>
> In short, what we can learn from organized religion, above all, is not
> any ideological tricks or political gimmicks or aesthetic props but
> the ABC of organizing, which we secular leftists have forgotten, or
> (more likely) which we remember but, multiply fragmented as we are, do
> not have resources to put into practice.
>
I'm all for stealing effective organizing practices from a variety of
groups, but the underlying assumption here is important to
analyze--viz., effective organizing principles can be yanked from the
social context in which they developed and be applied easily in new
social contexts. This is a strangely technocratic view: "Mechanism X
works in situation Y, so we can use it everywhere." I think it's
important to emphasize that effective organizing practices and
principles are socially contingent. The techniques used by religious
groups may or may not translate to secular organizing, because the
effectiveness of those religion-based tactics are in part determined by
the fact that they rely on religious beliefs and practices.
Miles