250 ANECDOTES ABOUT RELIGION: VOLUME 2
By David Bruce
SMASHWORDS EDITION
Dedicated with love to Hartley and Frank Bruce
Copyright 2010 by Bruce D. Bruce
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Cover Photograph:
Photographer: Vladimir Surkov
Located: Volgograd, Russian Federation
Website: http://vsurkov.ru
Image provided by Dreamstime.com.
“When any church will inscribe over its altar as its sole qualification for membership, the Saviour’s condensed statement of the substance of both law and Gospel, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and thy neighbor as thyself,’ that church will I join with all my heart and all my soul.”
—Abraham Lincoln.
•••
250 Anecdotes About Religion: Volume 2
Chapter 1: From Age to Death
Age
• Author Michael Thomas Ford once spoke before a class of children. One child asked him, “How old are you?” When he gave the answer—30—he shocked the children, one of whom marveled, “You’re older than my mom,” and another of whom said, “That’s old.” Afterward, the children’s teacher explained that whenever the children asked her how old she was, “I just tell them I knew God when he was a boy. That shuts them up—except for the ones who want to know if He was a good kickball player.”
• Pope John XXIII once traveled through a Roman tenement where some blankets covered billboards showing a very shapely Italian actress. The Pope noticed this and told the crowd, “It is good that you do this, but you should realize that I am an old man, and if one of my age is thought to be scandalized by pictures like these, what of yourselves and your children?”
• In Haifa, a city in Israel, the walls of the subway cars have stenciled on them these words from Leviticus: “You should rise up before the aged.” In other words: When the subway car is crowded, get up and give your seat to an older person.
Animals
• Wesleyan pastor William Woughter was serving at a church called Buena Vista, located in a rural area near Bath, New York, when he retired. This church had the custom of giving the pastor the fruits of the earth on Harvest Day. One Sunday during harvest, the pastor would be kept out of the church until the farmers had brought in the good things of the earth as presents to the pastor. One Harvest Day, a man named Dean Stewart brought in a live turkey, which proceeded to gobble as Pastor William began his sermon. Pastor William looked at the turkey and said, “If you don’t stop that noise, I will make you preach the rest of the sermon.” The turkey stayed quiet until church was over.
• The Jewish religious leader known as the Baal Shem Tov (the founder of Hasidism) told this story to a rabbi who was too rigid and legalistic: “I was driving a coach with three horses, none of which was neighing. I did not understand why until a peasant saw the horses and shouted at me to loosen the reins. When I loosened the reins, the horses immediately began to neigh.” When the rabbi heard the story, he realized that souls must be free in order to sing—too many restrictions stifle the soul.
Art
• In 1843, Englishman Sir Henry Cole invented the illustrated Christmas card. He wanted to remind his friends to give to the needy during the holidays, so he commissioned an artist to create a scene of a family enjoying a holiday feast while ignoring needy people nearby. He then sent these cards to his friends.
• Louise Nevelson created artworks for the Chapel of the Good Shepherd in St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in New York City. When a reporter asked the pastor why a Russian-born Jew had been picked to create works of art for a Christian chapel, he replied, “Because she’s the greatest living American sculptor.”
Baptism
• One winter, some Dunkers held an outdoors baptism, breaking the ice on a river to do so. After being baptized, one of the men was asked if the water had been cold. He replied, “No, not a bit.” The other man who had been baptized told the preacher, “You better baptize him again, and hold him down a little longer. He hasn’t been cured of lying.”
• Max Weber, the sociologist, once saw a banker in the American South being baptized in a cold stream. When Mr. Weber asked what was happening, he was told that the banker was being baptized so that the people of the town would trust him and so do business with him.
Bible
• Many of us read the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, in which the Pharisee says, “God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as that publican [tax collector]. I fast twice in the week. I give tithes of all that I possess.” Unfortunately, when many of us read this, we think, “Thank God that I am not as that Pharisee.”
• Ellen C. Waller, a Quaker, asked the children in her class to check and make sure that they had the Revised Version of the Bible, from which she was teaching. One child said that she had the wrong version of the Bible, because it wasn’t “Revised”—it was “Holy.”
Birth
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton once asked why this statement was read in the synagogue each week: “I thank thee, O Lord, that I was not born a woman.” She received the reply, “It is not meant in an unfriendly spirit, and it is not intended to degrade or humiliate women.” However, she was not satisfied with this answer, so she said, “But it does, nevertheless. Suppose the service read, ‘I thank thee, O Lord, that I was not born a jackass.’ Could that be twisted in any way into a compliment to the jackass?”
• Si-tien, a Buddhist priest, asked some men, “Which is more moving: the cries of an animal being killed, or the cries of a woman giving birth?” No one answered, so Si-tien gave the answer: “The cries of a woman giving birth. The cries of an animal being killed is an ending, but the cries of a woman giving birth is a beginning.”
Candles
• New York Yankees Waite Hoyt and Joe Dugan went to church together one day, and Mr. Dugan lit a candle. That afternoon, he batted 3-for-4 and the next day he batted 4-for-5. Therefore, Mr. Waite went to a church and lit a huge number of candles. Unfortunately, he was a pitcher and the opposing team’s batters knocked him out of that day’s game in the third inning. Mr. Waite asked, “How do you explain it? You lit candles and get a bunch of hits. I do the same thing and get knocked out.” Mr. Dugan replied, “Easy. I saw you light all those candles in church, but right after you left I saw two gamblers come in and blow them out.”
• Do you know the story behind the tradition of putting candles in windows during the Christmas season? This is an Irish tradition that stems from the days when the Catholic religion was persecuted. Catholic families longed to have a priest come to their house and celebrate Mass on Christmas. To help guide the priest to their house, they put a candle in the window.
Censorship
• The Rabbi of Smargon, R’ Menasheh of Iliya, became aware that Jewish children were being kidnapped by the Jewish leaders of the town and handed over for service in the Czarist army so that the town could meet its quota. Therefore, R’ Menasheh called a public meeting, in which he said, “One who can kidnap a Jewish child and hand him over to the authorities is not worthy of being called a Jew.” Afterward, the community leaders told him that he had no right to speak publicly on such a topic. R’ Menasheh said, “If that is so, I cannot be your Rav.” And he immediately resigned as rabbi.
• In the days before typewriters and word processors, Menashe Illyer wrote in longhand a controversial religious book, which he titled Alphei Menasheh and then took to a printer. The printer set in type the first few pages, but then he discovered that he disagreed with the contents of the book, so he burned it.
Charity
• Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, aka the Singing Rabbi, once filled in at short notice at a Lag B’Omer concert when the star attraction broke his foot and was not able to appear. Because the concert organizer wanted so much to have someone of Rabbi Shlomo’s stature at the concert, a deal was made that Rabbi Shlomo would be paid all the money that was collected at the door, minus the expenses of the concert. The concert was a success, and at its end, Rabbi Shlomo was handed $2,700 in cash, something he was happy to receive because of his chronically being broke. However, a young man came in to ask Rabbi Shlomo for a blessing on his marriage, and Rabbi Shlomo asked why he needed such a thing. The young man had started to observe the Sabbath, and because of this he had lost his job, and the lack of money was starting to affect his marriage. Immediately, Rabbi Shlomo reached into his pocket, took out the $2,700 in cash, and gave it to the young man.
• Comedian Eddie Cantor was known for his fund-raising. A Jew, he raised much money for Israel, but he also raised much money for many other worthy projects. Groucho Marx knew him and his reputation for fund-raising. At the Hillcrest Club, Groucho heard that Mr. Cantor had been in for lunch. Groucho asked, “What time did Cantor say he was going to save the world?”
• Writer Peg Bracken saw this sign over an alms box in an Aix-en-Provence chapel: “For the poor, the sick, the ashamed ….”
Children
• When Lhamo Dhondrub was two years old, a series of tests was given to him to determine if he was the Dalai Lama, who was believed to be reincarnated each time he died. Some of the tests consisted of offering the baby the choice of a number of objects, only one of which had belonged to the previous incarnation of the Dalai Lama. Each time, the baby chose the object that had belonged to the previous incarnation of the Dalai Lama, although the other objects were often newer, more colorful, and shinier. In one test, the baby hesitated before choosing one of two nearly identical walking canes. The first cane had belonged to the previous Dalai Lama, but he had given it away as a gift. The second cane had belonged to the previous Dalai Lama, and he had used it until his death. The baby chose the second cane. As a result of the tests, the baby was declared the 14th Dalai Lama, and he was renamed Tenzin Gyatso.
• Drought is often a problem in Uvalde, Texas, where Msgr. Vincent Fecher is a Catholic priest. One day, he saw a small child, and he asked her if she was praying for rain. Surprised, she said no, and Father Vincent told her, “You ought to. Jesus listens to little kids like you. So when you say prayers tonight, tell Him that people around here are starting to complain because He hasn’t sent them any rain so far this year.” The little girl promised Father Vincent that she would pray for rain. That night, rain fell—and it fell all the following day, and the day after that, and the day after that. Father Vincent looked at the rain, and he thought, “That darned kid. I had better find her and turn her off, before she drowns the whole lot of us.”
• A Sunday School teacher once told her class the story of the Prodigal Son, in which a bad son takes his inheritance while his father is still alive, leaves his family, wastes his inheritance, and driven by hunger, returns home, where his father rejoices to see him and calls for his servants to kill the Fatted Calf and prepare a welcoming feast for his long-lost son. The teacher asked her class this question: “But in the midst of all this joy and excitement, there was one to whom the Prodigal’s return meant not good times and laughter, but bitterness—one who hated the thought of attending the feast. Can anyone tell me who this was?” One child suggested, “The Fatted Calf?”
• When Ruthie, the nine-year-old daughter of Quaker humorist Tom Mullen, had a bike accident that resulted in six stitches in her chin, Mr. Mullen was surprised that she didn’t cry. He was further surprised when Ruthie told the doctor, “My daddy told me once when I was hurt not to be a crybaby!” Worried that he might have taught her the wrong thing, Mr. Mullen explained that it is OK to cry when you have an accident that requires six stitches. Ruthie listened, then told her father, “It’s all right, daddy. You can cry if you want to.”
• During church when he was a child, Stan Banker, who is now a Quaker preacher, used to play games whenever a sermon grew boring. For example, one game was “Quick Add.” He and a competitor would open their hymnals at random, then add the individual digits of the number of a hymn—whoever added the digits first (and accurately) won. Another game with hymnals was to pick a number at random, then see how many turns of the pages it took to open the hymnal at that numbered hymn.
• A Sunday School teacher once told her class the story of the Good Samaritan, in which a man is robbed, beaten, and left for dead. Some members of society see the man and pass him by, but a despised, lowly Samaritan takes him to an inn and pays the innkeeper to take care of him. The teacher then asked her class, “If you saw a person lying on the roadside all wounded and bleeding, what would you do?” A little girl answered, “I think I’d throw up.”
• In the Talmud appears the story of a King whose subjects came to offer him any gifts he might choose. The King replied that he already had possession of a kingdom, so ordinary gifts would be useless to him. However, he added, “If you would show love for me, attend to my words. I have children, and I cherish them dearly. If you would show your love for me, then go forth and serve my children.”
• During World War II, Germaine Belinne and Liliane Gaffney (who are mother and daughter) rescued over 30 Jews by hiding them or giving them false papers. Once, they hid a small Jewish boy named Willie. He was born in 1943, but because of the war, he wasn’t circumcised until 1946. After his circumcision, he pulled his pants down in front of Liliane and said, “Liliane, look! Isn’t it pretty now?”
• Will, the young son of Walter and Jamie Tevis, wanted to wear sneakers to church, but his mother told him that sneakers were not appropriate for church. When they went to church, two people sitting in the pew in front of them were wearing sneakers. Will pointed to the sneakers and said, “See.”
• Taking her young pupils to church, a Sister urged them to be quiet, saying, “Try to be so quiet that even Jesus will be surprised we’re coming.” The children were quiet and even walked on tippy-toes, but when they entered the church, one of the children shouted, “Surprise!”
• When the Dalai Lama was a child, he was fascinated by clocks and often took them apart in an attempt to discover how they worked. The few Tibetans who had clocks quickly learned to hide them when the Dalai Lama was near.
• According to the Irish mother of 1976 Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Corrigan, a baby smiles for the first time because it sees angels.
Christmas
• Although usually joyous, Christmas can be a stressful time. In Philadelphia, the Old First Reformed Church, United Church of Christ, always has a Christmas crèche (a representation of the Christmas story with Joseph, Mary, and the baby Jesus lying in a manger) with live animals. One year, the crèche featured a couple of kids (baby goats). The kids were a big attraction, as they were lively and would sometimes climb up on the back of the cow and walk around. One night, however, they wrecked the crèche—the mannequins representing Joseph and Mary were toppled over, and some of the mannequins representing the shepherds even had their heads knocked off. The pastor of the church, Geneva M. Butz, surveyed the wreckage, then told a passerby, “Isn’t this how many of us feel on Christmas morning?”
• Sculptor Louise Nevelson once saw a patch of very bright yellow in a snowstorm. Intrigued, she followed the yellow, which turned out to be a shoeshine box. Impressed by the brightness of the shoeshine box, she offered to buy it from the elderly man who was carrying it, but the man declined, offering instead to show her “the most beautiful shoeshine box in the world.” Ms. Nevelson went with the man, who showed her a shoeshine box that he had created and decorated with flowers, beads, costume jewelry, buckles, bells, and even pretty doorknobs. She was dazzled by it, and so she took the man and his homemade shoeshine box to the Museum of Modern Art. Officials there were also dazzled by the work of art, and they displayed it as a Christmas exhibit in the museum lobby.
• Enrico Caruso enjoyed giving gifts. One day, Aimé Gerber, paymaster of the Metropolitan Opera Association, left a prized pair of cuff links on his desk. Unfortunately, they turned up missing. Fortunately, a few days later, on Christmas Eve, Mr. Caruso brought him two packages. In one package were the missing cuff links. In the other was a matching stickpin. Mr. Caruso explained, “I want to make sure I get the pattern right, so I swipe cuffs and all while you were away, to show to the jeweler!”
• In the old West, a man named Uncle Smokey Brown was having some Christmas fun and decided that he wanted to be hitched to a one-horse buggy. After inviting a few friends to ride in the buggy, he pulled it gently for a while, but then he ran away with it, smashing it against the corner of the court house, capsizing it, and dumping his friends on the ground. He paid the damages for the buggy, but explained that it was his first time being hitched to a buggy and so of course he was skittish.
• During the holiday season, the American Civil Liberties Union tends to make itself unpopular by insisting on a separation of church and state in such things as Christmas decorations. At a time when the ACLU was insisting on the removal of a large star at the top of the Texas state capitol, governor Ann Richards said, “Oh, I’d hate to see that happen. This could be the only time we’ll ever have to get three wise men in that building.”
• During a children’s Christmas pageant, a small Joseph carrying a staff led the way down the center aisle of the church. Suddenly, the young Joseph stopped and used the staff to whack one of the parishioners on the head, then he continued down the aisle. Afterward, his horrified mother asked him why he had used the staff to hit the man. The young Joseph replied, “He was making funny faces at me.”
• In Vienna, opera singer Leo Slezak’s wife once was excited to see a piece of circa 1740 French rococo vitrine in a store window. Her husband told her to go ahead and buy it, but she worried that it was too expensive. Soon afterward, the piece disappeared from the shop window. That Christmas, she received the piece as a gift—Mr. Slezak had purchased it the day after she had mentioned it to him.
• Opera singer Leo Slezak’s wife received money each month to pay for the household accounts. Whenever Christmas or a birthday rolled around, Mr. Slezak would have his son steal her moneybox and its key and take them to him. He would put extra cash in the moneybox, then have his son return the moneybox and key to their proper places.
• In the family of Quaker humorist Tom Mullen, as part of the Christmas tradition the youngest child opened her presents first. The youngest child was Ruthie, who was not as materialistic as her siblings. For Ruthie a great part of the pleasure of Christmas lay in making her siblings wait a long time to open their presents.
• During the Christmas season of 1889, Jane Addams discovered the seriousness of child labor when several little girls refused the candy she offered them. The little girls explained that they worked in a candy factory from 7 a.m. until 9 p.m., and they “could not bear the sight” of candy.
• On December 20, before the 1998 Nagano Olympic Games, the Canadian women’s hockey team lost 3-0 to the American team at the Three Nations Cup. Canadian coach Shannon Miller was so angry that she commanded her players not to drink alcohol during the Christmas holiday.
• In the 1940s, African-American singer Marian Anderson threw a big Christmas party where she bought dolls for all the girls and footballs for all the boys. She stored all of the leftover toys in the basement of her nephew James DePreist, so he never ran out of footballs.
• Bass Fyodor Chaliapin and tenor Beniamino Gigli became friends during an engagement in Vienna, where they often ate risotto in an Italian restaurant. Thereafter, they sent each other Christmas cards signed “Risotto.”
• The family of Quaker humorist Tom Mullen had a Christmas tradition of hanging a stocking and wrapping gifts (rubber bones and dog biscuits) for their pet dog, a mutt named Terry.
• When Ohio sportscaster Jimmy Crum was getting his start in radio in the early 1940s, he used to frequently play “The Christmas Song” by Nat King Cole during the summer.
• One Christmas, writer Donald Ogden Stewart gave his wife an all-expenses paid vacation in a maternity ward, to be used the following September 25.
• Deaf children sometimes have a difficult time communicating with Santa Claus—his bushy beard and moustache can make it impossible to lip read.
Church
• One way to protest segregationist businesses is to stop spending your money there. When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. organized a boycott of the Montgomery, Alabama, bus company, people started walking. For those people who had to go long distances, car pools sprang up. Donations flowed in to the boycott movement, and Dr. King used the money to buy several station wagons to use for car-pooling—because of the righteousness of the boycott movement, these station wagons became known as “rolling churches.” When the bus company had been hurt in the pocketbook long enough, it ceased to segregate. Riding on the first desegregated bus together were Dr. King, Ralph David Abernathy, E.D. Nixon, and white minister Reverend Glenn Smiley.
• A. Monroe Aurand, Jr., used to attend an inter-denominational church meeting, where members of the Reformed church were asked to stand, then sit, and then the members of the Lutheran church were asked to stand. The chair of the meeting asked Mr. Aurand why he had stood up both times. Mr. Aurand said that he had stood up the first time because he had been born and raised in the Reformed church, and he had stood up the second time because after he had gotten married he had started to attend the nearest church and had become a Lutheran. The chair replied, “I guess it’s OK. I always had a hunch that one had to be reformed before he could become a Lutheran.”
• Mexican artist Diego Rivera hardly ever went to church when he was a child. One day, he attended a church service with an aunt, where he saw people praying before statues. Not realizing that the statues were symbols, young Diego thought that the people believed that the statues themselves had power. He grew very angry, and he ran to the altar, then he started shouting, telling the worshippers that they were stupid. Several worshippers thought that he was possessed by the devil; eventually, his aunt was able to get Diego out of the church. (Much later, as an adult, Mr. Rivera announced that he was a Catholic.)
• Ludwig Bemelmans, author/illustrator of the Madeline series of children’s books, had an Uncle Joseph who was a priest. Very few things upset him, but late arrivals to church services did. At the end of services, when Uncle Joseph walked down the aisle and blessed worshippers with holy water, he used to take a big dip of water and douse anyone who had come to services late.
• For a long time Russian ice skater Ekaterina Gordeeva was afraid of churches, even while visiting Western countries, because while she was growing up, to believe in God was illegal. (Despite the law, many families hung a religious icon on a wall at home—but in a room where ordinary visitors were not admitted.)
Conversions
• According to the Quakers, speaking in unprogrammed meeting is not something that can be planned; instead, it is a matter of divine inspiration. At least once, remaining silent resulted in a convert. Richard Jordan was a renowned Quaker preacher. Living near him was William Williams, who wanted to hear Mr. Jordan speak. He attended several First-day meetings, but Mr. Jordan remained silent. Thinking that perhaps Mr. Jordan spoke only during weekday meetings, Mr. Williams attended several weekday meetings, but again Mr. Jordan remained silent. However, the meetings—even though Mr. Jordan remained silent—had an effect on Mr. Williams, and he became a Quaker. Only then did the Holy Spirit again move Mr. Jordan to speak during meetings.
• In 18th-century Germany, Suss Oppenheimer, the finance minister of the Duke of Württemberg, was sentenced to death after false accusations were made against him. He was told that he could save his life if he converted to Christianity, but although he was not an observant Jew, he replied, “I am a Jew and I will remain a Jew. I would not become a Christian even if I could become an emperor. Changing one’s religion is a matter for consideration by a free man; it is an evil thing for a prisoner.” He died while speaking the words of the Sh’ma.
Courage
• The first three Muslims honored by Israel for risking their lives to save the lives of Jews during the Holocaust were Mustafa Hardaga; his wife, Zayneda; and his father-in-law, Ahmed Sadik. In 1941, the Nazi army attacked Yugoslavia. Mr. Hardaga was a merchant in Sarajevo, and one of his friends was a Jewish factory owner named Yosef Kabilio. The Germans destroyed the apartment building where Mr. Kabilio and his family lived, so Mr. Hardaga invited the Kabilios to move into his house with him and his family. He kept them there, safe from the Nazis, until they were able to move into the Italian-controlled part of Yugoslavia, which was safer. Meanwhile, Mr. Sadik was doing the same thing for the Papo family, who were friends of the Kabilios. This kind of heroism was dangerous, for the Nazis killed people who helped the Jews. Mr. Sadik himself died in a concentration camp because he had been found guilty of helping Jews. When Sarajevo was torn apart by war in 1994, the Muslims were endangered, and the Israeli government brought Mrs. Hardaga, by then a widow, to safety in Israel.
• Muhammad Ali had courage out of the ring as well as in. After Mr. Ali converted to Islam, a fight promoter said that Mr. Ali would have to publicly renounce his faith or he would not be allowed to fight. Mr. Ali absolutely refused to do this, and the promoter was forced to back down.
Deafness
• The Englishman Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892), a Baptist preacher, was a wit. Once, an irate woman cornered him and gave him a tongue-lashing, but he merely smiled and said, “Yes, thank you; I am quite well. I hope you are the same.” The woman continued to tongue-lash him, and this time Mr. Spurgeon said, “Yes, it does look rather as if it is going to rain; I think I had better be getting on.” Deceived by Mr. Spurgeon’s pretending to be deaf, the woman finally gave up and left him in peace, saying, “Bless the man! He’s as deaf as a post; what’s the use storming at him?”