Browse > Home / Befuddled Foreigner / Sacred and secular - Easter AND spring break

Sacred and secular - Easter AND spring break

by Jamie Snashall on March 24, 2008 in Befuddled Foreigner

Never let it be said that I lack courage.  This entry was originally going to cover religion, politics, sex, alcohol, guns, sport and many other controversial topics.  But hey – do I really need to run the risk of incurring multiple death threats all in one day … why not stagger them over the full week to live on the edge (it reminds me of ‘The Bachelor Home Companion’ where PJ O’Rourke encourages the liberal use of salt in all foods, taking time to remind us that “Salt keeps your blood pressure up to the pitch of modern life”).

We’re always hearing about the religiosity of the American population and of the influence (for better or worse) of religion in politics here, making the country something of an outlier when compared with other advanced industrial democracies around the globe.  When I compare my country with the US, I see a common heritage as ‘settler societies’, English as the dominant or only language spoken and Protestants historically as the major Christian denomination.  Despite these similar traits, the two countries are very different on secularization and religiosity. 

 I wrote a class paper in late 2007 on the reasons for this difference and one of the most persuasive arguments for the US came from Sacred and Secular, an excellent book by Pippa Norris (a KSG lecturer of mine) and Ronald Inglehart.  The authors used the concept of existential security and how it is felt by individuals to develop an argument:

that feelings of vulnerability to physical, societal and personal risks are a key factor driving religiosity and that the process of secularization – a systematic erosion of religious practices, values and beliefs – has occurred most clearly among the most prosperous sectors living in affluent and secure post-industrial nations.

According to Norris and Inglehart, unlike western and northern Europe, the United States is one of the most unequal post-industrial societies under analysis and this helps account for its high levels of religiosity: 

Exceptionally high levels of economic insecurity are experienced by many sectors of U.S. society, despite American affluence, due to the cultural emphasis on the values of personal responsibility, individual achievement and mistrust of big government, limiting the role of public services and the welfare state for basic matters such as healthcare covering all the working population.

 Well worth a read, as is the data from the World Values Survey, run by Inglehart.

However, I was in for a very big shock last week, living as I am in the ‘secular north-east’ of the US.  An assignment had a due date of 21 March – Good Friday.  What was going on?  In Australia, whether you commemorate the day with religious activities or not, it’s a public holiday with schools, offices and shops being shut.  In Massachusetts, it was Bad Friday – my assignment was still due at 5pm, everyone was going to work, the Kennedy School was open and those who take the day off are seen as committed Christians!  How dare Americans lack respect for the importance of religious holidays?  I went out on Easter Monday and found everything the same as Friday – open for business!

I may not do very much on Good Friday beyond eating fish and chips, watching the opening round of the Aussie Rules football season (go the mighty Magpies)  http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9011334/Australian-rules-football or, as I did one memorable year with a friend, hire ‘The Passion of the Christ’ on DVD for some “laughs” (good idea Dan), but it’s still important that I have the day off …  and there was an incident on one Good Friday where I was so hungover I slept through the alarm and missed an interstate flight to see my family!

I was in the heart of the American south at Christmas and remember seeing a host of signs on churches saying ‘Happy birthday Jesus’.  That makes sense I guess, but does that mean church signs should say ‘Happy deathday Jesus’ on Good Friday (and then change them two days later - after the Resurrection)??  Hmmm …  My ignorance of the 10 Commandments was on show when holidaying with colleagues in Atlanta – I was sure that one of the commandments had said ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s ass’ and, technically, I was correct http://www.allabouttruth.org/10-commandments.htm.  When my friends recovered from their laughing fit, they reminded me it was a donkey not an ass.  Whatever …

Oddly enough, this got me thinking about depictions of Easter in popular music.  And I wasn’t thinking very long, because there’s not much to be found.  Christmas is a different story – you’ve got the gamut from Wham’s ‘Last Christmas’ through to John Lennon’s ‘Happy Xmas (War is Over)’ and one of my absolute favorites, Paul Kelly’s ‘How to Make Gravy’ http://www.lyricstime.com/paul-kelly-how-to-make-gravy-lyrics.html  Of course punk icon Patti Smith sang “Jesus died for someone’s sins but not mine” http://www.lyricscafe.com/s/smith_patti/gloria.html but Easter just doesn’t seem to be the season of songwriting inspiration. 

We move to the irredeemably secular – the notorious spring break.  Of course, it doesn’t always coincide with Easter, but this year it does.  Most of my colleagues have escaped town for all or part of the week (but I’m not jealous!) and headed south for some warmth.  This is pretty important given the top temps in Cambridge are still struggling to hit double figures in Celsius. 

Speaking of heading south, I will close by telling a story about two intelligent, highly accomplished women – let’s call them JL and VG - looking for Fallingwater, the residence designed by Frank Lloyd Wright near Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania.  Falling victim to the temptations of the ‘set it and forget it’ GPS, they ended up in Falling Waters, West Virginia (approx 200km away) and wondered why there was no home to visit.  Having had GPS in rental vehicles in Maine and Las Vegas that are more trouble than they’re worth, I sympathise with them.  But that didn’t stop me from laughing at their misfortune!

Finally, for those friends of mine who think that spring break is all about photographs of female college students participating in wet T-shirt competitions in Cancun, well … you won’t find them here … they’re on my OTHER blog  :-)

Enjoy yourself this week, whatever you’re doing and wherever you’re doing it.

Written by Jamie Snashall · Filed Under Befuddled Foreigner 

Jamie Snashall grew up in Tasmania – that little island to the south of Australia – which made him something of a befuddled foreigner in his own country. The English novelist LP Hartley once said "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there," and many Aussies would think that that perfectly describes Tasmania, a former British penal colony for the nineteenth century convicts who were too bad for Sydney. Banished at the age of 13, he ended up in the nation’s capital, Canberra, where he became a political junkie, worked as a very civil servant for some years before jumping into the political arena as media and policy adviser to Julia Gillard, who has recently become Australia’s first female deputy Prime Minister. His weaknesses are U2, Star Wars, Thai food and red wine, preferably all mixed up together. In his spare time, he is trying to finish a TV sitcom about a college student and civil servant who are roommates. When not writing this blog and working on his sitcom, he is allegedly enrolled in the Mid Career MPA program.

Comments

Got something to say?