The Comfortable Pew

Back in the 1960s, the Anglican Church in Canada asked the most famous Canadian writer of the time, Pierre Burton, who had withdrawn from active church affiliation, to write a book about why he had problems with Christianity. The result was his book The Comfortable Pew.

The major point was that churches, in Berton’s view, were irrelevant to important national and world issues. The title says it all; Christians withdrew from dealing with the problems of the world by hiding in church on their comfortable pews.

Imagine! That was the worst thing he could say about religion. Berton could not have imagined, I suspect, that in the next century powerful churches would practically control the American government and deliberately head the world toward war and Armageddon, that they would glorify politicians who lived in all the ways that they claimed were sinful. Today, in America, most fundamentalist Christians celebrate Roy Moore. He is famous for, as Alabama chief justice, defying federal courts regarding stone monuments inscribed with the Ten Commandments on public property in Alabama, defying court orders to do so. He is now running for the U.S. Senate. Numerous women have accused him of sexual harassment. Apparently, to American fundamentalist Christians, you don’t have to actually obey the Ten Commandments, but just carve them in stone and then ignore them.

I almost wish we could go back to the time when the most dangerous thing about religion was irrelevancy.

The American Image

What is the image that the world has of Americans? We all know what the image is: Americans are rude, self-centered, loud, big, fat, violent, and impatient. At least once a week some French news item reminds them of this. One recent example is a French news item about gun violence in America. Also, it was from the French news, not the American news, that I learned about the white supremacist rally in Shelbyville, TN on October 29. We might think that the image they have of us is not fair, but we keep feeding it with confirmatory data.

Perhaps the author K. W. Oxnard said it best. The United States is a childish country that cannot make friends or clean up after itself. The author wrote this over twenty years ago, long before the Infant-In-Chief took office. Remember that the Infant-In-Chief got about half the votes in the country. About half of Americans want the world to think we are like him.

Altruism in America and in France

I have written recently about how the social environment of America has become hostile, largely due to the hostility that Trump Republicans hold against all other Americans, even other Republicans. Altruism binds together members of a group in a pact of mutual aid. Altruism can actually help a group be more efficiently violent against people outside of the group. Trump Republicans have drawn the borders of their group very tightly and restricted altruism to within their group. Therefore, altruism is dying in American society in general.

This trend is being reflected in government policy. National Parks, monuments, etc. were created for the common good of all Americans and all species. They were created for the future. Now the Trump Republicans want to dismantle the system of protected lands. They want to make a profit on land that Americans (especially the Republican Teddy Roosevelt) set aside for the future. But Trump Republicans literally do not care about the future. They could use as their motto, “What has posterity ever done for me?”

Also, in October, the Senate voted (50 to 50; Mike Pence cast the deciding vote) to make it illegal for Americans to sue financial corporations even if those corporations violate contracts and defraud them. We can date the end of altruism from that vote. As of that vote, the American people have no financial rights, and corporations have no responsibilities. You have money in the bank? You might still have it. You have a fixed rate mortgage? You might still have it. As of this vote, not only are corporations people, as Republicans have long proclaimed; but now, they are the only people. People aren’t people. Gone from society is the altruism of reliable laws and contracts; replacing it is the struggle for existence, only it’s not much of a struggle—we know who is going to win. The Republican government, and the corporations. What is to keep them from making us their slaves in everything but name?

Meanwhile, altruism continues in France. When I was in Strasbourg, I liked it, but was not sure exactly why. Now I realize what it is: everyone treats everyone else altruistically. With few exceptions, nobody throws trash in the street or creates loud noises. As a matter of fact, when you recycle glass (and nearly everybody does), you have to do it during the day so as to not create noise that could disturb the neighbors. If you use a public building for an event, and you create too much noise, the electricity will shut off. Translation: Attention! Limit to Noise! Please do not make sound at too high a level. If you pass a noise level of 90 decibels, the electricity of this hall will be cut off. Thank you for taking this into account.

As I said, altruism can create hostility toward outsiders, too. And after I move to France, I will never be completely French. The French are very happy to let you know that you are not one of them. I will always be something of an outsider, and I will not fully enjoy the benefits of French societal altruism. I know this is the way it is going to be, but I will accept this risk rather than to stay in America where I have no rights, where corporations can cheat me, where my risk of being killed by someone’s gun is five times greater, per capita, than in France. And I will enjoy the altruism (the French call it l’entraide, or aid-between) that is the dominant atmosphere there.

The Best Job Ever?

The Congressional Chaplain, Father Patrick J. Conroy, earns a salary of $172,500 per year, over three times what I earn as a professor. To earn this salary, all he has to do is to open each session with a prayer, a duty that he frequently delegates to an assistant.

Not only does this give Father Conroy a lot of free time to do other things, many or all of which could make him more money (I don’t know what he does with the rest of his time), but it also provides him with a huge amount of influence on Congressional deliberations. While I have not seen any videos of Conroy’s prayers, I have posted a video of a Baptist minister in Oklahoma who opened a session of the Oklahoma House of Representatives with aprayer that had clear political content. This would be very easy to do without being overt. A Congressional chaplain could say, “Guide us O Lord in our deliberations to defend the current government of the people who have claimed in the past to be Your Chosen Nation, and guide us to support the political party that claims to have special exemptions from Your Moral Law…” Well, maybe that would be a bit overt, but what is to stop him from doing it?