that’s me in the spotlight / using my religion

Ever since the November election, progressives have been freaking the high holy freakout about religion. We’ve been talking up the “Christian left” without being really sure what we’re talking about. Jim Wallis has become a folk hero in some quarters. Yesterday, I watched a thread break down on a “major progressive blog” because a poster accused his fellow major progressive bloggacks of dissing religion. The poster claimed alienation in the wake of the Papal Conclave; s/he insisted that progressives on the blog were disrespectful and hostile to religion. We were eating our own, the poster wailed, claiming that most Christians and other religious people are “probably” on the side of progressives.

Mm. Let me just give my bona fides, because it’s evidently now required if you are a progressive and want to discuss religion. I do attend a Methodist church, a very traditional one complete with 19^th-century hymns, an organ the size of a Lincoln Navigator, and a liturgy written by Moses. I am by no means hostile to religion. But I live in Texas—the real West Texas, not the place mythologized in story and song. I know that’s where I live because I brush dust out from between my teeth every night. And out here in West Texas, liberals, progressives, reproductive rights supporters, peace activists, gay people, people of color, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera: all have faced and continue to face open hostility from large segments of the religious community.

Directly from the religious community. Listen: In the fall of 2000, in the middle of the longest presidential election in U.S. history, I was “invited” to a Southern Baptist country church. For reasons that have been lost to the mists of time and the unpredictability of human romantic relationships, I attended the service. I was not unknown to the members of the congregation, nor were my politics. Nevertheless, the preacher proceeded to preach a long long sermon that demonized Gore and the Democrats as “very very bad men” who were trying to steal the election. O how I would have liked to stand and walk out—but that wasn’t really possible under the social circumstances. So I tried to daydream, tried to fill my head with television static, did everything but cover my ears with my hands and shout la-la-la-la-la. But I felt very very very alone that Sunday morning, even in a roomful of people.

Another story: I’m a teacher of a group of high school students I call the “Babies on Board.” My juniors and seniors this year were born at the end of the 1980s. I was attending Southern Methodist University during those years and I remember quite clearly that every BMW in Highland Park with a car-seat also sported a yellow Baby On Board sign. It wasn’t just in Dallas, of course; everywhere I traveled during those years, I saw these ubiquitous signs and they were also widely alluded to in the media. Apparently there were parents so overprotective that they believed that someone would actually drive into their car if they didn’t know there was a child inside. I always wondered what those kids who were protected from the world by blaring warning signs and quilted car seats would grow up to be.

Now I know.

Last year’s standardized-testing schedule at the high school enabled the seniors—who didn’t have to take the TAKS—to come to school late three days in a row. This year’s schedule only gives them two days—and my seniors have been wailing and teeth-gnashing all month long that they “deserve” that extra day.

Y'see, they still think the world needs to turn on its axis in whatever direction would make them the most comfortable. They’re still overprotected. They feel entitled—and the slightest perceived injustice leads to screams & shouts claiming victimization. I am their teacher and I love them, but I have to roll my eyes when they write in their journal that they should be worshipped as gods. Really. They write that.

I think of these particular kids when I read posts sticking up for defenseless Christians. Or when I watch television shows decrying the ways in which the faithful are persecuted. Or when a wearin’-my-religion-on-my-bumper sort says with that cute mix of outrage and righteousness: “I’m sorry, but I ain’t givin’ up my faith for no one!”

Heh. No one asked you to, dude.

Look, hyper-religious Christian fundies aren’t persecuted in this country. They’re just not. Neither are mainstream Southern Baptists, nondenominational evangelical Christians, Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, or even Methodists. At least not by secular humanists. By each other, maybe. And some members of all of the above bug the Moslems, the Buddhists, the Unitarians, and the Wiccans. But Left Behind-style persecution of the religious by the non-religious—not so much.

So I know everyone’s saying we need to somehow extend our reach into the churches, and I do agree that we need to find a way to blunt the impact of the Republican lie that we’re anti-church, but there’s just two things I can’t get outta my head—

First, when someone’s lying on the ground being stomped by a mob, it’s kinda silly to ask them to stop mistreating the poor mob. And secondly, if I gave in to every student who wails of victimization in my class, I wouldn’t be a bit effective.

SPACEDARK