Letter from America
Our wanderer returns…
The ‘War on Terrorism’ has already turned on its head, less than three years in. From the attacks on the World Trade Center onward, the language of ‘evil’ was being bandied around as if it and Islam went hand-in-hand. Now the shoe is on the other foot, as much of Europe and the rest of the world has returned to its pre-9/11 traditional stance of believing the USA to be the one that is ‘evil’ and/or ‘misguided’. However, having spent the last six months ‘across the pond’, I would argue that the USA is more ‘misunderstood’ than ‘misguided’, and certainly not ‘evil’ in any shape or form.
The title that it so uses to describe itself — the ‘Land of the Free’ — has a very real significance in the United States that I saw with my own two eyes. What many of us fail to understand here in Europe and the rest of the world is that there is a very real belief amongst the people of America that it is the bastion of freedom and the home of democracy. They see themselves, and are taught as such from an early age, as an oppressed people who were forced to rise up against an unfair and cruel ruling regime (that’s us) and found a land open and equal to all. From talking to a great many Americans, many fresh from school, I believe that this cannot be overlooked when making judgements about the USA, and is still very prominent in the nation’s thinking.
We often look on the United States in very negative ways due to their foreign policy. War in Iraq and consistent support for Israel has lost the USA a great many friends. Many people ask how they can follow such ‘erroneous’ policies in the face of the facts that confront them. There is the problem — one of the things that surprised me the most whilst I was in the USA was the shocking quality of American news media, which coupled with the fact that a great many Americans will never leave the borders of their own nation, can be said to create a certain ignorance of what is happening in the outside world.
This ignorance was apparent to me and was one of the most amusing parts of my stay. “Do you miss not having to wear your top hat?” I was asked on one occasion, and was then asked if it really was illegal to fall asleep on a park bench in Europe. “Have you ever had tea with the Queen?” was common question, but so were references to ‘President Tony Blair’ and how many ‘British dollars’ there were to an American dollar. The uphill struggle that I faced simply explaining where I was from was exasperating sometimes, and summed up by the young lady that asked which part of Britain I was from, was it France or Germany?
But does an ignorance of the outside world make America ‘evil’ or ‘misguided’, and what on earth does this have to do with Christis magazine? Well, for me the term ‘evil’ has always signified some involvement from Satan. Despite the references by some groups around the world to America as being the ‘Great Satan’, I don’t believe I have ever met a more God-fearing people. The USA has one of the world’s largest church-going populations, both in real numbers and percentage of population. This was evident to me at the church services that I attended with the Covenant Fellowship Church, where a double basketball court/gymnasium had to be hired out each week to fit in all of the people that wished to attend the 9.30 am service. During my Spring Break vacation, I visited the southern city of New Orleans (N’Awlins to the locals), a place associated with as many vices as Las Vegas by most Americans. Yet along Bourbon Street and the famous French Quarter, intermingled with the topless dancing-forfun and the over-consumption of alcohol, there were mini-services going on, led by men and women from several local churches, praying for the forgiveness of all around them. No matter where you looked, there was a leaflet or banner in plain view that they had put up a few hours before.
The most striking thing is that to the USA, it is us on the ‘other side of the pond’ who are the Godless ones. One American woman told me that she believed England to be somewhere “that has lost the light of the Lord”. The 2004 film, Eurotrip, whilst not being the most accurate portrayal of our continent, manages to sum up the general American view of Europe: out-of-control drinking, football hooligans running wild, and “crazy European sex”. Facts do show that after 9/11 itself, whilst many doom-saying Britons and Europeans were turning to the ‘pleasures’ of life in order to cope, thousands of young Americans were turning to God. It would surprise me immensely to run into a group of girls in Britain wearing shirts sporting “Abstinence is COOL” logos, like the ones I chatted to in N’Awlins.
It really takes a visit to the shores of the United States to even try and understand their ways and customs. I have spent the last half a year there and am still confused by things that I saw and heard whilst in the ‘Land of the Free’. My stay in the USA was an enjoyable (if sometimes strained) one, and it taught me that the Americans are just as serious about their religion as we often suggest. I think that this needs to be taken into consideration, along with some of the thinking that goes into their actions, before any of us can make judgements about an entire nation or people, least of all, the strange place that is the United States of America.