Theocracy

and things that go bump in the night

*This essay is not really on environmentalism, but on something else I’ve been thinking about since I’ve moved. Really, it’s all connected anyway. Let me know what you think.*

Once or twice a week I go to the most Christian physical therapy center I’ve ever been to (for knee pain that started because I went rock climbing and apparently my hips are not strong enough to compensate for my knee muscles when they’re overworked. Everyone I’ve told this to responds with “so your hips do lie.” I need new friends). There’s a wall decal in the bathroom of a verse from the book of John and a Bible in each exam room (for what occasion, I don’t know). Somehow it came up that my mother is a pastor and my physical therapist started asking about what church I go to, what denomination I grew up in, etc. with extreme comfortability, like he was asking about the weather, and as if most patients talk with him very freely about their (Christian) beliefs.

This was a very run-of-the-mill conversation for me, but I realize that in most other places I’ve lived (Northern Virginia, Chicago), a physical therapist would not engage in conversations about religion with a patient. He asked me where I go to church, not if I go to church. And I happened to have visited a few churches since I’ve moved—I don’t know how he would have reacted if I answered that I don’t attend anywhere. In general, I do think that religious questions should not be a part of medicine unless they’re relevant, because asking presumptuous questions about where people go to church could indicate to a patient that you would be pleased if they were a churchgoer and might treat them differently if they admitted to being agnostic, Hindu, or any other category of belief. I understand why people steer clear of religious topics in professional conversations. In my limited observation, I think many residents of western West Virginia and southeastern Ohio don’t adhere very zealously to this boundary and make a fair number of assumptions (with a cursory glance some of my coworkers have assumed a bumper sticker of Karl Marx on another coworker’s car is Jesus).

The sticker in question. This does kinda sound like the laborers-in-the-vineyard parable…hoping that little remark doesn’t get me executed by King Desantis’ goon squad in 2057

I have my qualms with people talking at length about their Lord and Savior in onboarding meetings or the PT’s office not because I’m embarrassed to be Christian, but because I’m trying to be more Christian. It goes without saying that a lot of deep wounds have been caused by hellfire theology in West Virginia, in what my coworker calls “the buckle of the Bible Belt.” The truth is that when people hear others say “What church do you attend?” they’re not hearing “I’d love to know more about you. Do you have a spiritual community that is important to you?” They hear, “I like you right now, because I don’t know anything about you. But if you answer that you’re not an active Christian, that might change. Like many people throughout your upbringing, I will begin to see you as a person whose beliefs and goals are less righteous than mine by default, and this will taint our working relationship.” According to Pew, as recently as 1992, 90% of Americans identified as Christian (this number is now about 63%). While surveys are only ever estimates, and while “Christian” means a lot of things (i.e. practicing, cultural, on-and-off) you get the picture.

Christians are victims of state and large-scale violent persecution in many countries around the world (in the Gaza Strip, for instance, the small Christian minority must obtain special, arbitrarily granted travel permits from Israel to travel to other parts of Palestine for Christmas), but the United States is not one of them. Christians had enough concentrated power in the U.S. government in 1956 to get “in God we trust” printed on our money (that’s right, 1956. The U.S. Constitution makes no mention of any God, Christian or not), replacing e plurubus unum (out of many, one) as the national motto. 1956 is about two generations away -- the power of that religious majority hasn’t waned. Eight of our nine Supreme Court justices identify as Christian. You may carry a cross in good faith, but those who are in the American religious minority will see that cross as a hammer, because many wield it as such.

So I don’t love when a near-stranger here asks me where I go to church, but here’s what I do love: that that person is talking about it. Do I wish people here were less assuming about my faith? Yes. But I love that they are enthusiastic about it. Religion is incredibly important to the lives of people who live in restricted systems, whether that be the aftermath of the coal economy or in an occupied territory. For some people in recovery from drug addiction, Christianity is important to their personal recovery process. The same is true, I’m sure, for people in physical therapy (is that what the Bibles are for? Does the doctor read from it while you do lunges? Whatever works). People in the more buttoned-up, liberal environments I’ve lived in approach many things with a gentle accepting curiosity, but not necessarily religion (to quote one of my sister’s Los Angeles college classmates, “So you, like, actually believe in God? Huh”). Many West Virginians, I’ve found, assume people around them are Christian immediately and love to talk about how important Christianity is to them (I’m not talking about aggressive proselytizing in this case, more so “Let’s all share a fun fact! My name’s Barbara and I love Jesus”). How I wish I could bottle up the secular scientific instinct to curiosity and the religious instinct toward personal sharing and mix them together for my utopian world. By personal sharing, I just mean the willingness to admit that you have religious values that are important to your everyday life. For instance, all through high school I wouldn’t wear cross necklaces because I thought people would make more assumptions (than they already did) about what “kind” of Christian I am. In doing so, I masked a part of myself unfairly.

I feel weird about the Christian physical therapy office. I don’t like theocracies, whether de jure or de facto. I just think we could do to get less frigid about religious belief in and of itself (asking someone what their kippah signifies is as normal as asking someone what their spotless Air Jordans mean to them) while staying very frigid about religious nationalism. “Religious nationalism” is a pretty good name for what it describes, though concrete religious practice generally fades into the background as the nationalism takes over. I’m fairly certain the people who display American flags where Jesus is holding an AK-47 and embracing Donald Trump in an unintentionally erotic way have entered a realm beyond religion, a realm of cultism.

I saw the flag I described on someone’s car the other day, but now I can’t find it online and I only have this, which is a disappointment because it’s not as erotic as the flag I saw.

One thing that some old-school Baptists and I have in common is the belief that you’re ideally supposed to be Christian first and American at some point further down the line. I’m not relying on my government to adopt my community’s vision of a just world, and I think that vision is stronger than any one “nation” with made-up borders. This has always been my interpretation of “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s” (verse from Matthew). I am God’s, and Caesar can kiss my ass. I’ll vote for Joe Biden, but he is no vision of a just world. I am that vision, as are my friends, coworkers, neighbors, or anyone who fights pipelines, wars, and cruelty. I’m not interested in a vision of the future that is not pluralist, because religious states inevitably, always result in the violent persecution of other people. I really want to know more about how my Muslim, Jewish, atheist, Christian, and pagan friends practice love for others in the world, and I want them to ask me about what I do. Talking with each other, enthusiastically, about what we believe and why, on Instagram, in texts, on the phone, over drinks, fosters a love of pluralism and builds walls against religious statism. It also makes us better people, because these conversations force us to refine what we believe, and why. I do not care that not all of the people I love are Christian; I care that they have an internal code of ethics, and that they try to live that code. This is what I appreciate about my coworkers who, for instance, mention they do church-related community service—they are giving me a window into their system of ethics. Should they ask an outside client where that person goes to church within five minutes of meeting them? Of course not. In this light, does that cross look like a hammer? Know what you are wielding.

One of the big Questions That Go Bump in the Night for me is how I expect people to practice religious beliefs publicly but not to the detriment of others. It goes Bump in the Night because I still don’t know completely. But I think the answer has to do with practicing simple respect for the beliefs of others and refusing to be power-hungry. Most religions whose tenets I’m aware of emphasize humility and an openness to acknowledging your mistakes. Non-Christians and Christians have contributed equally to me being a better Christian, because they have both asked questions of me that forced me to reexamine my beliefs and practice. And most religious practice, in my experience, is realizing over and over again how you are failing to practice your own religion, gently bonking yourself on the head, and changing course. For instance, I’ve since decided I owe it to my own principles to suck up what is in reality a very privileged fear and wear the cross (if it matches my other jewelry. Can’t mix golds and silvers). If people want to quietly assume, they can. If they want to find out more, they can ask me. And I will ask them a question in return. And on and on. The bearded, white-robed white man on the American flag giving Donald Trump a little forehead kiss does not seem like a man who wants to ask you a question. He seems like a man who wants to shoot you in the head with his big beautiful machine gun. With each passing day I understand less and less who he is supposed to be.

Me holding the rake I’m using to slowly fill in some of the potholes in my neighborhood (with help, most recently, from my family). Caesar couldn’t do *that* could he???