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167 9 Back to the USA my fa m I ly a n d I left Denmark at the end of June 2006. We flew up to Norway, where we spent three weeks inhaling the air, swimming the waters , hiking the trails, and pondering the lichens of the most devastatingly gorgeous country on earth, and then we flew back to the United States after over a year of living in Scandinavia. Our first stop was Colorado, where we spent some time with my in-laws. On our second day there, we were invited to their good friends’ house for a hearty dinner. After the meal, the man of the house showed me his “new toy,” a small gun. As he showed me all its fine (and lethal) attributes, I couldn’t help but think how funny and strange it was that within 48 hours of being back in America, I was in the immediate vicinity of a handgun—and that it belonged to a man who considers himself a born-again Christian, no less. “Well, Phil,” I thought to myself, “I think you’re not in Denmark anymore.” It was a thought that echoed through my mind many times upon re-entry to the United States. One incident really stands out. In the first or second month that I was back in my hometown of Claremont, I was standing in line at my community bank. While I waited for my turn at the teller’s counter, I couldn’t help but overhear a conversation that was taking place at the other end of the room. A customer was sitting at the desk of a bank manager, consulting with her on how to handle her overwhelming debt. Here is what the bank manager advised her to do (in a fairly loud voice, no less, so that everyone in the bank could hear): “You need to gather up all your debt statements—your credit card bills, mortgage bills, loan documents , overdue notices—and put them in an envelope. Then you need to take that envelope to my pastor. He is a real man of God, and he has a special power when it comes to removing debt. If you take this envelope to him, he will pray over it and bless it and anoint it. Then you just need to give $50 a month to his ministry, and within a year, God will see to it that your debt is all gone. I promise you. He is powerful. I have given this advice to so many people and it works every time.” What was so noteworthy to me about this incident was that not only was it shocking for me to 168 Back to the Usa hear a bank employee giving such “advice” to a customer in need of some serious financial help—but that no one else in the bank (and there was quite a line that day) seemed to think that what she was saying was weird or unacceptable. I was the only one standing there with a slack jaw. This is one religious country. Many of the Scandinavians that I interviewed said the same thing. Lots of them had spent time in the states, and they always commented on how religious Americans are. Lisa, from Stockholm and the mother of three, told me about an experience that she had when she was visiting some American friends of her husband’s in Seattle. It was the first time in her life that she had ever met someone who actually believed in the story of Adam and Eve. In this case, it was the wife of her husband’s friend. One day the two mothers took their children to the natural history museum, and while they were there, Lisa overheard her explaining to her children that all the displays relating to evolution weren’t true, that it was all just make-believe: I thought it was a little bit spooky, because she tried to fool her kids about something that the rest of the world believes very much in. I think it would be very interesting to have a real discussion with her—but not in front of her kids. Jonas, a 25-year-old man from the west coast of Denmark, told me about a time that he visited a girlfriend and her family in a small town in Texas, and what he observed while attending her local church: Everything in that society seemed to revolve around the church . . . it...

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