>The interesting thing about the "fundies," to me, is that there is a
>strong strain of popular or populist resistance and skepticism about
>ideas they feel are imposed on them by "foreign" intellectual
>authorities. For example, they feel they are competent to judge the
>validity of theories such as evolution, liberal Biblical criticism,
>and socialism -- and their judgment is of course decidedly negative.
>The rejection of "foreign" socialism is tied up with the whole
>resistance to immigration going back a century or more.
We call that "Hansonism" here. So you think that perhaps the "fundies" as you call them are partly a reactionary political movement, as much as a religious movement?
>Leftist fundamentalists and evangelicals like Jim Wallis may have a
>point that the U.S. left will have to bite the bullet and learn to
>speak to these folks in religious language, as he does, if it ever
>wants to reach them. I don't have the talent or the nerve to do
>this, but there are a few who are capable of it.
I suppose it depends whether that's the only language they speak. In my experience it isn't, Fundamentalist Christians aren't any more one-dimensional than the rest of us. The ones I know are environmentalists, into Elvis Presley music, body-building, as well as some bad stuff. I don't have any inclination to confront people personally about their religion (unless like the Jehova's Witnesses the do it to me first) but I'm not going to hide my opinions if it comes up either. That would be sheer hypocrisy.
>I belong to the school of thought that holds that "class
>consciousness" is not a particularly useful concept.
You're entitled to your point of view, but in the context of working towards socialism (which was the context I had in mind) this business of class is rather unavoidable. Socialism requires the abolition of class privileges, its hard to see how the people can do that unless they can recognise class privilege when they see it.
> Usually, it seems to me, "class consciousness" means "what *our*
>political party or grouplet thinks the working class *should* think."
Rubbish. It just means being conscious of class interests.
> I.e., it's something the "true consciousness" folks
Who are they?
> are trying to force on other people, for whose intelligence they
>really don't have much respect. Instead, I think that cultural
>phenomena like working class fundamentalist religion *is* a type of
>class consciousness which doesn't need to be rooted out of workers'
>minds; rather, they need to be taught to see the anti-capitalist
>implications of that very consciousness, which is what people like
>Wallis are trying to do. There have been Left fundies before, and
>there is no reason why there can't be more of them.
Well, Jesus and the early Christians were sort of utopian socialist I suppose. In that the socialism they preached took no account of the fact that the material conditions for socialism weren't present. You think I should try to explain to them where Jesus went wrong? (Lacked a materialist perspective.) I have tried one or two times, but they just look at me blankly. Is there some language in the Bible I could use to get the point across do you think? ("Render unto the working class what is the working class's", instead of "seize the means of production".)
>Probably a large part of the problem is that the mass media
>(especially in parts of the country outside the Northeast and some
>parts of the West Coast) are in the hands of reactionaries who
>aren't about to let Left fundamentalist/evangelical ideas reach very
>many eyes and ears, any more than they are hospitable to any other
>Left ideas. But there are probably other obstacles too, which those
>who are closer students of fundamentalism than I could point out.
I'm a little unclear about exactly what "Left fundamentalist/evangelical ideas" are myself.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas