Beholden: How Money May Have Trumped Both Religion and Politics
God helps those
who help themselves.
- Benjamin Franklin
I just finished Thomas Geoghegan's Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? and found, tucked away as an almost parenthetical observation, something absolutely not a part of his narrative thesis yet so crucial, something so obvious that I should have seen it years ago, something that helps explain so much about life here in the United States.
He was discussing one flaw (as he used to see it) in the German system: taxpayer money subsidizes the churches. This proves pretty common in European countries. Their churches, after all, have been established for almost a thousand years. How they specifically fund churches varies from country to country, but most of them do this. The paradox, of course, is that actual church attendance is falling in Europe, while here in the States it might be rising. (Actual numbers are damned hard to find.)
Yes, he once hated this German fluke, but as he writes. . . .
Well, I've reconsidered. Oh, I'm still for separating church and state, but I now see the advantages. What's the difference between the Catholic Church in the U.S. and the Church in Germany? Follow the money. In the U.S., we don't pay taxes to support the Church, so it begs for big money from the wealthy and well-to-do, i.e., right-wing Notre Dame alumni who snap even at the sainted Ted Hesburgh. Soon it's a mortal sin to vote for Kerry. But in Germany, the Church is at least not in financial hock to Republican right-to-lifers, because it gets money directly from the state, i.e., a left-wing welfare state. So the Church in Germany can be relatively more left-wing and even has an Archbishop Marx -- Reinhard Marx, archbishop of Munich and Freising, which is the pope's old post -- and this Marx, like the other Marx, has even written his own Das Kapital denouncing CEO pay raises, outsourcing, and the milder but still growing gap between rich and poor. Isn't it a help that Archbishop Marx doesn't have to beg alums of Notre Dame for money? But I don't want to give a Marxist explanation of Archbishop Marx.
I'll just point out that he's free to call them as he sees them, just as the early Christians used to do.
(Thomas Geoghegan, Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life, The New Press, 2010, p. 288, emphatic emboldenation mine, all mine.)
Not being Catholic, I had to Google Ted Hesburgh. He seems like a good guy for all his achievements. Hey, any guy who is too liberal for Richard Nixon is alright in my book.
Geoghegan is Catholic; I was reared Lutheran, therefore Protestant, and was surrounded here in the northwest by mostly evangelical branches of the protestant, those too pompous and mighty to distinguish themselves as anything other than "Christian" churches. All the complaints he has about the disappearance of the liberal Catholic Church can be multiplied by several orders of magnitude for Protestants. For example, Gentle Reader, you might notice that I opened this piece with one of Benjamin Franklin's aphorisms. I did so for a reason: Bill McKibbon pointed out something very, very disturbing:
Only 40 percent of Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments, and a scant half can cite any of the four authors of the Gospels. Twelve percent believe Joan of Arc was Noah's wife. This failure to recall the specifics of our Christian heritage may be further evidence of our nation's educational decline, but it probably doesn't matter all that much in spiritual or political terms.
No, that isn't the disturbing part. I just added that because I actually laughed at the Noah's wife part. Really, are twelve percent of Americans really that ill-informed? Really? That's just rich. No, Bill, continue:
Here is a statistic that does matter: Three quarters of Americans believe the Bible teaches that “God helps those who help themselves.” That is, three out of four Americans believe that this über-American idea, a notion at the core of our current individualist politics and culture, which was in fact uttered by Ben Franklin, actually appears in Holy Scripture. The thing is, not only is Franklin's wisdom not biblical; it's counter-biblical. Few ideas could be further from the gospel message, with its radical summons to love of neighbor. On this essential matter, most Americans-most American Christians-are simply wrong, as if 75 percent of American scientists believed that Newton proved gravity causes apples to fly up.
(Yes, emboldenation is once again mine.)
After reading McKibben's point in Deep Economy (it looks like he included the stats from the Harper's article in his book), I nodded. I had seen similar bastardizations of the Gospel in other books recently, like Charles P. Pierce's Idiot America, Thomas Frank's What's the Matter With Kansas? and especially Barbara Ehrenreich's Bright-Sided. From Bright-Sided:
By any quantitative measure, the most successful preachers today are the positive thinkers, who no longer mention sin and usually have little to say about those standard whipping boys of the Christian right, abortion and homosexuality. Gone is the threat of hell and the promise of salvation, along with the grim story Jesus's torment on the cross; in fact, the cross has been all but banished from the largest and most popular temples of the new evangelism, the megachurches. Between 2001 and 2006, the number of megachurches -- defined as having a weekly attendance of two thousand or more -- doubled to 1,210, giving them a combined congregation of nearly 4.4 million.
Instead of harsh judgments and harrowing tales of suffering and redemption, the new positive theology offered at megachurches (and many smaller churches) offers promises of wealth, success, and health in this life now, or at least very soon. You can have that new car or house or necklace, because God wants to "prosper you."
(Barbara Ehrenreich, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, Metropolitan Books, 2009, p. 124.)
This excerpt from her book especially caught me:
. . . (Over) time the preachers of positivity have found it more and more necessary to provide a kind of script in the form of "affirmations" or "declarations". In Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, for example, T. Harv Eker offers the reader the following instructions in how to overcome any lingering resistance to the wealth he or she deserves:
Place your hand on your heart and say . . .
"I admire rich people!"
"I bless rich people!"
"I love rich people!"
"And I'm going to be one of those rich people too!"
(Ehrenreich, ibid., p. 93, and once again it's me with the bold words.)
Off the top of my head, I can think of lessons actually ascribed to Jesus H. Christ himself that would not just deny but mark that "affirmation" as an affront to the Christian faith. There's something about how to treat the least amongst you. There's something about a business type, the eye of a needle and a fat-assed camel. Oh, and let's not forget that bit about selling everything you own before you die.
(Really, click the above link. You'll smile. Or gnash your teeth, depending upon your religious views and how inconvenient they might be proving at the moment.)
To follow Geoghegan's observation, what happened in Catholic political leanings has happened many, many times over with the Protestants. The monied few have donated to those that preach less what is actually found in the Bible and more what will allow them to keep both the money they amass and a clean conscious. Let's remember the teachings of Frank Zappa:
(Sung by Ike)
And if these words you do not heed
Your pocketbook just kinda might recede
When some man comes along and
Claims godly need
He will clean you out
Right through your tweed.
(Spoken by Frank)
That's right, folks, and remember:
there is a big difference
between kneeling down
and bending over...
Frank Zappa, intro to "Heavenly Bank Account"
You Can't Do That Onstage Anymore Volume One
I just realized that I forgot to talk about politics like I promised in this post's title. I don't think I need to, though, do I? Here we have an economy wrecked by a banking system gone horribly awry, and yet the legislation passed by congress does nothing substantive to correct those very banking excesses that caused the crash. Why? Could it be because campaign contributions and lobbying efforts by the financial sector are second in the nation, trumped only by health care and pharmaceutical interests? That greatest provider of re-election money might also explain why we have such a top-heavy health care system, one that rewards those that provide the get-well services even as it bankrupts patients stricken with the misfortune of getting sick.
Really, if the inequities of our money-driven American political system aren't completely obvious, you haven't been paying much attention. I can excuse those who haven't noticed, though, simply because years ago I should have noticed the very same connection -- or, rather, disconnect -- between money and vanishing Christian values.
My bad.
who help themselves.
- Benjamin Franklin
I just finished Thomas Geoghegan's Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? and found, tucked away as an almost parenthetical observation, something absolutely not a part of his narrative thesis yet so crucial, something so obvious that I should have seen it years ago, something that helps explain so much about life here in the United States.
He was discussing one flaw (as he used to see it) in the German system: taxpayer money subsidizes the churches. This proves pretty common in European countries. Their churches, after all, have been established for almost a thousand years. How they specifically fund churches varies from country to country, but most of them do this. The paradox, of course, is that actual church attendance is falling in Europe, while here in the States it might be rising. (Actual numbers are damned hard to find.)
Yes, he once hated this German fluke, but as he writes. . . .
Well, I've reconsidered. Oh, I'm still for separating church and state, but I now see the advantages. What's the difference between the Catholic Church in the U.S. and the Church in Germany? Follow the money. In the U.S., we don't pay taxes to support the Church, so it begs for big money from the wealthy and well-to-do, i.e., right-wing Notre Dame alumni who snap even at the sainted Ted Hesburgh. Soon it's a mortal sin to vote for Kerry. But in Germany, the Church is at least not in financial hock to Republican right-to-lifers, because it gets money directly from the state, i.e., a left-wing welfare state. So the Church in Germany can be relatively more left-wing and even has an Archbishop Marx -- Reinhard Marx, archbishop of Munich and Freising, which is the pope's old post -- and this Marx, like the other Marx, has even written his own Das Kapital denouncing CEO pay raises, outsourcing, and the milder but still growing gap between rich and poor. Isn't it a help that Archbishop Marx doesn't have to beg alums of Notre Dame for money? But I don't want to give a Marxist explanation of Archbishop Marx.
I'll just point out that he's free to call them as he sees them, just as the early Christians used to do.
(Thomas Geoghegan, Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life, The New Press, 2010, p. 288, emphatic emboldenation mine, all mine.)
Not being Catholic, I had to Google Ted Hesburgh. He seems like a good guy for all his achievements. Hey, any guy who is too liberal for Richard Nixon is alright in my book.
Geoghegan is Catholic; I was reared Lutheran, therefore Protestant, and was surrounded here in the northwest by mostly evangelical branches of the protestant, those too pompous and mighty to distinguish themselves as anything other than "Christian" churches. All the complaints he has about the disappearance of the liberal Catholic Church can be multiplied by several orders of magnitude for Protestants. For example, Gentle Reader, you might notice that I opened this piece with one of Benjamin Franklin's aphorisms. I did so for a reason: Bill McKibbon pointed out something very, very disturbing:
Only 40 percent of Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments, and a scant half can cite any of the four authors of the Gospels. Twelve percent believe Joan of Arc was Noah's wife. This failure to recall the specifics of our Christian heritage may be further evidence of our nation's educational decline, but it probably doesn't matter all that much in spiritual or political terms.
No, that isn't the disturbing part. I just added that because I actually laughed at the Noah's wife part. Really, are twelve percent of Americans really that ill-informed? Really? That's just rich. No, Bill, continue:
Here is a statistic that does matter: Three quarters of Americans believe the Bible teaches that “God helps those who help themselves.” That is, three out of four Americans believe that this über-American idea, a notion at the core of our current individualist politics and culture, which was in fact uttered by Ben Franklin, actually appears in Holy Scripture. The thing is, not only is Franklin's wisdom not biblical; it's counter-biblical. Few ideas could be further from the gospel message, with its radical summons to love of neighbor. On this essential matter, most Americans-most American Christians-are simply wrong, as if 75 percent of American scientists believed that Newton proved gravity causes apples to fly up.
(Yes, emboldenation is once again mine.)
After reading McKibben's point in Deep Economy (it looks like he included the stats from the Harper's article in his book), I nodded. I had seen similar bastardizations of the Gospel in other books recently, like Charles P. Pierce's Idiot America, Thomas Frank's What's the Matter With Kansas? and especially Barbara Ehrenreich's Bright-Sided. From Bright-Sided:
By any quantitative measure, the most successful preachers today are the positive thinkers, who no longer mention sin and usually have little to say about those standard whipping boys of the Christian right, abortion and homosexuality. Gone is the threat of hell and the promise of salvation, along with the grim story Jesus's torment on the cross; in fact, the cross has been all but banished from the largest and most popular temples of the new evangelism, the megachurches. Between 2001 and 2006, the number of megachurches -- defined as having a weekly attendance of two thousand or more -- doubled to 1,210, giving them a combined congregation of nearly 4.4 million.
Instead of harsh judgments and harrowing tales of suffering and redemption, the new positive theology offered at megachurches (and many smaller churches) offers promises of wealth, success, and health in this life now, or at least very soon. You can have that new car or house or necklace, because God wants to "prosper you."
(Barbara Ehrenreich, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, Metropolitan Books, 2009, p. 124.)
This excerpt from her book especially caught me:
. . . (Over) time the preachers of positivity have found it more and more necessary to provide a kind of script in the form of "affirmations" or "declarations". In Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, for example, T. Harv Eker offers the reader the following instructions in how to overcome any lingering resistance to the wealth he or she deserves:
Place your hand on your heart and say . . .
"I admire rich people!"
"I bless rich people!"
"I love rich people!"
"And I'm going to be one of those rich people too!"
(Ehrenreich, ibid., p. 93, and once again it's me with the bold words.)
Off the top of my head, I can think of lessons actually ascribed to Jesus H. Christ himself that would not just deny but mark that "affirmation" as an affront to the Christian faith. There's something about how to treat the least amongst you. There's something about a business type, the eye of a needle and a fat-assed camel. Oh, and let's not forget that bit about selling everything you own before you die.
(Really, click the above link. You'll smile. Or gnash your teeth, depending upon your religious views and how inconvenient they might be proving at the moment.)
To follow Geoghegan's observation, what happened in Catholic political leanings has happened many, many times over with the Protestants. The monied few have donated to those that preach less what is actually found in the Bible and more what will allow them to keep both the money they amass and a clean conscious. Let's remember the teachings of Frank Zappa:
(Sung by Ike)
And if these words you do not heed
Your pocketbook just kinda might recede
When some man comes along and
Claims godly need
He will clean you out
Right through your tweed.
(Spoken by Frank)
That's right, folks, and remember:
there is a big difference
between kneeling down
and bending over...
Frank Zappa, intro to "Heavenly Bank Account"
You Can't Do That Onstage Anymore Volume One
I just realized that I forgot to talk about politics like I promised in this post's title. I don't think I need to, though, do I? Here we have an economy wrecked by a banking system gone horribly awry, and yet the legislation passed by congress does nothing substantive to correct those very banking excesses that caused the crash. Why? Could it be because campaign contributions and lobbying efforts by the financial sector are second in the nation, trumped only by health care and pharmaceutical interests? That greatest provider of re-election money might also explain why we have such a top-heavy health care system, one that rewards those that provide the get-well services even as it bankrupts patients stricken with the misfortune of getting sick.
Really, if the inequities of our money-driven American political system aren't completely obvious, you haven't been paying much attention. I can excuse those who haven't noticed, though, simply because years ago I should have noticed the very same connection -- or, rather, disconnect -- between money and vanishing Christian values.
My bad.