Not acting Christian

Playing the jerk

In older literary works one sometimes encounters the expression “Christian gentleman.” This description had less to do with religion than with comportment. The so-called Christian gentleman was a model of courtesy and dignity, a man whose word was his bond. The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Dickens contains the line, “This condition fulfilled, you will pledge me the honor of a Christian gentleman that the quarrel is forever at an end on your side.”

I fear my friend “Steve” has instead picked a quarrel with a “Christian gentleman,” although in this instance I mean the term strictly literally. This Christian is not particularly successful at comporting himself as one.

But I'll let Steve tell the story:

Brace yourself, Zee. We are having a flame war at AR. A colleague has taken offense at our oppression of Christianity. People are using "Reply to All" to argue about it in campus email, which is where it all started.

Steve is a former student of mine and is now a math teacher at American River College in Sacramento. ARC is famous (infamous?) for having had its student government taken over by a right-wing Christian cabal, now mercifully gone. To my chagrin, Steve's latest missive related to an incident involving a math colleague. Aren't we math teachers supposed to be rational people? Not always.

Our sister college in Folsom Lake just unveiled a new performing arts center. It looks nice. Everyone in the district got a message promoting the center's schedule of performances. Recently we got an email announcing an appearance by a touring group: "We are delighted to announce that the Tibetan Monks from the Gaden Shartse Monastery, India will be honoring us with their presence at Folsom Lake College! Everyone is welcome to enjoy an evening of Tibetan multi-phonic chanting (often referred to as throat singing)."

This struck me as familiar because I had read Tuva or Bust!, an account of Richard Feynman's desire to visit the Soviet republic of Tuva. The famed physicist had wanted to experience the practice of Tuvan throat-singing in its actual place of origin, but was frustrated in his attempts by unresponsive government bureaucracies and cold war politics.

It sounded as if Folsom Lake College had accomplished quite a coup. A math professor at Sacramento City College hastened to disagree. Steve forwarded the message to me, which had gone out to everyone in the school district:

From: XXXXXX
To: SCC-Everyone-on-Exchange, ARC-Everyone-on-Exchange, FLC-Everyone-on-Exchange, CRC-Everyone-on-Exchange
Subject: The Monks are coming to Folsom Lake College and HONOR??????????????????

I thought we were a non-denominational, non-religious school when they hired me, but once again it sounds that having Budishm monks is an honor, but any other religion,- specially the religion of most Americans, including American Founders of this Country (sorry you have to guess, because to some even the name seems to be an offense!) - do not have any rights and/or would imply that the school is violating separation of school and relion.

Sorry but I am getting sick of Yoga and Easter religions preferences over any other! It is just UNfair

Wow. It was written by a college professor, but it bears all of the stigmata of the nutcase teabagger: profligate punctuation, careless misspellings (“Budishm”?), and a sense of profound resentment and frustrated entitlement. I was astonished and dismayed, but I burst into laughter while reading the rest of Steve's forwarded messages and annotations. The “Christian gentleman” received a quick rebuke at Steve's hands:

To: XXXXXX
Subject: The Monks are coming to Folsom Lake College and HONOR??????????????????

Thank you, XXXX, for this astonishingly immature outburst. If, for example, the Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos were on tour with their program of Gregorian chant, Folsom Lake would be fortunate to book them into their new performing arts center. It wouldn't be a religious service (even though the songs might be religion based), it would be a performance. Similarly, the Gaden Shartse monks know multiphonic singing, which is a rare and challenging art form. Congratulations to our sister college for hosting them.

By the way, XXXX, adding 18 question marks to the subject line doesn't impress anyone. It just makes you look intemperate. Try to calm down and think twice before sending out any more silly messages to everyone in the district.


Steve reports that there was a lot of outraged reaction to the “Christian” diatribe, although it has now started to die off. In fact, most of the messages posted to the thread in recent days consist of people using “Reply to All” to tell people to stop using “Reply to All.” Even in education circles you can't help but run into a few silly folks now and then.

Hang in there, Steve! (Are you going to the throat-singing concert?)

Postscript

The irate Christian who objected to the Buddhist chorus is probably unaware that he works in a building named in honor of the local state senator who appointed the California senate's first non-Christian chaplain—a Buddhist minister—back in 1975!