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Stephen Shelton
Professor Morean
English 100
15 October 2014
Still a Faithful Nation

What happens after we die? This question may be one of the oldest questions in
human history and still we do not have an answer. Of course, religion can provide a
means of support to help understand what happens. But this question can never truly be
appreciated if a person does not have faith. There are three definitions of faith according
to Mark J. Zia, 1) Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not
seen. 2) Faith is the gift of God and Human act by which we completely submit our
intellect and will to God. 3) Faith is not only a gift from God, but also a human
act(Zia 18). In order to respond to The Christian paradox we must get to the root of
Catholic tradition, which he fails to do.
Faith is the most important aspect of Catholicism, without it you cannot believe
that the bible is true, the saints are worthless, and the battle between heaven and hell is
fake. According to Mary b. Ingram despite the weakness and the limitations of human
understanding, the tradition maintains strongly that the human mind is capable of
attaining truth (Ingram). Even though God has unlimited knowledge, Ingram believes
that with the help of faith and a strong desire to understand, we are able to come close to
understanding the question; what happens after we die? Zia states that there is one main
source of Public Revelation The Bible (Zia 23). The Bible, which is the principle of

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Catholic tradition, is important for outlining the belief and characteristics of the catholic
faith. After determining the role the Catholic faith plays in our society today we can
begin to talk about Bill McKibben.
Some of the points that Mckibben makes are very effective for the stance he
takes. For example, he says, the most violent rich nation on earth [U.S.], with a murder
rate four or five times that of our European peers(McKibben). Then he contrasts this
with how catholic the U.S. is. This point is very effective in comparing murder rates with
how Catholic Americans are. However, another point such as offerings to the poor has
inaccurate information. The Bible states, When you give to the needy, do not let your
left hand know what your right is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your
father who sees in secret will reward you(Mark 6:3-4). So by this alone can we
determine that statistics would not include the true Catholics who are humble and do
not share what money they give to the poor. The point of this paper is not to completely
rule out Bill McKibben because most of the information he provides is factual, however
when there is incorrect information one must correct it. McKibben also does a great job
of breaking up his paper into sections or themes.
Themes are prevalent all throughout McKibbens paper, but the main theme of his
essay is that even though 85 percent of us call ourselves Christian (McKibben),
America still has children who live in poverty, which apparently should not happen. He
also goes about citing statistics on our high murder rates, high prison populations, and our
rich nation so even though were 85 percent Christian, we should not have these statistics.
Another theme he emphasis is the theme of Hypocrisy, he talks about the disconnect
between belief and action(Mckibben). So while the Christians in America attend church

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and have an exuberant amount of wealth then why do we still have 18 percent of children
living in poverty. This come off as a hypocritical way of thinking, and is a great point
that Bill makes on current American society.
However, the themes he did not argue for well were the themes of our Morals
being skewed and his ignorance stance. For example, he says that 85 percent of
Americans are Christians, so how can we know which of the 85 percent have their morals
skewed it is not possible. Another theme Bill proclaims throughout his paper is that of
ignorance, but is Bill not being ignorant when he says despite Jesus strong declarations
against divorce, our marriages break up at a rate just over half (McKibben). While this is
an alarming percentage Bill does not know the whole story to the divorces that take place,
for example a mother of three could have been suffering from abuse, and had to get a
divorce does this make her any less Christian? The obvious answer is no, but what if the
situation is much more subtle. For example, The Dutch who are apparently godless have
a less divorce rate; well Bill McKibben is very ignorant because he does not understand
the customs and traditions that are practiced in Netherlands, such as womens rights
compared to in the U.S. While there are some flaws in this newsletter it still had valid
points that really makes you think about the catholic faith.
All throughout the Newsletter McKibben uses many statistics and Bible versus to
support his stance. However, being as ignorant as he is he fails to see the other side to
points that he makes, which is not how a good writer should be. A good writer should be
one who is able to look at both points of an argument; McKibben does not do this. Faith
is also an important part of the Christian faith, which McKibben does not touch on at all.
Faith allows us to understand the plan that God has for each and everyone of us, and

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looking into American society as a whole does little in accomplishing this for us. Despite
flaws, we are still a faithful nation.