> Chip Berlet wrote:
>
> It focuses on a narrow
> band of predominantly White fundamentalist Christian
> theology,
>
But it doesn't. Ashcroft and his kind are not all of Christianity. To
quote both my sentences, rather than just the second one to which you
take exception:
> What you cite is the feminine masochist side of
> Christianity. One of the more elementary clinical insights is that when you
> see M, all you have to do is dig a little deeper and S is there somewhere,
> maybe a bit hidden, maybe not so much. It's helpful to recognize Christian
> faith as an ideologized manifestation of sado-masochistic character
> structure, organized along lines of gender.
>
Ashcroft and his "predominantly White fundamentalist Christian" types overtly show only one side of the sado-masochistic character structure. (Note that I am using these terms not to imply clinically describable psychopathology, but socially formed character.). I made this clear in the sentence that follows, where I singled them out as overtly predominant masculine sadists with their feminine masochism less overt, and referred to their sadistic side --
> It'll be a while before these
> guys' sadistic impulses give out.
>
Sado-masochism is a very broad concept that includes much of the
subjective experience of all of us living in capitalist society. To
reiterate, sometimes one aspect is clearly visible, sometimes the other.
This distinction should have been clear.
As you say, Christianity is very broad and diverse and certainly includes the manifestations -- to us on the left, more pleasing -- that you mention. These usually are overtly feminine masochist and tend to involve identification with the victim, often with the self as victim. There is nothing inherently wrong with this. Over the generations, as you pointed out, many democratic struggles have mobilized around feminine masochist identifications. Some others have mobilized around masculine sadistic ones.
At the same time, it is a serious question whether or not political struggles with this unconscious psychological basis can advance democratic and socialist values in the future in the same way as in the past. Many current controversies on the left, as it seems to me, are attempts to address this question on a conscious, ideational level when more attention to the sado-masochistic implications of gender and politics would help us to more clarity. Lynn Chancer's SADOMASOCHISM is a first effort that deserves more attention.
Carrol asks:
> This, like most psychological "explanations," simply won't do. It is
> just a disguised form of the Christian Myth of original sin. Where did
> that ambivalence come from?
>
A legitimate question. Sado-masochism is not a merely psychological explanation, or if it is, it simply abstracts from the social. One of the Frankfurt School's less recognized achievements is in the early studies of authoritarianism, where they analyzed such ambivalences in the Central Europe of their time, and showed the links to changing family structures among proletarianizing bourgeois and others, resulting changes in family structure and relationships, derivative changes in ego development, and much more. Adapting this kind of analysis to the United States, where Christianity is even more prevalent, can clarify many issues.
Doug comments ironically,
> Humans are so transparent. You can tell exactly how they'll
> think from how they act, and how they act from...what was it Carrol?
> I forget now.
>
After all, Christianity rests on a mythological narrative of a family,
though a quite idiosyncratic one, with unclear paternity, and a deity
imagined in a familial rôle -- as a father. This distinguishes it from
many other historical ways of subjectively experiencing the world, and
also means that political/economic changes that affect family experience
will create conscious and unconscious conflicts in and around
Christianity.
(This is true of other religions too, and perhaps it would be better to broaden the religious category to include others that define the deity as masculine and paternal.)
Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema
>