Religion and the Community

The United States has an interesting relationship with religion.  Thomas Jefferson worked hard to include freedom of religion in the new country he was working on with his buddies back a couple of hundred years ago.  Freedom of religion, and the tolerance of many belief systems, is an important part of the vision of America, although it sometimes seems difficult to maintain.  Thomas Jefferson also wrote to his friends, in letters, that he also believed in the privacy of religion. He wrote that his beliefs were his own business, and he wasn't going to force his on anybody else, nor did he want any body else to force theirs on him.  So it seems that the idea of the separation of Church and State remains important in the United States, and allows many groups to live together, but the problem arises when the religions being fostered in this environment challenge this tolerance and demand that they are the pre-eminent.  

Our most recent field trip was to compare two different large religious communities in Cincinnati, Crossroads Community Church and the Islamic Center of Cincinnati.  Both institutions work industriously to build community for their members, and in their own ways, they reach out to the city to include new people.  Crossroads advertises as "the church for people who don't like church".  Most traditional Christian symbols are absent: no crosses, no altar, no crucifixion.  My personal sense of irony was piqued by the fact that where an altar would have been is where the rock-n-roll band was located, and the woman who gave the opening invocation was wearing a Mickey Mouse t-shirt.  There are, however, lots of bibles available, and the sermons are very Jesus-centered. There is also bible study and faith exploration groups.  There was a speaker at the service we visited who testified to how Jesus came into his life when he went on a service trip to India.  A person did not need to know a single thing about the church to feel comfortable because the words to the songs were up on the two giant screens, the room was dark, and people could come and go during the sermon as they pleased.  It was all about saving face, but the minister did, in fact, go on a five minute tirade about the "slackers and losers who come to drink the free coffee and use the free wifi and not support their sorry asses by giving to the collection plate."  I was also troubled when this enthusiastic person spent about five more minutes explaining how Hindus and Buddhists were losers because they did not make an effort to help people, not like the brave Christians who were trying, apparently, to save India single handedly from the Hindus while the lazy Buddhists sat around and just suffered.  However, in spite of the focus on money and the ignorance concerning other belief systems, the service was fun and accessible for the almost 4,000 people who filled the audience.  Also, one cannot deny that Crossroads has an excellent band. They totally rocked.   

Our next stop on our religious tour was to the Cincinnati Islamic Center in West Chester.  A very enthusiastic woman gave us a two and a half hour tour!  She was clearly an experienced rhetorician in English, and I was sad we could not hear her exhort us in Urdu, her native language, because I bet it would have been even better.  She emphasized the kinship of Christianity and Islam using examples from shared stories, and she explained the beliefs of Islam using vivid metaphors and parables.  She was clearly a woman of great faith.  She spent a lot of time talking about Islam, the seven pillars, and the influence of Islam on daily life.  It is currently Ramadan, so she spent a good deal of time explaining how fasting helps a person become more sensitive and disciplined as a Muslim, and that fasting from sunup to sundown won't kill you.  My aikido teacher is an observant Muslim, and he even came to practice during Ramadan, but he did say he was all worn out after practice and a little stressed about not being able to have a drink of water after practice.  This Pakistani woman was very insistent that Islam has laws that protect women.  I think the confusion for non-Muslim Westerners is the conflation of religion with culture.  Patriarchal cultures will oppress women, even if the Qur'an says not to.  Personally, I remain confused on this point. I have read the sections of the Qur'an where it explains the rights given to women, so I get confused when Saudis, who are observant Muslims, seem to deny these rights to women.  Also, as a Westerner strongly influenced by Jefferson, the idea of my holy book telling me about civil law is a little disconcerting.  Sharia assumes a homogeneous population which we don't have in the United States.  In order for a heterogeneous population to live together peacefully, we just can't mix religion and politics.  

The Culture of Food

For our task concerning the culture of food, we went to two very different stores. One was Pipkins Market in Blue Ash. At this fresh fruits and vegetables market, the owners cater to local consumers and people willing to travel to find fresh produce, which is as local as possible. On all the signs they write where the produce came from. It helps a person know what is in season. When the apples are only from the west coast, and they are looking a little old, it is time to start eating the peaches that are from Indiana or South Carolina. In the fall, the apples come from local orchards. The eggs Pipkins carries are from a local farmer who has field raised hens. People drive from far away for these eggs because they are the best, but they are also seasonal. Pipkins also has a garden center, which is very popular in spring. The people there are very friendly and willing to talk to you about anything. They taste all the produce to make sure it is good, and they will tell you about that too, if you ask. It is small and generally quiet, except on weekends it can get pretty crowded. In addition, they hire local high school kids to work there, so they are very involved in their community. When we needed more fodder for our compost heap, they let us come and get several barrels of their reject fruit.


In contrast there was Jungle Jims, the international grocery store. It is not just a place to buy things from other countries, it is an international experience. The middle eastern and south asian men stand in the parking lot and chat while their wives go in and shop. Little kids run around and yell at their moms in several languages, and there are multilingual produce preparers to help anyone learn to cook the strange vegetables. They even had stalks of sugar cane. When one of the students asked the tour guide ($5.00 per person for a guided tour with samples of select delicacies) if Jungle Jims was better than Pipkins, the tour guide refused to answer. That was very interesting. He said, "It depends on what you want," and left it at that. He also said that when he gives tours to people from countries other than America, they tell him that seeing the brands of food from their home country helps them feel less homesick, so I suppose Jungle Jims provides a certain kind of culinary therapy. Food is love, you know. Jungle Jims is huge and a person can get lost in it. In that way it is quite different from Pipkins. It has a greater variety, and often the origin of the food is posted, or it is obvious. There were huge bags of rice and tea from India, for example. The carbon footprint of JJ is huge, whereas the carbon footprint of Pipkins is smaller. Nevertheless, there are things available at JJ that are available nowhere else. I suppose one must save up carbon credits from shopping at Pipkins to spend them at JJ.

Cincinnati Freedom Center

Today we went to visit the Underground Railroad Freedom Center. In each person's blog, he or she discusses a part of the exhibition that affected him or her most. Most of the students nominated the videos as the most affecting exhibits, and three mentioned that the tunnel and the night noises was very affecting, along with the docent urgently telling every one they "had to move". When comparing this museum to the holocaust museums they were exposed to as children, they said that the Freedom Center was a little more emotional because it had sounds and video, but that visiting the concentration camps was more affecting because it was a real place, whereas the museum was all exhibits. One student explained that it is important to learn about past violence so that we can make sure it never happens again, and another quote Vera Cruz, in reference to what we should do, where Vera Cruz writes, "If not now, when? If not you, who?" Everybody agreed that it was unclear what kind of action the museum was prompting audiences to take because the "taking action" room was very small compared to the rest of the museum, although one person did point out that just remembering was a big thing to do. Ultimately, everybody agreed that it was important to teach children about the violent events of the past so that the evils of history will not be repeated.

Big and Small

Landscape Posting:
In Ilmenau, there is a division between the town and the university. A person has to walk a bit to go from one place to the next. If a person were not motivated, he or she could completely avoid the town. However, that is not a good idea: I like the winding main street of Ilmenau: it is a very human size, and it is pretty and comfortable. The same division is true of the Clifton campus of the University of Cincinnati. A person has to make an effort to leave the campus. That division of "people at the university" and "people NOT at the university" is very clear. At the Krogers, it is a meeting of these two populations in the grocery store. I suppose one could say Krogres is the Geneva of Clifton. On the other hand, the Blue Ash Campus of the University of Cincinnat, really is separated, all by itself. Because it is a commuter campus, however, there is no town/gown division: we are all part of the community, like it or not. I like that feeling of mutual belonging.

When I first came to Cincinnati, I had no idea what to expect! I found a television show called WKRP in Cincinnati, but the only view of the city on that show was the skyline. The rest of the sitcom took place inside. So when I came over the hill from Kentucky on 75 north, I was astounded by the skyline. When I began to live in the city, I was unprepared for the rigid neighborhoods. If you were Westside, you did not go Eastside, and vice versa. Today, I find that I do live in a narrow perspective of the city. I don't go out of my local neighborhood much. That makes the big city a small town.

I think what is American about Cincinnati is the way it fragments into small towns. Americans do not travel much, in this part of the country, and I think that there is a tendency to emphasize neighborhood localities. Philadelphia does the same thing. It is always interesting how human beings need to create a manageable community. Even in New York, you identify yourself by neighborhood, but only in the company of New Yorkers. With people from out of state, you just say "New York". I also found this way of making things too big be smaller in England. So I wonder to myself, is this way of turning a big city into a small town the same in Germany? Is Ilmenau divided into neighborhoods? It seems too small for that to me, but maybe I am just familiar with bigger places. However, Leverett, my tiny hometown, does not subdivide further into smaller neighborhoods because it is already quite small.

So I conclude that human beings prefer a small economy of scale. We seem to prefer to belong to smaller communities, and if the community we belong to is too big, then we make it smaller ourselves.

Welcome to Cincinnati

From August 15 to September 5, we will have an intensive English program in Cincinnati for students from the Ilmenau Technical University. We will study American English and Culture through active, real-life interactions with the community. We look forward to exploring Cincinnati and its own version of English through the eyes of our students.  The top center photo is Debbie Page, the program director.  Bottom left is Jody Ballah, and the bottom right is Ruth Benander, the instructors for the course.