[lbo-talk] RE: angst fest

[joanna bujes]

Kelley writes:
"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."

Oh, I totally agree, religious space is the last social space left in the U.S.; it's the last form of "community" offered/available. But, as you note in the last paragraph, the move to religious grouplets is inadequate to the problem. It solves neither the religious problem (which cannot be solved through the creation of a bubble of a safe heaven, through escape from the real) nor does it solve the social problem, which must be solved in social terms and solved universally.

Joanna