One Nation Over God, Redux, 2020
Long ago and far away, in a tiny second floor room in a Swiss chalet in the quaint village of Genolier on the Rte de Vignoble near Geneva, with my two young bilingual children sleeping nearby and my bilingual wife huddled by the oil burner we had for heat on the ground floor, I wrote a book. The year was 1994. Or 1993. It was long ago and far away, so I'm not totally sure. It took me a year to write it, three hours every evening, 9-12. I've got a picture of the chalet somewhere if you want to see it. It is my favorite home. It leaned a little, back to front. Red shutters. As is the habit of Swiss chalets. Maybe I'll put the picture at the end of this piece. It's not relevant, but I love it.
If it's not obvious, I think having a bilingual family is totally cool. Again, not relevant.
I was going to call the book "The Americanization of Christianity", but sitting around one evening with my friend Jerry Tookmanian, the idea popped up to give it that name as a subtitle, but to call the book itself "One Nation Over God". As opposed to, you know, "Under God". We thought that was clever. I think we were right.
The thesis was simple: American Christians loved America more than they loved Jesus, and had grossly and obscenely compromised and warped their faith out of all recognition. They had done so since the beginning of American history, before it was America at all, and continued to do so.
I had researched the book since 1980 and kept notes and sources all the way through the '80s, that is, through the Reagan years. Those years became sort of a metaphor for Christian history in America, an archetype, maybe even a denouement, one that I recorded as my book. I self-published it in 2006 after being rejected by every Christian publisher on the planet and having burned through two literary agents, names lost to time and poor memory. I think it sold 180 copies world-wide. That's not quite one per country. It is, however, almost four per state. Rounding up. I"m a math guy. Rounding up is a thing.
The president of Baker House, a Christian publisher, told my agent that 1) every Christian in America should read my book, but 2) if he published it, his company would be driven out of business.
Ouch.
From that I glean that 1) the book was not garbage, but 2) it was dangerous.
You'd think Americans would be all over that. We love danger.
Yeah. Not so much. Not this kind of danger. Nobody likes the slaying of sacred cows when those cows are American cows.
Not only are we accused of loving America more than Jesus, and sacrificing him again on the altar of the flag (OK, that's just downright inflammatory), we stand accused of idolatry. We are accused of idolizing America and American precepts; freedom, democracy, individualism, and capitalism.
Since the book was written, I wrote another (actually, I wrote four others, but three of them are science-y books that I still self-published, but which sold many more than 180 copies). That one is called "Love Story", copying as a title in a weird way that my wife correctly disapproves of, but oh, well, the book and movie starring Ryan O'Neal and Ali McGraw wherein she (Ali) says something like "Love means never having to say you're sorry", which is monumentally stupid. Hence, the title of my book. It's shorter as a book than ONOG (my clever acronym) and easier to read, but makes the same points. I have sold many fewer than 180 copies of that one. But who's counting? I mean, apart from me.
Here's the links to those two books. Go buy them. I mean, why not? It's still Covid-19 lockdown time, you've watched all of Netflix and need something to read, and reading something radical and revolutionary and maybe even prophetic would be awesome. www.lulu.com/spotlight/andyfletch42.
Now. Since 1994, we've had 9/11, various incarnations of Gulf Wars that seem to be still trudging along, and now a pandemic, plus the arrival in world history, seemingly improbably, of Donald J. Trump, who will not come off well in what is to follow in this blog. However, who Trump is, is his fault, but that we elected him as president is just the logical end of American idolatry. If end it is.
So it is time for an update to ONOG. That was written about the '80s, although I kept it current until Obama was inaugurated in 2009. It is now 2020, and time for us to see how well we have done. Spoiler alert - not so good. To be continued.
If it's not obvious, I think having a bilingual family is totally cool. Again, not relevant.
I was going to call the book "The Americanization of Christianity", but sitting around one evening with my friend Jerry Tookmanian, the idea popped up to give it that name as a subtitle, but to call the book itself "One Nation Over God". As opposed to, you know, "Under God". We thought that was clever. I think we were right.
The thesis was simple: American Christians loved America more than they loved Jesus, and had grossly and obscenely compromised and warped their faith out of all recognition. They had done so since the beginning of American history, before it was America at all, and continued to do so.
I had researched the book since 1980 and kept notes and sources all the way through the '80s, that is, through the Reagan years. Those years became sort of a metaphor for Christian history in America, an archetype, maybe even a denouement, one that I recorded as my book. I self-published it in 2006 after being rejected by every Christian publisher on the planet and having burned through two literary agents, names lost to time and poor memory. I think it sold 180 copies world-wide. That's not quite one per country. It is, however, almost four per state. Rounding up. I"m a math guy. Rounding up is a thing.
The president of Baker House, a Christian publisher, told my agent that 1) every Christian in America should read my book, but 2) if he published it, his company would be driven out of business.
Ouch.
From that I glean that 1) the book was not garbage, but 2) it was dangerous.
You'd think Americans would be all over that. We love danger.
Yeah. Not so much. Not this kind of danger. Nobody likes the slaying of sacred cows when those cows are American cows.
Not only are we accused of loving America more than Jesus, and sacrificing him again on the altar of the flag (OK, that's just downright inflammatory), we stand accused of idolatry. We are accused of idolizing America and American precepts; freedom, democracy, individualism, and capitalism.
Since the book was written, I wrote another (actually, I wrote four others, but three of them are science-y books that I still self-published, but which sold many more than 180 copies). That one is called "Love Story", copying as a title in a weird way that my wife correctly disapproves of, but oh, well, the book and movie starring Ryan O'Neal and Ali McGraw wherein she (Ali) says something like "Love means never having to say you're sorry", which is monumentally stupid. Hence, the title of my book. It's shorter as a book than ONOG (my clever acronym) and easier to read, but makes the same points. I have sold many fewer than 180 copies of that one. But who's counting? I mean, apart from me.
Here's the links to those two books. Go buy them. I mean, why not? It's still Covid-19 lockdown time, you've watched all of Netflix and need something to read, and reading something radical and revolutionary and maybe even prophetic would be awesome. www.lulu.com/spotlight/andyfletch42.
Now. Since 1994, we've had 9/11, various incarnations of Gulf Wars that seem to be still trudging along, and now a pandemic, plus the arrival in world history, seemingly improbably, of Donald J. Trump, who will not come off well in what is to follow in this blog. However, who Trump is, is his fault, but that we elected him as president is just the logical end of American idolatry. If end it is.
So it is time for an update to ONOG. That was written about the '80s, although I kept it current until Obama was inaugurated in 2009. It is now 2020, and time for us to see how well we have done. Spoiler alert - not so good. To be continued.
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