At 01:14 PM 6/26/2008, Doug Henwood wrote:
>On Jun 26, 2008, at 1:03 PM, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>
> > Second, religion is a system of thought that provides certitude in
> > everyday life. But to fulfill this function, it must rests on
> > certain unquestionable assumptions and axioms that are accepted as
> > given and cannot be subject to any doubt or even discussion (you
> > should have gotten that from your Catholic education.) In European
> > religiosity, such foundations were provided by the institution of
> > church and its authorities (cf. the pope and his supposed
> > "infallibility" in the Catholic church) and scholars.
> >
> > However, given the populist and anti-intellectual nature of the
> > American society (much of which was refuges from persecution by
> > religious authorities in Europe) - such solution to the certitude
> > problem was not well received here. Consequently, Americans came
> > with a different solution to the certitude in their religion
> > problem - more compatible with their populism and anti-
> > intellectualism. It was fundamentalism - or literal common-sense
> > interpretation of the holy scripture. It may look laughable to any
> > educated person, especially of an European descent, but it plays
> > the same role as the religious scholarship, inquistion, and
> > ecclesiastical authority did in European religiosity - it is a
> > conventional "common sense" final authority that infuses certitude
> > to religious discourse.
>
>Except that the Pew study shows a considerable degree of flexibility,
>tolerance, even syncretism in a lot of American religious thinking
>today. What you say about white fundies is true, but they're a
>declining percentage of the national population. Thank God, so to speak.
>
>Doug
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