A Tale of Two Churches: Part Three by Dave Jaffe.

   A Tale of Two Churches: Part Three.




      If you're like me you may attend the Canadian Memorial United Church or the Society of Friends, more commonly known as the Quakers. Then you might tell yourself, "Canadian churches are very liberal." Many of the people who go to the churches I've just mentioned usually support a women's right to abortion. They worship a compassionate caring God - that is if they believe in the divine. They have no problems now with same sex marriage. Many of the people in these churches believe in helping the poor and welcoming refugees to Canada.
      Yet not all Canadian or North American churches cling to this type of religion. Nor did all ever do so. Lucien Pope, an American sociologist found out over 80 years ago that many groups favour a much harsher religion. The U.S. sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset came to the same conclusion  a few years later. "The poorer working classes," Lipset wrote in the 1950's, "want ministers who preach hellfire and damnation."
     This is still true today. In her recent book, 'Strangers In Their Own Land' Arlie Russell Hoschchild found the same thing. In Louisiana, Hoschchild studied, mingled with and befriended supporters of U.S president Donald Trump. She found that these mostly white working class Americans believe in 'the rapture' or time when the Book of Revelations says, "The earth will burn with fervent heat." Until that time though, the devil is on the rampage.
     Along with this harsh theology, these white citizens had no time or sympathy for black Americans, feminists, gays or environmentalists. God, says Derwin Arenos, a young white worker, will fix the polluted bayous of Louisiana. "And that will happen shortly," he says. "So it doesn't matter how much man destroys now."
     A woman I'll call Clara may share the same viewpoint. She lives in Vancouver in a one bedroom basement  suite, alongside three other neighbours who also live in one bedroom places. Clara is bipolar and survives on a small handicapped allowance. She doesn't have much money and sometimes asks people to buy her a cup of coffee. When Donald Trump was elected U>S. president Clara was overjoyed. "He''ll fix the elites," she said. "They're too powerful."
    Clara goes to an east end church that preaches that the world may be doomed and damnation awaits all sinners. In Metro Vancouver there are quite a few churches preaching this sort of message. One many I met was a strong supporter of the Anglican Church he went to. "We don't believe in abortion here," he says. "And we have no time for same sex marriage." Another man I know is a churchgoer who totally is against any new social programs.
     One Sunday morning I slipped into the pews of a Baptist church and heard a strong  message. A big powerfully built preacher  took an American senator to task for saying that he enjoyed going to church on Sunday. "You don't go to church to enjoy it," he thundered. "You go to church to feel God's presence. Your enjoyment is not important."
     At the service's end, one church usher asked me if I'd come back. "not me," I replied. "the sermon was powerful but it's not my trip. I'm a bleeding heart liberal." Even so I put a few dollars in the dish that was passed around. For I don't go to churches without leaving some money behind.

A Tale of Two Churches by Dave Jaffe. Part Two.

   A Tale of Two Churches: Part Two.




   Churches have their uses which is something that the new aethiests like Christopher Hitchens, Sam Adams and Richard Dawkins sometimes ignore. To be fair to Hitchens, he did mention the positive role churches played in the U.S. civil rights movement. Yet even the hard core right wing politicians
sometimes realize that churches can help people.
    In late 1975, William 'Bill' Bennett became premier of British Columbia ousting Dave Barrett's short-lived New Democratic government from power. The hard-nosed, tough Social Credit premier at once started cutting the social programs the Barrett's government had set up. Eight years later, in 1983 Bennett wiped out the rest of Barrett's reforms.
      When confronted by irate demonstrators  in the B.C. legislature, Bennett gave no ground.
     "What will people do when you get rid of all the social programs?" Joe Arnaud, a demonstrator demanded of Bennett in 1975.
     ""Why they'll go to the church basements," said Bennett, a very wealthy son of a wealthy former premier, W.A.C. Bennett. "That's what they did when I was young." Maybe we'll need church basements again to feed many more of us as some church basements do now. If so, I recommend Canadian Memorial United Church and the Vancouver Quaker worship house. I like both these places and I've often eaten at both of them.
      Yet right now we live in  an age when most right wing governments often stay in power for a long time and shred one social safety net after another. Who will protect the poor and the homeless against the Bennetts, the Thatchers, the Trumps and the Doug Fords? Churches can play a small but useful role here. The United Church of Canada was formed after the first World War from three separate churches: the Presbyterians, the Congregationalists and the Methodists.
      As a result  of this merger, the United Church has often played a progressive role in Canadian history. Before the First World War, Methodist ministers like James Shaver Woodsworth pushed what was called 'The Social Gospel'. This was a religious platform with a progressive bent. Unfortunately after World War One, a right wing wave swept across the world and buried the Social Gospel. Woodsworth left the newly formed United Church and went on to sit in Parliament and then  help found the left leaning Co-operative Commonwealth Federation or C.C.F. in the 1930's.
       Despite the vanishing of the Social Gospel, United Church ministers have often spoken up for peace and social justice. To-day for instance, the First United Church still does wonderful work in the now slowly disappearing Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.  It certainly helped the poor after the right wing Liberal government swept to power in the 2001 B.C. election.
     "It was an aberration," one high level N.D.P. organizer said about  this event as he saw the Liberal party grab 77 of the 79 seats in the B.C. legislature. The N.D.P. government had run the province for the past ten years. Once in power, the tough, hard-nosed new premier and Liberal leader Gordon Campbell did what former premier Bill Bennett had done nearly 20 years before. He slashed social programs to the bone, fired thousands of government workers, and gave big tax cuts to the rich.
      Thousands of welfare recipients had their monthly cheques slashed or reduced to zero The amount of homeless people in the streets soared.  Yet many of the homeless huddled in the pews of the First United Church on the corner of Main and Hastings.
     "It's really crowded in there," one Downtown Eastside resident said at the time about the First United Church. "Without that place many people would be a goner." At this time in 2002 and at many others times, the United Church has saved many people from starvation and even an early death.
 

A Tale of Two Churches: Part One by Dave Jaffe

   A Tale of Two Churches: Part One..




   One church is tiny. One church is reasonably sized. The small church has about 10 to 20 people come to it every Sunday. In the bigger church hundreds flock to its services once a week. The tiny church has a n annual budget of close to $30,000. "Our budget," the forty something head minister of the big church proudly told me, "is close to $850,000 annually." 
      The big church has lots of stained glass windows, a full throated choir and is staffed by four full time ministers. The tiny church has no minister, no choir and no ordinary service. It's surrounded by evergreen trees that circle the tiny house and protect it from the elements. I go to both these churches from time to time. For both of these churches support a liberal version of Christianity which is now my favourite religion.
    The tiny church  is a Quaker worship house that sits at the edge of southwest Vancouver. Few people come to this place of worship. When they do, they sit in silence in  a circle of comfortable chairs.for about an hour. Once I counted the amount of persons in the room. I don't think the total came to more than 30. Some times there are an  even dozen in this house.  At times there may be even fewer people in the small upper floor of the house that is the worship space.
     "Don't get hung up on numbers," a political organizer told me years ago. And at the Quakers I forget crowds or masses of people. I sit in silence and happiness, often recalling what the Quakers' founder George Fox discovered in 1650's England. The divine light is within everybody Fox said. To worship the divine you don't need big churches, massive choirs or even expensive places of worship. All you need to do is focus on the divine light within you.
      I agree with all of this and have spent some lovely hours in the Quaker worship space. Yet sometimes  I tell myself, "I need a regular church service." Then I head off to the Canadian Memorial United Church where there is everything that most people think of when they mention the word "church". A wonderful set of stained glass windows with a social theme line three of the church's walls.  A big choir belts out hymns in the fall, winter and spring. In the choir three or four wonderful young women singers sometimes come forward from the choir to do solo turns. As one woman once said to the church congregation after the choir stopped singing, "You couldn't get this music anywhere else."  She was right.
     As for numbers of people who come to this church, the crowd sometimes swell to over 300. people. This is a huge contrast to the Quaker congregations.
    The church's regular minister Beth Hayward often gives sermons, explaining parts of the Bible while giving inspirational twists to her comments. Lonnie Delisle, the music director and minister
works long and hard to keep the choir and solo singers on track. And all kinds of groups and people work on program and committees.. There's a healing centre in the church's other building that 's right across the alley from the church. This building is called the Peace Centre for reasons I'll explain below. Some people do meditation before the church service starts. The church serves meals once a week to street people. And the list of church committees goes on and on.
     The Canadian Memorial United Church on Vancouver's west side was founded by a Canadian veteran who came back from World War One determined to remember those killed in that terrible event. He set up the church as a memorial to those that had passed away. 90 years later the church still has a strong social conscience and a liberal and pacifist outlook that not all United churches share. The church holds many of its political events in the Peace Centre. Many of the stained glass windows in the church refer to wartime events as well as Jesus and the apostles
     Churches are still important in Canada, even though less than one in four Canadians go to churches on Sunday. I'm one of those that do and I'm glad that liberal churches are still around. I've not joined either church but I have given money to both. They have enriched my life in many ways.
   "This is a magnet church," one of its loyal members Susan tells me. "It draws people from all across Metro Vancouver."  Susan herself comes from the outer suburbs. Her loyalty shows that the Canadian Memorial Church has put down deep roots in people's hearts and minds.
   

History May Be Partly Bunk: Part Ten by Dave Jaffe

  History May Be Partly Bunk: Part Ten




         Despite all the favourable conditions I was living with, in the 1970's, my life tumbled on a diownward slope. Then I was lucky again. I met a man who taught me survival skills. He taught me how to access social prgrams. He guided me into an unorthodox therapy that cured me of my sadness and damped down my ferocious temper. He also taught me how to write journalism. And this helped me get jobs.
     "This man was the greatest guidance counselor I ever had," I told a woman who also knew this man too. When his grip fastened on me too tightly, I escaped into the world of anti-poverty movements. Once in this milieu I met two other men. One man guide me to apply to live in a housing co-op. Another helped me get a handicapped allowance. A third man gave me a book on drawing that transformed my life. All of these events and people turned my life around.
     In my early 30's, I was a depressed abusive handicapped man. Ten years or so later I had become a more stable balanced human being who felt happy and secure. In the film 'Match Point' the tennis pro Chris Wilson over a dinner in an upscale London restaurant agrees that hard work is mandatory for any success in life. Yet luck and fate, he insists, counts most of all if you're going to thrive. I agree with Wilson and now in the closing days of my life I tell myself and others, "I've sure been lucky."
      Henry Ford may well have been correct when he said, "History is bunk. Yet I now see that luck has enabled me to escape the terrible events that clutter up history books.

History May Be Partly Bunk by Dave Jaffe. Part Nine

History May Be Partly Bunk by Dave Jaffe. Part Nine.




      One thing has let me live to the age of 77 and it's not events from history.. It's just plain luck.
"It's better to be lucky than good," tennis instructor Chris Wilson played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers says in effect in Woody Allen's film 'Match Point'. At times I've tried to be good. Yet near my life's end, I realize how important luck is.
    First off, both of my parents were nearly killed by German flying rockets in World War Two England. Yet luckily they weren't hit and they both survived. So I grew up with two parents. Not all children in post World War Two England were as lucky. Then for the first eight years of my life, I lived a middle class lifestyle and went to a private school. Soon my parents lost all their money. With me and two sisters in tow, my parents trekked across the Atlantic Ocean and through poverty stricken times in 1950's Montreal.
     Yet even when we were poor neither my mother or father descended into drug addiction, gambling or alcoholism. My parents never abused me although a nurse I had as a baby did hurt me. My father hit me twice through my entire life. My mother never hit me and nearly always supported me. The British psychiatrist Donald Winnicott said his work had been driven, "by the urge to find and to appreciate the ordinary good mother. " My mother wasn't a very warm person. Yet she gave me love and many gifts. She was a good mother.
    In the world outside my sometimes unstable family, I was lucky too. For in the end I was living in very prosperous times. From the 1940's to the late 1970's, the western world went through one of the greatest economic booms in history. This boom in the end, at last lifted my family out of poverty again.
     Then, too, in the 1960's, the federal Liberal government built up a welfare state. They set up a national medicare plan. a Canada Pension Plan for seniors, a Canada Assistance Plan that guaranteed five rights for welfare recipients and two other payment systems for the aged. Under  prime ministers Lester Pearson and Pierre Elliot Trudeau the Canadian government helped build tens of thousands of units of social housing.
    In Quebec the so-called 'Quiet Revolution in the 1960's, the Quebec government poured hundreds of millions of dollars into post secondary education. If they hadn't done that, I never would have gone to McGill University.
      "The age of big government is over," U.S. president Bill Clinton said in the 1990's as he hacked away at programs that helped the poor and the lower paid working class. Yet in the 1960's when I was young governments all over the western world built up social programs. In the 1990's many governments tore holes in the social safety net. Yet the programs set up in the 1960's helped my survive and grow.
     Another thing helped my immensely and that was the so called 'miracle drugs' that came on stream in the 1940's and later.  Penicillin, streptomycin and the polio vaccines extended my life and saved me and  many others from an early grave.

History May Be Partly Bunk: Pat Eight by Dave Jaffe

History May Be Partly Bunk: Part Eight by Dave Jaffe.


   The great depression of the 1930's led to massive upheaval and great suffering. It also triggered the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany and Japanese militarism. Both events led to World War Two. As the economy fell into a very steep downfall in the years 2007 and 2008 the U.S. government came to the rescue to avert a massive world economic downturn.
     In 2009 the new Democratic president Barack Obama pushed his agenda of spending trillions of dollars to save the U.S. and the world's economy. Though Republicans balked at spending these massive sums, Obama and his Democratic government won the day. "They are too big to fail," some people in the U.S. said about the big financial firms that may have started the whole mess.
    President Obama spent trillions bailing out these big firms and helping other big firms survive. For a time the U.S. government and the Canadian government  owned parts of General Motors and the Chrysler auto giant. Workers in these firms endured savage cuts to their wages and benefits. Yet without government help these auto giants would have gone under and the North American economy would have been destroyed.
     In Europe, the U.S.A also spent trillions of dollars and saved Europe from economic collapse. By 2010, the western economies started to move forward again. Yet the pain for many people still went on. Over 11 million Americans lost their homes. In European countries like Spain, youth unemployment stood at 30 per cent in 2018. "A whole generation of Spanish youth," one British economist pointed out, "have grown up and never have worked." The big banks just got bigger while ordinary citizens suffered. There's no doubt that the Great Recession - as the economic collapse was called- helped trigger the rise of the far right in the U.S. of A. and Europe.
   Left wing groups in the U.S. formed Occupy Wall Street to protest the rescue of big banks and the great gap between rich and poor. On the far right in America, a massive Tea Party movement sprung up and denounced Barack Obama as a socialist.
    As all this unfolded, I wasn't even touched by any of it. In fact I got richer. Every month after turning 65, I received three small government cheques . Small as they were, they far outstripped  the tiny handicapped allowance I had subsisted on for the previous ten years. For the first time in years I started to save a growing amount of money.
     "History is bunk," said Henry Ford whose Ford Motor company survived the Great Recession without any government help. Maybe Ford was right or wrong. Yet I managed to survive most of  the great upheavals of the 20th and 21st century without being scarred or traumatized. I lived in what John Berger called "pockets of exemption" and I realize in the closing years of my life that I have been incredibly lucky. I also hope that billions of others have also been as lucky as I have been.
     

History May Be Partly Bunk: Part Seven by Dave Jaffe.

  History May Be Partly Bunk by Dave Jaffe. Part Seven.




    In 2007 I turned 65 years old. As this happened, the world economy nearly went into a death rattle.
It survived but only after drastic surgery. Meanwhile I hopped on  a plane and flew into the growing city of Kelowna a few hundred kilometres east of Vancouver. Then after a few days under a warm sun, I drove home in a Greyhound bus.
     On the bus I chatted with a young seat mate. "Things look bad," I recall telling him. "We'll see how it all works out." In fact the world economy was falling into its greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930's. Yet once again this economic collapse seemed to have no great impact on me. In fact my life improved. Once again I realized that I was living in what John Berger called " a pocket of exemption." Or was it true as Henry Ford once said, "History is bunk." ? In other words the great events written down by historians never had the impact on most people that the recorded histories claimed?
   Wherever the truth lies, I realized soon enough that the world economy was in terrible shape. The big American banks stopped lending to each other and soon stopped lending period. Lehman Brothers a huge American financial institution went bankrupt. And millions of Americans lost their homes.
     What caused this great economic crisis? Robert Reich, a U.S. economist and onetime Labour Secretary in the Clinton administration blamed the rising tide of inequality for the economic collapse. Others fingered the semi-fraudulent financial trades on Wall Street of worhless bonds that were made up of mortgages lent to low income people.
    Yet whatever caused the crisis, the whole problem started on the U.S. financial centre  on Wall Street in New York City, and then surged across the world. This is exactly what happened  at the start of the Great Depression in 1929. In that crisis tens of millions of people suffered and lost their jobs. The newly elected U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt who won the 1932 presidential election tried to stimulate the American economy by bringing a whole swath of new government programs that he called 'The New Deal'.
     "We tried the gold standard," Roosevelt told his aide Raymond Moley, "and that didn't work out. Now we may try the silver standard. And if that doesn't work we'll try something else." But Roosevelt assured Moley that in the end the U.S. government would finds a solution to the world's economic problems.
    Roosevelt's New Deal only applied to the U.S. of A. Hit hard by the Great Depression, Germany ended up under the rule of dictator Adolf  Hitler. Hitler prepared for war and the invasion of most of Europe. Japan embraced militarism and invaded China. In Italy the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini unleashed his air force against Ethiopia and then conquered it.  All over Europe and parts of the Americas, racist and anti-Semitic groups flourished and grew. "The lights are going out all over Europe," said  British diplomat on the eve of World War One in 1914. Yet he could have said the same 25 years later. The Great Depression triggered wars and preparations for war.
     Would the same thing happen now in 20007 in the midst of what was soon called 'The Great Recession'? Time would tell.