I live in that dark blue area on that map. I grew up in the Episcopal church, which is kind of like a country club that mentions God sometimes. At some point in my 20s I realized all the stuff we heard at church about virgin births, Jesus dying for our sins, etc was BS, and then I became an atheist. It had never made any sense, but I assumed the grownups knew what they were talking about, and they seemed unanimous on the point that God did exist. Later I found out my dad never believed any of it but made us go to church because it was "customary." It was usually not a source of warm fuzzy feelings, but I enjoyed singing in the choir, and it was a place to meet boys.
Now I live in deep Bible Belt territory. There is a huge concrete cross right next to the exit for our town that you can see for a long ways as you approach on I-40. There have been numerous times when people have challenged my atheism. Once at my grief group, another person told me that my life meant nothing because I didn't believe in God and I should just kill myself. Another time, a friend told me she could prove God existed: "Try to hold your breath until you die. You can't do it." Yeah, I know. This level of ridiculousness is hard to believe but it's pervasive.
Also: I attended the last drag brunch in our town's history. A local pastor, alerted to the fact that drag brunches had been occurring on the local college campus and at a local bar, called in hate groups from around the state who arrived in force. This was in January of 2023. These guys, and a few women, had signs and masks, and bulging pockets, and loud voices. I walked past them and got past security: a locked gate. The drag brunch was fun. Inside, the organizers identified the hate groups for me: Proud Boys, National Justice Party, and actual Nazis from Chattanooga, plus a group of "Christians" from the pastor's Baptist church. We survived that confrontation, but Drag Brunch and the bar did not: the bar had to shut down due to death threats. From Christians, Nazis, Proud Boys,etc.
On the other hand: I know a lot of wonderful Christians, including conservative evangelicals, who have adopted kids from foster care and are generally a force for good in the community. They may harbor some hateful ideas, but they also do good things. I try to stay friends with them and avoid discussions about polarizing issues like abortion, immigration, homophobia, etc. Not all of them are racists.
Forty years ago, when I moved to this town, things were not like this. People invited you to their church, but the churches were mainstream denominations, not evangelical white nationalist mega-churches. People didn't obsess about pedophiles or who was gay. They didn't care what party you usually voted for. All this seems like a distant dream of another world that is completely gone.
Sometimes I have an almost irrepressible desire to flee this area and never come back, but I own a nice farm here, and it's very affordable to live here for an old person. I try to get away to a more tolerant area as often as possible. I'm not sure what the "answer" is. I know people who are in the UU and have absolutely no belief in god whatsoever, but just go for the sense of belonging. (These people are nevertheless sometimes quite critical of other UU attendees!) I think that people really need a sense of community, but there have been times when our neighborhood has had that, without any religiosity. The unifying force was a love of place, this land, these gardens, this creek, these trees. I wonder if there might be some way for people to use love of the Earth, and love of specific places, as a unifying force, instead of the Pretend Authoritarian White Male Friend in the Sky who wants everybody to be armed and who probably has an AR-15 or two Himself.
I appreciate the term lamination. I've been talking about this idea a lot lately w/r/t the media's sloppy adoptions of phrases that propagandists slip into mainstream usage, whether tactically or not and how they get laminated into our minds uncritically along with feelings about incidents, places, wars, foods, whatever. Thank you for the language.
Thank you for sharing the video and your thoughts. I am remembering with great love and gratitude my agnostic father who could almost always see both sides of an argument and allowed his children to decide for ourselves what we believe. That love is wired together in my heart and neurons along with hiking mountain trails, solving logic puzzles together, and learning the names of constellations in the infinite night sky.
When he was diagnosed with a serious illness, he told me that he had once come close to dying after a car accident . He said he didn't remember much about the near death experience except the certain feeling that there was nothing to fear. After he died I had a vivid dream that he was in my house. I asked him how that could be possible and he answered "It doesn't matter, the love is real". May your daughter also know the love and joy captured so well in the video you shared.
Sure, belief in G-d isn't a prerequisite to experience the joy or transcendence of religious experience or community, (And some of us have experienced that without drugs or meditation). But Jay, why such confidence in your defining what "Southern" or others mean when they express "certainty" in their belief. Like you, I'm drawn to the nuance, gray area and doubt that Judaism allows, and even encourages. But when the Talmud exhorts us to "Judge our fellow generously", I suspect that also applies to how we view - and write about - the belief of others. (And yes, watching one's son hit a home run, or a daughter score a goal, is ended pure joy. So too is listening to them struggle with their own certainty or un-certainty).
I live in that dark blue area on that map. I grew up in the Episcopal church, which is kind of like a country club that mentions God sometimes. At some point in my 20s I realized all the stuff we heard at church about virgin births, Jesus dying for our sins, etc was BS, and then I became an atheist. It had never made any sense, but I assumed the grownups knew what they were talking about, and they seemed unanimous on the point that God did exist. Later I found out my dad never believed any of it but made us go to church because it was "customary." It was usually not a source of warm fuzzy feelings, but I enjoyed singing in the choir, and it was a place to meet boys.
Now I live in deep Bible Belt territory. There is a huge concrete cross right next to the exit for our town that you can see for a long ways as you approach on I-40. There have been numerous times when people have challenged my atheism. Once at my grief group, another person told me that my life meant nothing because I didn't believe in God and I should just kill myself. Another time, a friend told me she could prove God existed: "Try to hold your breath until you die. You can't do it." Yeah, I know. This level of ridiculousness is hard to believe but it's pervasive.
Also: I attended the last drag brunch in our town's history. A local pastor, alerted to the fact that drag brunches had been occurring on the local college campus and at a local bar, called in hate groups from around the state who arrived in force. This was in January of 2023. These guys, and a few women, had signs and masks, and bulging pockets, and loud voices. I walked past them and got past security: a locked gate. The drag brunch was fun. Inside, the organizers identified the hate groups for me: Proud Boys, National Justice Party, and actual Nazis from Chattanooga, plus a group of "Christians" from the pastor's Baptist church. We survived that confrontation, but Drag Brunch and the bar did not: the bar had to shut down due to death threats. From Christians, Nazis, Proud Boys,etc.
On the other hand: I know a lot of wonderful Christians, including conservative evangelicals, who have adopted kids from foster care and are generally a force for good in the community. They may harbor some hateful ideas, but they also do good things. I try to stay friends with them and avoid discussions about polarizing issues like abortion, immigration, homophobia, etc. Not all of them are racists.
Forty years ago, when I moved to this town, things were not like this. People invited you to their church, but the churches were mainstream denominations, not evangelical white nationalist mega-churches. People didn't obsess about pedophiles or who was gay. They didn't care what party you usually voted for. All this seems like a distant dream of another world that is completely gone.
Sometimes I have an almost irrepressible desire to flee this area and never come back, but I own a nice farm here, and it's very affordable to live here for an old person. I try to get away to a more tolerant area as often as possible. I'm not sure what the "answer" is. I know people who are in the UU and have absolutely no belief in god whatsoever, but just go for the sense of belonging. (These people are nevertheless sometimes quite critical of other UU attendees!) I think that people really need a sense of community, but there have been times when our neighborhood has had that, without any religiosity. The unifying force was a love of place, this land, these gardens, this creek, these trees. I wonder if there might be some way for people to use love of the Earth, and love of specific places, as a unifying force, instead of the Pretend Authoritarian White Male Friend in the Sky who wants everybody to be armed and who probably has an AR-15 or two Himself.
I appreciate the term lamination. I've been talking about this idea a lot lately w/r/t the media's sloppy adoptions of phrases that propagandists slip into mainstream usage, whether tactically or not and how they get laminated into our minds uncritically along with feelings about incidents, places, wars, foods, whatever. Thank you for the language.
Thank you for sharing the video and your thoughts. I am remembering with great love and gratitude my agnostic father who could almost always see both sides of an argument and allowed his children to decide for ourselves what we believe. That love is wired together in my heart and neurons along with hiking mountain trails, solving logic puzzles together, and learning the names of constellations in the infinite night sky.
When he was diagnosed with a serious illness, he told me that he had once come close to dying after a car accident . He said he didn't remember much about the near death experience except the certain feeling that there was nothing to fear. After he died I had a vivid dream that he was in my house. I asked him how that could be possible and he answered "It doesn't matter, the love is real". May your daughter also know the love and joy captured so well in the video you shared.
Sure, belief in G-d isn't a prerequisite to experience the joy or transcendence of religious experience or community, (And some of us have experienced that without drugs or meditation). But Jay, why such confidence in your defining what "Southern" or others mean when they express "certainty" in their belief. Like you, I'm drawn to the nuance, gray area and doubt that Judaism allows, and even encourages. But when the Talmud exhorts us to "Judge our fellow generously", I suspect that also applies to how we view - and write about - the belief of others. (And yes, watching one's son hit a home run, or a daughter score a goal, is ended pure joy. So too is listening to them struggle with their own certainty or un-certainty).