City Heights has got religion. A distinctive characteristic of my community is not only the sheer number of religious establishments located here, but the diverse forms that religious expression takes. There are the storefront Evangelical and Pentecostal Christian churches that have sprung up along University and El Cajon Boulevard, with names like La Esposa del Cordero, the Shepherd’s Wife, and signs with the exhortation Pare de Sufrir, to stop suffering.
There are Buddhist temples, botánicas, a mosque, a tiny Russian Orthodox church, and familiar Catholic and Baptist churches as well. Religious services are conducted in Spanish, Creole, Russian, Chinese and Vietnamese, to name just a few of the languages routinely spoken besides English. I do not know if other languages besides Arabic are used at the mosque located adjacent to the Somali neighborhood known as Little Mogadishu. There are also shamans and babaloas living quietly among us.
The City Heights streets themselves are integral to proselytizing. Slow moving groups of nicely dressed, polite yet religiously resolute Jehovah Witnesses are visible every day. They hold copies of La Atalya, the Watchtower, and are prepared to leave a religious tract in the hands of residents at their homes and at bus stops. From time to time someone with a bull horn stands on a busy corner denouncing sin and describing the glories of redemption. I’ll occasionally see elders of the church of Latter Day Saints (LDS) bicycle down the street, unmistakable in their short sleeve white shirts and narrow black ties. Once two members of the Bahá’i church knocked at my door. City Heights has got a lot of religion.
The Evangelical churches here seem to provide a particularly compelling message. Evangelicalism downplays ritual, embraces biblical truth, emphasizes conversion by spreading the gospel, and requires personal conversion, to be born again. It is a religion which has an appeal across racial and ethnic lines, and it is particularly resonant with the working poor, the down and out and the forgotten. City Heights, by virtue of its socioeconomic demographics, is fertile ground for the fast growing Evangelical movement.
Cindy (name changed and a few details altered because it is the right thing to do) has struggled to keep her body and soul intact throughout the many years I have known her. She always worked, but the jobs were marginal and barely covered the rent and kibble for the abandoned dogs she rescued from the street. Then she got sick and had no health insurance and couldn’t work. This has become such a common story that our eyes can easily glaze over when we hear it repeated yet again. Our meager health care safety net did not provide the expensive drugs she had been prescribed nor the surgery she needed until a much later date.
In addition, her adult daughter Sarah had serious mental health issues since childhood and a not too distant past that included drug addiction. I seldom saw Sarah, but she would stay with Cindy for weeks at a time then disappear. Cindy’s life was always unraveling or falling apart in sheets. But throughout all of her travails, she spoke about the strength and comfort she received from her Evangelical church community.
We ran into each other on the street one day, and Cindy told me that she was still dealing with health issues and was shocked that her application for Social Security disability had been rejected. For the first time I saw anger in her eyes as well as tears forming. She pulled herself up tall and said to me “God don’t make junk! I know God don’t make junk!” Cindy’s raw expression of belief arising from her profound pain has left an indelible memory.
That was the clear message of her church, the church of God Don’t Make Junk. That is a powerful message to those who have been treated as junk, move through life invisibly because they are perceived as junk. Cindy understood the other relentless message that she heard every day, when she wasn’t at church. People who work marginal jobs are junk. People who get sick and have no health insurance are junk. Poor people with mental health issues are junk. Poor people with drug addictions are junk. Poor people are junk.
It is no surprise that the poor and the disenfranchised want a sense of meaning and purpose in their lives and a sense of worth. A good job would be nice too. It is likewise not a given that the religious realm would be the sole provider of those very human needs. The unraveling of Cindy’s life approximates in many ways the unraveling of our national social contract with each other. The idea of personal freedom is eclipsing the belief in the communal and egalitarian public good.
I am disinclined to venture into the theological weeds despite the fact that years later I continue to turn Cindy’s words in my mind. It may sound both prosaic and profane to point to the very doable public policies that would change not only Cindy’s life but our world here in City Heights. Livable wages. Universal health care. Affordable higher education. Affordable quality housing. These things don’t require divine intervention, only human will and action.
Despite being a non-believer, I agree with Cindy. God don’t make junk.
Anna Daniels
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To one side of the political divide, health care in general is regarded as a privilege to be enjoyed only by those who qualify for it by being able to pay for it in full. See this Jonathan Chait piece on the subject.
People like “Cindy” (and me, for that matter) are viewed as “junk” by the folks on that particular side of the political divide, not worthy of seeing to even our basic health care needs. That’s the system they want. Life is only for those who can afford to pay for it.
On the other hand, all life is sacred and life begins at conception. But the minute the fetus is outside of the mother’s uterus, you’re on your own.
This is very true and way under-emphasized: These right wingers care far more about a five week old fetus than they do about actual human beings.
Thank you Anna…and regardless of what you think Kiddo, you believe…it just doesn’t fit in a neat tidy little box called religion. Again, thank you for this morning’s contemplation. By the way anytime you want to negotiate the theological weeds, let me know. It doesn’t take a weed whacker.
Now you will have to excuse me as I feel an essay coming on.
Jack-
I see you as more spiritual than religious. Big difference in my book.
Somehow this article makes me think of this song by The Dead Kennedys.
Lyrics by By JELLO BIAFRA
“Efficiency and progress is ours once more
Now that we have the neutron bomb
It’s nice and quick and clean and gets things done
Away with excess enemy
But no less value to property
No sense in war but perfect sense at home¡¬
[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsfreak.com/d/dead+kennedys/kill+the+poor_20038160.html ]
The sun beams down on a brand new day
No more welfare tax to pay
Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light
Jobless millions whisked away
At last we have more room to play
All systems go to kill the poor tonight
Gonna
Kill kill kill kill kill the poor¡¬tonight
Behold the sparkle of champagne
The crime rate’s gone
Feel free again
O’ life’s a dream with you, miss lily white
Jane fonda on the screen today
Convinced the liberals it’s okay
So let’s get dressed and dance away the night
While they¡¬
Kill kill kill kill kill the poor¡¬tonight”
Goatskull- that song took me back… it strikes me too as a pertinent association.
It’s a poor reflection on the modern Church, the reliance on catch phrases and populist marketing. We see congregations and leaders promoting this claim that God will magically fix your life. Become a Christian and you’ll be rich, powerful, blessed, and all your dreams will come true.
Not how it works. Jesus himself, when told to pay his taxes, sent a disciple to go fishing and he’d find a coin in the fish’s mouth to cover the costs. The very least this says to me is that these guys weren’t walking around loaded. If Jesus came today, I don’t think he would be driving around in a ferrari, catching private jets between locations and eating at five star restaurants… So why do people keep trying to say that the Christian (ie. “Of Christ”) life is one of gold, caviar and leather?
Thanks for this post, you’ve inspired the topic for my next blog!
Lest anyone think that the Dead Kennedys song Kill the Poor is little more than youthful hyperbole, the following words were uttered by libertarian economist Tyler Cowan:
“A rejection of health care egalitarianism, namely a recognition that the wealthy will purchase more and better health care than the poor. Trying to equalize health care consumption hurts the poor, since most feasible policies to do this take away cash from the poor, either directly or through the operation of tax incidence. We need to accept the principle that sometimes poor people will die just because they are poor. Some of you don’t like the sound of that, but we already let the wealthy enjoy all sorts of other goods — most importantly status — which lengthen their lives and which the poor enjoy to a much lesser degree. We shouldn’t screw up our health care institutions by being determined to fight inegalitarian principles for one very select set of factors which determine health care outcomes.”
Sometimes people will die because they are poor, and that’s ok.
Fm…that is one truly cold-blooded analysis of the situation. I am not familiar with Cowan, so I believe my one question from this quote would be the context in which it was uttered. If it is a very candid description of our current class warfare….and it is, albeit rather genteel…I would have to say he is absolutely correct. If, however, it is an advocacy and justification of institutionalization of class superiority, in which one literally lives off of the others, it is a frightening divergance from the course this nation once claimed to be. It represents a complete change in the manner in which we morally and ethically resolve conflict.
This is a whole essay in the making.
Jack- I went back and looked at the full text of his remarks. His essay is entitled “What kind of mandate should “the right” have supported?” He is talking about a conservative alternative to Obamacare.
How widely accepted are Cowan’s remarks about the poor? During the Republican presidential debates, Ron Paul was given a hypothetical situation about someone who chose not to buy health care & later needed sustained, costly medical care. Paul was asked “Who pays?” Paul responded with the standard libertarian view “That’s what freedom is all about: taking your own risks.” When pressed further to respond to “are you saying that society should just let him die?” Someone in the audience yelled “Yeah” and was joined by other voices repeating the same.
“Let him die” now even comes with applause. The libertarian definition of freedom is not only completely devoid of the democratic cornerstone of justice, it is morally bankrupt.
I have actually talked to people who posses that “let then die” attitude. In their mind it’s a win win situation because they actually feel that society is better off if those who cannot afford health care die off. I’m not going to go so far as to say that ALL conservatives or even libertarians think this way but there certainly are those that do. It’s amazing they sleep at night. What really makes me kind of makes me distraught is a couple of them that I know are military retirees who are getting health care through the VA. In their mind they deserve tax payer funded health care whereas others do not.
“Prosperity Theology” is prominent among many in the Christian community. If you are poor it is because you are bad and deserve to be so. If you are rich it is because you are good. This helps to rationalize and justify what appears to outsiders as utter cruelty. Witness the Paul Ryan budget that the Catholic “Nuns on a Bus” are protesting.
“Prosperity is Your Right” is the powerful message sent out to the comfortable, the antipode of Cindy’s church of God Don’t Make Junk. The former provides a religious reinforcement for the social darwinism served up by the right.
“Let ’em die! ” I found out today that my neighbor Jim died last Friday. He stopped by a couple of weeks ago and I was shocked to see how old and sick he appeared. My feisty neighbor who has kept an eye out on the street and never had any compunction about getting up in the face of someone whom he thought was screwing with us by dealing drugs or leaving graffiti on the fences ended up with a heart problem and diabetes that put an end to his day jobs. He had no health insurance, was only 62 and wasn’t eligible for Medicare. He was completely dependent upon the swamped local clinics and Medicaid to help him with surgeries and drugs. Those resources were unable to respond quickly enough nor comprehensively enough to keep this man alive.
Jim should be alive right now. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that he could be alive right now. We let him die. I am a howling hot mess of grief and anger. Jim has been been sucked up into the utter anonymity of the universe .
Don’t anyone dare applaud.
I am going to remember Jim from now on whenever I talk to some person who thinks national healthcare is a bad idea. Thank you Anna.
Sadly, there are those WHO DO applaud at situations like these and as a result people suffer. I refer back to DK.
Great essay, Anna. It makes me think of my “religious” upbringing – enough that I might just write about it, about when I joined church at age nine just to keep from going to Hell, a place that dominated my little mind for years.