Carrol,
What does it mean, to relate to religious people?
Jo
At 16:01 08-07-00 -0500, you wrote:
>
>
>Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>>
>> Is that good or bad? Do secular leftists make a big mistake by not
>> taking religion more seriously?
>
>Two points have also been made over and over and over and over and over
>and over and no one ever seems to acknowledge them.
>
>1. Secular leftists do and always have taken religion very seriously
>indeed -- and have always succeeded in relating to religious people. This
>has been my personal experience -- and it has been the personal
>experience of every activist I have ever talked to.
>
>2. This is a matter of practice, and is endlessly reposed and resolved
>in practice. There is neither any need to theorize it nor is it possible
>to. Working with religious people is like kneading bread -- one must
>learn it in one's fingertips as it were. Theory doesn't help.
>
>I'm neither going to teach anyone on LBO how to relate to religious
>people in practice nor am I going to learn anything from anyone on LBO on
>that point. Whenever I find a leftist worrying about how to relate to
>religious people, or worrying about how other leftists might relate to
>them, I assume I am talking to someone whose experience does not extend
>beyond fellow leftists. This is a problem that exists only in people's
>heads, not in actuality, and it is precisely in people's heads that it
>cannot be either solved or even formulated accurately.
>
>Carrol
>
www.overlookhouse.com