Gore: creationism OK

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Fri Aug 27 13:00:32 PDT 1999


At 01:33 PM 8/27/99 -0400, Yoshie wrote:
>>In the US, howver, "US nationality" involves a lot of
>>>"undesirbales" -such as blacks, asians, eastern europeans, jews etc. which
>>>would have to be be included under the rubric of a "true American" had
>>>nationality been used as totalizing ideology. Consequently, religion, and
>>>more specifically christian identity which is a unique product of american
>>>brand of protestantism and exludes both non-christian religions (esp. jews)
>>>as well as roman catholics (hispanics, eastern europeans), not mention
>>>secular humanists (mostly while folks that also need to be excluded) plays
>>>the trick of defining "true Amerikans".
>>
>>Extremely provocative hypothesis, Wojtek. Do note that only we non
>>Christian Asians are left out since everyone else can claim to be part of
>>the great Judeo Christian tradition, such as it is. And I don't think we
>>can make such a clean split between American nationalism and Christianity;
>>they seem interpenetrated
>>Yours, Rakesh
>
>Asians in America are generally regarded as foreigners, regardless of
>immigration status, also regardless of whether or not they speak
>American-accented English. Yoshie
>

Yoshie, that's probably true, but excluding people from in-group based on their ethnicity alone would sound to obviously racist - and good christians want to avoid bad publicity. Do not also forget that christianity can be a vehicle for some 'foreign elements' - such as the moonies - to be included in the in-group of 'true americans' regardless of their immigrant-asian status.

Do not also forget the instituional aspect of american religion - which tends to be very parochial and local - in contrast to the universalistic ambitions of the roman catholic church. that combination of institutional localism and absence of overtly ethnic identity makes american religion an extremely useful tool for de facto fascist movements and groups without making them appear blatantly fascist and racist.

Again, it was easy for the germans to built a fascist movement on national identity alone because that automatically exluded all undesirables: "bolshevists" (russian nationality), jews, gypsies and later virtually every other european nationality they conquered (unless one opted to be "included as a volksdeutch - ie. demonstrated his "ethnic connection" to the german nation). You certainly agree that such an approach would be very difficult to implement in this country - because of its multinational character. religion does a much better job becaus it exludes many native-born american who are 'undesirable' and at the same time makes it easier to be a 'volksamerikanische' all that is needed is a 'spiritual conversion' to the right brand of the local religious cult (e.g. moonies).

wojtek



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