Deep within the American psyche is a longing for convertive piety. We are a nation and culture of extremes and polarities: The Saturday night drunk who weeps in repentance on Sunday morning; The Sunday night holy man who leaves his ethical convictions at the door of the church when he steps into the office on Monday morning; The self-proclaimed irreligious person who prays in moments of crisis. Lips that sing the hallelujah chorus part to display the forked tongue and nasty sting of gossip, paranoia and anxiety. “Jesus Christ” is a name exclaimed more commonly and comfortably by the skeptic or hater than the true believer.
Deep within the American psyche is a longing for convertive piety. We are a nation and culture of extremes and polarities: The Saturday night drunk who weeps in repentance on Sunday morning; The Sunday night holy man who leaves his ethical convictions at the door of the church when he steps into the office on Monday morning; The self-proclaimed irreligious person who prays in moments of crisis. Lips that sing the hallelujah chorus part to display the forked tongue and nasty sting of gossip, paranoia and anxiety. “Jesus Christ” is a name exclaimed more commonly and comfortably by the skeptic or hater than the true believer.
As a society we are literally haunted by God– the preacher, the church lady, the tortured backslider, the agnostic and the atheist. Religion, and our strange attractions and repulsions to it, reveal more about us than the nature and character of any divine being. What is revealed in our convoluted spiritual pursuits is the beauty and ambiguity of our common humanity. We are people who can imagine what love is, but can never quite make it to be “on earth as it is in heaven.”
Nothing illustrates the tensions we feel about religion and our humanity more than the cultural relic of the revival meeting and the revivalist phenomenon. In America, everyone is converting to something — to Jesus Christ or the teachings of the Buddha, from P.C. to Mac, from City to Suburb or from country to city. We are going green or going cold turkey, coming out gay or republican, becoming locavores or vegetarians, quitting our smoking or not buying anything. We put our faith in the latest technology, the newest idea or the best looking person that serves it all up to us just the way we like it.
But secretly we know that the perspiring troubadour is just like us and we wonder and we hope that the healing change being proclaimed is really possible– because if there was ever a time when our world needs love and healing and reinvention and redemption, that time is now.