Wednesday, January 29, 2014

"Bible-Mindedness"

A Facebook friend posted a survey which attempted to rank American cities on the basis of how "Bible-Minded" they are. It probably won't come as a surprise to readers to learn that the survey concluded that a number of towns in what used to be called the "Bible Belt" were considered to be most "Bible-Minded." Conversely, the least "Bible-Minded" cities were in the northeast, and on the west coast.


Looking at the results, I wondered what criteria were used to make these determinations. I'd be willing to guess they estimated percentages of the local populations that said they attended church regularly, went to Bible study classes, could quote passages of Scripture, and claimed they said daily prayers.


I'm not against any of those things, mind you, in fact am in favor of them, but doubt that's all it takes to be "Bible-Minded." (Actually, I stridently deny that's all it takes to be "Bible-Minded.")


People who engage in the activities I just mentioned, and who don't follow up with what my parochial school nuns called the "corporal works of mercy" seem to me to be like the object lesson in Jesus' parable of the Pharisee and the Publican. I hope you remember the story. The Pharisee stands at the front of the temple and brags to God about how holy he is, while the Publican - a despised tax collector - lingers in back and begs for mercy as a sinful man. The lesson was that the Publican will find a merciful God and the Pharisee will not.


So, I wonder, was the amount of money given to worthy charities part of the survey-takers' calculations? I don't know.


I do know that the states that are allegedly most "Bible-Minded" have the highest rates of homicide and assaults with intent to kill in the United States. That's right, the very places identified as most "Bible-Minded" seem to pay the least attention to the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill." We hear in the news about the terrible murder rate in big cities like Chicago, but the statistical evidence clearly shows that Americans are most prone to kill each other in the states that were once part of the Confederacy. (Years ago, when I was a park ranger, I saw the FBI statistics that indicated more law enforcement officers were killed by gunfire in wildlife enforcement than in any other activity, and more of those officer deaths were in the south than anyplace else. And that persisted year after year.)


Another method of weighing "Bible-Mindedness" might lie in looking at the percentage of marriages that end in divorce. Once again, the places where divorce is most common are the same places the survey alleges are most "Bible-Minded." (I was divorced myself once, so I'm living in a glass house as I mention this.) The Bible, as we know, is ambivalent about divorce. The Jews of the Hebrew Bible were permitted divorce under some narrow circumstances, and the Talmud comments extensively on the matter, but the Christian Bible seems to prohibit it. "What God has joined together let no man put asunder." Catholic teaching through the centuries is that divorce is anathema, but other Christians take a somewhat more lenient approach. The fact still is that divorce is most common in those "Bible-Minded" places.


Shall I even talk about race relations? Jim Crow, legal segregation and lynch mobs are things from the past, and it's wrong to condemn the children for the sins of their fathers - or grandfathers. These horrors, by the way, happened throughout the country, but there's no denying they were worst in the south. No part of the country can claim to be free of residual racism, but de facto segregation remains more entrenched in the south than elsewhere.


And what of persistent poverty? Over and over, Jesus tells his followers that they must give of all they possess to the poor. It's a central message of the Christian faith. Where does poverty linger most in the United States? I think we all know.


I'm feeling Pharasitical myself as I write this, so will end here, except to reiterate that trying to determine where people are most "Bible-Minded" is much more complicated than the survey might lead us to think it would be, and that this survey allows people living in the areas spotlighted as "Bible-Minded" to become complacent and smug.

Monday, January 20, 2014

TR, Taft and Progressivism

Recently, I've been reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's history of the progressive age, The Bully Pulpit. The book concentrates on the two careers of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, and contains some interesting items. I was aware of some of them, but others have been surprises.


Probably the most upsetting part of the history, so far, is the tragedy of Theodore Roosevelt's home life. His sister "Bamie" suffered from curvature of the spine that made physical activities painful for her and rendered her nearly an invalid. Then, while Teedy, as his family called him, was a sophomore at Harvard, his much loved father died of colon cancer, in great agony, and before Roosevelt could reach New York to say good-bye. If that wasn't enough, Roosevelt's mother passed away after a short illness when Roosevelt was twenty-four, and on the same day his wife succumbed to Bright's disease after giving birth. That's right, he lost his mother and his wife on the same day, both after very short illnesses.


It was an overwhelming loss for Roosevelt, who tried to find solace in work and then by heading west to spend a year as a cattle rancher in North Dakota. After he returned to New York he remarried and resumed custody of his toddler daughter, only, a few years later, to confront the horror of his brother Elliot's disintegration in alcoholism, and his death.


Taft's history was comparatively placid, but not less interesting. Known as "Big Bill" at Yale, he had grown up in rather affluent circumstances and had been pointed towards a law career from early childhood. His rise can be attributed to his affable scholarly demeanor, but also to the ambitions of his wife Nellie. A far better politician than Taft, she is credited with urging him into the political arena when he always wanted to be a judge. The Supreme Court was his ultimate goal, not the White House.


Taft was able, friendly, and a conciliator, good qualities for most occupations, but not for the presidency.


In addition to following the lives of the two presidents-to-be, Ms. Goodwin traces the progressive movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through the staff of McClure's magazine, the best forum for political idealism of its time. And before talking about the magazine, she dwells on Henry George and the single tax.


As a young man, George had puzzled over the conundrum of rising productivity in the machine age and increasing poverty. Why were some people becoming enormously rich while others struggled through life sinking gradually into worse and worse distress? Then, according to George, one day while gazing at San Francisco from a distance,


I asked a passing teamster, for want of something better to say, what land was worth there. He pointed to some cows grazing so far off that they looked like mice, and said, 'I don't know exactly, but there is a man over there who will sell some land for a thousand dollars an acre.' Like a flash it came over me that there was the reason of advancing poverty with advancing wealth. With the growth of population, land grows in value, and the men who work it must pay more for the privilege
 Or, as Will Rogers advised years later, "Buy land. They ain't making any more of it."


George's argument was that all improvements on property belong to the person who made those improvements, or bought them, but the land itself belongs to all citizens. Therefore, taxes should be reckoned and paid on the basis of what unimproved property is worth. He called it the single tax. If enacted, there would be no need for income tax, sales tax, tariffs, or any other tax.


Now, it seems to me that such a scheme would require an army of assessors to value property, and lead to endless disputes about the size of the assessments. But then, don't we have an army of IRS agents now, not to mention the army of lobbyists in Washington and every state capital, endlessly trying to get tax breaks for their clients?


And why am I bringing this up on a January day in 2014, when George's idea went into the dustbin a century ago? Why, because we have the same dichotomy now that was so troublesome back then. I have taken to thinking of it as the lottery economy, in which a lucky few become enormously rich by doing nothing of anything approaching commensurate benefit to the country, and the rest of us plug along in life trying to keep body and soul together and having a tougher time of it every year.


Need proof? Just look at any highway junction or shopping center parking area, and you'll see beggars now, where there were none a generation ago. We need another Roosevelt. We could use another Taft.