<quote> Do not imply that accepting Christ means accepting your culture. If your friend burns incense and has 19 earrings, so be it. Maybe churches would look less dour if more people sported 19 earrings."
heh. heeeeeeHOOOOOOOO! <http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2000/012/12.107.html>
As the article noted in the section on religion, most folks use religion as a way to become involved in their communities, as an antidote to alienation and disconnection. most people also aren't really interested in imposing their morality on others, judging others harshly, etc. etc. Indeed, their commitment to the metaphysical claims made by the representatives of whatever church they attend aren't always doctrines with which they agree.
A small, vocal minority are interested in imposing beliefs, however, but these tend to be folks who'd be like that _anyway_. They tend to be very active, making sure that the US remains a religious society against the forces of secularism. They view themselves as an embattled minority, fighting against a dominant liberalism that they believe cultivates many misplaced stereotypes about them. For these more active believers, the charge of Anti-Christian Bigotry is becoming a frequent rallying cry. The politics of victimization.
Also, as the article noted, there are so many different kinds of protestantism and increasing numbers of "jiss christian" strands that explicitly reject doctrinaire, institutionalized religion. They are members of this particular community of faith and do not necessarily identify with the tenets espoused by the church next door. They're just another church under a "big tent" called christianity. (As a northerner, this confused the hell out of me. Someone would say, "I'm christian" and I'd say, "Baptist, Episcopalian, Methodist, Presbyterian... ?" They'd smile and say, "Jiss Christian. Bless yo' heart."
I suspect Liza's drunken salesman was not especially representative of Christians if he was aggressively trying to convert her. very few people I meet in the South are actually interested in trying to convert my heathen ways. They may react with a kind of parochial shock that I dare say shit in the classroom or that my colleague teaching human sexuality says vagina without blushing. However, they rarely think that it is their place to convert me. Conversion in many "jiss christian" communities of faith is something that is understood as a very individual process. It is something one comes to from the trials and tribulations of life experience. Faith is demonstrated by "earning" it via tests of one's faith and commitment, not because other people hounded you until you signed up to be a member of First Christian Academy.
Where you do see their influence, then, is actually in their voluntarism, community involvement, political activities, and as members of the business community, etc. Here, the opportunities to "witness" manifest themselves in a way that reminds me of what Carrol advocates the left should do.
They see themselves as "witnesses" to Christian faith. The public sphere becomes an opportunity to convert in a far more subtle way. In the public sphere, christians go about their business and, as they do, they're supposed to demonstrate how their _personal_ relationship to jesus changed their life. Those who actively seek to witness for christ, do as exemplars of christian faith who frequently attribute their business, political and personal successes to their relationship with christ, their strength through times of personal trouble as part of their sometimes rocky relationship with jesus, etc. etc. For most quiet christians, witnessing simply by being good and kind, tolerant, or even just successful at business or work is witnessing enough. Other sects are a little more aggressive about it, but I'd hesitate to say that they make up the bulk of christians with whome I interact.
Joanna's concerns are misplaced, too. The bulk of religious USers participate in communities of faith primarily as communities: as one of the only places where they can establish friendships, cultivate business networks, expand lifestyle interests, meet partners, etc. These communities of faith often appeal explicitly to people who are seeking out community, to people who feel overwhelmed by the struggles of ordinary life, to people who are lonely, depressed, unmoored from their birth families, friends, and disappointed with the trajectories of their lives in general.
The sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world.....
So, while institution is the correct sociological word, in common parlance the word institution tends to refer to be thought of as something more organized. It's not quite as organized as all that. Indeed, it's much more subtle and, I think, insidious because they're appealing to the energies the left normally appeals to! They offer folks what they need--an antidote to alienation--and a sense of belonging to something and sense of efficacy even if only a sense of efficacy within one's rather small community of faith, family, friends, neighborhood.
Kelley
At 10:08 AM 11/11/03 -0500, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>The wide spread of the US-brand of religiosity attest to the profoundly
>fascist nature of the US society. That does not mean that the majority
>of US-ers are fascist - perhaps most of them are not (but neither were
>the Germans or the Italians) - but that fascist ideology has an appeal
>to a sufficiently large segment of the population to create the
>distinctive flavour that many Europeans find so repulsive. Europeans
>experienced fascism first hand and thus easily recognize it when they
>see it.
>
>In sum, it is not the religiosity (meaning: metaphysics sum
>spirituality) that is so repulsive about the US, but the distinctively
>fascist flavour of the US society and politics cre