Free State Observer

Editor’s note: the views expressed herein are those of the heathen blogger’s and do not represent the views of any organizations mentioned

A few months back, a young man contacted the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire looking for info on how to join the party. He mentioned that he lives in Greenland. I offered to help find a place for him to stay if he could make it to New Hampshire to attend the Free State Project’s Liberty Forum conference. He replied with laughter “No, I live in Greenland New Hampshire!” Well, blow me down.

Last weekend I had reason to visit Greenland (the town, not the country) for the first time, as my cousin’s baby was being “dedicated”. I wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but I assumed it meant baptised. As it turns out, Greenland is only about an hour away, but apparently not big enough to warrant any road signs of its own; you have to be right on top of it before you find anything pointing to it. True to form, I missed a turn, but due to the Bermuda Trianglishness of NH accidentally wound up finding the very street I was looking for, just at the wrong end.

I was looking for Bethany Church. Here begins my introduction to a significant part of modern U.S. culture of which I am apparently quite ignorant: Christian evangelicalism. Now, I knew my cousin is quite religious; he won’t pop a piece of food in his mouth, or let anyone else do so, without a quick prayer first. And I kinda knew that his wife isn’t Catholic, which my cousin and approximately 1,603 of my closest relatives are/were/sought therapy for. But I never realized that what my cousin now believes/practices is not garden-variety child-molester-in-robes in front of dead-Jesus-on-wall Catholicism until I arrived for the aforementioned “dedication”.

My first clue that something was different was catching my first glimpse of the church. It was MAMMOTH. As in, the biggest church I have ever seen in my life this side of the Atlantic Ocean. Then, there were the parking attendants directing traffic… I did a doubletake to make sure I was, in fact, pulling into a church and not the Verizon Wireless Arena. Entering by what I guessed was the front door, although it was a bit hard to tell, a strange man smiled at me, held out his hand, and said “Welcome!” Um, OK… some places do ice-cold holy water in a tub by the door, and this place apparently does greeters. At this point, I was completely befuddled. I was standing in what looked like the lobby of a community college, with various doors and hallways leading off in different directions. Fortunately, there was a desk labelled “Visitors” or “Customer Service” or something else which was informative but which I had never, ever seen inside the door of a church before. I should mention that, despite being raised Catholic, I have been in a few other varieties of Christian church, but they all followed a fairly familiar architectural design. Church is like a McDonald’s burger, or so I thought; you can attend one anywhere in the world and know ahead of time exactly what it’s going to look and taste like. And they’re all really quiet as soon as you set foot inside, whereas this place had people scampering around in every direction and talking in non-whispers.

I told the nice lady at the Customer Service(?!) desk I was looking for a baby dedication. Her face fell and she said “oh, I’m afraid you missed it”. This didn’t particularly surprise me, seeing as how I’d experienced my usual pre-caffeine malaise and left the house late, then got lost en route. But since the typical Catholic Mass lasts 45-60 minutes, I figured something would still be going on; I was only 30 minutes late. I asked if everyone had left already, and the lady said no and pointed me to one of the numerous doors leading off the lobby.

Next order of disorientation came when I entered the “church” (although that is apparently not what they call it; they call it the “sanctuary”) and was met by ushers. And they were really needed, because there were actually people here… hundreds of them. Probably over a 1000, actually. The first floor, where I assumed my cousin and myriad relatives were down at the front, looked pretty full, so I slipped up the stairs and still needed to be directed to a vacant spot, because the top floor was full, too.

It wasn’t until I sat down and took a good look at the scene before me that I fully understood what was going on. This was one of THOSE churches. You know, the ones you see on TV!! In fact, this one *is* on TV (Channel 22 on Seacoast Public Television, Sundays at 2:00PM!). There was a huge stage, but no altar. There was a huge cross on the wall, but no Jesus on it. There was a man standing on the stage speaking, but he wasn’t Father such-and-such, he was “Dr. Bruce”. There were guitars (acoustic and electric), a full drum kit, a Korg keyboard and a baby grand on the stage. There were lots of Klieg lights pointed at the stage, and so help me, video displays projected on the walls, on either side of the cross.

At first I soaked it all in while racking my brain trying to guess which denomination of Christianity this church represented, as it was like nothing I’d ever seen outside a TV screen before. Dr. Bruce was talking about the parable of Jesus feeding the masses with the fishes and loaves. Hey, I know this one! At a certain point, the sermon morphed into a discussion of feeding the real, modern-day masses via soup kitchens. Dr. Bruce brought another man on stage who runs some sort of organization that negotiates deals with grocers to obtain large quantities of food at a discount to feed the poor. And then, Dr. Bruce asked the congregation for money. Lots of money. As in, $250,000 by Easter, if I recall correctly. And Dr. Bruce made a point of mentioning that this money was on top of the donations the church needs to cover normal operating costs, which is apparently $55,770 a week.

I felt vertigines. I don’t mean to imply that I doubt the sincerity of Dr. Bruce; I’m sure he does intend to try to feed some poor people by encouraging his congregation to donate money that will go to Seacoast-area soup kitchens. But the whole business of a man standing on stage, sweating like a pig (not with religious fervor but because those Klieg lights make it hot as hell (if you’ll pardon the expression)), pushing people to give until it hurts, with a video projection of the fundraising goal up on the wall right beside the cross-with-no-Jesus on it, just struck me as …. Let’s just say that, if forced to pick seafood-related moralistic one-liners, I prefer the one about “Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and (assuming he gets off the couch and goes down to the river), you have fed him for a lifetime.”

But hey… people obviously love this stuff. Evangelical Christianity is a global growth industry. Joel Osteen is a beloved, and wealthy, man. If it makes the people happy, what the hell (if you’ll pardon the expression)! And if you can’t make it to the service in person, no worries, you can catch it on the radio, on TV, on live webcast, on CD and DVD.

After the service ended (and it ended when Dr. Bruce said it ended; there were no prayers, no psalms), I caught up with my relatives. At what I hoped was a suitably discreet moment, I asked “I can’t figure out what kind of church this is?” My aunt and uncle shot sidewise looks at one another, and my uncle replied “I don’t think any of us can figure that out.”

By the way, you might want to check out this very interesting movie which is available for free viewing online: Zeitgeist.