Have you been saved? What a question!

As always an interesting perspective on a part of America I am not so familiar with.

Reminds me a little of when I spend a few months in Western Samoa in the South Pacific. The people there are very nice, though belligerant when drunk. Christian missionaries spent a great deal of time competing over the Samoans, so that now there are more Christian chruches in each village than any other kind of building. When they ask you "what religion are you?" in Samoa they are really asking "what Christian church do you belong to?"

So, as a Jew, I was outside their experience.

I once met a Samoan in the capital, Apia, and we sat down and started beating the heat with some large bottles of the native "Vailima" beer. We drank the kind that the natives drink--better, bigger AND cheaper than what the tourists drank. Neither of us had much to do that day, so we drank for quite some time and had some really great discussions. Samoans enjoy talking, drinking and making friends, to whom they are very generous.

At some point in our long drinking/discussing session, he asked me "what religion are you?" Alarm bells went off in my head, but I am honest...so I said I was "Jewish."

It was almost as if I had said I was a cannibal. A look of utter astonishment...and anger...came to his face. He asked, amazed, "YOU'RE JEWISH???" When I repeated that I was, very calmly, I watched his face go through a whole range of emotions very rapidly: confusion, anger, then remembering that he has just had a long, friendly afternoon with me...back to confusion.

Finally, he pulled himself together and said, "Maybe I don't know what that means."

Interestingly, San Diego, California, is the other place where I had encountered people who really had no idea what it meant to be a Jew.

Shortly after WWII, when I
was working at the American-
Scandinavian Foundation on
East 64th St in NYC, one of our associates was a woman of no nonsense from Massachusetts. I was the lone goy in our office. At the time I was outraged by open anti-Semitism in the City. Probably the discussion du jour had to do with something like whether to attend the concert by the pianist Geisikin (spelling phonetic)because he was reported to have been a collaborator. One thing led to another and finally she simply said: What's the difference? Some of my best friends are anti-Semitic.

* Changed the date
* Edited paragraphs for clarity
* Added a graphic

I looooooove this post. I love how you knit the narrative here from one vignette to another; using religion as the common thread. It's as if religion is not about religion anymore but a state of mind that controls every aspect of life in your slice of Tennessee.

If one stops to think on it, we study history as a combination of territorial grab and religious conversion. Modern history is surely as bloody as in the Old Testament.
Sometimes one has to wonder whether we adults are much more advanced than a couple of little boys duking it out in the schoolyard, when they try to settle whose daddy can run/shoot/nameit the fastest.
During the 04 campaign I worked with an e-group of very savvy Texans from Austin. Much of our discussion settled around just how we got involved with the God/War question. Some, who grew up in the Southern Baptist tradition, wanted to throw religion out the window. As if that can ever happen. People just keep finding new beliefs.

oh, this brings back memories. growing up in Chattanooga, i was always asked where my church was. when i was really young, i was embarrassed that we didn't have one, so i picked out one that i went to when my grandparents came to town (super old time relgious)and said it was my church. eventually i got over it.

excellent post.

It's really none of their business when strangers ask about one's religion. It's never stopped anyone. Had such an incident just last week in the warm water pool at the Wellness Center. The woman and I have acquaintances in common, and I know where those people go to church. One thing leads to another and the first thing you know, I was in a corner. I'm not a Baptist, have eaten with friends in many of their churches. Used to attend Episcopal services with my late husband until we both were too old to climb the stairs--and maybe the social strata. I wiggled out of the corner by talking about "Girls Gone Wild." Now there's a topic on the front page of today's paper, to vote about. And my water pal and I were on the same side of the question about how those who want to see such channels are going to anyhow. And then the conversation veered off to the Inquirer, and how her son-in-law, who used to be the janitor in my building, had to cart out many such magazines from the nice little old ladies who live here.
Other topic: I think the election between Corker and Ford was cultural, not political. What do you think?

...one of my little pet peeves is how Evangelicals refer to themselves, exclusively, as 'Christians', the implication being that members of other denominations are something else. I remember reading a testimonial somewhere once from someone who was 'a Catholic before she became a Christian'.

Very irksome, that kind of stuff.

I remember answering this post. It's not here. Just more goings-on with my DSL, apparently.

No. During the War Between the States, the East Tennessee area, Knoxville, Maryville supported both the north and south. There were plenty of Confederacy supporters, probably a majority. This has been researched since we moved here.

The question "have you been saved" is not something I say to people, but I understand that it is motivated out of care and concern for another.

One of the first things which alerted me to that was the house turned into a museum (Longstreet if I remember correctly, in Knoxville). We were still tourists and had time to visit places in the city. The nice lady gave us a great tour and then said she was thrilled that General Robert E. Lee had just regained his citizenship. Things run deeply in sentiment sometimes.
I am most interested in how the Southern Baptists broke from the Baptist Church. It was over the question of slavery. Most of the Baptists I know have little outward hostility toward African-Americans, yet define themselves as much by which part of the Baptist Church they belong to==Missionary, Primitive, etc.
I live down the Parkway from Friendsville which had its Quaker beginnings from that time. One of our Maryville neighbors had parents whose families came from both sides of the question. A nice place to see history, for me, is Andrew Johnson's home. It is so well taken care of. It's a good way of seeing how a man of little learning and no wealth managed to play a big roll in Tennessee history. And his history also tells us a lot about troubled times in politics after the war.
Just as an aside: Will Lamar run for Senate again?