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What God Gap?
06 September 2004
Crossing Lines in the Culture War The "God gap," as the media has come to call it, is the imaginary abyss that separates pious conservatives from atheistic liberals and leftists, as if there was a heavenly kingdom divided between red states and blue states. Sound a little too simple for the world we actually live in? We thought so, too. So instead of getting press passes to the predictable rituals of the Republican National Convention, five Revealer reporters went looking for religion, spirituality, belief -- the "mysterium tremendum" -- outside the Garden. What follows is a six-part experiment in reporting stories that don't fit the big media narrative. Part 1: A Bush Voter Marches Against Bush, by Jeff Sharlet Bill McDonald doesn’t claim to know what Jesus would do, but he knows what Jesus wants Bill McDonald to do -- march against the Bush administration. McDonald has accepted his assignment and has joined a protest on the second day of the RNC. But he’s not budging on his vote: It’ll be cast for George W. It’s kind of complicated, the mystery of What God Wants, but there it is... Part 2: A Catholic Skips Mass for Communion in the Streets, by Scott M. Korb The streets were filled with us gnostics. While I stood in front of Madison Square Garden a motherly police captain told me we must have been some 400,000 strong, all of us skipping church... Part 3: A (Job) Seeker Gets Lost in the Crowd, by Jesse Sunenblick "Oh, Lord," says Roy, "I really need a job, so I can get back my wife, because right now her parents are not liking my financial situation. It's a problem. She's back in Japan. Going on a year now. She doesn't like this type of shit." Roy waves toward the protestors... Part 4: TV News to Believers: Behave!, by Kathryn Joyce “Why can’t you be more like them?” The ABC cameraman demanded, gesturing to the drumming Krishnas beyond the protestors. “They’re quiet. They’re behaved...” Part 5: Nuns & Baptists Die, Balloons Fall From Heaven, by Jason Boog “I saw all these nuns, Baptist ministers, parents and children keep going, even though they knew the risks were higher,” the marcher told me after his friends were arrested. So he kept going, toward his own private showdown... Part 6: Burnt Offerings, by Jeff Sharlet The police did not know what do -- best-laid plans had not included giant fire-breathing Trojan salamanders. In minutes the fire leapt up and out of the dragon’s skull, then consumed it entirely, a bonfire thirty feet tall in the middle of "Fashion Avenue"...
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