Born Again
America's largest religious minority, self-styled evangelical Christians comprise a quarter of the nation's population and make up half of the registered Republican voting base, from which they have exercised disproportionate leverage across contemporary politics and culture since the 1960's. Summing their judgmental creed, Congressman Barney Frank playfully suggested evangelicals "believe that the right to life begins at conception and ends at birth."
Yet this photographer is in no position to snicker too loudly. I got myself "born again" in college, where for a time I "spoke in tongues," healed through "the laying on of hands," and tried out much else in the evangelical hope chest, short of handling rattlesnakes. But at some point my infantile faith in faith-based hokum got the wind knocked out of it, following an abrupt, accidental collision with reality. Not even mouth-to-mouth could revive it.
Evangelicals insist that a loving God stands by to intervene in response to prayer, and to serve their interests with partiality as copilot in life's daily dogfights. This quintessentially American optimism is what quietly undergirds the buoyant, risk-taking premise of the American enterprise: you can bet your bottom dollar that God is on your side. It also sustains sales for the perennially born-again Christian bestseller, God Wants You To Be Rich.
TITLE - "Born Again"
WHERE - CPR dummy at Red Cross Training Center, Vancouver, B.C. (2017)