Skip to main content

From Tirol to Hawaii: The Omnipresence of Faith and Religion

I have lived in L.A. more than ten years and still things amaze me which others who were raised in the U.S. take for granted. The way religion, politics, public life, and pop culture meld is one such area. I was recently reminded of this when I came upon pictures of Jeremy Scott's Enjoy God fashion line in the LA Times Magazine and again as I was browsing some photos I had taken in Hawaii in April.

"Amen". License plates in a burger restaurant... 
...and van with banners (both in Lahaina, Hawaii) 
Where I come from, in Austria, faith and religion are omnipresent too - but in a different way. In my home state, Tirol, Catholic shrines and crucifixes line country lanes; chapels stand at crossroads out in the fields; and many a church is tucked away in a hamlet up on a mountain. These structures are part of the alpine landscape and they have been for hundreds of years - though their meaning is lost to many. (The days when children were taught to make the sign of the cross whenever they passed a blessed site are gone. If kids forgot they needed to go to confession lest they end up in hell.)

Confession or hell? Church of Kronburg, Tirol,...
...with high altar to its patron saint, Mary

Labels:

Comments

debi said…
Christina,

The contrast between European and US religious advertising is striking in these pictures; Tirol is so beautiful but here, uh, well… the pictures speak for themselves; it's almost comedic.

I understand your point, though, about the melding of "religion, politics, public life, and pop culture", and your pictures illustrate it perfectly.

I often wonder if we haven't convinced ourselves as a society that any set of ideals or beliefs should not be personally embraced unless and until the almighty public opinion has put its stamp of approval on it.

Where has our individualism gone? Great post.

debi
July 17, 2011 at 5:45 AM
Christina Schweighofer said…
Thanks, Debi. Always good to see you on Across the Pond.

What happened to individualism? I think it is still there, just maybe harder to find, more hidden. Our world of social media and general connectedness, of show and tell in blogs (here!) and on Facebook, encourages mainstreaming, at least on a superficial level.

In an era where everything is public (and where, in turn, anything we produce can be used against us), people can be reluctant to set themselves apart, be it from the norm or from "officially" sanctioned beliefs. And so we wear masks, slip into roles, showing our individualism in small safe zones and to a select few only.

I don't think this happens consciously and that is where the danger lies: after a while it can become easy to take our own camouflage for the real thing, the false identity for the true self.

A profile of the internet pioneer Jaron Lanier in the most recent issue of the "New Yorker" relates to this ("The Visionary", July 11 & 18). Lanier compares our "fakey-fakey social life" on the internet to the life of citizens in Communist countries "where people had a fake social life that the Stasi could see, and then this underground life".

Personally, I believe that authenticity and integrity cannot be valued high enough. Become who you are! The pursuit of this goal should be a constitutional right - and an obligation too.
July 22, 2011 at 9:06 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ban on Plastic Bags Bugs L.A. County

Paper or plastic? Bag from South Africa. My friend recently came back from a trip to South Africa and brought me a reusable grocery bag. It is from Woolworths, one of the largest retail chains in South Africa; it is made by a community project and serves as a symbol of the company's commitment to sustainability and social development. I will think of this whenever I use my new bag. Thank you, dear friend! The Woolworths bag is not my first reusable bag. I carry two baggies which fold up into packs smaller than a deck of cards in my purse and a bunch of bigger ones in the trunk of my car. To me this feels like an easy way of making a difference environmentally. Others seem to have a harder time. When the county of Los Angeles recently introduced a ban on plastic bags for its unincorporated areas the new ordinance was met with resistance. Shops bemoan that paper is more expensive than plastic. They charge customers ten cents for every paper bag. Shoppers complain about ...
10 comments
Read more

Stuck in the Middle Ages? Women in the Catholic Church

How did women, whom Jesus treated as equals, become second class Christians? Why have they retained this inferior status until today, especially in the Roman Catholic church? When will it change? A book I recently read, Women in Christianity by the Swiss born theologian and Roman Catholic priest Hans Küng, an emeritus professor at the University of Tübingen in Germany, gives some answers — and leaves one big question open. In earliest Christianity gender differences didn't affect life in the church, which back then was nothing but a community of free and equal people. But with the institutionalization of the church hierarchical structures replaced egalitarian relationships. Add to that a devaluation of education especially for women in late antiquity, and we have a perfect storm that reduced women to their biology. Going forth, men dominated in all areas of public life and usually in the home, too. In the Middle Ages, the sexuality-averse teachings of Augustine and Thomas Aqu...
Post a Comment
Read more

Solid Rock, Human Transience (The Huntington 2)

Organic blend: Chinese garden at the Huntington The Chinese garden at The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino (L.A. county) is a magical place. It blends the man-made and the natural, architecture with trees, straight lines and curves, all in an organic way. Last week, as I was wandering the cobbled paths of the garden I decided to take a closer look at some of the rocks. I got to my knees, admired the shades of white and grey, the undertones of purple, green, and red; I let my hand glide over the limestone's spurs, cracks, and sharp edges, felt the coolness of the rock against my skin, its enduring solidity against my human transience - and decided to look up some facts. Spurs and cracks: 50 Chinese stone workers flew in to carve the stone Transplants in L.A.: 850 tons of rock The limestone rocks in the Huntington's Chinese garden are transplants. They were imported from Lake Tai in the Y...
Post a Comment
Read more