When I think of Christianity, I think of my childhood version of it: Church on Sundays, memorising hymns, singing songs, camping trips, Christmas trees, stained glass windows, Cathedrals, and a social network of people who primarily pushed their children to go to Ivy League Schools. I also think of how this earlier vision became perverted into controversy in my young adulthood: news reports of sexual abuse from pastors, sodomy of Church choir boys, and the overall contemporary hypocrisy present in religion as a social and political institution which exacerbated my extreme dislike of the commercialisation of televangelists and the strict social rigor that prevented self-expression. Yet, I still found its history alluring. I was enamoured with Cathedrals, the music, the traditions in itself, and there was something about non practicing Christians that I found an affinity towards, in the way that most children who were raised from any religious belief, Islam and Judaism included, became disillusioned with it yet still held onto those core memories of their upbringing.
My generation did not trust any religion. We grew up as non-practicing Christians or Muslims, reformed Jews and only utilised religion at family gatherings. For us, it was not a personal choice. This is how I have always viewed religion. However, this documentary made me realise that religion, too, had its roots in economic and social strife. Religion and Politics, these twin ideologies that were branches on the same tree, were suddenly cleared of the fog from the mystical remnants of a text that seem mired in allegory.
"Whoever eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, has eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day."
-John 6:54
Imagine a world where there were starvation, economic disparity between the classes, diseases being rampant and a lack of resources: of education, of healthcare, of simple living standards. There were endless class wars, and factions killing each other in retaliation, similar to the situation in Darfur and Serbia; in the middle east, between Shiites and Sunnis. At first, in the historical, Biblical situation of Jesus I was reminded of contemporary North Korea- where indeed the 1% lived in abundant riches, and the rest were living in starvation, with the presence of cannibalism amongst its population. Then came a man, Jesus from Nazareth, who envisioned that this abstract entity, God will provide for all, and accept all into his world. In this world, everyone would have health care, education, food and opportunity to pursue one's passions.
In our contemporary Orwellian state of affairs, what threatens to re-create a version of the Holy Wars, or the Class War in the United States and its allies is the belief of Us vs. Them. Of the 99% against the 1% and vice versa. Hedge fund manager, Paul Tudor Jones reminded us in his annual address to his organisation that: "We have to take the 1% and the 99% and remember that we are the 100%"
The banking sector is vilified as the enemy in the current social climate; however, they are merely the middle men to this long economic history that encaptures the government, lobbyist factions, energy pharmaceutical, and insurance industries. The government deregulation of these industries has created a tempestuous fiduciary climate in which poor impulse control has lead to the collapse of multiple sectors within the United States which in turn, affected the entire global economy. We can say with certainty that Reaganomics has indeed failed. It took 30 years before we started to feel the full effects from the seeds in which the Reagan administration had planted when he first took down those solar panel walls off the White House, and gave financial, energy and pharmaceutical industries carte blanche in 1980.
During the MF Global Congressional Hearing, one Representative asked Jon Corzine: "How can we regulate greed? No matter how many laws or regulations we put in place, we just cannot regulate greed." He said this in a rather audacious manner, with a slight smirk, as if he weren't actually a puppet to lobbyist money who had bought his seat and had ordered him to say exactly that: Regulation isn't the solution. Yet America's history tells us otherwise.
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door. "
It is easy to forget where we came from when we are living in splendour. It is easier to blame others for their misfortune, and to point the finger and blame others for ours. Religion might have been a way to cope with economic disparity within our annals of history, and perhaps religion as a social construct was a way to govern people whose own government had failed them. But as the current lessons in the Middle East and Africa have taught us, genocide isn't the solution to the problem. So then the question needs to be asked: How can we redistribute wealth without affecting the innovation of certain sectors, particularly in technology, where America is the strongest? Is there a way to address the current economic disparity without resorting to another Class War?
