Pop quiz: What freedoms are protected under the first amendment? A recent survey on the state of the first amendment found that most people don’t know what freedoms they have.

Of those surveyed,
63% could name the freedom of speech,
22% could name the freedom of religion,
16% could name the freedom of the press,
11% could name the right of free assembly,
2% could name the right to petition the government.

The survey went on to cover some of the big church vs. state issues (as well as some major freedom of press issues):

68% of people think the phrase “one nation under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance is not a violation of the separation of church and state.
78% of people think the phrase “In God We Trust” on U.S. currency is not a violation of the separation of church and state
62% of people think government officials should be able to display the Ten Commandments in government buildings

While I have my own opinions about the church/state issue, it’s pretty clear that most people don’t think it’s an issue (I would have expected those numbers to be higher).

What’s even more interesting is that most people don’t see it as a religious issue.

73% of people think the phrase “one nation under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance is primarily a statement about the American political tradition.
18% of people think the phrase is a religious statement.

Finally, I was rather surprised at how many were in favor of limits on our free speech.

31% of people think individuals should not be allowed to protest in public against America’s involvement in war during a period of active military combat.

Granted it’s only one-third of people, but that seems like a lot considering a basic freedom of expression. Then again these are the same people who couldn’t identify these freedoms in the first place.

According to the Global Rich List, my family was in the richest 1 percent of the world’s population. Of course now that I’m unemployed, we’ve slipped to the richest 3.5 percent. It’s amazing to me that with all the financial woes we have, we’re still richer than 96 percent of the world. It really makes me wonder how badly we need some of the things we have. It’s kind of sad that our society makes so many things standard purchases that even being in the richest 1 percent we’re not swimming in cash. We only have one car, we don’t have a cell phone, and I still use a dial-up modem.

Even sadder is the fact that the poverty level for a family of four in the U.S. still leaves you in the richest 10 percent of the world. That’s $16,000 a year for four people, and it’s better off than the vast majority of the world.

Why is WalMart such a dump? I hate to be elitist, but I really can’t stand that store. It’s one part white trash, one part ghetto. It’s as if the only thing they have going for them is cheap prices.

Sadly, the merchandise isn’t worth the slashed prices. We were in the store yesterday to pick up a fridge for a friend, and we swung through the furniture section, always watching for cheap shelving. The shelves were definitely cheap. Probably half the price of other retailers, but they looked like crap. I’m used to buying crappy furniture. My bed (mattress on a frame) and my coffee table are the only pieces of furniture I bought from a real furniture store. Everything else is low-budget stuff, but it looks like gold compared to what WalMart sells.

In addition to their lack of quality, the store is a mess. The shelving goes higher than is probably practical, giving you a boxed in feeling like everything’s going to come crashing down. They also keep you from seeing what limited signage they have to help you find what you need. Every aisle is jammed with extra sale items sticking out in the middle of the floor that just create traffic.

Barbara Ehrenreich talked about how awful it was to work at WalMart in her book Nickel and Dimed, and now I can see why. The place is a circus. Whatever money I can save thanks to WalMart’s price rollback isn’t worth the trauma my spirit suffers simply walking in the door.

Maybe I’m just an elitist jerk (though that doesn’t seem likely when I’m unemployed and poor), but I’d prefer to do my shopping in a clean, well-organized, manageable store. I want to find what I need easily and not feel like I’m running an obstacle course. I need deodorant, not a headache.

Apparently some folks in North Carolina aren’t too happy about Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed, a book that focuses on the impossibility of surviving on low-income wages. The University of North Carolina chose the book as required reading for all incoming freshmen, which seems like a safe choice, given last year’s book (a collection of readings from the Koran). Yet a group of students going by Committee for a Better Carolina is calling Ehrenreich’s book a “classic Marxist rant” and a work of “intellectual pornography with no redeeming characteristics.” But as Ehrenreich responds, perhaps the Committee for a Better Carolina should realize just how much better they need to be: “60 percent of North Carolina families with children do not earn enough to meet basic, bare-bone needs. Nationwide, when last measured in 2000, 29 percent of families were in the same straits, giving North Carolina twice the level of economic misery as the country as a whole.” Ouch. (link via jordoncooper.com)

I spread the love today. Donated two cans of food (tomato sauce and vegetable beef soup) for a free Chipotle burrito. I’m never quite sure if these charitable free food events are really charity or a big fat publicity stunt. It seems like just cutting out the middle man and giving free burritos straight to the homeless folks would be more effective. At least it’d be more tasty than Campbell’s vegetable beef soup.

“And so I gave my thirteen cents to the man who peed his pants. He passes out and falls on me, I watch my change fall from his hands … What does it matter anyway, thirteen cents or all I own? How can I ever save the world on cup-o-soup and student loans? I want to try and save the world, but it never goes that way. God I don’t know what to do,” (“Where the Zero Meets the Fifteen” from Upbeats and Beatdowns by Five Iron Frenzy).

That’s how I feel so many days. I wince at the dirty man, wondering how and if it’s my lot to show him something more. I avoid eye contact, walk slower, faster, whatever. There’s not much I can do anyway, too busy, too preoccupied.

But it goes beyond the huddled masses, it covers the consumer masses, those jetting about in their financed cars and name brand clothes. I feel it even in my own heart, the need, the longing, the yearning to have something more, to at least have the magazine hair and catch nods and stolen glances from other hipsters trying to be someone they’re not. I lose myself trying to save myself.

This lonely planet needs so much help–and who am I? Another drifter lost and weary, afraid of commitment and drowning in a sea of joblessness. Can I just get paid to read and write? A holy stipend, something dependable but with no real commitment? Just put me on the heavenly payroll, and I’ll do your will. Can it work like that? You pay the mortgage and I’ll write that book I’m always talking about. Deal?

It’s not easy and it’s not supposed to be.

More from Nickel and Dimed:

“The preaching goes on, interrupted with dutiful ‘amens.’ It would be nice if someone would read this sad-eyed crowd the Sermon on the Mount, accompanied by a rousing commentary on income inequality and the need for a hike in the minimum wage. But Jesus makes his appearance here only as a corpse; the living man, the wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist, is never once mentioned, nor anything he ever had to say. Christ crucified rules, and it may be that the true business of modern Christianity is to crucify him again and again so that he can never get a word out of his mouth. I would like to stay around for the speaking in tongues, should it occur, but the mosquitoes, worked into a frenzy by all this talk of His blood, are launching a full-scale attack. I get up to leave, timing my exit for when the preacher’s metronomic head movements have him looking the other way, and walk out to search for my car, half expecting to find Jesus out there in the dark, gagged and tethered to a tent pole,” (page 68-69).

As you can tell, I’m liking this book. But don’t get the wrong impression. I’ve already quoted two extremely isolated sections that refer to Christianity. These are simply religious asides, which I find particularly biting. The rest of the book is just as intriguing, and I feel it’s time I give it a bit of credit.

Barbara Ehrenreich is trying to make it on minimum wage jobs, working as a waitress or a cleaning woman, living in efficiency apartments you could fit in your bedroom. She’s trying to see if it’s even possible to survive like that, and then reporting on it so the rest of us feel some shame or guilt or a bit of understanding and maybe something is done about it.

It reminds me so much of the summer of 1999, when I scoffed at going to Taco Bell, afraid to spend the 99 cents on a Taco Supreme. I pinched and I scrimped that summer, and I tried not to live off my dad’s gas card. I lost at least 10 pounds that summer, and made a lot less that minimum wage. But even that experience barely allows me to relate.

What I find so striking is when Ehrenreich applies the daily existence of the lowest class with Christian teaching. It sucks, but she is so right. Jesus was a wine-guzzling vagrant. He told people to give to the poor and not to cheat each other. He told us there are more important things than money, but you wouldn’t know it by the cars parked in church parking lots.

Jesus wasn’t interested in rules, especially not societal rules. Yet we are. I walk past apartments small enough to pass for the ones Ehrenreich stayed in, I ride the bus with people she describes as coworkers, and I see these people everyday at restaurants and stores. Sometimes it does feel like the church has taken the real Jesus, shoved a sweaty black dress sock in his mouth and stuffed him in the baptistery. We’re afraid he’d overturn our pews and fellowship tables.

The words of Paul stuck out today: “For we are not peddlers of God’s word like so many; but in Christ we speak as persons of sincerity, as persons sent from God and standing in his presence,” (2 Corinthians 2:17, NRSV).

“The salary I got was quite sufficient to enable me to practice evangelical poverty.” (Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton, page 356).

HIV/AIDS is the modern-day leprosy. Some call it a sinner’s disease and want to wash their hands of the whole thing. But thankfully we’re called to wash feet, not hands.

Prescription for Hope was a Christian conference for HIV/AIDS held a few weeks ago, and it represents a strong move forward for the church in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

“Regardless of what they may have done,” said Franklin Graham, head of Samaritan’s Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, the two organizations behind Prescription for Hope, “each of the 40 million men, women, and children worldwide who are infected with the HIV virus are precious to God. And if they’re precious to God, then by God, they should be precious to us.”

Those are some encouraging words from the conservative end of the spectrum. Wouldn’t it be nice if the church could actually be leading the way when it comes to compassion?

“So different from his pictures / Breathing air through yellowed tubes / Jesus Christ, dying of AIDS / Can look right through you.” (‘Under Bridges’ by Brave Saint Saturn)