Fire and Brimstone

I had two experiences in the last 12 hours that together effectively summarize my feelings on religion.

Last night I saw the Reverend Vince Anderson play his weekly Monday-night show at Black Betty in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I met the good Reverend through the family of my friend Nate Bock. Nate’s father is a former minister and one of the most decent people I’ve encountered. He once spoke with me briefly about the branch of Lutheranism that his family practices, a faith so inclusive of other beliefs that it seemed to me to almost border on Unitarianism, but with a genuine embracement of traditional Christian scripture.

This is closely related to the faith the Reverend Vince preaches every Monday night to a packed house of sweaty sinners in a bar under the BQE. Vince is the genuine article. He’s the rare performer that treats his music as a religious experience and exhibits it without a trace of artifice. In the so-ironic-it’s-almost-sincere-again world of hipster culture this remarkable honesty has garnered him quite a following.

In what is probably the most cynical neighborhood in America, the Reverend thrives by preaching a gospel of love. His religious fervor is not dogmatic, but rather pure enthusiasm for life. I have always admired, even envied, the passion that churchgoers can achieve in support of their faith. The Reverend certainly has passion to spare, complete with prayers, fainting spells, tap-dancing, sing-alongs and resounding shouts of “Amen!” The message he preaches is love for your fellow man and acceptance of all faiths, classes and races, a message that he rightly proclaimed last night might cause him to be labeled a heretic. However, this kind of unabashed acceptance is, in my mind, much closer to the spirit of Christianity as it likely originated, and speaks to a truth so universal that even the most jaded kids in the country lose themselves in prayer and praise.

Conversely, this morning found me confronted with a very different kind of preaching. I had crammed myself merrily onto the A Train at 8AM to ride to work like I do every morning and will continue to do UNTIL I DIE. Pre-coffee, burdened with bags, my hair sticking up like an aloe plant from borrowing my girlfriends “Blond Vibrance” conditioner, I was already not in the best of moods when I saw the A Train Preacher board my car. While some of you might take issue at my disparaging a man’s honest attempt to create positive change, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the A Train Preacher, and those like him, are abominations on the face of this city.

The man is ostensibly collecting for the homeless, a task he dispatches with great haste, quickly moving on to his preferred topic: the eternity that we will all spend in hell if we refuse to accept Jesus as our savior. in the 3 minutes between 34th and 42nd streets, he manages to embody everything I hate about religion. He takes a captive audience (separation of church and state sadly doesn’t apply to busking) and he uses fear as his main selling point. As the doors closed behind me, that last words I heard were, “I hope you don’t have to die to find out I was right!”

No one needs that at 8 in the morning. No one needs that ever. At it’s worst religion attempts to control people’s behavior through fear of eternal damnation. At best it gives them a vessel into which they can pour their faith, love and hope for humanity. You can see both in 12 hours in New York City.