He lives part of the year in this really interesting culture, some might say sub-culture, where most everybody in restaurants and bars, even, bows their heads before eating to say a prayer. They are very religious without talking about their faith preferring to live it out mostly in prayers in public and have that living be seen by others as a witness to the faith they don’t talk about and even a judgment on others who don’t bow before eating.

If they do talk, they talk about their loyalty to a political party not a religious faith, which dates back to Lincoln, but which Old Abe wouldn’t recognize today. They once stood for the Union but now stand for free markets even though most of them are blue-collar people who don’t like unions and are losing out to the one percent, who in their minds got that way because of God’s blessing, which will be their blessing, too, if they just stay loyal and do things like pray before eating in public.

To their credit, they, over the years, have been very productive, which is next to Godliness as is cleanliness, but now they value a time clock as evidence of doing their Godly duty whether anything really productive is accomplished or not, which seems kind of strange given their forebearers’ emphasis on productivity.

They really like individual salvation in Jesus Christ, mostly without Jesus and with a heavy emphasis on Christ because they have a ticket to heaven and only have to worry some about personal sins and not about salvation that transforms structures and systems to reflect the peaceful, just Realm of God that Jesus preached over and over and over.

They just don’t have a clue about that stuff which smacks of communism and socialism as they bless their Buffalo Wings and microbrew beer, which was recently removed from the list of forbidden things, because in light of the prosperity of surrounding seaside communities, God told them to advocate for because it would help make the area more prosperous, which is always God’s will for this interesting culture, which some might call a sub-culture.