the voice of reason. And thanks for the blue, my old eyes are still stinging (hee hee).
I guess I don't see it as scary anymore because I see the most extreme as marginal pockets--the KJV types and the funeral protesters who follow the returning dead soldiers around the country and make us all cringe. And I see the religious right losing ground as people start to realize that people in politics, regardless of party, will woo any block of voters they can. I think movement come and go in phases, and this "risible oxymoronic Moral Majority" is a phase that is waning.
I am concerned, though, about this upcoming election. The Democratic candidates are fed up with the Republicans staking a claim to faith and are now each trying to prove that he/she is as spiritual as the Republican candidates. That's a heavy cross to bear, and someone is going to be forced to claim something they don't truly believe just to get votes.
And about the race issue, it was very much a part of the fearful rejection of that "native beat." I toned down my post yesterday, excluding my own father's adjectives, as not to offend. Yikes.
Thanks, Robyn. It's good to hear the balanced view from somebody who's right there.
And the thought of you as that cute little girl in Alabama in the midst of all that is truly frightening. I'm glad you turned out like you did.
even worse, this all happened in Indiana.
I've always dismissed the religious wackos and kept them well out of my circle of friends. I find them most often cruel and judgemental in the worst ways. That said, there are a lot of people in my life who are good christians. I don't believe.
The sad truth of the matter is that this country is teeming with the religious right. I come from a religious family... ironically, not so much on the Mexican side. Most of my peole aren't awful and judgemental about it though. I think that most religious folks aren't awful about it. Perhaps not.
When I moved to Massachusetts from California I actually had the opportunity to drive through many of the "fly-over" states in the middle. There are a freaking lot of people out there and they tend to be a very conservative bunch. The intellectual liberal sets that populate the edges and larger cities in this country tend to "fly over" and don't always realize how many of them are out there and how vehemently they cling to christianity. And the right-wing "ideals".
People in this country are comforted by the idea of something holy in the world. And thinking about the current administration, it makes sense to cling to anything that could explain the political madness that has plagued this country. However, the political madness in this country is largely perpetuated by agenda-driven right wing christian conservatives. So it is scary at times. Blind faith. Yikes.
Yikes, Robyn! That's not far from where you are now!
Start running.
Thanks, FH; that's a great reply. I'd never heard those parts referred to as "fly over" before and it makes sense. It must be scary to drive through them now.
One of our motoring TV shows, Top Gear, sent its presenters on a dare last year, to drive through the south in pink cars daubed with pro-gay and pro-Hillary slogans. They barely got out alive. Even the camera crew got beaten up. That was fucking scary!
Brrrrr …
I had a collection of Playboy Magazines when I was a kid and nobody would get me to ever purge those. They got me through lots of lonely nights.
I am surrounded by Christians. They are generally speaking a pleasant and agreeable lot, not noticeably different from other people—even though the, the Christians of the South, the U.S.A., the Western world have killed off more people than all other people put together. Yet I cannot be sure they don’t have the truth. But if they have the truth, why it is the case that they are repellent precisely to the degree that they embrace and advertise the truth? One might even become a Christian if there were few if any Christians around. Have you ever lived in the midst of fifteen million Southern Baptists?...A mystery: If the good news is true, why is not one pleased to hear it?
---Walker Percy
I was born and raised in one of the “fly over” states, and I have certainly felt that way. But, I have also been surrounded by amazing Christians—people who work to live their faith--to love their neighbor as themselves, to do justice and love kindness and walk humbly with their God.
So, I have seen both sides.
What pisses me off the most? Fundamentalist homophobia. I live with a gay woman and now see just how much of it is chucked in her general direction. It makes me so incredibly angry--angrier than I have ever been.
Hee hee, Rich.
Hey, T; that's a great piece. Thank you.
And I guess you answered my question pretty well in your last paragraph. Poor Lolita. Stay angry, T!
Funeral protesters who follow the dead around? Thats just scary.
In australia we don't automatically have the right to freedom of speech, we just assume we do and use it. However we don't have that sort of thing, we don't have protesters outside abortion clinics killing the people who use them. I guess we are a lucky very laid back country.
Religion go t a foot hold in with the stolen generation and the taking of aboriginal and white kids from their parents and "making them white" alot of children suffered terribly through that. And earlier in our history we had reverand marsden who was known as the flogging priest. But being a country built on the back of the sheep and agriculture in general the religion of flood fire drought is the one we listen to.
Have you heard Rufus Wainwright's song, "Going To a Town"? It says it all about America, I think.
I am pretty much in a place of deep anger at my country. I can't believe that this idiot is our president. I can't believe that Hilary Clinton has to be scrutinized to see if she is "friendly and warm" enough to lead our country. I know of NO male candidates who have to undergo that sort of scrutiny.
Fred Phelps and his clan scare the bejesus out of me.
But, then, I will see some small bit of wonderfulness in someone and just for a second, I feel like maybe we could still be okay.
And then, there is Dubya on the telly again, smiling that insipidly bland smile and saying those things that make me cringe.
And of course, there are all those so called Christians who feel that gay marriage may just besmirch the sanctity of the holy marriage of Britney Spears and Kevin Federline....
And the beat goes on....
KAte, you are very lucky down there, in so many ways. But the flogging priest sounds fun!
And thank you Maria. I'm totally in agreement with every word.
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