GodTubed

A friend of mine whose job it is to keep up with the world of the weird told me about GodTube last week. It is the "Christian" equivalent of YouTube, featuring videos with supposedly uplifting, mostly evangelical content. "Broadcast Him" is the tag line. There are music videos as well as playlettes showcasing the dangers of sin. And of course advertisements, one for Liberty University right at the top of the landing page. See it for yourself: www.godtube.com.

After a week in which Mitt Romney appeared on television to affirm his Christian credentials for Iowan Republican Evangelicals, it seems a kind of GodTube was everywhere. Those of you who watch TV probably saw endless replays of what he had to say, interminable discussions of what it means that a major candidate has to explain his religion, reruns of JFK defending his Catholicism, talking religious heads, etc. Religion was big last week. It will stay big throughout the election year, I think, because everyone running for office feels s/he has to pander to the Christian Right in one form or another. And you cannot be other than Christian if you want to be president. Imagine a Muslim trying to address the nation and concluding with a phrase other than God bless America. Allah, anyone? Or an observant Jew declining to mention the name of the Holy One at all.

The fact is, Romney really has nothing to say about religion. I am content that he is a practicing Mormon down to his underwear and that if he is elected president (he won't be, of course) he will behave no more badly than our current leader. He could hardly be worse. As governor of Massachusetts, he left the state about as liberal as he found it. Listening to him pontificate about his faith must be ten times more painful than reading his words. I hope the others don't follow suit. I don't want to hear Clinton talk about being a Methodist, nor Huckabee tell me about his personal relationship with the Savior and Redeemer of the World.

It is rhetorical nonsense. I was struck that some commentators were concerned that Romney did not argue for the inclusion of nonbelievers in the American civic landscape. Nonbelievers are doing just fine, thank you. The voice of Christopher Hitchens was heard, strident as always, last week in an article condemning, of all things, Hanukkah as a primitive throwback that Jews should repudiate. I also found an image of Santa on the Cross, which Landover Baptist Church (http://www.cafepress.com/landoverbaptist/33515) puts on t-shirts and mugs as a pro-Christian (put Christ back in Christmas) statement. The image here also decorates a thong on their website. These are some pretty rad Baptists.



Religion is dished up to us daily in a variety of repulsive forms. One of the most offensive is currently running in movie theaters. Perhaps you've seen it. The video is an advertisement for the National Guard. It features a band on a hillside singing with that breathy sincere sound while soldiers, in Iraq and our own Revolutionary War, rescue children and promise to be there whenever we need them. It is a religious message in every sense of the term, offering salvation, security, and really bad music to true believers (in the American military way). It is exactly the kind of music featured on GodTube, except it extols the citizen soldier instead of Jesus. Both of course are redeemers.

If you haven't already been subjected to the video at a movie theater, you can download the MP3 file and listen to it at http://www.1800goguard.com/movie/index2.php. When we first heard it a couple of weeks ago here in Portland, the audience began hissing before it finished playing. It's one of the reasons we like living here.

What's my point this week? We could use some serious, and less noisy, faith practice in this country (not more religion--we have too much of that). What we have now is a parody of faith: marketing, manipulation, and unbridled ego. Another example of religion as parody, and I'll finish with this one, is from the Episcopal Church, my favorite institution. A diocese in California has officially voted itself out of the church because it, the diocese, knows itself to be purer than those of us who sup with gays and take communion from women priests. The bishop in this diocese sounds just like Romney or any of our political candidates: unctuous, full of himself, and lacking in credibility. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.