The Failures of Organized Religion

One of the themes that continues to resurface again and again in the reading so far is the utter failure of organized religion during the Great Depression. Steinbeck mentions it in The Grapes of Wrath, Woody Guthrie has an incident of it in Bound For Glory, and now Tom Kromer drives the point home in Waiting For Nothing. In fact, the title of the novel refers to an incident at the very end, in which the mission the narrator is spending the night in has shut many homeless people out in the cold, because they were not early enough to listen to the sermon guaranteeing them a bed for the night. Kromer writes, “I lie here and wonder since when did Jesus Christ start keeping office hours?”

George Orwell relates a similar story in Down and Out in Paris and London, in the London section, about having to attend a sermon before being given a meal and a bed to sleep in. Down and Out was published only two years before Waiting For Nothing, perhaps demonstrating that the attitude of organized religion toward the unfortunate and homeless was relatively uniform worldwide. The idea of Christian charity being handed out “in exchange” for attempting to indoctrinate these people is not only, from both the perspective of the time and now, completely absurd, but it also shows an inherent lack of awareness on the part of the religious organizations. Rather than being fed, cleaned, and given a place to sleep, which might truly lead these men to considering a sort of faith, the missions end up jading the drifters that they preach to. Kromer’s concern is only to play the system in order to get as much out of the missions as possible; he notes repeatedly those who are new to the life and unaware of the necessary playacting that comes with attending one of these sermons.

Not only does Kromer portray these churches as being unaware of the hypocrisy surrounding their charity, but he shows that in many cases the workers at these missions are actively uncaring and antagonistic toward the homeless they are helping. The night man at the end of the book seems simply irritated by having to deal with the dying man, rather than compassionate or concerned to any degree. Not only does he help the dying man only reluctantly, he vows to throw Kromer out for even alerting him to this situation. Earlier, too, the female preacher is quick to throw out any men who question her sermon, although she is certainly aware of what she is sending them out to.

What is truly disturbing about this is that I, personally, simply have no way of knowing how much this system of Christian charity has changed. However, I suspect that it largely has not. There continues in America to be an attitude that those who are trapped in a situation of misfortune have brought it upon themselves, and that they should be able to pull themselves up out of it. But as unemployment continues to stay high, and the country feels the affects of this recession, how can we justify this attitude to ourselves?