The Unrequited Love of Automobiles

Coventry Cathedral 1996 

From time to time I recall the report of a worship service in Coventry Cathedral which took place in 1996 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the automobile. Officials from car manufacturers were in attendance but they must have felt uncomfortable because the provost of the cathedral offered up a confession asking God's forgiveness for the "environmental pollution from exhaust fumes, the relentless encroachment of new roads into our countryside and the appalling toll of death and injury" with the words 

The wheels had already begun to fly off at the start of the service when smoke from the 1897 Coventry Daimler driven down the aisle to launch proceedings all but choked the car worshippers.

Then the 1,000 attendees were then shocked by a naked woman protestor, a la the legendary Lady Godiva, who took to the pulpit to declare "In the spirit of Lady Godiva, I am here to mourn the death of my mother and the 17 million people killed directly by the motor car and to remember the mothers who have lost their children, the orphaned children, our brothers, sisters, fathers and friends. Mother Earth forgive us."

I thought of this fiasco and flirtation with idolatry when I saw Nathan Heller's New Yorker piece with the title Was the Automotive Era a Terrible Mistake? For a century, we’ve loved our cars. They haven’t loved us back.

Heller explores what he describes as the North American "fetishism" of cars, a post-war obsession with the automobile which seems to be running out of gas with Millennials. Getting a driver's license is no longer the the rite of passage for teens it once was. Still, Heller observes: 

It is odd, then, that we still look to the mid-century for evidence that cars proved their necessity and worth. Tell someone that you cannot drive, and they respond as if you had confessed an intimate eccentricity, like needing to be walked on with high heels before bed. “Re-e-eally! ” the reply goes. “How do you . . . ?” The answer is planes, trains, buses, ferries, cabs, bikes, feet, and the occasional shared ride: almost anywhere in the world can be reached this way for less than the amortized cost of a car and its expenses.

We were just forced into purchasing a new vehicle after our tried-and-true Santa Fe was written-off in an accident. We had hoped to wait a few more years to buy one of the emerging hybrid or electric vehicles. I figure that we should look on any internal combustion engine vehicle as a gas-guzzler, but the choices for alternatives are still limited. Meanwhile we'll also cycle as much as possible, and use "shank's mare."

What do you think. Are automobiles a blessing from God or a necessary evil? Has our automobile idolatry kept us from developing alternative forms of transportation? And What Would Jesus Drive?