Faith and Freedom

Up the road from my cave lies a Masonic temple. And a Yoga and Meditation place. Three churches. I am sure there are Masjids and Gurudwaras within easy driving distance.

Every kind of faith flourishes in Jesustan. One way of seeing this is that Jesustan is true to the wishes of its founding fathers. Another is that this is fertile soil for freaks of all descriptions.

What particularly intrigues me is the way in which this cornucopia of faiths has manifested itself on ground. Thus, the landscape of urban Jesustan is dotted with replicas of Baroque cathedrals that stand in Europe. Natives of Hindustan who have emigrated here build Hindu temples inspired by the marvels of Mahbalipuram, but cast in concrete, not hewn from stone. Mosques, similarly, aspire to make the faithful believe that a fifteen-minute drive through some back lane of Jesustan will transport them into Riyadh.

In other words, the structural manifestations of faith here are transcriptions of religious tradition, as distinct from tradition. Their message is that tradition can be constructed with cash, much like Subway sandwich – its all a question of slapping together things picked up from a vast array of choices. Faith is just like shopping: you just have to pick the right one off the menu of choices available. If you fuck up, there is always a 30-day return period.

To be honest, I am not sure this attitude is a bad thing. A lot of people in Jesustan mutter darkly about slaughtering the infidel, but the fact is television and shopping leaves them too little time to actually go do it. So far, at least, the land has been free from the orgies of holy blood-letting we in Hindustan periodically indulge in. Aesthetes can also look at it another way. Building some monstrous carbon copy of the Sistine Chapel is a lot better than demolishing the Bamiyan Buddhas – an extreme act of architectural criticism, if there was ever one.

It would be interesting, though, to tests the limits of this tolerance. How, for example, would Jesustan react to the construction of a concrete replica of the Khajuraho temples in Dupont Circle? What would happen if the temple was sold to a renegade Christian sect, who renamed it Our Lady Of The Enormous Boobies (or, Our Lady Of The Literally Rock-Solid Pants)? And would someone get a PhD out of claiming that the suspend-from-the-ceiling sex in the Kama Sutra was pre-Christian representation of the immaculate conception?

Any volunteers?