"In effect they have destroyed a religious way of life. So in this sense they are a wholly modern social phenomenon."
If you mean Xian fundamentalists are mainly interested in secular power, you could be right. However, that seems true of Xianity and Judaism for most of their history. If you mean fundamentalism substitutes group rituals for true belief, that also is true of earlier religions. And if you mean fundamentalists are more interested in condemning non-believers than in examining themselves, well, that goes back a long way too.
BobW --- cgrimes at rawbw.com wrote:
> As I wrote before I lament the loss of the sacred
> and it is one of the
> things I dislike about xtian culture in the U.S....
> John Thornton
>
> ---------
>
> I would go further and say fundamentalist
> Christianity has no concept
> of the sacred at all.
>
> Back some time ago, I argued with Chip Berlet over
> whether or not
> fundamentalism was a completely modern impulse or
> was a
> resuscitation. I maintained it was an attempt to
> regain a lost way of
> life and was therefore a resuscitation. Now, I am
> arguing my way over
> to Chip's position. I was wrong and this loss of the
> sacred is a core
> part of that argument.
>
> Even though I am a stone cold atheist, I do have a
> concept of what is
> sacred and Christian fundamentalists are from that
> perspective,
> completely profane. I would say their demeanor and
> almost everything
> about them is blasphemous. In effect they have
> destroyed a religious
> way of life. So in this sense they are a wholly
> modern social
> phenomenon. My mistake in thinking they were
> attempting to resurrect a
> religious life, was to assume they understood what
> such a life was,
> when it now seems to me, they couldn't possibly
> conceive such a
> life. There is something about the fundamentalist's
> apparently
> overwhelming need to dictate and proselytize that is
> entirely
> antithetical to what I consider a religious life. So
> in this sense
> then the Israeli government's presumption to
> represent Judaism, or the
> Islamic militant's jihad against the West, and our
> own home grown
> nasties, the Christian right, strike me as entirely
> secular as in
> devoid of any understanding of the sacred. They all
> give religious
> people a bad name.
>
> Here is a thought experiment. Imagine walking into a
> bright new
> fundamentalist mega-church say in Houston or Los
> Angeles and sitting
> in a seat when the whole place was completely empty.
> I can't imagine
> offering a prayer in such a place. It would be an
> absurd gesture,
> mocked by say the bright green carpet, the
> absolutely white bare walls
> and echoing acoustics of a completely barren
> architecture. As a
> practical matter it would impossible to even get
> into one of these
> places when it was empty, since I am certain they
> are all well guarded
> with rent-a-cops who would no doubt hauled my ass
> off to the precinct
> jail without a second thought.
>
> Now imagine walking into a old spanish colonial
> church in Mexico, cool
> and dark against the overwhelming heat and light of
> mid-day. I imagine
> my sight slowly getting used to the dark and seeing
> the paintings on
> the walls, the icons in the stain glass tinted
> gloom, the votive
> candles in their stands, or flickering in their
> glass cups, maybe one
> or two old women with scarfs inside silently
> kneeling in the old
> fashioned way with their rosaries. Would a prayer be
> a mockery in such
> a place? I don't think so. I might even feel
> compelled to offer one
> out of respect, despite my complete lack of belief.
>
> I know exactly why there is such an impulse. It
> turns on the concept
> of architectural presence which was refined to a
> high art in
> Renaissance and the Baroque, when a few decades
> later the most famous
> of spanish colonial churches were built in Mexico. A
> very similar
> architectural style grew up in Sicily. And in the
> oldest centers of
> religious life in the Middle East, South Asia, China
> and Japan there
> are related architectural spaces, places of great
> devotion to the
> sacred that evoke related thoughts. Malraux
> discusses these kinds of
> ideas at length in The Metamorphosis of the Gods.
>
> In any event, I am not sure you can do art at all
> without some sense
> for these things and how they are orchestrated to
> create a concept of
> the sacred. That in its most comprehensive sense was
> in my view almost
> the entirety of the craft of art. In short, you
> don't need symbols or
> icons to enter this realm. All you need is a sense
> of space and its
> ability to sculpt the mind.
>
> CG
>
>
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