To be an American

As an American living in Canada, who has travelled some, who has lived and worked in Japan, who has spent less then three months living in the country of her birth over the course of the last five years, I am somewhat at a loss when confronted with the media image of my mother country. Is this the culture I grew up in? Was I ignorant? Did I miss something. Or is it that in the five years of my absence, the U.S. has asserted itself much more prominently as a god-fearing country--scratch that--as a Christian god-fearing county?

News headlines this week raising questions about a certain presidential candidate's religious background, about a certain other candidate's need to assert his Christian-hood and about the growing popularity of the latter's opponent based primarily on his sectarianism are disturbing, to say the least. But my disturbance is not natural or innate; no, it is only since expatriating that I wonder just how analogous to the American ideal such topics might be.

Growing up in Indiana, religion was everywhere. In my school, in my neighbourhood, on the news, at the mall, from the lips of my representatives--everywhere. "A church on every corner"; that was the Hoosier legacy. And growing up, I was struck by how many different kinds of religion there were. I was Quaker, my best friend Betsie was Christian Orthodox, I knew lots of Methodists, Lutherans and members of the United Church. I even remember being struck by how much real estate the Penticostals covered north and south of the state's capitol. Ha! I laugh now because, really, the variety of religion that I truly felt surrounded me was almost entirely limited to Protestant Christianity. I knew two and a half Jewish kids. One of the members of my Quaker meeting had at one time experimented with Islam. Oh, yeah, and it was rumoured that a girl at my high school was Ba'hai.

When I got to university, located right in the agnostic heart of Manhattan, I was roomed with a girl from Long Island, NY. She blew my mind. She didn't even know any Protestants. I remember her once asking--to my complete astonishment--if Protestants, like Catholics, were Christians too. Where she grew up, you were either Jewish (in varying degrees) or Catholic. Unless you operated a gas station; then you were probably Hindu or Sikh. She told me I was from the Bible Belt, and she told me she would never--ever!--go south of D.C., and maybe not even south of Jersey. But North Carolina is so beautiful, I insisted. "They'd probably lynch me," she explained; half-Jewish, half-Catholic herself, she was also the daughter of a single mom. Apparently, down south, they don't take kindly to her kind.

Really?!, I thought, is this what the rest of the country thinks about the South. I'm actually not from the South (she didn't know that), Indiana is only barely a member of the Bible Belt (a hard sell), and for myself, I hadn't been to worship in more than a year. But I felt somehow misunderstood. And gradually, after five years in the city of sin, I forgot about religion. It became a non-topic. None of my friends and no one I interacted with wanted anything to do with anything god-related. (Perhaps, that's what New York is for us agnostics and atheists, who make up a significant portion of the transplants that populate the city: an oasis for the ungodly.)

Flash-forward to my first interactions with Canadians, who make up a large percentage of the English teachers in Japan. Over and over, I heard that my country was all about God. God with a capital "G" (or, perhaps, the more apt capitol "G"). God in government, God in schools, God in the bedroom, God from the doctor, God for breakfast, God with dessert, God, God, God, God, God-God-God. The idea seemed ridiculous to me at first. None of my friends were even religious, I asserted. That point was moot.

And by the time I met the Canadian who would eventually bring me to live in his home country, I was feeling downright defensive about the subject. How dare "these people"--who, frankly, I'd never given a hoot about--characterize the place of my birth as this Christianity-obsessed haven for fanatics?! Who did they think they were telling me Americans were all a bunch of toe-the-line Christian Conservative sheep with nothing on their minds but God and fealty? Then he asked me, "Have you ever in your life heard a speech from a politician that didn't include the word 'God'?"

I was positively thunderstruck, agog. I had no words, no response. I couldn't believe that I'd never questioned this. In fact, I hadn't ever heard a speech absent of the word. God was in every speech. "In God we trust": it's even in the money. And to be honest, I think even at that time, I thought, well, who cares, that's who we are; it's part of our national identity.

But wait a minute. That's not who I am. That's not a part of my identity. Sorry, Mr. Bush, I don't trust in God; in fact, I don't even trust in money. Does that mean I'm not an American?

Now, I'm mad. Angry. Furious even. I've lived in Canada for more than two years now, through a national election, a party leadership campaign, several scandals and more, and never has religion come up. It's simply not part of the national dialogue. Ask anyone here whether they went to church last Sunday and the response most often is laughter. Laughter. Here, religion is first of all private and secondly little practiced.

In Canada, if a politician running for the office of prime minister vis a vis party leader were to be "accused" (yes, that is my word choice) of being a Muslim, and it was rumoured that he might prefer to be sworn in via the Koran, Canadians would think less of both the accusor and the news agency who reported the matter. It would be a non-topic. No one would care.

And if a politician, again running for the top office, were to go out of his way to profess his faith, most would think he was singing the dirge of his own political career. A death song no less startling than the fires of Waco. "What do I believe about Jesus Christ?" he asked himself in his speech. "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind." Who cares, most would think.

But in the U.S., such is not the case. In fact, it was the downward sliding polls indicating his pre-primary popularity was dissipating that compelled this Mormon to defend himself and his religious convictions. And why? Because hot on his heels is an Evangelical "angel" floating down from the heavens to nab the Christian Conservative vote--despite a muddied past. (Has a presidential candidate ever been labelled a "Rapist-sympathizer" before?) The Mormon, hedging his bet that the pulpits will be mega-phoning the Evangelical's "virtues" this Sunday, seems something of a clown from the vantage of the 49th parallel. Yet the spin he's generated from his speech tells of citizens who are "relieved" to hear that he's every bit as Christian as they are.

Said the Mormon:

Today, I wish to address a topic which I believe is fundamental to America's greatness: our religious liberty. I will also offer perspectives on how my own faith would inform my Presidency, if I were elected. ...

When I place my hand on the Bible and take the oath of office, that oath becomes my highest promise to God. If I am fortunate to become your President, I will serve no one religion, no one group, no one cause, and no one interest. A President must serve only the common cause of the people of the United States. ...

Americans do not respect believers of convenience. Americans tire of those who would jettison their beliefs, even to gain the world. ...

It is important to recognize that while differences in theology exist between the churches in America, we share a common creed of moral convictions.

I'll put aside the contradictions of "religious liberty" and faith-informed government, of an oath to God and serving no one religion/group/cause/interest because God's special interest groups and I don't seem to be on the same page. I'll even put aside the fact that of any of the candidates, the Mormon is perhaps most vulnerable to accusations of jettisoning his beliefs to gain political power. (Um...A woman's right to choose? Did someone have a change of heart because after years of perceiving women's terrible decision-making skills he decided that he'd couldn't trust a woman as far as he could throw her?)

But when did we decide that we as Americans were going to be members of a Christian state? I never voted for that proposition.

And through all this, I've forgotten myself. I've forgotten that even when I was living and breathing Americana in practice, religion was not what ruled my day. God didn't inform my decisions. And which church I was member to did not determine my status amongst my peers. So, I ask again, is this the culture I grew up in? One of God and religious justifications? One of accusations against alternate faiths and of pulpiteering for candidates?

Perhaps. Perhaps America filled me with so much God that I couldn't see it for myself until I'd left, let it run its course and detoxified, like a dope addition or a virus. Maybe America is the new Catholic Church, and the Iraq War it's Crusade.

Or maybe it's just a sexy topic that gets headlines and feeds news agency and advertiser coffers. I'm not sure.

Waking up to these questions, I feel as if I'm closer to seeing the light. But see what I did just there: "Seeing the light." It's a Quaker phrase first, but no less an American one as well. Just like that favourite quote--"Free at last, free at last, Thank God Almighty, I'm free at last."--God is in the vocabulary of the American experience, a writer of its historical lexicon. Our freedom and liberty are inextricably tied to our religion. God made us free, we imply. It is perhaps impossible to explore what it is to be an American without using such phrases to describe who we are. Life, liberty, democracy, morality, God. Where are the lines?

So, no, you won't hear a speech by an American politician in which God is not present. It would be un-American.