No discussion about in US in 2007 could be complete without a look at the religious fervor of the popular culture. Chapter 21, one of the longest in
Wealth, Women, and War, covers that topic. Since it is long, you might want to print it out and read it at your leisure.
Wealth, Women, and War is released in accordance with the solidarity principals of Occupy Wall Street adopted on February 9, 2012.
Cliff Potts
November 8, 2014
God and Country U.S.A.
We have lost any rational sense of judgment in the United States.
We cannot tell the difference between who needs help and who does not. We have
also lost any sense of how to help. The famous “hand-up” of Compassionate Conservatism
is nonexistent. The phrase “Compassionate Conservatism” is an oxymoron. The
hand-up is a dead end job for less than share cropper’s wages. Congress
struggles with a $7.50 an hour minimum wage when it requires $14.50 an hour to
keep a family of four going. Job boards are filled with advertisements for
on-line universities whose credentials are questionable at best and whose
business practices are less than ethical. Monster.com now makes special listings
for people over 40 because age discrimination runs rampant. Young men and women
are running the show now. They want cubicles filled with their own pretty
people. Older workers need not apply in most cases. The hardship inflicted by
the corporations goes unnoted. It is considered selection.
In an era of abortion on demand the younger managers
know that at some level they missed the surgeon’s knife. Their existence could
have been terminated in the womb. Somewhere there is a feeling of natural
selection’s kiss, and by some reckoning they are the best of the human
generation to date. This sense is mimicked in Steven Levitt’s work in
Freakonomics.
The younger managers would do better to consider it blind luck, or parental
love than natural selection. However, those considerations is discounted in the
current era and would take some forethought to consider the larger
ramifications. Levitt’s work draws a corollary to the decline of crime in the
1990s and abortion. That drop in crime, however, is explained in Terrie E.
Moffitt’s
Pathways in Life Course to
Crime which shows that crime activity peaks at age 15 and steadily declines
to age 30 for most offenders.
The younger managers look in the mirror and it tells
them that they are the individual around which the universe revolves. This is
reflected in the character of Johnny Storm (in the 2005 movie Fantastic Four. Showy, self-absorbed,
full of commercial ventures, and yet, still able to get the job done. This is
the essence of their religion as well. God is their God, and their God
loves them. There are no
circumstances beyond one’s control. Everything that happens is an act of
individual will. This is the essence of the 2006 film The Secret. While there is some truth to the effect of the
individual’s perspective on the world around them, it is taken to a manic level
when it is promoted as a panacea for the world’s ills. When a hardship occurs,
it is reasoned that it is due to some lack in an individual’s life. That is the
teaching of today. The insurance corporations are very willing to help this
idea along since it alleviates them of the responsibility of paying out
settlements when losses occur. The concept of Christian kindness has been
utterly lost even among the Christians.
In 1992 Moody Press released Larry Burkett’s
Whatever Happened to the American Dream.
Larry Burkett was a Christian author and radio personality, who specialized in
financial accounting and economics for the Evangelical Christian community. He
toured the country promoting his particular brand of “Godly” economics, and was
largely ignored by the main stream media. Yet, his work raised much of the pseudo-Calvinist
economic concepts at play today.
He was wrong. Even if one believes that God ordained the Torah, the economic
system created within the first five books of the bible is no longer valid.
That system was based on specific land grants
dividing the land
of Israel to the specific
tribes. The tribes then divided up the allotment to the specific families within
the tribes. When hardship occurred and a Jew became a slave, the other Jews
were to restore him or her to freedom as soon as possible. The community, in
essence, was to make sure that no one Jew was to be left in destitution. If a
slave was abused, he was given his freedom. If a slave ran away he was not to
be returned to his or her master. Land was never sold in perpetuity. Every 50
years it reverted back to the family which owned it. It was deeded back to the
oldest living member of the family (male or female). Land was valued only on
what it could produce from the time it was sold. Land did not appreciate in a
never ending inflationary spiral.
Since
Israel
of antiquity was an agricultural based economy, the ability of the tribe, or
the family within that tribe, was secured through the basic subsistence produced
by the land available to them at all time. Even the priest class, which had no
land allotment to speak of, was taken care of this way. They did have seven
cities and the land around these cities was allocated to them. They were not
destitute either, nor were they completely dependent upon what was “donated” by
the congregation of
Israel.
Added to this, every seven years a plot of land was to be left unattended “that
the poor of thy people may eat: and what they leave the beasts of the field
shall eat.”
The Jew of antiquity, as ordained by God, had a welfare system coded into their
constitution (which is what the Jews still call the first five books of the
bible). Nothing in the
United
States today reflects this biblical economic
system. We have crated a system that is no longer dependent on the agriculture
base.
There is one passage worth noting from the Old
Testament in regards to the attitudes we see today:
For the poor shall never cease out of the
land: therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto
thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land.
It is sufficient to say that this is not what we are
hearing taught from the pulpit in the Churches or the Synagogues. We are
hearing how the poor are lazy. They want to have a hand out. They are ignorant.
Contrast that against comments made by Rev. Falwell concerning Union activity.
Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbour,
neither rob him: the wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all
night until the morning.
The latter parts of that passage become interesting because
many rabbis teach that if a employee and an employer agree that wages are paid
once or twice a week then it is acceptable by mutual agreement. The catch there
is “mutual” agreement. Rarely does the employee stand on equal footing with the
employer. The tasks are left to the employer’s notion, and payment schedules
are left to the judgment of the employer. There is no equity in the matter. The
employee takes it or leaves it as he can. No negotiation will alter what is
decided based on the best interest of the employer.
In today’s world, with the advent of personal
computers and accounting software available through Quicken, a firm could roll
out a payroll at the end of the each day. However, due to cash flow
considerations, employers have to play
the float until some predetermined pay period. The onus is put upon the
employee to “make ends meet” between pay periods. If we concede that there are
sound financial reasons for not abiding by this commandment, then we have to
conclude that our economic system today is not aligned with anything which
existed 6000 years ago. All we are left with then is to abide by the principle
of the command and not it literal application. Yet, with the nature of wages
today, even the principle is ignored.
Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant that
is poor and needy, whether he be of thy brethren, or of thy strangers that are
in thy land within thy gates….
It is a shame that so little has been written on
these basic premises over the past forty years. It is as if it is ignored in
the public debate. Yet, the passages sit there staring at us, and showing us
the millennium ago someone was working to make a just and kind society. They are
goals which we seem to have decided are not in the best interest of the nation.
Democrat or Republican, it doesn’t seem to matter one iota.
Larry Burkett came from a background which included
the Strategic Air Command, NASA, a defense contractor. He was the product of
the Military Industrial Complex. His views come straight out of the corporations.
They had a Christian flavoring to them, but they were pure corporate-speak.
One of his many themes in
Whatever Happened to the American Dream was that the injured worker
was responsible for his own injury. His take can be summed up that the
government intervention by OSHA was a socialist intervention by a secular
humanist government and in itself was depriving people of taking responsibility
for their actions. His diatribe was that government regulations were killing
the God ordained prosperity in the
United States. It is hard to
imagine how that could be since the government’s safety programs began in the
days of Teddy Roosevelt’s Square Deal; and the nation prospered quite well from
1901 to 1980. The destruction of the American Dream began with Nixon, when
wealth was separated from work, production, and delivery of product. Mind you, Burkett
says little about the abandonment of the Bretton
Woods agreement. It is simply easier and far more lucrative to tell people what
they want to hear. To him, OSHA removed the individual responsibility.
The employee
has little to no control over the work environment. The decision makers, making
their living by pushing electrons around from desk-top computers and telephones
have forgotten (if they ever knew) what it is to actually work for a living.
The employee can either do what he is told, or be terminated.
In Texas,
some time ago, an employee was ordered to cut apart an old steel storage tank.
It had been excavated from a demolished gas station, and it had to be scrapped.
A discussion occurred which ended with “do it or you are fired!” The employee
descended into the tank. Exactly what occurred after that is unknown. The tank
exploded. The man’s body was ejected through the six inch diameter filler
nozzle. It was recovered two blocks from the site of the explosion. The
workman’s compensation insurance company refused to pay. Their position is that
the employee should have known better, and brought about his own death. At last
report the case was winding through the Texas Worker’s Compensation Commission.
The rights of the insurance company have to be protected. The TWCC system is
about as impartial as is a college fraternity house where the injured workers,
or the surviving families, are about as welcome as campus police. This is, to
some people’s thinking, right and just, and explaining the absurdity is like
describing the color red to a blind person.
Insurance premiums are paid to the insurance
companies so that when an accident occurs to one person there is money pooled, to
care for the survivors. That is what the money is for. It is not the insurance company’s money. The
premium paid to the insurance companies is held in trust for when it is needed
by the insured. They are allowed to invest that money and keep any profit from
the investment, but it is not their money.
It is the customer’s money held in trust for the customer.
We seem to have forgotten anything resembling justice
in the U.S.
today. The institutions turn on the injured worker, or the survivor, as if they
were pariahs. One has to question whatever happened to the instructions “do
justice” and “love mercy.”
When people are suffering, then it is the
institutional religious organizations responsibility to come to their aid. If
the religious institutions are overwhelmed by the number of people in need,
then perhaps there is a problem in capitalism itself. To hear it from the
pulpit, “This can never be; the system was ordained by God.” That is nonsense.
This is our system, created by us. Capitalism, or at least the free market,
came into existence in the 1340s when the Black
Death killed between one-third and two-thirds of Europe’s
population. Some would place its origins in antiquity, but Rome had no middle class, or merchant class,
to speak of, and Feudalism was in full sway prior to the 1300s. It simply came
about in response to the manpower shortage, and the power vacuum left as the old
order died off. As with any human institution it is what we make of it. The
institutional religions’ ability to recognize this stems from the nature of the
individuals within the institutions. Burkett, who died on July 4, 2003, was a
product of capitalism with a background in finance, not theology.
The people within the religious institutions are
trained in the ethics of the corporations to be judgmental, critical, skeptical
and unwilling to aid anyone. Moreover, even the few who have made a commitment
to intervene are low on funds. Take the Salvation Army for instance.
If anything, the Salvation Army’s statement on personal
financial responsibility does not reflect the edicts of the corporations in the
United States
today. It is a statement of a specific faith, and given the aid they do render,
should be used as a guide in principle at least for other institutional
religions in the United
States:
People can learn skills in handling money
that enable them to use what they have responsibly, and thereby benefit
themselves, their families and communities. Unfortunately, modern society with
its emphasis on materialism, and its virtually free and unlimited access to
debt has produced increasing numbers of individuals who find themselves in
desperate financial conditions. The Salvation Army deplores those lenders who
prey on the poor, enticing individuals with limited financial stability to
incur debts at high cost and then refusing to deal fairly with the inevitable
financial disasters that follow.
While the statement does address the corporations
culpability in the “our culture’s greed, selfishness and deification of money,”
they go much further in seeing their responsibility as an institutional
religious expression. As they say, “The Salvation Army believes that people
with these problems deserve compassion, assistance and sound Christian
counseling.” That is more than one has heard from so many others in the
religious institutions today.
Each
Salvation Army Church is autonomous to the parent organization. They have only
the resources contributed in the local community. When the local community
lacks resources then the local charity lacks resources. Every holiday season,
there is at least one news story about some corporation limiting the collection
activities of the Salvation Army. Not only do the corporations refuse to help,
but they often refuse to let others help. That has to give one pause.
Wal-Mart, on the other hand, makes a big show of
their charitable contributions; it is the ultimate photo op for them in the
local community. They strive to create an image as a public minded corporation.
However, considering the amount of capital drained from the local community,
the infusion of charitable capital is a pittance. Wal-Mart’s employees are
often so impoverished that they have to utilize those same charities for
assistance.
We are letting this happen to our own people because
we no longer can make a distinction between who needs help and who doesn’t.
Moreover, we don’t give a damn. The “hand-up” of the “Faith-Based Initiative”
of “Compassionate Conservatism” never materialized because it was political
rhetoric to attract the religious vote. The followers of Jesus Christ are
instructed to give to charity even to those who are in prison. The distinction
of who deserves charity and who does not is irrelevant. If is it true that “all
have sinned,” then it is equally true that all deserve charity.
As Saint
Paul wrote,
“
Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity
envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up …”
If there are too many in need, the failing is
systemic, and not the functions of individual choice, no matter what the corporations
or mass media have to say about it. The individuals in the religious
institutions are blind, however.
There are, based on whose numbers you chose to use,
or find on the World Wide Web, approximately 157 million Christians in the United States.
Since there is no official count by government census the numbers can be
weighted to give the advantage to whichever group one wants. They spend seven
days a week immersed in the capitalistic culture of the corporations. For the
majority of the week’s 168 hours they are focused on “winning” and “losing.”
That focus undermines the ideals of the “Christian Life”.
At best the Christians spend four hours each week in
the teachings of Christ. How in all rationale can someone expect even a
minority of 157 million Christians of various denominations to wake up one day
and live the ideal Christian existence when they live in the amoral
capitalistic system for 164 hours a week? Even the most devout, who spend the
daylight hours in on their chosen Sabbath in the institution do little better.
The corporate ethos has grabbed their souls and will not let go. The
competition of capitalism has more sway in their lives than the teachings of
their God. The corporate competitiveness is the source of the “we” are better than
“them” sermonizing which is the core of many religious expressions today.
Men, with their predisposition to focus on one
prioritized issue at a time, are less likely to be paying attention during the
short span of Sunday school, socializing, worship services, teachings, and
afterglow. Moreover, in what one may call an Orwellian twist, they don’t even
have a conceptual vocabulary to address what is and is not charity. Some would
call it “love in action,” but the term love has become synonymous with lust in
the current culture, and at that point there is an utter logic disconnect. Even
where it is not automatically translated to “lust” the word love loses meaning
in a society which cannot and will not acknowledge that human beings are
expected to act as if each individual within society, regardless of station or
status, matters. The struggle for recognition of status within the society is
as competitive as the struggle for monetary resources.
If these men do some work outside their self-defined,
cubicle-ized, definition of their function within society (attorney,
accountant, doctor, technician, teacher, writer, shop keeper, athlete) then
they define it as charity. Even if the charity is ineffective or lacks defined
goals then they accept that charity as “God’s will.” Many para-church
organizations exist today which fit this category of charity; they do nothing
practical, but preach a good sermon twice on Sunday, and once on Wednesday.
To challenge this general concept of ineffectual
charity is to invite a quick and sharp rebuke. That rebuke, however, is
meaningless. The rebuke may stifle the question but it has convinced no one of anything.
It adds to the overall state of official indifference. This only adds, based
again on Colvin’s work on coercion, to hostility until, one, or both, leave for
another Christian institution rather than come to blows. The idea of coming to
blows is well within the thoughts of both parties, but is considered
uncivilized, and ethically unchristian … no matter how much it may be a natural
response to the stimuli. As such the valid questions concerning the
institution’s morality and ethics, or their support of unethical and immoral
conduct, are never answered.
It is worth saying that no one on earth speaks for
any god, and that we all are ultimately judged as to our value by what we
accomplish among the affairs of man. As Robert A. Heinlein stated in
Time Enough for Love, “A human being
should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, con a ship,
design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone,
comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve
equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a
tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
The questions asked do not fit the simplistic
conventional wisdom of the given institutional community, remain unasked and
unanswered, and the situation decays into the kind of narcissistic idolatry of
the self. The concern of most people within the institution is to fulfill some
personal obligation to a far away spiritual deity, while fixating on issues
concerning home, self, and work. It is seldom on the religious instructions. If
an empty belly is a poor political advisor it is an equally poor spiritual
advisor.
The one main “feeling” which the 157 million
Christians are trying to mitigate from the 164 hours spent in the larger
community is: guilt. They know their actions do not fit the ethics which they
know intuitively that they are violating. They know that the violation will
eventually bring reprisal. This breeds a deeper sense of unease. So guilt is
layered with fear. They become paralyzed in the situations because they cannot
or will not walk away from the abusive environments because they will suffer
economic loss. Then they cannot be good consumers. They cannot be good citizens
if they cannot consume. Their ability to be good providers is in jeopardy.
Their self-worth becomes questionable. Rather than address the cause; they
blame the liberals, or the conservatives. They cannot come to grips with the
system itself. They use the religion to cover up the guilt, and alleviate the
fear and pain. As Marx said, “religion is the opiate of the people.”
Given the insecurity brought about by the corporate
activities within the United
States, the lack of opportunity and economic
resources, more than likely the man’s mind is fixated on what Maslow refers to
as safety issues, and not contemplating the instructions of the preacher, or
teacher. The situation grows worse when the sermon is somehow wrapped up in the
general insecurity of the era.
Many sermons pray on people’s insecurity and fear of
loss. This has become so prominent that in the early 2000 decade time frame,
the chairmen of one of the nation’s
Christian Broadcasting Associations was forced to step down because he
suggested that they preach about the love of Jesus Christ rather than the
conservative social agenda. He received so much resistance from the rank and
file over that suggestion that he tendered his resignation. It was a suggestion,
not a policy change, yet the man was forced to step down. The rank and file, so
firmly fixed on the idea that they are in competition against the secular
society that to take any other direction is untenable. However, if they were to
actually put their faith in their own teachings they are in competition with no
one; according to Saint Paul,
they have already won. Yet, they perpetuate the idea that they are in
competition with “the world.” This can only be a conditioned response to the
world in which they live.
Dating back to the late 1980s, the reason behind
institutional religious attendance was to “feel better” about oneself. The
Flower Children had grown up and become institutionalized into the main stream
religious expressions. The 164 hours in the larger, general culture molded
their thinking into the corporate model. They desperately wanted something to
release them from the taint of that model. They were not interested in some man
in clerical garb challenging what they had to do during the 164 hours at work
and home. The message shifted to become more conciliatory when addressing the
164 hours. Themes like “name-it-claim-it” and “God wants you to be rich” became
standard fare.
Anyone who has the audacity to question these
teachings is considered rebellious against God, and against church authority.
The institutions will do everything in their power, which is admittedly little
save for social ostracism and possible exorcism with prayer and cooking oil, to
convince the heretic that he is wrong. It is heresy in the
United States to question the
capitalistic system and the edicts of the corporations in many of the
institutional religions today. The individual is questionable, but the
institution is beyond reproach. This is how religion gets it reputation as
being one of the worse forms of tyranny. However, such tyranny is not about
God’s intervention for man, it is the tyranny of unfailing support of a system
which in itself at odds with the religions upon which the institution is based.
This shift in the message can only be explained in terms of bolstering the
standards of the era, in the name of God. Those standards, right or wrong, are
not to be questioned. Yet, Jesus asked, “For what shall it profit a man, if he
shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
Of course we see what the institutions of His era did to him.
By 1982, the Vietnam War was a receding memory. The
Civil Rights era was over. The free love era had been codified into the social
matrix, as had the drug culture. Individual lawlessness became the rule not the
exception. Cocaine had replaced pot as the drug of choice in the corporate
boardrooms. Crack was appearing on the streets. All that was needed was to
reassert the conservative values that spoon fed people. The essence of the
message was that the corporation was good, the system was good, and the individual
was at fault. If the individual was not at fault because they did not behave
like “those people” then all was right with the world. No on wanted any more
social agendas. That was passé at best. This involved a subdued version of
“greed is good” and “might is right.” To support the “feel good” need, the
controlling bodies of the individual institutional religions sought out people
who extolled the Calvinist doctrine within the approved understanding of the
corporate ethos.
While it is true that the humorless, pain ridden,
reformation theologian of the 16th Century, John Calvin, did teach
the virtues of hard work and thrift, it is equally true that he had a well
documented distain for excessive profiteering. The latter part is lost in the
current era. The teachings of the current era are derived specifically from
sensitivity to what is acceptable within the current era. This was true during
the Clinton
administration, and true now under Bush. Going against the flow of the current
conventional wisdom can create even more hardships for the individual.
Anything which questions the comfort zone established
by the main stream agenda is utterly unacceptable in Christianity today. While
not directly apparent, the activity of the church is based on the corporate
model; all power resides with the “boss” (i.e. the pastor). No only does this
go against the teachings of Jesus Christ and Saint Paul,
but it also flies in the face of the philosophy which founded the United States of America.
The United States
was founded on the idea that power is derived from the consent of the people.
Power is not derived from a divine right to rule. The founding idea of the United States,
of course, was not a Christian ideal. The U.S. is based on Hermetic philosophy of individual enlightenment;
under this even the Puritan Christians found acceptance. However, it is very
much at odds with the authoritarian ideals of neo-Calvinism.
The capitalist structure of the churches in the United States
has caused some rifts in the Anglican (Episcopal) Church, and in the Roman
Catholic Church. In the Episcopal Church it has fired the debate over the
acceptance of gay clergy. To the Episcopal Church in the United States of America, this is a
purely religious issue. The capitalistic underpinnings are not openly apparent.
The root opposition to the acceptance of gays in the community at large would
force the corporations to accept the standards of civil unions as binding as marriage, and the corporations
would incur the added burden of providing additional benefits which it does no
now have to bestow.
The riff between the American Catholic Church and the
Roman Catholic Church is far more philosophical. The Roman Catholic Church does
not understand that the American Catholic Church has to be competitive with its
non-Catholic counterparts. The more conservative expression of Catholicism from
Rome is not always in line with the culture
within the United States.
The sensitivity to the conventional expression of the current culture is
nothing less than the competition for a portion of the entertainment dollar.
While many adherents to religion will balk as such an
assertion the churches are an inexpensive form of community based live theater.
Both theater and popular music are rooted in the church. The first plays
produced were morality plays based on the scriptures in support of the
Christian teachings. As the era changed the teachings changed. The function
remained the same. Today’s pastors and choir directors will openly admit that
the choir can make or break a church. This was taken one step further in Barrington, Illinois in
the late 1970s when the flagship mega church Willow Creek
Community Church
was formed. The backbone drawing the people to the church was live theater of
well produced morality plays, small Jesus-Rock bands, and conciliatory
preaching of Jesus as savior. Today entertainment is still the backbone of this
church. Bill Hybels, the founder of Willow
Creek Community
Church, was studying
business before catching the vision of Acts Chapter 2. It began with 125 people
in 1975, and grew to 2000 a week in three years. It is estimated the church
draws 6000 people over three services on Saturday evening and Sunday Morning. Willow Creek
Community Church
is an impressive practice of successfully applying the principles of competitive
capitalism to institutional religion. Bill Hybels and the Willow Creek
Association have successfully exported their model through a number of books
and seminars. There is no mistake, institutional religion is big business, and
it is rooted in capitalism and the corporate model.
The Southern Baptist Convention is also based on this
model. The SBC, as it is called, is a more Antebellum expression of
contemporary Christianity. It links its linage to Calvin and purports a active
membership of over six million, and a world wide membership of 16.3 million.
Its core message is one of the superiority of Jesus Christ as the leader of the
world, and the privileged status of the Anglo-Saxon male in the church
leadership as taught by Calvin’s interpretation of Saint Paul’s writings. Saint Paul, however,
may not have been setting up the social standard for the church, but
instructing the church in the first century how to comport itself within the
socially acceptable cultural patterns in Rome. While the Protestant Church,
including the SBC and independent churches like Willow Creek Community Church
believe that the Bible is infallible, the Catholic Church which codified the
Bible in the 1500s, hold that the scriptures are inspired by God, but reflect
the understanding of God at the time it was written; faith and human experience
with God to the Catholics is a dynamic and evolving expression. The Catholic
Church is somewhat more flexible over the long run, but is slow to make
changes. It takes its job of guarding the souls of its membership very
seriously.
The competitive nature for the support of
institutional religion in the United
States has yet to fully catch on in the
Catholic Communion where the institution is used to depending on the support of
a faithful following out of loyalty to the Christ and the teachings of the
Church. That following has thinned out since Vatican II, which allowed
Catholics to participate in Protestant services without threat of
excommunication. Now, even the Catholic Church has to vie for the entertainment
dollar.
To the faithful lay person this smacks of blasphemy.
It will be rebuked with righteous indignation. According to
Saint
John,
Saint Paul,
John Calvin, and Martin Luther, only God can save souls. As
Saint John wrote, “For God sent not his Son
into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be
saved.”
The whole evangelical thrust is to put “butts in the pews” in the hopes that
the a few of them will become inspired to give a full 10% of their earning and
will keep the physical plant in operation.
While the concept of tithing in the Old Testament is
far different than the concept of tithing in the current western expression,
the current tithing model is derived from necessity of functioning within the
capitalist system.
When a lamb was sacrificed in the Old Testament, the
equivalent of the tithe in contemporary religion, the lamb was butchered
carefully, and the entrails which were inedible were consumed in the fire of
the alter, the blood was drained, and the meat was roasted. The priest took a
portion of the roasted meat for their service, and the remaining was consumed
by the family offering the sacrifice. There was plenty to go around.
Thou shalt truly tithe all the increase of
thy seed, that the field bringeth forth year by year. And thou shalt eat before
the LORD thy God, in the place which he shall choose to place his name there,
the tithe of thy corn, of thy wine, and of thine oil, and the firstlings of thy
herds and of thy flocks; that thou mayest learn to fear the LORD thy God
always. And if the way be too long for thee, so that thou art not able to carry
it; or if the place be too far from thee, which the LORD thy God shall choose
to set his name there, when the LORD thy God hath blessed thee: Then shalt thou
turn it into money, and bind up the money in thine hand, and shalt go unto the
place which the LORD thy God shall choose:
And thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth after,
for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy
soul desireth: and thou shalt eat there before the LORD thy God, and thou shalt
rejoice, thou, and thine household …
In today’s society the tithe becomes a regressive
voluntary religious tax where the 10% is turned over to the religious
institution to be used for the institution’s needs. It is a further hardship
for the poor within the community. Much ink has been wasted on the arguments
convincing the poor that they will somehow be blessed if they give from their
already diminished economic resources. However, giving of alms is still a
charitable act, and Jesus himself did praise the poor widow who contributed two
coppers to the temple’s collection box.
As such, one can say that giving at any level is honored by God. However,
giving to the point of self-destruction will not buy any favors from God. In
the Old Testament the idea was that one was to give from the excess profit, not
the funds needed to sustain life: “Thou shalt truly tithe all the increase of
thy seed, that the field bringeth forth year by year.”
Pastors today spend more time raising funds to keep
the plant in operation than they do in preparing for their sermons.
Many a Christian worker at Billy Graham’s crusades
has noted the phenomenon of marketing religion. The majority of Mr. Graham’s
converts are not “sinners coming to Christ.” They are wayward Christians who
have forsaken the church. Through Mr. Graham’s missions, the local Churches
which are closely related to the Southern Baptist Calvinist and supportive to
individual spiritual growth, are infused with new blood. That builds the
support base for the SBC, and increases the funding from which it can support
its operations.
The Southern Baptist Convention, founded in 1845, was
created for socioeconomic reasons in support of the Antebellum South’s specific
flavor of capitalistic expansion. It was not formed in support of any given
specific inspiration of a supreme being. The Southern Baptist Convention came
into existence specifically to support African American chattel slavery. It is
debatable that one can consider that spiritual authority.
Its message, over the past 142 years, has not changed
much. Capitalism is good. Capitalist exploitation and abuse is godly. The only
necessary education is to be able to read the Bible. All other approaches are
of the Devil. Therefore, the corporation is ordained by God. Rejection of the corporation,
represented (modeled after) by the plantations of the Old South, is a rejection
of a Godly way of life.
This of course is beyond the awareness of most
thinking Christians. Any question of this Church is of the Devil, the
institutional church is of God, so anyone questioning the Southern Baptist is
attacking God. Furthermore, an attack on God is an attack on a personal friend
who was killed for the sake of the faithful … and not so faithful. The watering
down of the Christian Gospel to support the corporations is simply a function
which Currie defined as “the weakening of social and political alternatives”
and “the erosion of informal and communal networks of mutual support.”
The institutional religions are, in effect, victims of the harsh capitalistic
system in the
United States
as well. This is the system in which we all live.
While the competition may not be apparent in the
rural United States
where people are dedicated, baptized, married and buried in the same community
church for generations, the urban church has a much different story going for
it. A good example of the competition is Chicago,
Illinois.
On Foster Avenue
in Chicago, Illinois, between Milwaukee Avenue and Elston Avenue, there are no less than
twelve different churches. At Milwaukee
and Foster, behind the floral shop and across from King’s II restaurant is the
Jefferson Park Evangelical Free Church. Around the snake turn on Foster,
heading east to Long Avenue is Saint Cornelius Catholic Church. South on Long
Avenue, right across the street from the old Chicago
and Northwestern station (now Metra), is the Jefferson Park
English Lutheran
Church. From Foster and
Long, straight east on Foster, is Forest
Glen Baptist
Church. That small
Anglo-Saxon based congregation with its northern version of the Southern
Baptist message shares its building with a Korean Baptist
Church. Two congregations
in one building. The Forest Glen Baptist
Church corporation owns the building
and the Korean Baptist Church
leases the use of it from them. Within sight of Forest
Glen Baptist
Church is Trinity Lutheran
Church on Foster. The Knanaya
Catholic Society is also there, as is the Bong-Bool-Sa Buddhist
Temple. Holy Mountain
Evangelical Church
is a few blocks away on Lawler
Avenue, as it the First Congregational Church. Northwest
Bible Chapel and High Praises International Ministries are a leisurely stroll northwest
on Elston Avenue.
All of these are within walking distance for the
average Chicagoan. Give yourself a few hours on a warm autumn day, and you can
visit all of them. Mind you, this is in Chicago,
Illinois, the home of the world famous Moody
Bible Institute, Moody Church, WMBI radio, and Willow Creek
Community Church
and all of its affiliate churches. This is not an atypical Chicago neighborhood.
Logan
Square, a rougher part of the city, has
approximately 10 different churches which can be visited from the corner of Fullerton and Central Park.
One of which is a very modernistic looking Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day
saints. This is a mixed neighborhood of first generation Polish Catholics, Puerto
Ricans, and Mexicans.
In walking distance, within two separate
neighborhoods in Chicago, Illinois are at least 22 different flavors
of Christianity. From a consumer perspective this represents the quintessence
of choice. Yet, with all these expressions of spirituality and goodness, Chicago, the Windy
City, is also the city of Al Capone and the Jungle of Upton Sinclair. It is a
city with the reputation of crime, political corruption, and scandal. One
cannot help but wonder why.
It is not a lack of individual morality, or the lack
of God in the schools. Both those causes are wishful thinking on behalf of the
fundamentalists looking for a simple answer to a complex social problem. The
cause of the corruption, scandal and mayhem is that the people who fill the
pews are a product of the environment in which they live. It goes back to the
164 hours a week in which they immersed in the ethos of the corporation. From
sun-up to sun down the 2,896,016 inhabitants of Chicago are engaged in capitalistic
competition where group-think can easily override individual morals and ethics.
Church attendance is still an expected ritual for
people of the relatively middle class culture. To live the idea of Christianity
is not expected. This can best be
described in a reversal of the old cliché. It would be, “do as I do, not as I
say.” The expectation is to park one’s fanny in the pew for four hours a week,
pay the weekly dues, and go about life without rocking the boat, or asking any
real questions. This does go back to the function of the Church in the United States.
It is neutral ground upon which a person can stand
and for a few hours, once a week, feel good about themselves, or find a
personal fix for a personal problem so long as that fix does not require a long
term investment of real capital. Primarily, the people of the United States go to church to
convince themselves they are living right within the structure of the corporate
environment. One is favored in the community if one shows that he has a
spiritual life through some form of religious observance on a regular basis.
There are those within the general community who will find fault with the
observant, and harass them, but that too builds the ethos of the Christian
observance. If one is so bold as to point this out to the faithful, they will
denounce the observer, and they will proclaim that the observer does not understand Christianity. However, these
observations apply equally to the Christians, Jews, Muslins, Pagan, and the
wide assortment of other religious expressions. It is all striving to feel good
about oneself with the superior being while existing within the capitalist
society.
One of the fascinating points of the church’s
relationship to society at large is that the church as a private institution
functions the same way in the capitalistic system as it would in socialism or
communism. Its support in the United
States is directly in the hands of those who
attend it.
This is very much unlike the Church-State marriage
which initiated the struggle against religion. The struggle began in earnest in
during the French Revolution with the separation of the French State
from the Catholic Church. Even now, if an individual wants to show that he or
she is an independent free thinker, apart from the status quo and society, it
is expressed in the separation from institutional religions. Religion is
denounced and ridiculed. This has given rise to various non-institutional
spiritual expressions. Some of these non-institutional expressions fall under
the heading of New Age Religion, and Neo-Paganism. Wicca, included in the latter,
is striving to become an institutional religion with equal protection under the
law and full social acceptance.
At no point, however, do the rebellious within
society truly distance themselves from the capitalistic system. The system lays
the groundwork by which we all survive no matter how independently one likes to
think they are. The church is an easy target to rebel against since it holds no
real power within society and it a voluntary organization. To rebel against the
church is empty symbolism as it requires no sacrifice. One might summarize the
act of rebelling against the church as cheap street theater. It is a rebellion
against an institution which does not care if the individual is rebelling
against it or not. There is no effect. Just like so many other corporations,
the church figures that any individual who leaves will eventually be replaced
by another one. Constant rotation of bodies in the pews is understood and
accepted. Call it apathy towards customer satisfaction if you wish, but it is
real.
The church is not
the enemy of the people. At worst, it is a form of community entertainment. At
best it is an institution which simplistically upholds the values of the
current era as an expression of the conventional wisdom of what is good in the
name of a generic deity referred to as God, and coupled within the Christian
expression to the historic figure of Jesus Christ.
The church’s pastor is nothing more, and nothing
less, than an imperfect person brought up in the current society who is trying
to do some good for some of the people within the congregation. When he stays
true to his vocation, he is a good role model and spokesman for the
conservative values within society. Minimally, he attempts to perform some form
of spiritual infotainment, and renders solid conservative capitalist advice.
Hard work, frugality, charity, faithfulness, and honesty are not bad character
traits. Pastors are not perfect representatives of the ideal Christ. They are not, however, the enemy of the people
either. They attempt to balm the wounds of those suffering from the shock of
the remaining 164 hours a week.
The majority of church members are there to escape
the grind, and find some form of social contact not defined by the absolute
structure of the corporation.
It is hard to argue that the state is an extension of
the church. Both the state and the church are institutions within the economic
system. While each church has influence in upholding certain conservative
values, they don’t influence society as much as they reflect the mood of
society once that mood has been institutionalized within the corporate
community. The church is more a barometer of social acceptability. It does not
exactly wield any real authority in any individual’s life in the United States.
While this may not be reflected in rural America,
this is reflected in urban America.
If someone does not like one church, he can go to another, or not go at all,
without penalty of law. They may suffer some social fallout for that decision
but in the United States
that social fallout is minimal at best.
Those who chose to reject the concept of God, or the
specific God of the Bible as understood by the Jews, Christians, and adapted to
Islam, are equally allowed to do so in a free society.
While the Theist argues that the cause of the decline
of society is the “sinful nature of man,” the Atheist, and the Agnostics, argue
that the source of the decline of society is the unenlightened and unscientific
superstitions of humanity. Included in this, of course, is the constant
bombardment of anti-religious propaganda. They site as their authority the
writings of Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and, Karl Marx. They uphold that
the tribalism contained within the sacred writings and belief systems are a
pestilence on humanity, and that the only real god is the natural universe and
the laws of the universe.
The Book Your
Church Doesn't Want You To Read edited by Tim C. Leedom, released through
Truth Seeker Company, Incorporated (Freethought Publishers), states that there
are as many Atheist, Agnostics, and Freethinkers as there are Christians in the
United States today.
This is a dubious statement at best. There are 300 million people in the
United States
as of 2006. According to polls there are 157 million Christians. As such the remaining
citizens, less than half the total population, are Jewish, Muslim, Hindu,
Buddhist, Pagan/Neo-Pagan, etc. This remainder would include atheists.
The alternative view is contained in the arguments of
the spiritual humanist, and religious humanist. They are derived from Carl
Sagan’s approach to spiritual expression:
A religion old or new, that stressed the
magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to
draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional
faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge. -- Carl Sagan
This is not a new expression. The key to understand
it lays in the term “modern science.” Much of what is called superstition today
(i.e. Tarot Divination, Magick, Astrology, Numerology) were in their era,
considered modern science. Tarot Divination is a form of analysis of a
question. Magick is a form of autosuggestion applied to the inner-self, and the
outer world. Prayer is equally a form of auto expression. Astrology was a guide
to aid in overcoming the confusions of daily life. The old superstitions were
at one time, state of the art science. Science, by definition, means
“knowledge.” Now there is the Scientific Approach:
1.
Observe some aspect of the universe.
2.
Invent a theory that is consistent with what you have observed.
3.
Use the theory to make predictions.
4.
Test those predictions by experiments or further observations.
5.
Modify the theory in the light of your results.
6.
Go to step 3 and make new predictions.
While spiritual humanism is a minority expression
within the larger Atheist community it is without a specific expression of God,
and is within their scope of acceptance. The contention between the Atheist and
the Theist comes from a power struggle as to who holds sway in the society
today.
On April 8, 1966 the cover of Time
magazine asked the question Is God Dead?
The inside story concerned the theothanatology
(God is dead) movement in Christianity at the time, stating that there needed
to be a new expression of deity. From the 1960s to the 1980s, the classical,
fundamental approach to God was in question. This was part of the wider social
questioning experience of the era.
The word Atheism means there is No Theis, or no God. It supports, by its adherence to the natural
order of the world, a certain form of social Darwinism. This supports the
tenets of the capitalistic system in operation today. Those who “win” have the
right to rule because they are “winners.” The fact that they are a protected
class who sit outside the trauma and crime inflicted upon society as a whole is
never mentioned in their considerations. It would not be. To consider it would
call into question the crimes committed in the name of the science of
economics.
Atheists pride themselves on reciting tales of the
atrocities committed in the name of religion. In the United States it is specifically
the atrocities committed by the Christian Church. Very little is mentioned of
Jewish or Muslim atrocities. Even less is said about the crimes committed by
the Soviet Union, or the Communist Chinese. It
has to be pointed out that neither the Soviet Union,
nor the Communist Chinese have stellar records when it comes to human rights or
civil rights.
The purges of Stalin can be written off as the events
of a bygone era, however, acts of oppression are still going on in China
today. As of July 6, 2006 there is documentation that Communist Chinese using
members of the Falun Gong as host for
organ harvesting. Amnesty International's Falun
Gong Persecution Factsheet sites sexual torture as a form of punishment
routine in the Communist state now supported by Western capital.
Where the Atheist argues that the crimes of the
Communist Chinese are specific to the political nation state, then the crimes
of the Middle East attributed to the
Christians, Jews, and Muslims are equally crimes committed by specific
political factions and nation states. It is either that, or Atheism as a
specific religious philosophy is just as much a failure in honoring and
protecting humanity as are the other religious philosophies. That is a simple
conclusion which can be drawn on based on the scientific method.
The Atheist scientists who site the Galileo affair as
a crime against science by the Catholic Church do so out of ignorance. It was
Galileo’s propensity for being offensive to his peers in the 1630s which
brought him under the question of the inquisition. The inquisition at the time
functioned much like our FBI and was autonomous of the Church itself. His
science was supported by the Church’s own scientific community, and was
supportive of Nicolaus Copernicus’s work. It was not the Pope who triggered the
initial investigation but Galileo’s own peers. The rest of that story has
little to do with religion or science, and more to do with legal issues of the
era. Heresy was not a label of a philosophical argument. It was a specific
crime of rebellion against the church’s authority. The Galileo issue was not
one of science; it was an issue of free speech.
While Galileo was an obvious genius, he was, as is
often the case, a bit of an ass. He had a habit of haranguing his peers. They
took offense and decided to give him a lesson in humility. They filed charges
against him for heresy. The heresy, or rebellion, was harassing the other
scientists. Galileo, a good Catholic by even today’s standards, was personal
friends with Pope Urban VIII. It was Pope Urban who convinced him to admit to
heresy to get the inquisition off his back. This affair, seen to be scientific
in nature, is anything but.
His predecessor, Copernicus, was fully supported by
the Catholic Church, and all of his findings were published by the church just
before his death by natural causes. Fiction not withstanding, the Catholic
Church, since the time of Saint Augustine
(circa 408 C.E.), reasoned that science of the physical universe did not
conflict with the sacred writings. The physical universe was as it is, and the
sacred texts were meant as spiritual arguments, metaphoric in nature, to bring
people to an understanding of God, and salvation through Jesus Christ. As such,
Galileo’s science was not a threat to the church, his behavior was.
This whole picture gets messy when you bring in
current Protestant expressions up to the inclusion of fundamentalism. Part of
the protest of the Protestant movement is the exaltation of scripture. It is
worshiped as if it is an incarnation of God himself. The Protestants will not
openly admit to that, but the essence of the arguments is that God’s Word is
infallible. As such it is an extension of God. God, if he exists, may be
infallible, but humans are anything but. The Catholic Church is well aware of
this human fallibility. The Catholic Church’s approach to the Holy Writ is that
it is advisory and relative to the understanding of the people of the era in
which it is written. One can say they are stodgy and slow to change, but that
is in the nature of any large organization. This is no different than Ford
Motor Company’s assertion that small cars are cheap cars and the American
population was not interested in cheap cars. If one can criticize the Catholic
Church for anything, it is that it is a human institution which is not perfect.
While science did not explode until the Catholic
Church lost political control of Europe, that
may be more of a function of exponential human development. It is undeniably a
function of a conservative institution which is loath to make errors on a
spiritual matter. Any institution which has existed for 2000 years, give or
take half a century, is not bound to the lifetime of any individual. Yet, it
still grows and changes over time like any human creation. It was none to keen
on capitalism, mercantilism, free enterprise, or Protestantism. It periodically
terrorized the Jews and others who did not consent to their authority; not
unlike other political factions through history. However, it did adapt, and it
did correct it errors.
Those who wish to continue to brow beat the Catholic
faithful or the faithful of any religion, for being unscientific are doing so
with a specific political agenda. At the same time, those who are holding that
science is in conflict with God, know nothing of science or of God, and are
equally bent on a specific political agenda. Much of it has to do with status
within the competitive nature of capitalism and little about truth. At the
street level, most people have little concern for philosophical truth, and
would not know it if it bit them.
A good case is the GOP’s running on a Pro-Life (anti
abortion) platform. This is done to pull in the religious community. Ronald Reagan,
George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush all ran with a Pro-Life plank in the
platform. Yet none of them proposed an amendment to the constitution which
would completely outlaw the procedure. Based on the demographics explained in
the late 1980s book
Attitudes and
Latitudes, while the urban citizens support Pro-Choice, the rural citizen
of the
United States
support the Pro-Life stance.
As such an Amendment to ban abortion would probably pass. Yet, to ban abortion
would remove the emotional issue which has given the Republicans such a strong
support base.
The same holds true for the arguments concerning
stem-cell research. It has nothing to do with religious ethics. The programs,
or lack thereof, have little to do with science, or religious ethics, and
everything to do with upholding the capitalistic ideal. If the scientific
community wants to extend the research then the scientific community has to
sell that research to the capitalists; evidently that has failed thus far.
According to Saint
Paul, the oppression of religious tradition is for
bragging rights. It has nothing to do with the Christianity given to the
heathen gentiles in Galicia.
Those who insisted that the Galicians observed the Jews customs of circumcision
were doing so for the status of bragging that they made the new Christians
uphold the old traditions. This is not unlike the fundamentalist movement in
the U.S.
today. If there is any argument here, it is with a small sect which is trying
to force its will on the population as a whole. One does not have to uphold
unscientific beliefs to be a Christian nor do they have to bow to the dogma of
the Southern Baptist Convention to be a Christian. There is nothing in the
Authorized Bible of King James of the Gospels or Epistles which dictates
adherence to a literal bible for the sake of salvation.
The reason is not found in the authorized work of the
King James era, it is found in the Gnostic writings which were not recovered
until 1945. The founders of Christianity had a more fluid understanding of
spirituality. From 525 C.E. to approximately 1550 C.E. the bible did not even
exist as a single unit. The Catholic Church had the text which had survived,
but it was the Lutheran challenge which forced the Catholics to finally codify
what it considered scripture and what it considered commentary on scripture. By
the 1500s, the Gnostic works had long since gone underground. This was simply
due to politics. Gnostics had a tradition of being unruly and independent minded
and did not “play well with others.”
The Gnostics did not consider it necessary to submit to an established church.
Today the strife between the Atheist and the Theist
is much the same. It is political in nature and is far more about bragging
rights and status than the true nature of the universe. No one knows what happens after death. No one knows the nature of God. All any of us
have is what we see in the physical universe and our subjective understanding
of the spiritual universe. That spiritual universe may indeed be nothing more than
the random synaptic firing within the brain. Even proof, if it exists, is
subjective. That proof revolves around the individual’s perception which cannot
be tested in a controlled study. At one time we get a study which states that
prayer and emotional support aid in the treatment of cancer. At another time we
get a report that states it does not. The institutional religions uphold that
their scripture is authoritative proof of their position. The Atheist holds
that science is their proof. Both, however, are human creations, and are prone
to error. The scientific study on prayer is one such proof of the fallibility
of science.
The Atheists want to be depicted as some form of
minority. Yet, as sited, they also claim to have as many adherents as the
Theists. It is hard to have it both ways. For reasons as personal as any
individual believer’s they have decided for themselves that there is no god.
Bigotry, discriminatory behavior, divisiveness, not to mention political agendas,
and bragging rights, has to be recognized as part of the game. This too is part
of the capitalist system. It is about money, power, and status. Madalyn Murray
O'Hair was anything but broke when she was murdered in 1995.
The recent argument over the phrase “under God”
serves little function in a civilized society. The argument does little but
distract from the remaining phrase in the pledge of allegiance: “… with liberty
and justice for all.” Since Atheism,
whose adherents balk at the wording “under God” is itself a religious
expression, their view is no more constitutional than the fundamentalists who
want to have the
United
States labeled a Christian nation. While the
concept of the
U.S. being a
Christian nation is a misnomer derived from the Confederate constitution, it is
equally a mistake to say that the
U.S. is an amoral nation. To
address the issues within the amoral capitalist system the ideal of
enlightenment drew heavily upon the teachings of Jesus Christ. As Thomas Paine
wrote concerning the teachings of Jesus, no one has done worse than he did in
teaching morality, nor better. The implication being that the founders
respected the teachings of Jesus as a moral guide.
When the nation lacks “liberty and justice for all”
due to economic conditions which favor the rich and powerful and deprive the
population of adequate opportunity, then there is a much bigger problem than
the generic phrase “God” in the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United
States of America.
Religious institutions are not the enemy of the
people. If they are an opiate, then they function as a pain killer. Rather than
being attacked, they need to be supported and encouraged.
The Churches, Mosques, Synagogues, Covens and
enlightened free-thinkers all need to dig deeper into their scriptures and
traditions to find a better expression of what is good which does not endorse
the social, economic, and physical violence embraced by the corporations in
pursuit of capital gains.
