The Disconnect Between White People And Religion

There has been a dramatic fundamental shift in how White Americans deal with religion since the 1970s and it is not good. The other day my buddy, Mike, was working in Carmel and was having a discussion with a client when he reference the Bible. He says that it was if he had pulled out a gun because his client, an otherwise smart,educated and wealthy man completely became unglued. It was like showing a Vampire a Cross. This is an all too common reaction that is exclusive to White people and it is both sad and more than a little silly. I do understand why there is a issue with religion in today's American society but it does not justify the near hysteria demonstrated by White people no matter which side of the debate they are on.

A Quick & Sloppy History

America's first large group of immigrants were Puritans, who settled in New England to escape religious persecution in England. They soon got around to persecuting non-Puritans which seems to have established a trend in America as new immigrant populations arrive that have different religious beliefs. America was huge and this allowed sub-sects of Anglican churches to spring up and thrive between 1690 and 1899. Shakers, Quakers, Methodists, Baptists, Brethren and those crazy people who dance with poisonous snakes all became part of the American religious landscape. To deal with this the Congress during the Constitutional Convention made a point of mandating a separation of church & state by forbidding making of law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. In some states at that time you couldn't run for office if you didn't belong to the right church. This has worked pretty well until the 1980s. In the old days, religion and church was something that White people did for a variety of reasons. Church was a good social gathering, a good place to catch up on the week's activities and chat with friends. Church was good for businessmen who could network and drum up work for the next week. Church was also a good place to go and for an hour get a dose of the Bible either in soothing Episcopal tones or in fire & brimstone sermons. The other six days of the week most White people went about their days business as usual but some (many) would try to incorporate what they were reminded about in church into their activities. The majority of White people kept their religion to themselves and minded their own business. In the 1920s it would actually be the Catholic Churches in Chicago and New York that began to force government to do their bidding as motion pictures became more popular. Movies brought "Dangerous ideas and questionable moral behavior" into their neighborhoods and were considered a threat to the minds of young Catholic children. Their cause was soon taken up by the Southern Baptists and smaller Evangelical churches and soon the movie industry was forced to adopt a strict code that made movies suck until the 1960s. Outside to the theaters things were civil until the turmoil of the 1960s. Young people replaced LSD and pot for Jesus and the Bible. Anything went and often did. Then in 1973 the landmark Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion began the snowball that has become the Conservative, Right-Wing Christian (CRWC) movement of today. Up until 1973 the government had allowed itself to give judgement in favor of religious groups [ not that this was all bad. John Bron was a religious fanatic and later the Republican Party was formed by anti-Slavery Christians who plunged the United States into a civil war to decide that question once and for all]

The CRWC movement was a reaction to the liberal intelligentsia who had been actively trying to push out traditional morals (as the CRWC saw them) and instituting a non-moral society with concepts like relativism. Roe v Wade was the straw that broke the camel's back and would ignite a movement that would eventually put two Presidents into the White House. The problem was that the CRWC sold their souls to the Republican Party (GOP) in order to gain power. The GOP in the late 70s was crippled by Nixon and Watergate and saw the CRWC (and their money) as a way back into power so they opened their doors wide and thus created the single most unholy alliance since the Third Reich and the Vatican. All a GOP candidate had to do was be against abortion and maybe be against gay marriage and they got the votes. Nobody cared that many were actually crooks. Plus, the Republican Party was against social spending which meant that believers in Jesus were electing politicians into power who were fucking the poor. Worse, the cuts in social programs under the Republicans lead to MORE abortions as financial options of singe women dwindled under their leadership. Non-fundamentalists and non-Christians became disgusted by this alliance of the GOP and CRWC so soon there became a large rift as White people no longer minded their business and gleefully stuck there noses into other people's lives to question/mock their motives. This went both ways which has gotten us to where we are today.

9/11/2001

The anti-religious White Americans got their broken camel's back on a morning in September of 2001 when 19 religious fanatics hijacked four commercial passenger jets and flew three of them into the World Trade Center in New York and into the Pentagon in Washington D.C. ( the fourth jetliner was flown into the ground in Pennsylvania as passengers staged a revolt). They saw this act as proof that religion was a cesspool for the weak minded and a backwater movement gained traction. This was the Militant Atheist (MA) and they saw their chance to step out into the sunlight and raise their smug voices to point out the insanity of religion in the 21st Century. Atheism had been around for a while. The Communists were big on it and in the 1940s, 50s,60s and 70s it had flourished in college campuses amongst Philosophy students. It was harmless and in many ways liberating because one felt that their personal conduct was based upon their own morals and feelings instead of being dictated by an unseen, all-controlling being. Militant Atheists were few and far between and seen as trouble makers. Madalyn Murray O'Hair

would fall into this category for while she is seen as a champion of the First Amendment the fact is that she was a con-artist who (according to her son) took money from a lot of people. She began a chain of events that has co-formed the foundation of the religious disconnect of the New White American.

The MA are different than traditional atheists just as the CRWC are different than traditional Christians in that they do not conduct themselves as atheists. The MA are so solid in their beliefs that they have turned atheism into...wait for it...a religion. Make no mistake on this, the belief that there is absolutely no God/creator/supreme universal intelligence is as equal a statement of FAITH as the belief in a God (or gods). It is the intellectually honest truth of the matter. That's why the old-school atheists were so quiet, theirs was a philosophical belief and not a statement of fact which in the case of a God is also a statement of faith. So Americans was divided into the CRWC, who elect politicians who are everything BUT Christian and the MA who are conducting a religious war against other religions but don't know that it is a religious war because they've turned Atheism into a de facto religion. In between the two are everyone else. People who have some kind of religious faith but don't go to church , church-going folks who don't drink the Kool-aid and normal non-believers. So as the MA file lawsuits over increasingly stupid things and the CRWC lick their wounds from the 2008 election the majority of White Americans just want to avoid the topic of religion all together and it is starting to make them(us) crazy. Some literally run from the room if religion is brought up and of course everyone is now offended at any perceived slight. So honest discussions of faith are few and far between outside of church and I don't see this as a good thing.

Most people have not bothered to read the Bible or read beyond the Bible into the archives of Biblical Scholarship where one can learn how the Bible was written and who wrote what and why. What comes into focus through Biblical scholarship is that a group of people were trying to make sense of crazy times and bring some kind of order into play to cool everyone off and make them less crazy. They didn't have all the answers and you'll find that today we don't have many more answers than they did. The problem is that you cannot teach Biblical scholarship in a public school and while a good Catholic School will offer these classes you often will not find Biblical scholarship discussion within the church itself. So the faithful are at a loss to the developments in archeology and scholarship that have fleshed out the Bible and the Gospels bringing them into clearer focus. So you have churches that don't want to educate people about what is going on in Biblical scholarship and you have people who think that they know everything about religion yet cannot answer basic questions about the subject even if only to dispute it.

For example, there are many MA and young religious types who call Tom Cruise's church a religion. They don't know the difference between a cult and a religion. This is painfully common even among better educated White folks as well. A cult is easy to get into and hard/impossible to get out of/away from. I walked away from the Episcopal church in 1979 and they've never said boo about it. They've never tried to kidnap me and reprogram me and I do not even receive a harassing newsletter. Church doors are always open and you can walk in and walk out any time you please. That some self-proclaimed Atheists don't know this calls into question their judgement and that other young Christian types the same as true as they somehow see the faith of Cruise as somehow on equal apostolic footing.

Really, you gotta be white to think like this.