[Mb-civic] The Christian Paradox: How a faithful nation gets Jesus wrong

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

http://harpers.org/ExcerptTheChristianParadox.html
[Excerpt]
The Christian Paradox
How a faithful nation gets Jesus wrong
Posted on Wednesday, July 27, 2005. What it means to be Christian in 
America. An excerpt. Originally from August 2005. By Bill McKibben.
Sources

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. 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 uber-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.

Asking Christians what Christ taught isn’t a trick. When we say we are 
a Christian nation—and, overwhelmingly, we do—it means something. 
People who go to church absorb lessons there and make real 
decisions based on those lessons; increasingly, these lessons inform 
their politics. (One poll found that 11 percent of U.S. churchgoers were 
urged by their clergy to vote in a particular way in the 2004 election, up 
from 6 percent in 2000.) When George Bush says that Jesus Christ is 
his favorite philosopher, he may or may not be sincere, but he is 
reflecting the sincere beliefs of the vast majority of Americans.

And therein is the paradox. America is simultaneously the most 
professedly Christian of the developed nations and the least Christian 
in its behavior. That paradox—more important, perhaps, than the 
much touted ability of French women to stay thin on a diet of chocolate 
and cheese—illuminates the hollow at the core of our boastful, 
careening culture.

* * *

Ours is among the most spiritually homogenous rich nations on earth. 
Depending on which poll you look at and how the question is asked, 
somewhere around 85 percent of us call ourselves Christian. Israel, by 
way of comparison, is 77 percent Jewish. It is true that a smaller 
number of Americans—about 75 percent—claim they actually pray to 
God on a daily basis, and only 33 percent say they manage to get to 
church every week. Still, even if that 85 percent overstates actual 
practice, it clearly represents aspiration. In fact, there is nothing else 
that unites more than four fifths of America. Every other statistic one 
can cite about American behavior is essentially also a measure of the 
behavior of professed Christians. That’s what America is: a place 
saturated in Christian identity.

But is it Christian? This is not a matter of angels dancing on the heads 
of pins. Christ was pretty specific about what he had in mind for his 
followers. What if we chose some simple criterion—say, giving aid to 
the poorest people—as a reasonable proxy for Christian behavior? 
After all, in the days before his crucifixion, when Jesus summed up his 
message for his disciples, he said the way you could tell the righteous 
from the damned was by whether they’d fed the hungry, slaked the 
thirsty, clothed the naked, welcomed the stranger, and visited the 
prisoner. What would we find then?

In 2004, as a share of our economy, we ranked second to last, after 
Italy, among developed countries in government foreign aid. Per capita 
we each provide fifteen cents a day in official development assistance 
to poor countries. And it’s not because we were giving to private 
charities for relief work instead. Such funding increases our average 
daily donation by just six pennies, to twenty-one cents. It’s also not 
because Americans were too busy taking care of their own; nearly 18 
percent of American children lived in poverty (compared with, say, 8 
percent in Sweden). In fact, by pretty much any measure of caring for 
the least among us you want to propose—childhood nutrition, infant 
mortality, access to preschool—we come in nearly last among the rich 
nations, and often by a wide margin. The point is not just that (as 
everyone already knows) the American nation trails badly in all these 
categories; it’s that the overwhelmingly Christian American nation trails 
badly in all these categories, categories to which Jesus paid particular 
attention. And it’s not as if the numbers are getting better: the U.S. 
Department of Agriculture reported last year that the number of 
households that were “food insecure with hunger” had climbed more 
than 26 percent between 1999 and 2003.

This Christian nation also tends to make personal, as opposed to 
political, choices that the Bible would seem to frown upon. Despite the 
Sixth Commandment, we are, of course, the most violent rich nation 
on earth, with a murder rate four or five times that of our European 
peers. We have prison populations greater by a factor of six or seven 
than other rich nations (which at least should give us plenty of 
opportunity for visiting the prisoners). Having been told to turn the 
other cheek, we’re the only Western democracy left that executes its 
citizens, mostly in those states where Christianity is theoretically 
strongest. Despite Jesus’ strong declarations against divorce, our 
marriages break up at a rate—just over half—that compares poorly 
with the European Union’s average of about four in ten. That average 
may be held down by the fact that Europeans marry less frequently, 
and by countries, like Italy, where divorce is difficult; still, compare our 
success with, say, that of the godless Dutch, whose divorce rate is just 
over 37 percent. Teenage pregnancy? We’re at the top of the charts. 
Personal self-discipline—like, say, keeping your weight under control? 
Buying on credit? Running government deficits? Do you need to ask?

* * *

To read the remainder of this essay, pick up a copy of the August 
issue of Harper's Magazine, on newsstands near you. Looking for a 
newsstand?
About the Author

Bill McKibben, a scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College, is the 
author of many books, including The End of Nature and Wandering 
Home: A Long Walk Across America’s Most Hopeful Landscape. His 
last article for Harper’s Magazine, “The Cuba Diet,” appeared in the 
April 2005 issue.
This is The Christian Paradox, a feature, originally from August 2005, 
published Wednesday, July 27, 2005. It is part of Features, which is 
part of Harpers.org.
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