(!) "The Rest of the Goddamn Nation"
- From: RainbowChristiannohate@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (• Ninure Saunders)
- Date: Sat, 03 Sep 2005 22:07:37 GMT
(!) "The Rest of the Goddamn Nation"
"The Rest of the Goddamn Nation"
02 September 2005
Those aren't the words of a starving prisoner of the New Orleans
Superdome, radicalized by the realization that he or she may well die for
lack of a school bus. They're the words of Col. Terry Ebert, director of
Homeland Security for New Orleans. FEMA's response -- or lack thereof --
he told The New York Times, has been "criminal."
Also notably lacking in the response to this disaster are suggestions
that Katrina is a punishment sent by God. When the tsunami struck Asia,
such notions came from across the spectrum, but most pungently from
Christian conservatives who noted that Aceh, an "exporter of radical
Islam," as National Association of Evangelicals president Ted Haggard put
it, had been hardest hit. Such neanderthal theology apparently does not
apply to the U.S.
Rather, the God invoked most often now is the distant, inscrutable deity
responsible for other no-fault acts such as earthquakes and tornadoes.
The "acts" of this God are not willful so much as "natural" -- hence the
rise of the term "natural disaster" in the late 19th century. "The
concept of an act of God implied that something was wrong," writes
scholar Ted Steinberg in an important book called Acts of God: An
Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America, "that people had sinned
and must now pay for their errors. But the idea of natural disaster may
have implicitly suggested the reverse, that something was right, that the
prevailing system of social and economic relations was functioning just
fine."
Indeed. The cavalry -- or, in this case, the shock troops -- are on their
way to protect those economic relations. Three hundred troops directly
from Iraq have landed in the city, and "they have M-16s, and they're
locked and loaded," blusters Louisiana Governor Blanco. "These troops know
how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so if
necessary, and I expect they will."
In addition to bullets, the rescuers are bringing Bibles. Crates of them
reportedly await refugees in Houston, and FEMA has listed Pat Robertson's
"Operation Blessing" as a suitable destination for donations.
But if this is a religion story, it's not about an act of God or the
banal use and abuse of the Bible as substitute aid for people dying of
literal thirst; it's about sin. And no vague, blustery "pride of man"
stories about ill-preparedness or mistakes by the Army Corps of Engineers
will address the original sin of this event. We need
theologically-charged, morally outraged, investigative historical
reporting to tell us why and how the dead of New Orleans died, and when
their killers -- not Katrina, but the developers and politicians and
patricians who are now far from the city -- began the killing. It wasn't
Monday, and it wasn't last week. We need journalists, not just
historians, to look deeper into the American mythologies of race and
money, "personal responsibility" and real responsibility. This isn't a
religion story because God acted, but because people acted. It's not
about what they didn't do, it's about what they did do, under the cover
of civic development and urban renewal and faith-based initiatives that
systematically eradicate the possibility of real, systemic response to a
crisis that is more than a matter of individual souls.
The root of the word "religion," "religare," tells us
what kind of religion story can be reported from the Superdome. Religare
means "ties that bind." Those should be bonds of community. But in New
Orleans -- and in every other poverty-stricken city in America -- they're
chains.
--Jeff Sharlet
The Revealer 2005 Contact: the.revealer@xxxxxxx
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Pax Christi,
? Ninure Saunders aka Rainbow Christian
Jesus is my Shepherd and He knows I'm Gay
http://Ninure-Saunders.tk
My Yahoo Group
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Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches
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