Since the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock, the country that we now know as the United States of America has been home to people who felt strongly about religion. The spiritual descendants of those early colonists are here today, along with a number of people who feel very strongly against religion. I suspect it’s all part of the same phenomenon, two sides of the same coin. So perhaps the seeds of our current discords have been there from the beginning.
Maybe Americans have always been incapable of believing anything in moderation. Dare I suggest that in this way, we are more like the people of the Middle East than we are like the people of Europe?
I mention Europe because the early settlers, the founders of those 13 colonies that would become the United States, came from there. I know, of course, that there were people here before the Europeans showed up; and people of all sorts have come from many other places in the intervening centuries. Still, much of what we used to call the “dominant” culture came from the colonists' European roots.
Lately I've thought maybe there was a fundamental difference in those Europeans who crossed the water to put down roots in the New World. I’ve seen some museum exhibits; I have a vague idea what trans-oceanic travel was like in those days, and it was no picnic. It took serious motivation to get on those ships, to leave behind the known world and venture into the new as a colonist, an explorer, a missionary. Every one of those people must have had an extraordinary need to conquer, some fervent belief, or a high sense of adventure; and perhaps some were so persecuted that they simply couldn’t stay where they were.
One could make the argument that everyone in Europe who had a capacity for living in moderation stayed home. Maybe that's why public discourse on religion is so much livelier in the U.S. than it seems to be on the other side of the Atlantic.
... although France's recent action to ban burqas appears to have ignited some sparks. More on that next time, perhaps.
I wonder whether there IS a genetic component to 'beliveing in moderation' vs. feeling strongly about things. It looks like another of those cases where "nature vs. nurture" is the issue, and that's straight out of my Human Development class notes. It is probably more likely that the folks who don't feel strongly about things don't get much press (or write blogs!).
ReplyDeleteWhat both amuses and confuses me is that so many claim to be Atheist, while in order to be one you have to define what it is you are against (Theos?),and by defining this God-thing you've already asserted it has a presence. Sounds like a case of creating big blindfolds to me --and then waving them about for show.
As for my ancestors, I believe all 4 grandparents came through ellis island, and 3 out of four came for economic reasons I believe. The fourth had other issues but the details are real hazy.
Okay, I guess a lot of immigrants came to America looking for better economic opportunities. Still, I've heard it argued that the people who made that trip -- even if they had nothing going for them in the Old Country -- had to have a certain amount of get-up-and-go just to get on the boat.
ReplyDeleteI know that my grandmother took the boat ticket of someone who chickened out, and had to pay them back for it (my grandfather--meeting her here-- paid them back, from which came his belief that he bought her, sort of). She was only 16.
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