Religion

I've been meaning to write about this ever since I came down here, but refrained from it since I feared it might do more harm than good. However, there really are some fascinating differences so maybe I should stop ignoring the elephant in the room and just get it over with. Therefore, as a note of warning: whatever follows is nothing but my own, personal view on some rather general and sometimes abstract events and concepts and it is in no way meant as a personal offense to anyone. Not to anyone at all - especially no one I know.


Maybe I should start off with some background for the non-Europeans. The fact is I grew up in a religiously very simple and clear-cut place: everyone was Catholic, but no one went to Mass (except maybe at Christmas and if you're over 60 - old habits die hard). Those that weren't Catholic, were either clearly African immigrants or in the case of Jews they stuck to themselves and were so orthodox that there was, again, no mistaking them for anyone else. Since historically the Churches were placed in the centres of cities and towns, the church square would be used as a market place on Sundays and as a convenient parking lot during the week, though the church itself remained mostly empty.

I was therefore not too surprised when I saw the hugely prominent parking lot next to the church in Star City - given the importance of cars in WV, it was only to be expected. The thing I did not expect was that this lot would be empty at all times except during mass. That is to say: in this town, demographically the youngest town I've ever lived in, more people go to church - much more people go to church - than anywhere else I've lived. And that isn't all. The other part of the equation was something I first realised in Australia.


As I said, in Belgium things are easy: there only really is one church and one religion. Everyone who goes to church, goes to the same place (and still that place is empty). In the New World, this isn't the case by far. Every group of immigrants, be it the English, the Irish, the Italians or the Germans, they all imported their own religion or rather, since these are all Christian (to keep things "simple", I'll focus on Christianity for now) they all imported their own flavour of a religion. And so you have heaps of churches all over the place and everyone goes to his own little church - and yet somehow (I don't know about Australia, but at least in Star City/Morgantown) they manage to get decent numbers.

While I find this interesting from a mere mathematical point of view, religiously I don't understand it, either. Growing up in a homogeneous community, there was never really a point to wonder about whether your religion was the right one and whether it was best to follow the Roman Catholic church or if maybe Martin Luther had a point. Living in a place where the churches of different denominations are built side by side, I would think the question about which religion you adhere to and how sacred and indubitable the words from your holy book are, would certainly be put in perspective.


Having said that, a small word on Jews. Where I grew up, the only Jews I knew about where the ultra-orthodox ones who effectively lived in a ghetto somewhere on the rim of Antwerp. So you can imagine I was pretty surprised when it turned out some of my friends in Melbourne - who by any standards (and especially mine) look really normally Western - were, as a matter of fact, Jewish. The same thing happened here, of course. I knew someone for quite a while, but it's only around Christmas time that I discovered he celebrates Hanukkah instead of Christmas: I haven't found any other way to tell - there simply are no clear differences (for as far as I can see) between Christians and Jews. Or so I thought until (don't ask me how or why, I regret it already) the subject of Israel came up. I have not, so far, had the courage to figure out how prevalent support is in either Australia or the US, but it has been a very long time since I heard someone react with shock, horror and disbelieve (and, just maybe, a tinge of hate) after I confessed to not being a big fan of the state.


Finally, a word or two on tolerance. Last week, a proposal to legalise Gay Marriage was voted down in the New Jersey state assembly. Please do have a look at the Daily Show's clip here. It has it all - the good old orthodox Jews, the conservative nuts, both sides claiming that the Founding Fathers would be on their side of the debate - they even managed to find a conspiratorial anti-Semite. The bottom line, though, is more disturbing and recalls the debate about Sarah Palin's granddaughter and the fact that she wouldn't be aborted, because in both cases the main argument (first against abortion and now against same-sex marriage) comes down to "my God says it's evil, so no one should be allowed to do it". Maybe it's just me - and I hope wholeheartedly that a majority of the university-attending church-goers would be with me on this one - but I cannot understand how in a supposedly secular, 21^st century Western nation, the word of one person's God can be used in a legal argument to prevent another person from doing something.