Responding, Or Not...

LAST APRIL I TURNED sixty, retired, and decided to start having a really good time. I went to college, for free, and joined the senior center in my small southern American town. Elderly folks in the morning, hordes of twenty year olds by afternoon. Quite a contrast, and I felt out of place both places. Too young in the morning,, and too old by afternoon.. I like the senior center crowd because they don't constantly look at their smart phones. They are, however, almost all of them politically conservative Christians, a combination I find revolting. I like the youngsters because many of them seem ready for a revolution, Bernie Sanders style. Plus, they seem more open minded, better listeners, surprisingly. One day an eighty five year old lady asked me about my "background." I replied that my teaching career was long and rough edged, due to the fact that I taught American history, and I insisted on telling the truth, which'll get you fired. The truth, I explained to the elderly conservative Christian lady, is that the United States was not founded on Judeo-christian principles, nor was it intended to be. Quite the opposite, in fact.The United States, alas, is a by product of the scientific revolution, the enlightenment, which is the opposite of religion. Our most prominent founders, folks like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and George Washington, tended not to be christian. My lady friend wasn't having any of it. Obviously upset at my heresy, she repeatedly interrupted me, as if by stopping my words she was wiping out bad history, avoiding my horrible lies. Her reaction reminded of of students, parents, and administrators in American public schools, many of whom have twisted their religious beliefs around their perception of history. Another senior center lady kept looking at the cover of a book I was toting around, Mathew Stewart's: "Nature's God: the Heretical origins of the American Republic", so I asked her what her reading preferences were. None, she proudly replied, except for the Bible. I was proud of myself for not responding to that.