Religion Redux

I was thinking about a couple of things the other day. One was about my relationship with the churches I attended after I discovered Unitarianism, or more correctly Unitarian-Universalism. The other was about the relationship of religion to our culture. This may end up being two separate pieces.

The latter item first.

When someone said to me "this is a Christian nation," it started me thinking. In a very real sense it is but not quite in the way he was suggesting, as in "Christian" to the exclusion of all others. People who propose this idea seem to me are in denial of quite a bit and captive of their very narrow view of history. Most are unaware that the "under God" phrase was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in the fifties as a defense against godless Communism. The Pledge itself is an artifact of the nineteenth century, composed in 1892 and formally adopted in 1942. "In God We Trust," coined in the Civil War era, was formally adopted as the official motto in 1956. Seems we adopt these things in time of war, hot or otherwise. reminiscent of the German "Gott mit uns," a motto used by their military that actually has a long imperial history going back to the Romans and Byzantines, and even the Hebrew "Immanuel."

The latest version of this kind of reactive cleaving to religious ritual or symbol in time of war is the now apparently mandatory singing of "God Bless America" during the seventh inning stretch of baseball games--a practice initiated after 9/11. I think I am as patriotic as the next person. I've studied the work of our founders, read their own words about what they were doing. I love this country, and I hate the mistakes she makes in my name. I've always wondered why we think singing anthems at professional sporting events makes us more patriotic or American. Though I do like that the practice compells hockey fans to have to listen to "Oh Canada."

The founding fathers were religious men but they were close enough historically to the religious wars and atrocities of England and the religious persecutions that drove many to settle here that they had the wisdom to avoid the idea of a state religion, although some states had established churches that both shaped their laws and were sometimes supported by taxation. The illegality of birth control in Connecticut until the sixties or seventies was an artifact of this.

Christianity does appear to have become the "state religion" of capitalism, however.

It works like this. Calvinist doctrine--the Puritan settlers of Massachusetts were Calvinist--says that there are those who are "elect" and those who are not; those who will receive salvation and those who won't; and that only God knows who they are. A kind of a cosmic lottery. Now very quickly those people who were successful Calvinists started to think that their success was evidence of their "election." Obviously if God makes me a success, I must be favored in his eyes.

They also had a little thing about having some kind of conversion experience to be covenanted with God and the church community. When people stopped having those so much they decided that there could be a "half-way covenant." If you were the child of someone who had had the conversion experience, you could be a full member. Member or not, elect or not, you were still expected to attend church regularly.

Anyway the apparent beliefs of the successful capitalist Calvinist merchants live on today in the apparent unflinching support of the wealthy by some not very well off believers of an unnamed political persuasion. In another forum one posted a lengthy justification that CEOs deserved their rewards because they obviously have talent and abilities beyond those of the mere lazy mortals who work for them. That view of executive compensation is as detached from reality as the Calvinist burghers' belief that they were elect was detached from doctrine.

Shock yourself. Pick out a half dozen or so publicly traded large companies and go look at the 10-K statements posted on the SEC website, Edgar. Look at the executive compensation and severance provisions. The basis for the numbers you will see are the decisions of crony boards based on surveys of "comparable" companies, usually selected to be larger and more successful. The result is a continuous ratcheting up of all executive compensation that has absolutely nothing to do with competence or performance.  It is an adult version of "but Johnny's mother lets him do it."

The severances are obscene. Typically a multiple of annual compensation including bonuses, with accelerated vesting in stock and stock options, they state that they will be awarded even if termination is for cause (i.e., non-performance). Under these deals a CEO would practically have to be convicted of child-abduction to not get their payout.

So, yes, the religion of our Calvinist forebears lives on in statements like "Capitalism, God's way of sorting rich and poor."

Here's what I consider the highest irony. These are the same people fond of hurling the "Socialist" label around, but if you read the Gnostic Gospels you get a very different picture of Jesus and the early church than theirs. Helping the poor was the focus of the early church. Communal activities and meals were the rule.

Would be nice if indeed the nation was truly "Christian."