Does Your Perception of God Determine Your Politics?

The cover story of USA Today about ten days ago was "How America Sees God," and certainly if so august a journal elevates this to its main front-page feature, it must be factual and important.

The piece was basically a publicist's dream, touting America's Four Gods: What We Say About God--and What that Says about Us, a new book by two sociologists at Baylor University.  The authors, Paul Froese and Christopher Bader, have often mined Baylor's annual religion surveys, packaging the idea that how one sees God determines one's political and social positions. I actually read the survey from their 2006 report, which asks everything from belief science will find Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, to whether God is "a 'He,'" to agreement that "The U.S. must establish democratic order in the Middle East."

The survey shows a bias in its Christian-centric construction (as a Jew, I was confused by some terms and would be at a loss to answer some queries).  In 2005, Gallup contacted 3,702 potential participants, and got a 46% response rate. Once the results were in, the professors interpreted the material--by deciding that views of God fall into (only) one of four types, "Authoritative," "Benevolent," "Distant" or "Critical."  The first two include an active, engaged God; the latter two, a God who started it all, but now doesn't interfere.

According to the USA Today summary, the 24% of Americans whose God is "Distant" think since creating the world, He stands back and watches. The 21% whose God is dubbed "Critical" also think God "rarely acts on earth," but might judge in the afterlife.  This is the deity of "ethnic minorities, the poor and the exploited," says the article, mainly because their lives are so hard (and therefore God must be "critical").

The "Benevolent" God of 22% of the respondents see Him as mostly a "positive influence on the world."  These folk don't blame God for tragedies, but credit Him for the good stuff in life.  The final 28% of respondents see an "Authoritative" and judgmental God, who, while loving, "can become angry and is capable of meting out punishment to the unfaithful," such as natural disasters or illness.

Basically, Froese and Bader take James David Barber's four constructs describing Presidential character, and apply them to Americans' views of God.  Barber sees some presidents' personalities as active (like the Authoritative and Benevolent God) and others as passive (like the Distant and Critical God).  At the same time, some presidents have a "positive" affect (corresponding to the Benevolent and Distant God) and others a "negative" perspective (Authoritative and Critical God).  Barber uses these to categorize Presidents (or candidates) to predict how they'll perform in office.

Presidents like Thomas Jefferson, F.D. Roosevelt and John Kennedy are "active-positive" presidents, adaptive and self-confident.  John Adams, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon are "active-negatives" who compulsively but joylessly achieve.  James Madison, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton are "passive-positives" whose need to be loved makes them compliant and reactive, while George Washington, Calvin Coolidge and Dwight Eisenhower exemplify the "passive-negative" withdrawn style that acts out of principle.  Just as you'd expect, the best bet for president is active-positive, then passive-positive.  Active-negatives were termed "dangerous" choices by Barber.

So, who are USA Today's poster boys?  Glenn Beck is their Authoritative God icon (who prefers the "dangerous" active-negative God), with his "warnings about losing God's favor."  Their Benevolent God guy?  Why, Barack Obama.

And how does this play out in political views?  "People with an Authoritative God are about three times more likely to say homosexuality is a choice, not an inborn trait...affecting their views on gay rights, particularly marriage and adoption."  (Notice that reporter Cathy Lynn Grossman uses the word "rights" rather than "issues.") Yep, active-negative, all right.

Glenn Beck's Authoritative God, book author Bader says, likely caused tragedies like 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, "directly punishing us for a society's sinful ways."  The Benevolent God fans, though, are relentlessly upbeat, and "focus on a fireman who escaped, or the people who rebuild homes..."

Says the newspaper piece, "When President Obama says he is driven to live out his Christian faith in public service, or political satirist Stephen Colbert mentions God while testifying to Congress in favor of changing immigration laws," they're expressing a deity author Froese says "cares for all people, weeps at all conflicts and will comfort all."  (How active! How positive!) But Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck represent those who "divide the world by good and evil," whose actively negative God "appeal(s) to people who are worried, concerned and scared."

I think I'll take care and comfort over worried and scared.  And active optimism over active negativity.

By the way, the Distant God (who's passive-positive, like Bill Clinton) gets good press too.  Quoted is Rabbi Jamie Korngold, since Distant is "the dominant view of Jews."  She says Distant appeals to her because "that gives me more personal responsibility. There's no one that can fix things if I mess them up. God's not telling me what I should do."  (Notwithstanding those pesky commandments in the Torah.)

So, Froese and Bader offer a paradigm where two views of God appear to be pessimistic, and two appear to be optimistic.  Two reflect the active vitality of self-determination, and two reflect passive powerlessness and resignation.  Authoritative and Critical views of God correlate with conservative (bad) political views; Benevolent and Distant views of God correlate with liberal/progressive (good) political views.  Surprise!

The research assumes--without evidence--that like one's character, shaped in childhood, views of and feelings about God are well-defined character traits, not subject to change.  That people don't hold conflicting and sometimes confused thoughts at the same time. That such variables as mood, weather and public or personal events don't influence connection or inspiration.

I'd speculate that even the most faithful have doubts, various levels of clarity, and frequent revision in their religious perspectives.  And those perspectives are a complex amalgam of views on all sorts of spiritually-related subjects--not a single concrete block of simple beliefs.  Similarly, political views cover a range of topics--and views on any given subject can change.  (Can a conservative be a tree-hugger or condone first-trimester abortion?  Can a liberal favor second-amendment rights or oppose the death tax?) And how does God-perception predict the political views of the third of the electorate self-identifying as "independent?"

Just look at Barack Obama's polling--the country was overwhelmingly supportive in January, 2008, when his approval rating was 69%; Gallup's ratings for this month (Oct. 2010) show his disapproval rate higher than his approval, 48-46%.  Does that mean the electorate changed its views of God?

Could it be that these academics have a political agenda?  Oh no, the pristine halls of ivy are populated only by seekers of truth, who would never overlay personal perspectives on research outcomes.  Maybe they're just hoping to copy James David Barber's literary success.  And perhaps if God is truly Benevolent, they will.

Why Automobiles are Inherently Godly and American

The Washington State Auto Dealer's Association chose Hawaii as the venue for its annual meeting, and I'm so glad I got to tag along with one of their keynote speakers this last weekend.  I snorkeled next to Honu, large sea turtles who nonchalantly grazed on algae just inches from me, and I contemplated how completely and admirably our society relies on cars.

  Cars Express our National Character

Cars represent our craving for initiative and independence, American national traits ingrained by immigrants who took huge risks to come here, pioneer this country and strive for success.  Deprive us of our cars, and you thwart that fundamental enterprising spirit.

Because the individuals who chose our land endowed the national character with their industrious and competitive stock, we cleave to our cars.  We love the power they offer, the personal control, the ability to harness and direct energy.  Our nation thrives on verve; the chance to plot one's unique direction and arrive there is the engine of our economy and the purpose of the engine under the hood.  Cars allow mobility and robust change; we should encourage and honor use of the automobile rather than foment politically-motivated disdain over some phony environmental threat.

I do believe gasoline-powered vehicles affect the environment (I grew up in a smog-choked Los Angeles that improved once gas additives were controlled).  But instead of forcing people onto government-run public transport, policy should encourage using our creative spirit and ingenuity to make our individual cars environmentally green, as well as cleverly and satisfyingly designed.  The billions taxpayers are forced under threat of imprisonment to pay toward constructing now-empty light rail stations should go toward enhancing and improving highways.

  

Cars Let America Spread Out--and Prosper

Here's the nearly-Darwinian reason why even Al Gore can't and won't force Americans to give up our cars:  their evolution enabled our nation's survival.

In the early years of North American settlement, cities formed to allow efficient specialization of tasks.  Proximity let the candle-maker, the fabric weaver, the grocer and lumber vendor conveniently distribute their wares.

As the nation's population burgeoned, automobiles met the need to colonize our open spaces , first with cities, and then with suburbs. A unique American culture formed inside suburbs' proverbial picket fences, figurative moats around each man's (and family's) "castle."

Unsettled spaces and autos allowed us the unique privilege of freedom from meddling; an expectation of privacy and its liberation from censure I believe fed our already self-selected industriousness and entrepreneurial energy. Thanks to corporations competing to make cars affordable, after World War II families could buy spaciously situated homes with front and back yards, space enough to acquire, spread out, and, with this buffer from the world--relax. One-car garages morphed into two, then three-car garages.

The average size of a home built in 1970 was 1,500 square feet. By 2000, it had grown to 2,200 square feet. By 2008, the Census Bureau reports US average home size expanded to 2,473 square feet.  Everyone's heard the term "McMansion;" residential narcissism recently spawned the jaw-dropping MTV series "Cribs," where teens tour tv-voyeurs through their folks' conspicuously consumptive houses, loaded with science-fiction amenities.  Andrew, for example, knows the water at his bathroom sink is hot because it lights up red; blue water's cold. Another bath in his home boasts a gushing waterfall and remote controlled toilet. His bedroom includes an actual tree house, and outside is his custom-built hobbit-cabin and a warehouse holding a full-size basketball court with electronic scoreboard.

Andrew's parents and all the workmen and service personnel who built and tend the estate all depend on cars.  No Light Rail could bring any of them to Andrew's house--or even to the vast majority of transformed-countryside developments that compose and ring every metropolitan area.

Cars Help Us Emulate God

It's not only our immigrant heritage that makes it intrinsically American to crave the autonomy and independence that automobiles afford.  Just as God's essence is creativity, we humans have a similar yen to create, using our individual capabilities forging technology, devising solutions to environmental problems, and advancing efficiency.  We want to go where we want, when we want, with or without whomever we want. This is the essence of creativity--striking off on your own to take a risk, start something different.  Traveling at set times on a fixed rail may serve confined cities, but people who need independence, privacy, space and flexibility--freedom!--want cars.  Those in Manhattan who can afford it take the subway when convenient, but also pay the $431 average (up to $800) monthly fee to park their cars in a garage.

An underlying reason is that Americans, with our sense of the possible, value time.  People love their cars largely because a driver's in control and can minimize waiting, not subject to a governmentally-set timetable or schedule.  That's why traffic can be so frustrating--here you are in your own car, administering your own affairs--and then all these other cars get in your way--they limit and constrain what you had planned to do.

Americans' cars express our drive to determine how we change the world, often producing something valuable from nearly nothing--and how we allocate our time.  Some tasks can be accomplished in a noisy terminal while waiting for a bus or train. Most creative activities can't.

We are hampered in emulating the creative nature of God by losing or wasting time we could spend creating.  Clearly, most people waste scads of time (watching "Cribs"?) and create very little.  But we lose our collective zeal when enforced lines and imposed schedules become a daily expectation (Russia under Communism comes to mind).

It's worrisome, then, when politicians and politically-correct pundits insist dependence on governments' management of our time and transport is more noble, patriotic and humanitarian than our automotive independence.  Giving up our cars dulls the American independent spirit, shrinking us nationally into more limited options and smaller worlds.  Those who would eliminate God and religion from the marketplace seek to eliminate our Godly urge to act independently and creatively. (Thus it's not more humanitarian, but perhaps more humanistic to push Light Rail.)

If there's consumer demand for high-mileage cars that run on, say, kudzu (my personal suggestion for biofuel), some entrepreneur will invent it and clean up, uncovering lots of rusted cars in Southern fields while adding to our national prosperity.  Hooray for the car dealers of America, whose difficult efforts to serve the public fuel the innovative, independent spirit that keeps our nation zipping along...

What's on God's Mind? Not Sure...

Just in time for the Jewish month of Ellul, which is the "prep month" for the somber and even scary High Holidays, a friend brought to my attention a hilarious, primitively-animated video that asks some pretty deep questions about Christianity.

It basically questions why God would bother to come to earth if He didn't want to significantly improve life for His creatures. Having just completed a very lengthy, intensive study of the Jewish scriptures collected in the "book" of The Twelve Prophets ("Trey Assar"), which contains some pretty strange stuff, it occurred to me that some of the same questions could be asked about them. Here they are able to convey to man anything God wants us to know (and there were thousands of these guys; only timeless prophecies are preserved) and yet God just didn't want us to have some pertinent information that could have made earthly life better and easier, and more in line with what God did suggest He wants for/from us.

This time of year, Jews use the metaphor that "the King is in the Field," ie, the King (God, obviously) doesn't make His subjects come to Him in His castle; rather, He's especially accessible to those who approach, coming out to their turf. What this means for us is that our solemn accounting of our actions and our heartfelt repentances will be more graciously received. I'd also like it to mean that it's easier for us to face our own mental and psychological housecleaning.

But the big deadline is Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year, anniversary of when the first man spoke), when our fate for the coming year is determined. It's then "sealed" ten days later, on Yom Kippur. Oh, we do have through the holiday of Hoshana Rabah to really, really, really repent, and for God to modify the verdict, but the actual decision happens with the Jewish New Year, the first of the Jewish month of Tishrei, which this year synchs to the solar calendar as sundown, September 18.

So, here I am, trying to make the most of this prep month, when the shofar, or ram's horn trumpet, is blown every day to wake us out of our spiritual stupor, and questions I repress just jump in front of my face. The ones raised in the YouTube (regarding the prophets, and other issues) are mere samples of the ongoing discussion I have with the Deity.

But conveniently, I do happen to be Jewish, and questioning and delving and confusion and "breaking one's teeth" over illogic and inconsistency is the "stuff" of this religion. Our sages are known for their questions (What's bothering Rashi?) and our leaders must justify any decisions and answers they offer, based on precedent and earlier sources. The rather bothersome bottom line for me, however, is that ultimately, we humans still have too many questions that are unresolvable.

So, is it better just to give up and enjoy a secular life? Or to be agnostic and admit that yes, there could be God, but it's impossible to know for sure what He wants? Or, to seek closeness through a particular religion? I do think that God desires the flourishing of several major religions, and probably doesn't want people killing each other over doctrinal differences (eg Sunni-Shiite sectarian violence). But then again, what do I know? It's a personal thing; each individual's relationship, or lack thereof, with God is as idiosyncratic as our affinities for particular foods or hobbies or people.

But when you try to live according to Jewish law, there's no escaping the questions. Take a look at the video and let me know what you think.