“I love Jesus Christ!…so FUCK YOU!“
These ridiculously ironic words were just screamed, no SCREAMED at me by a young man just before he floored the gas and cut me off, causing me to slam on the brakes to avoid a crash.
What caused this hostile act of aggression?
More below.
The answer is my Mom-mobile with the Who Would Jesus Bomb? bumper sticker on the back.
Here in the South, you cannot travel more than 100 yards in any direction without running into a church. There are mainline Protestant churches, and a very few Catholic ones, but the vast majority are Southern Baptist and non-denominational evangelical churches. There is one synagogue that I know of within the city limits of Raleigh, and no mosques (that I am aware of.)
The social lives of most Southerners revolve around church. Sunday morning services, Wednesday bible studies, small group meetings at local coffee shops almost everywhere you look, pig-pickings (self-explanatory pretty much) church carnivals, garage sales, car washes, plant sales. Everything is sponsored by a church.
As a northern transplant who grew up decidedly Catholic and then decidedly lapsed, this is the single most significant change I have had to get used to in my three years in the South. And, make no mistake, it is South with a capital S.
Catholics are kind of the ugly step sister here. We’re just barely tolerated as “not the right kind of Christian” because the biggest employer here, IBM, employs many northerners who need a place to attend Sunday Mass. We wouldn’t want to offend IBM, but it’s okay if we regularly slander the catholics it attracts to the area.
The area which encompasses Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill is called The Triangle….or The Research Triangle. Here there are many computer and pharmaceutical companies and with these high tech jobs come a lot of northerners. This makes The Triangle lean blue these days, though the rest of the state is overwhelmingly Republican and very conservative.
I almost wept today to read in the Raleigh News and Observer this column by longtime Southerner Dennis Rogers. In it he laments how the Southern Baptists have evolved over the past 10 years from “rebellious and contentious free thinkers” to what he calls Bobble-Head Baptists, going along as the ultra-relgious leaders wage war against homosexuals and women.
He ends with a word of praise for the United Church of Christ which just a few days ago voted to recognize same-sex marriages.
This, coming from a thank-you-ma’am, grits-eating, flag waving lifelong Southerner is a thing of beauty and a signal of hope for all of us that times might indeed be a-changing.
