>there's a good practical question for chuck, come to think of it. i
>know how i try to do it, but i wonder how he would do it. or anyone
>else, for that matter.
reversing the order, Since I've been involved in various groups, I know that Chuck's worked with and does work with religious people. It is inevitable. And Chuck confirmed this offlist: he works with religious people at infoshop and has always worked with them and will continue to work with them.
I pointed out to him, offlist, and what I'd wanted to point out on list, that politician in the "Straw in the Wind" post from Marvin Gandall? Did you read the last line:
"If doing what's right means I don't return to Congress, then it's God's will," he says. "And God knows my heart."
So, one o' them thar dead guy on a stick worshippers, full of despair :), is our new hero of the moment. And, who knows? he may actually do a good deal to win certain people over. I have a lot of searingly critical thoughts about the shock expressed recently that the tide is turning --but I know I'm a little too peeved about it to bother writing about it. My peeve is mostly from disappointment in people I think should know better.
The problem with Chuck is that he's interpreting these discussions as arguments for conceding ground to the religious right or that we should moderate 'our' anti(fundamentalist)religious activism. He's wrong, of course, that this is what anyone's doing. Although, from Michael Pollak's perspective, it appears that his is, whether directed so or not, an argument against being vocally critical of fundamentalists (wrong word, but shorthand) religions because then the progressives thing you're talking about them. Apparently, any discussion of what some of us might really think about religious belief or spirituality is going to make the religious and spiritual hide under a rock and move to the right or, at least, support the right. OR. like my students, they'll be offended if you simply discuss religiosity and spirituality from a social scientific point of view.
That's where I get off the bus. When I'm pissy, I think: grow the fuck up. If your attachment to your own belief system is so weak you can't bear another view, that you feel that the expression of these views is an attack on you or your religion, then maybe there's something else going on here. For, in my estimation, the study of religion, the careful listening to what people are saying, etc. _is_ taking it seriously -- not necessarily as belief, but as social process. But, whatever.
>so how DO we organize
>ambivalent christians on an issue like gay marriage or gay rights
>generally?
I've come across some stuff on the 'net and spoken to my (not)MIL enough to learn that when it comes to proselytizing and testifying, they sit around and think, "How do we win over your son, who's living in sin with his gf? Do you talk about the 'end times' and how they won't be in god's good graces if they don't get married? Do we talk about all the economic and political crises in our society and show them how marriage gives you the fortitude and companionship needed to face them?" Which are things my (not) MIL, a devout Mormon, raises in our phone conversations.
I didn't look in the archives, but I posted a link here to a page about how to win over people with nose rings and purple hair.
Now, I don't know about you, but I'm not convinced by these approaches. In fact, I feel patronized.
We don't have to organize them. We create viable left organizations, we do what we can to bring issues to the forefront, we put our positions out there, we engage in agitation here 'n' there, we write books and articles and stand on street corners engaging others in arguments. Whatever. But what we do is focus on building a viable left organizational and ideational infrastructure.
When people come around, they'll have somewhere to go. If we don't, they'll have nowhere to go --except to the groups who've been doing this work. Reaching out to them is, like, sooooooooooo unnecessary. The ones who want to advance their views, will do so. The middle, by its very definition, isn't much interested in getting involved in any kind of politics anyway -- not right now at least.
And there's something else Carrol has said that's quite true. People will be won over by seeing people working together, building community and solidarity, and exemplifying what it means to be moral and have a sense of meaning in purpose in your life. I have a lot more to say about that, but I've got work to do.
this is probably incoherent. I'm not quite awake yet... ha.
Kelley
"Finish your beer. There are sober kids in India."
-- rwmartin