If per capita temptation-denying is how you define a saint, then yes, it seems that New York is number one in avoiding naughtiness.
Now, that raises all sorts of theological issues, of course, what with people being thought of as totally depraved and all, so maybe the survey just took into account what New Yorkers are willing to do in public.
Of course, if you think saintliness is not just avoiding the bad but also includes knowing a bit about God and Scripture and suchlikes, then it's a different story. That crown, according to Christianity Today's article, goes to Knoxville.
Instapundit does have some surprising insight about such matters, occasionally revealed, though from a different sort of experience than most Knoxvillians. My guess it's an educated center in the Bible belt, a gold buckle bringing together the faithful or recently enough so, who still have the habits of saintlihood.
Of course, for Barna, reading the Bible and believing in the Bible is what exalts the person to the lofty state. But reading and believing doesn't always translate into doing what the Bible strongly encourages. I've been around churches enough to know that.
So, saintliness is a bit more difficult to pin down than surveyists might suggest.
Gallup, it seems, has a different method and may be more ecumenical in its civil canonizations. Provo, Utah leads their list, implying a latter-day sanctity at work.
St. Louis is where the sinners go. Apparently the arch functions as a weir for ne'er-do-wells heading west.
The high school in my town has the mascot of Saints, which isn't all that intimidating. Can there be fighting saints? Curiously enough... maybe.
No mention of New Orleans, which has a strong claim for being really good sinners while great fans of saints. Speaking of which, has someone let Beth know about our new venture hereabouts?
What makes a saint for you? Avoiding the bad? Doing the right deeds? Putting money in the right box? Checking the list off the right set of beliefs? Saints come in all shapes and sizes, and mileage may vary on any one of those aspects.
29 comments:
I don't believe I'm a Christian, because I think saints are measured in good works. Heck, even the Catholics used to need a miracle (good works) to get that sheepskin. So what city does the most good works? And who gets the special category award for "Random Acts of Kindness"?
Avoidin' troublesome blogs?
Nah, that's not saintly, just pragmatic.
I think the award for city doing the most good works would be the USS George Washington (CVN-73) Population approx. 6,000.
"The Saint is a medicine because he is an antidote. Indeed that is why the saint is often a martyr; he is mistaken for a poison because he is an antidote. He will generally be found restoring the world to sanity by exaggerating whatever the…world neglects, which is by no means always the same element in every age. Yet each generation seeks its saint by instinct; and he is not what the people want, but rather what the people need."
GKChesterton
What makes a saint is loving Christ above everything else. It It is seeing Christ in everyone, no matter how difficult that may be. It is being able to forgive because I received forgiveness before I was born. It means following God's law no matter how tempting the alternatives are.
Not easy to do. But very worth doing.
A story about Mother Theresa.
She once found a man lying at the side of a road, dying. She lowered herself to the ground and stayed next to him, comforting him while his life slipped a way.
A stranger stopped and said "I wouldn't do your job for a million dollars."
"Neither would I" she replied.
A saint?
I usually take a person and subtract avarice, corruption, and me.
Least saintliest seems to be Chi-town.
When I was 6-7 I was given hagiographies redacted for children, with beautiful illustrations, which made a deep impression on me. For example, I still expect a Julia to be a dirty blonde wearing lavender --- though I've managed to drop the expectation of a chained dragon at her feet.
Naturally, as a blood-thirsty kid, I preferred the martyrs, and was puzzled by why the rest, e.g. "widow", "friar", were included. They seemed so dull, their lives uneventful.
Now, however, I understand that the saintliness of the latter, evidenced by their patience, kindness and conscientiousness day after day, often in unrelentingly difficult circumstances, is more difficult to achieve than going out in a quick, albeit painful blaze of glory.
Blake!
Freem!
The boy takes after you! (That is your oldest, right?)
Ha. No, that's me at about four. I bet I do take after myself!
You're still recognizable, then, congratulations!
As you can see from my pic here, I--well, I don't know where I'm going with that.
Saints come in all shapes and sizes.
That reminds me of the quote from CS Lewis - How monotonous alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints.
Can there be fighting saints?
Joan of Arc is sui generis, but she was a saint and by God she fought.
I broke my brain on her some years ago. There is no good explanation for Joan and what she did.
There are a ton of books on her. I recommend "Joan of Arc In Her Own Words" compiled by William Trask.
Much of the material is from the court transcripts after she was captured by the English. It was spooky enough what she did on the battlefield, but in court we see an imprisoned teenage peasant girl with no support whatsoever under hostile examination by the powers of England and the Church, and she holds her own so well in open court, that they must make the proceedings private.
Do you know that you are in God's grace?
If I am not, God put me there, and if I am, God keep me there!
--Joan of Arc
I broke my brain on her some years ago. There is no good explanation for Joan and what she did.
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Can you expand on that--or would it take to long?
Damn it--it's self evident in the way that you wrote that--that you are saying you can't.
It's been so long since I have read about Joan of Arc I have forgotten a lot.
I should go skim the wiki.
I saw a thing on teevee about her that was very good at getting at that line between religious zealotry and complete madness.
I tuned in when she finds a sword in the field. The show was very good at imparting how much of a miracle that would seem to be right there. A mighty shiny perfect ornately decorated expensive silver gold trim brilliant sharp sword right there smack in her field. She picks it up, it glistens in the bright sun and it's like she's talking directly to God.
So right off she's a bit whacked. She finds a sword, a'ight? Give it back already. But no, it's a signal from God. And they persist with that mixing throughout. She's convincing and drags everybody into it.
Sorry Paddy I haven't read this.
Felt like I Had to be over at my please stop thread in case people had questions.
I'll read it tomorrow that's a promise.
saw a thing on teevee about her that was very good at getting at that line between religious zealotry and complete madness.
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Ya--I guess that's the thing.
J'entends des voix qui me commandent
I hear voices that command me. . .
--- Jeanne d'Arc
Can you expand on that--or would it take to long?
madawaskan: I can write more, sure, but I can't resolve it.
I was touched by that odd Luc Besson movie, "The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc," so I started reading about her. I was raised Catholic but even my mother told me that Joan was a crazy person who heard voices. As an ex-Catholic I thought that was the bottom line.
But the more I read, the more I realized the crazy story doesn't work. Crazy people are not empowered by their illness; Joan was. It seems to me that we are left with several unsatisfactory choices.
* Joan was a superhuman mutant who managed to acquire the skills of a warrior and politician part-time in a few years, while tending her uncle's farm.
* Joan was crazy, cynical people took advantage of her, and she had a very long run of luck until her luck deserted her entirely.
* Joan was a classic Catholic saint, in communion with God and other saints, and doing his work with miraculous assistance.
Here's Vita Sackville-West, a writer of the Bloomsbury group and a lover of Virginia Woolf, on Joan. She did believe in "one comprehensive, stupendous unity" but she was not a Christian.
My readings into Joan of Arc have done nothing but increase my belief in the existence of that unity, and also the belief that certain persons are in touch with ...[this] unity, for which we have no adequate name. Without pretending to explain how or why...I accept the fact...that Jeanne must be regarded as prominent among them....
It would simplify the whole problem if we could just believe that God sent three of his saints to instruct Jeanne; if we could throw ourselves into the frame of mind of a good, believing Christian. Unfortunately, for some of us, this attitude is impossible to blindly adopt. I have been painfully torn myself.
--Vita Sackville-West, Saint Joan of Arc, p. 345
Here's novelist Mary Gordon from her short, excellent biography, "Joan of Arc."
She shouldn't have been able to do what she did. Ride at the head of an army. Lead men into battle. Be victorious. A year earlier, she hadn't known how to ride a horse. She'd practiced by riding on the backs of her father's cattle. She taught herself to ride in the few weeks she lived at Neuchatel, while she worked at the tavern of La Rousee, when her family was fleeing the Burgundians. She had never worn armor, and the armor weighed sixty pounds--a much heavier burden on the body of a short woman than a tall man. She did what she did beside men who had trained for it since early childhood. She had never studied tactics. She had never even seen a battle. But she knew she was a warrior; her voices told her she would lead men to victory. She harbored no doubts.
How is such an achievement explicable? Joan reached a level of both of physical prowess and of courage that was enormously against all odds. Can this level of achievement be properly called miraculous? Or is just an event that is extremely unlikely? What is the relationship between what we are able to comfortably call genius and what we are unwilling to call miraculous?
Crazy people are not empowered by their illness; Joan was. It seems to me that we are left with several unsatisfactory choices.
* Joan was a superhuman mutant who managed to acquire the skills of a warrior and politician part-time in a few years, while tending her uncle's farm.
* Joan was crazy, cynical people took advantage of her, and she had a very long run of luck until her luck deserted her entirely.
* Joan was a classic Catholic saint, in communion with God and other saints, and doing his work with miraculous assistance.
July 21, 2013 at 2:17 AM
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Damn it--that's intriguing--especially what you wrote in the bolded part--because I think I've always tossed it off as a bit of the lune--but what you state there really makes me rethink it.
What makes a saint for you? Avoiding the bad? Doing the right deeds? Putting money in the right box? Checking the list off the right set of beliefs?
In my brother's conservative Lutheran church, they refer to everyone in the congregation as saints. I have some trouble embracing that. I tend to think os a saint as someone who as even able to maintain an unbroken communion with God while living life on this earth. Admittedly, some of the recognized saints, especially the warrior ones and overtly political ones, don't readily fit that definition. at least not to this faulty human heart.
I've long thought that many who deserve to be saints are not because of their saintly personality. They do incredible acts of kindness and never bring attention to it.
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