Posted on April 5, 2007
From one American to another, it is my privilege to wish you a very happy Easter. It is my right to do so. After all, America is a Christian nation.
That is, if self-identification is to be believed. Bill McKibben, writing for Harper’s Magazine, reported that around 85 percent of Americans call themselves Christian; the “Jewish state” of Israel is, for the sake of comparison, only 77 percent Jewish. Now it’s true that not quite as many of us pray and dramatically fewer of us actually attend church. But as McKibben argues, “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.”
Yet while we’re apparently “one nation under God” after all, we exhibit precious little knowledge about the God we claim to follow. Stephen Prothero, the chair of Boston University’s religion department, had enough proof of the fact to recently publish a book titled “Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know — and Doesn’t.”
For example, while two-thirds of Americans endorse the teaching of creation in public schools, less than one-half of us can identify Genesis as the first book of the Bible. Only 40 percent can name more than four of the Ten Commandments — including Republican Congressman Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia, who sponsored legislation to place the Commandments in the Capitol Building — and only half of us can cite the four Gospel authors. A full 12 percent of us believe Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife.
Most surprising of all is that three-quarters of the country believes the phrase “God helps those who help themselves” appears in the Bible. For the record, it is not — it was originally coined by the less-than-scriptural Benjamin Franklin. Not only is the idea unbiblical, it is counter-biblical: the Bible, from the table of contents to the maps, chronicles mankind’s woeful inadequacy to in any way “help themselves” while simultaneously issuing the clear command that we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. “On this essential matter,” McKibben states, “most Americans … are simply wrong, as if 75 percent of American scientists believed that Newton proved gravity causes apples to fly up.”
As a result of this ignorance, one of the most religiously homogenous countries on earth often acts in direct opposition to its faith. Despite the repeated commands of Christ leading up to his crucifixion, America ranked second to last among First-World nations in proportional foreign aid in 2004. It is estimated that, under our global watch, 27 million people are enslaved in the world today, likely more than any other point in human history; approximately 17,000 of these slaves are trafficked into the United States annually. Regarding legal human traffic, the Department of Homeland Security reports America admitted 2,473 Iraqi refugees in 2001. But in the four years since the U.S.-led invasion, we have only admitted 466 refugees — total — out of the 2 million displaced Iraqis. We fall equally short in our work against AIDS, genocide, “climate change” and human rights abuses.
Nor were we taking care of the home front; 18 percent of American children are under the poverty line, markedly higher than, say, the 8 percent of impoverished Swedes. And it is not hard to see how the doctrine of “God helps those who help themselves” plays out in our “compassionate” positions on health care, affirmative action and welfare. We have so pathetically missed the point that, in 2004, the Christian Coalition of America placed “making permanent President Bush’s 2001 federal tax cuts” as its top legislative priority, lending credence to punk band Ace Troubleshooter: “Savior born in manger, please forgive us born in the inn.”
It will not always be like this, of course. While most Americans probably don’t know it, their Jesus often talked of a time when “the last shall be first and the first shall be last.” As we celebrate the death and resurrection of the Christ this weekend, we would be wise to take note of his teachings; it is not just our opportunity but our explicit obligation to help those in need, not out of a sense of privilege but out of a sense of humility. If this Jesus character is to be believed, “the least of these” are ultimately the ones who should have pity on us.
This Easter, it is my earnest hope and prayer that God does, in fact, bless America. Clearly we need it.
Brian Goodman is a senior communications major.
