The Balmy, Airy, Fantastical Belief In Religion, The Most Imaginative Creation Ever

Enoch Andrews grew up in rural North Carolina, as remote and backward as a place can be in that part of the South. His family had an acre of scrubby, rocky land to grow corn, a few chickens, one goat, and a hutch of rabbits.  Summers were hot and winters were freezing cold.  School was five miles away and truancy was expected in high planting and harvesting season and when the weather was too cold to walk. 

 

It wasn't a bad life, Enoch thought at the time, and only in retrospect did he understand how poor they had been.  Life in Vibberts Crossing, a hundred miles from any town, was the only life he knew, and as far as he was concerned everybody went shoeless in the summer, shivered under threadbare covers in the winter, and ate cornpone and fatback three meals a day - scraps and crumbs of the cornbread in the morning, sow belly soup at lunch, and leftovers from the first two in the evening. 

What they did have was religion, a mighty, salvational creed inspired by the Reverend Jackson P Evans, invested long ago by the Lord, no stranger to the North Carolina woods, a man with a mission and a divine purpose. 

His church, the Hope and Glory Baptist Church of Vibberts Crossing, was filled every Sunday morning, and Reverend Evans never once missed a beat nor an opportunity to preach the gospel.  The Lord was here and now, approachable, willing, and full of grace; and prayer would be the only invitation he needed to come down and minister to his people. 

 

He began every sermon with a homespun homily about his grandpappy and hound dog Bart, coon hunting, and stewed partridge for Sunday dinner.  'Praise the Lord', he said and talked about his dear mother, dead and gone to her reward, his eight brothers and sisters conceived in God's grace and faithful to the Lord.  Life with Jesus was as good as it gets, he went on.  He is our faithful companion, our savior, our solace, and our redemption. 

That Sunday service, the loud and beseeching voice of Reverend Evans, the hymns, the friendship, and the colloquy with Jesus Christ, was not only the high point of the week, it was the only point of note in an otherwise miserable existence.  If it weren't for faith in Jesus, there would be no reason to get out of bed in the morning. 

The same was true for Mary Spicer O'Donnell who got down on her knees every morning and asked the Lord to look over her, protect her, guide her on the path of righteousness, and reserve a place in heaven for her.  Mary had grown up in Beverly, a small town on Boston's North Shore, as Irish Catholic as any town could be, and was a member of St. Patrick's Church of the Holy Trinity.  She was baptized there, made her First Communion and Confirmation there, and was a star pupil at Sister Edna Joseph's Catechism class. 

There was nothing Catholic that she didn't embrace - the consecration, Confession, adoration, the Stations of the Cross, choir, communion, and good works.  Religion was her whole life, and although tempted by the nun's suggestion of a religious vocation, she preferred to stay home as long as possible with her mother, father and little brothers. 

Although the sex-obsessed, penitential religion of the Irish Catholic fathers was a source of guilt, anger, and frustration for many - lapsed Catholics might still profess the faith had they been born and raised in California where the Italian Franciscans took a much more tolerant and accommodating view of Catholic obligations - it did not bother Mary Spicer.  She reveled in the Sturm und Drang of Father Brophy's harangues every Sunday morning.  Religion was not supposed to be a bright, airy, and happy thing, but a serious one.  Jesus after all suffered for our sins and we must do the same to gain eternal life. 

She blessed herself a hundred times a day, whispered Hail Marys throughout the day, and bowed her head in prayer upon waking, before meals, and at bedtime.  Religion for her was the be-all and end-all of her life. 

'What if I had been born a Jew', she wondered, 'or worse a Muslim'. Would the light of Jesus Christ, the one and only Savior of the World shine through?  A Muslim - what a horrible idea! Buggered by some bearded, goat-smelling sheik, burqa-ed, and bagged then shut in and locked away with his harem; or gun noll strapped in the back of a pickup truck while some keffiyeh-wearing bandit shot up the Christian quarter of town.  Who would ever choose to be a Muslim woman, treated like shit, tossed around like so much luggage, rolling over for some Muhammed or Ibrahim. 

Most Muslims are born Muslim so they don't know any better.  Allah, Muhammed, mosques, muezzins, patriarchy, beheadings and caliphates are not everyone's cup of tea; which leads one to the question, why on earth when so many religions exist, would anyone in their right mind actually choose Islam?

'Can you imagine', she said to a friend, they actually believe that God wrote the Quran in Arabic, put in bits and pieces of the Old Testament in for good measure, gave Jesus a minor role, confided it to an angel who delivered it to Muhammed, an ignorant, illiterate Arab, and told him to go West, kill all infidels in his way, and establish my religion throughout the world? 'What a story'. 

Of course the virgin birth, the resurrection, miracles, and The Last Judgement where all bodies and souls are reunited in one heavenly jamboree is not very different, and although Christians were not told explicitly by God to kill heathens and infidels as Muhammed was, the early Popes took such implied instructions to heart and launched the Crusades, bloody affairs that lasted decades. 

This all might be true, and the priestly buggering scandal of today rather unfortunate; but Mary Spicer's faith was unshaken.  After all, the genius of Athanasius, Augustine, Aquinas, and the Early Church Fathers, the foundation of Christianity, is indelible.  Faith and reason, politics and history, and the Word. 

 

Nor was anything of Allah's disputed or criticized.  Yes, the ISIS beheadings, the al-Qaeda massacres, and the Boko Haram mass murders were on the surface deplorable, but eggs must be broken to make an omelet, the ends justify the means, and the the extension of Holy Islam throughout the world a noble enterprise. 

'If there were a God', said atheist Christopher Hitchens, 'he would either have created one religion for all, or let all men create their own'.  Since there is no one world religion, then the latter must be true. 

And what a truth!  Each of the foundational myths of  the Abrahamic religions, Islam, Judaism, Christianity is a marvelously created, fantastical, story beyond belief.  No Thousand and One Nights, no Ramayana, no Gilgamesh, or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight can match such fancy, such storytelling, such marvelously tempting tales.   The parting of the Red Sea was made for Hollywood. walking on water, turning water into wine, the many wives, concubines, and vestal virgins of the Muslim paradise are worth of retelling over and over again. 

 

The many incarnations of God in the Hindu pantheon could not have been more fanciful and inventive - Hanuman, the monkey god; Ganesh the Elephant God, Kali the devouring, frightful, harridan, Siva the Creator and Vishnu the Destroyer.  Who would not be charmed and enticed by them, and who would not worship them? 

Enoch Andrews and Mary Spicer O'Connell were but two out of billions of believers who take God on faith.  Christopher Hitchens once said that a religion based  only on faith and without reason can be dismissed just as easily', but non-believers have a tough time in a world that seemingly cannot give up its credulous belief in myth.  The atheist is not considered part of a spectrum, but an outsider, missing something, and who will end up on his deathbed praying for salvation.  'There are no atheists in foxholes', goes the old adage. 

Let it be, and let those who believe, belief.  What difference does it make?  In any case getting Enoch, Mary Spicer, Ahmed Bagrhabi or Israel Cohen to deny their roots, reject God, and to ditch it all is just whistlin' Dixie.  Of all the fundamental, unshakeable beliefs in the world, religion is the most intractable, all the more surprising because it is such a fanciful and obviously marvelous story with no foundation.