What do you say to people whose myths are crumbling and whose families are falling apart? (BTW, I'm not talking about the kind of physical suffering that's so terrible to hear about in Iraq every day, though that's probably more important.) I'm talking about the loss of potency of conservative Christian mythology and the breakdown of the Southern family.
Let me explain by sharing what happened today. First, a personal prelude.
My grandparents were FDR/JFK Democrats, and my parents are Republicans. My namesake--my father's father--ran Kennedy's presidential campaign in Dunbar, West Virginia. My mother's father benefitted from Kennedy's space program, working with NASA in Florida in the sixties and seventies. Then Mom and Dad got "saved" in the late sixties--AND THAT'S WHEN THE TROUBLE STARTED! Dad went to a radically fundamentalist college in Tennessee, and Mom supported him. They had a five children, and I am the oldest. Mom and Dad voted for Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and both Bushes. All my parents and grandparents have always considered themselves Christians.
Given their adamant and dogmatic views, my right-wing parents would never have imagined that
their children and grandchildren could experience divorce, drug addiction, or teen pregnancy. But that's what they've had to see. Two children divorced and one son an addict.
And now, here is today's example of a myth crumbling.
Today I received a call from Dad. He's traveling through California's San Juaquin valley, preaching at fundamentalist churches he helped establish. You see, he's a Director of a large Baptist mission board, and his goal is to convert the USA to Christ. Good luck.
The irony is that he called me to talk about one of his grandchildren, one of my nieces. She's fifteen and pregnant, a hard thing for my father to discuss. Her other grandfather is a Baptist minister in North Carolina and he must be shouting and screaming right now. It breaks my heart because I hate seeing her start adulthood this way.
"She's five months along," my Dad explained.
"Five months! How come nobody said anything earlier?" I asked.
"We didn't want to alarm anyone, and I thought your brother would tell you by now. Evidently he's too embarrassed. We've tried to talk her into giving the child up for adoption," he whispered into the phone. He and Mom are eating breakfast with some other fundamentalists. Got to watch you say.
He continued, "But she's determined to keep it."
Funny how children or fetuses become "its" in these circumstances.
"Who's the father?" I piped.
"Some shady guy she needs to leave, but she won't listen. He's black or hispanic or something in between."
"Wait just a second. So this is an interracial baby, right? Is that why you're trying to get rid of the child?"
"Son, it's nothing like that. Come on, you know we love children."
"Yeah. Right." I'm thinking of the shit I used to have to put up with.
And so the revelation went on. I'm sure you get the gist. Here you have a slice of life from a slice of the South, in a region of the country where the divorce rate is now highest and teen pregnancies are rising (email me if you want figures).
The myth of Christian conservativism is DOA. Maybe it's been dead for a long time, but if so it's really looking like a bit of necrophilia out there, what with the right wing trying to raise the corpses of the past (a past that was probably never really the way they claimed it to be). The more this right-wingism dies, the more hysterical (I swear) they get.
So what's happened? The South is going bonkers trying to save itself embarrassment and shame and spiritual ineptitude. That's what I think. In a way, it makes sense the right wing would try to raise the dead via political means, believing somehow that will make the world all better again, fix all family problems.
Hell, the family these people are talking about is almost dead. Worse yet for my parents is that my divorced brother and his pregnant daughter were part one of the most right wing churches in their area.
So what happens when the myth crumbles? All hell breaks loose. Or does it?