> alternative political party. When no such party is in
> view, campaigns like Jackson's merit support.
Right. If the situation seems hopeless, the belief that God's got your ass merits support.
Charles B posted something here from Abdul Alkalimat (Gerald McWhorter); perhaps Charles can convince Abdul to share some of his research (published in Black Scholar) into that other black petit bourgeois hero of the left--Harold Washington.
> For criticism of religion
> to be illuminating, it must grapple with the true item in
> all its profundity, and you've missed it by a country mile.
Some of the true items are our mortality and the contigent nature of human life--the ever present power of chance to disrupt our lives in meaningless ways. Religion speaks to these ineradicable elements of the human condition. And of course we must grapple with them.
In a volume ed by THomas Childers and Jane Kaplan on Nazism, there is a profound analysis by Detlev Peukert on the attempt by Nazi social science to accomplish what religion no longer could do-- to secure immortality through the eugenic deliverance of an unblemished German race. It's a profound analysis of the eschatalogical functions social science can play. To grapple with religion requires us to understand the religious structure of our conception of politics and social science. I think this is why James F reminded us that the critique of religion is the beginning of all criticism.
Regarding Blacks for Jesus, of those Black Brooklynites who voted for the death penalty in a recent case, I would imagine many were Christian. The one interviewed on television surely sounded like her justification derived from that fount of all rational knowledge--the Bible.
best, rakesh