Don’t Tell them I’m Jewish (Or an atheist).
July, 2010 — Liberty University, Lynchburg, Virginia
I am sitting in the student center at Liberty University, the “Christian” alternative to liberal academia. Liberty was founded in a particularly unironic fit of largesse by the scion of the moral majority Jerry Falwell. Here he is known as Doctor Falwell, though he has no such degree.
Jerry Falwell, the nemesis of ground beef pornographer Larry Flynt. “God must be dead if you’re alive,” sang the Dead Kennedys.
I am sitting at ground zero of the fundamentalist backlash, among the foot soldiers of the culture war they declared. I am sitting in their cafeteria, eating a Rice Krispy treat with a cup of coffee that I have to admit is above average.
I am sitting among a large group of what appear to be ordinary college kids, none of whom are speaking in tongues. Perhaps a little on the clean side. I mean clean in a nonspecific way that is apparent by only by how dirty I feel amongst them. They are a racially mixed group. Perhaps 30% nonwhite?
They look happy, untroubled and well rested. They look unconflicted but not particularly zealous. No one has testified and no one has tried to save me yet. (Can they tell?)
They make me look dirty and depraved, like one of those Nazi caricatures of the swindling Jew. Grotesque features, dark circles and possibly hairy palms.
I don’t know when I acquired the humility to admit these kids have something I don’t.
At an earlier stage in life I would have qualifiers on that. They’re sheep, delusional, chasing windmills. Clichés, condescenation that would have blinded me to their obvious, palpable happiness. That these people live without need to define themselves. They set out a goal based on a course and then achieve it without looking down all the time. Their faith is the ground beneath their feet. They know it’s there and it’s never going to change. The world makes sense in a way that has nothing to do with a lack of fear of death. The way of the world is not for them to judge, none of them are the deciders, the universe was before we were and will thereafter continue unperturbed, no matter what we do. They are free to do other things and it shows in their bright healthy smiles.
Did I mention that there is an awful lot of handholding at Liberty? It’s sweet. They part reluctantly without embracing. It’s not frustrated sexuality. It’s that back of the throat infatuation from junior high that makes you clutch your pillow at night.
Sure, they would certainly say that you and I and all the other fornicators are headed for the fire, but only if asked. Because the fact is, they don’t think about us all that much. They know where they are going when the spaceship lands and it makes me burn. Or is it a peptic ulcer. Elohi, elohi, lama sabacthani.
Those are, of course, Jesus’s last words if you believe the earliest gospels. My god, my god, why hast thou forsaken me.
The other three include philosophical conversations with shoplifters and proclamations that god will forgive them for not knowing they are killing god (?!). That’s the gottspeil…”good news.”
In our collective secular until the bombs start falling consciousness we have forgotten the account of Jesus dying in stunned silence and replaced it with a vision of a cross in the sky and a virgin birth etc. Peter’s fish keeps getting bigger, despite ditching his net at the top of the story. But who gives a shit? The end is nigh. “This generation will not come to an end till all these things are complete…” That was meant literally.
But that’s not the Jesus of Liberty University. They pray to the Jesus of Paul, the schizophrenic apostle who never knew Jesus, has no connection to him aside from claiming to have hung out with a couple of people who did for a week or two.
This is the Jesus of the apocalypse.
I am in a pleasant coffee shop in Purcellville, Virginia, the home of Patrick Henry University. The staff is hip and tattooed and the customers look like goths as interpreted by the producers of Saved by the Bell. There is a sign on the door indicating that I will be treated with kindness and respect should I choose to enter. This reminds me of the signs in the lobby of Denny’s and Cracker Barrel that insist they are proud to serve anyone.
Patrick Henry University is the opposite of Liberty University. Liberty feels (sorry, fellow liberals), open, diverse and friendly. Patrick Henry feels…paranoid. The women wear ankle length skirts even in the summertime. The men narrow their eyes to slits as if they can see through the nice-jewish-boy veneer (bad enough) to the atheist inside (unforgivable).
These are the choices the right presents us in these dark days.
