Concordat vs. Resistance (was Re: religious crackpots in public life)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>kenneth.mackendrick at utoronto.ca wrote:
>
> >Something that hasn't much been mentioned, is the rise in 
>fundamentalism that
> >coincides with the rise in feminism. Fundamentalism wasn't an 
>issue in the US
> >until the beginning of this century... which, if I'm not mistaken, is pretty
> >close to the rising political activity of the suffragettes.
>
>But feminism is a global phenomenon, while what we are concerned with is the
>*special* place of religion, particularly fundamentalist religion, 
>in the United
>States *in contrast* to Europe in particular.
>So the question becomes "Why, in the United States in particular, did the
>negative response to the women's movement take religious form?" Also, remember
>that the temperance and women's movements in the u.s. were interlinked.
>
>Carrol

One of the reasons why Communism, despite the U.S.-led attacks on the 
Reds, survived better, for instance, in Italy than in the U.S. is 
that Italian Communists emerged out of the World War II with an aura 
of Partisan Resistance (whereas the American Party didn't have the 
same aura).  On the other hand, the Catholic Church became tarnished 
with the muck of Collaboration in the eyes of many intellectuals and 
working-class people.  This is just one example, but I think that 
similar stories can be told about various faiths' responses to 
fascism in contrast to secular communists', anarchists', and other 
left-wingers' resistance against it in Europe.

Yoshie