My question is not whether a billion pentecostals convinces you that their religion is good. My question is whether the supernova growth of renewalist christianity in the world outside the US moves you to reconsider your claim that religion is primarily a celebration of idiocy by hicks in the US, and primarily a repository of wise traditional folkways in the global south. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. The most popular man in Kenya today is a black southern baptist preacher from the US, TD Jakes. His revivals there mobilize crowds of literally millions, that dwarf anything any political rally has drawn since decolonization. Is he a wise sage? Or a dullard motivated by his fear of the superior 'knowledge system' of urbane intellectuals such as we?
>My only concern is the material outcome of these
>activities,
I agree with you very much; I also am only interested in the material and political outcomes of evangelical religion, not by theology or spirituality. I'm an atheist too.
But let me ask you a question: what is the material outcome of the far-right content of much of US politics today? Does the profound estratengement of the left from the lives of ordinary working-class people enable this tilt? And given that that right-wing tilt is demonstrably connected to the christian religion of approximately half of the United States' population, do we help solve that estrangement by asserting that Christians are christians because they hate how much smarter we urban intellectuals are than them? Leaving aside my contention that your assertion is wrong on its face, and arguably a bit self-centered and arrogant, the real question is: will that attitude help us rebuild a mass left?
What attitude towards religion will help us rebuild a mass left in the exurbs where megachurches are the only oasis of civil-society in a social desert? In deindustrialized small towns where neighborhood churches are a rare bulwark of mutual aid and civil cohesiveness in a devastated landscape? In ghetto inner city streets where storefront charismatic churches marshall greater strength than the NAACP or neighborhood organizations? In Appallacian towns where holy roller churches have always been the center of the community?
I do not know. My own opinions are formed primarily by working with health care workers who are unionizing and fighting the class struggle in their hospitals and nursing homes, who represent the full variety of ideology and personality to be found out there in america, and include many, many christians of all stripes.
Regardless of how foolish and superstitious it seems to you or I, evangelical religion is one of the biggest facts on the ground in america today, and it ain't going away. While there are some demographics signs that the boom in bible-believing christianity may wane in decades to come, and in the past sometimes fundamentalist christianity has receeded from public politics (like from 1926-1940s), if we are in the business of changing the world by helping bring about mass movements, we are going to have to grapple with lots of normal working people worshiping their jesus.
You might respond to this fact by asserting an angry atheism intended to confront and offend (like chuck0 advocates). This has been productive at changing the terms of debates at times, most notably by the first generation of ACT UP. But you seem more of a pragmatist and realist than Chuck, Woj (as act up is, as well). So are you sure you stand by your opinion that christians are christians not because they love their god but because they fear our superior urban intellectual brains? Or is there a more informed and constructive attitude to religion out there we as a left can come up with, that doesn't equate to 'surrendering to superstition'? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20061108/ecda0b9d/attachment.htm>