Originally posted at Liberal Street Fighter
Poor fundies … the NY Times reports that they fear that they are swimming against the tide of our nasty, terrible secular culture:
At an unusual series of leadership meetings in 44 cities this fall, more than 6,000 pastors are hearing dire forecasts from some of the biggest names in the conservative evangelical movement.
Their alarm has been stoked by a highly suspect claim that if current trends continue, only 4 percent of teenagers will be “Bible-believing Christians” as adults. That would be a sharp decline compared with 35 percent of the current generation of baby boomers, and before that, 65 percent of the World War II generation.
While some critics say the statistics are greatly exaggerated (one evangelical magazine for youth ministers dubbed it “the 4 percent panic attack”), there is widespread consensus among evangelical leaders that they risk losing their teenagers.
“I’m looking at the data,” said Ron Luce, who organized the meetings and founded Teen Mania, a 20-year-old youth ministry, “and we’ve become post-Christian America, like post-Christian Europe. We’ve been working as hard as we know how to work — everyone in youth ministry is working hard — but we’re losing.”
The board of the National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella group representing 60 denominations and dozens of ministries, passed a resolution this year deploring “the epidemic of young people leaving the evangelical church.”
As is their wont, these folks blame liberals and gays and feminists and “activist judges”, but those excuses are mere marketing slogans. They have no philosophic or theological weight, and serve only reinforce the frightened thinking of their like-minded followers. Being a shallow movement spiritually, they don’t ask the important questions that determine whether people join, or leave, a religion.
Why do people feel they NEED religions, and why do they pick, or stay with, the faiths they belong to?
It is a big and scary universe. Contemplating life and death and the hard choices presented by life, throughout history people have found comfort in religion. Some, like Professor Bruce Hood, think that human beings are “hardwired” to look for supernatural explanations for life’s mysteries.
“They have basically said there are two types of people in the world,” he said – “those who believe in the supernatural and those who do not. But almost everyone entertains some form of irrational beliefs even if they are not religious.
“For example, many people would be reluctant to part with a wedding ring for an identical ring because of the personal significance it holds. Conversely, many people are disgusted by an object if it has associations with ‘evil’.”
I think the Professor puts too much weight on this tendency. Life is eased when certain rituals and practices can serve to smooth out the need to confront every issue every time you come across it. The wedding ring, to use his example, isn’t just an “object” easily replaced. It is a manifestation of a commitment, and thus performs a mental shortcut to remembering this commitment. It is no mistake that people take the ring off when they break that commitment. They don’t remove it because it has magical power, they remove it because it represents a covenant, and they don’t want others, or they themselves, to have to confront the boundaries demanded by that promise.
Being social animals, people have codified these explanations into the various faiths. These beliefs, and the institutions that grow up around them, prosper if they fulfill their function: to give people comfort and meaning. As they grow they become more and more intertwined into people’s lives. Children grow into the faith of the parents, and so too their children, and so on through time. Once institutionalized, many faiths rely more and more on dogma, creeds and ritual. When you look at the state of institutional religion in America today, faith communities often seem to become little more than their trappings.
This is, after all, a very shallow culture. Reflection is actively discouraged. The right’s version of evangelical thought is especially shallow and resistant to contemplation. One strengthens one’s commitment to the faith NOT by doing the hard spiritual work of examining the puzzles and solutions presented by their scriptures and the way they interact with the world, but rather the hard, and very SECULAR work, of rejecting outside influences. This isn’t a new theological gambit, of course, but it is a very lightweight one. Contrast this movement, for example, with the Amish so much in the news now. That community, too, rejects much of our “base” culture, especially unneeded technological “advancements” that encourage people to become caught up in vanity, in commodification and competition. However, they have a very different way of forcing young adherants to confront what it means to become adult members of that faith community by going out at age sixteen to experience the broader culture. Compare this to the usual evangelical demands that their children avoid temptation at all cost, and one sees how immature this brand of faith is. In fact, so insecure are these “believers” in the power of their message that they demand OTHERS help them remove temptation from their children’s path.
Paltry shadows of Christians past, these people. All too reminiscent of some of the more dangerous varities of that religion that have popped up throughout history. A faith built without trial, without confrontation is a weak thing, like a sword forged in a flame just not hot enough. Brittle, easily broken, and if this exodus is real and not just hype to get butts in the pews, then it is this weakness that is causing their young to flee. Religion’s purpose is to support and buttress the believer when confronted by trials and tribulations, not to function as a mere security blanket and rah-rah group cheer.
Perhaps their children have come to see the “blankie” that is their church as merely a tattered and threadbare cloth, one that has served it’s purpose. Perhaps their children, ill-served by a theology based on fear, hate, rejection and self-loathing, are moving on in their journey as human beings, in search of worldviews that enable them to be happier people.
Mad Melancholic Feminista has an interesting take on the NY Times piece:
She has some interesting things to say comparing these movements to feminism.
Or perhaps they’ve come to realize that this is all useless. In a world where thousands continue to die unassisted in Darfur, where is divine intervention? Where is it for the thousands that are suffering from aids and malaria in Africa? Where is for that are being oppressed around the globe? Where was it for the roughly 12 million killed in nazi Germany?
In response to this question, a colleague (who was the subject of a post here) stated that things are this way because man has free will. So those slaughtered in Darfur an nazi Germany could have chosen otherwise? Likely not.
So perhaps what the fucking fundies really need to do is arrange a miracle to demonstrate that their beliefs are still relevant, if they ever were.
In the end, while emotional comfort may have been one ancillary benefit of religion, it seems that the primary purpose was mind control. The old Marxism about religion being the opiate of the people comes to mind. Or perhaps this for those dedicated to militarism and popular culture: Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid. -Han Solo
People need to believe in themselves and their own abilities.
Excellent post, Madman.
When I was in seminary and beginning to really question all of the religion I had been taught, a friend of mine came to class one day pretty stressed out. She told me her car had broken down, and “thank the Lord, it happened right next to a service station.” Inside all I could think about was “do you REALLY think the Lord cares more about where your car breaks down than the millions of people who are starving to death today?”
What’s amazing to me is that so many people DON’T ask these questions. The egocentric nature of so many people who think God cares more about such minor details in their lives and yet seems to have no time for people who really suffer just blows me away.
One of the questions that I ponder regularly is “why me?” I was raised in the most hard-core right wing fundamentalist family and community in East Texas. By now I have pretty much rejected everything I was taught, which is not true for most of my siblings, cousins and friends. And I was not propelled by rebellion. I was a “good Christian girl” all the way though graduation from a fundamentalist college and seminary. So I wonder what made me different or what were the important different experiences I had that changed the outcome for me.
There were many subtle things that contributed to this transformation – even while I didn’t know it was happening. But the first questions I began to ask happened after I graduated from college and began working in a secular drug treatment program for adolescents. They came from the disconnect between all that I had been taught and its lack of relevance for the real lives of myself, the kids I was working with and their families.
Just as an exmple, imagine a “good christian girl” who’d never rebelled and never even experimented with drugs working with some hard-core addicted kids. They made mince meat of me. I was a colossal failure in my attempts to help them. And as I looked around me at the other staff, who according to my rules, did not qualify as “christians” but were so much more able to help these kids and demonstrate what “love thy neighbor” meant in real life. So I began to ask myself how being a christian enabled me to love my neighbor. Ultimatetly, my answer to that question was – not a bit. That began my consious journey that got me where I am today.
it’s harder to be truly compassionate w/o having faced trials yourself. Most people need some personal experience to use as a “doorway” to be able to imagine how bad someone else’s pain or despair is.
You asked questions, which makes you, in my opinion, much more HUMAN than most of the people who hide behind the skirts of religion.
I think you’ve hit on a core issue madman. This is why so many times I try to counsel people against the idea that you can intellectually argue someone out of their fundamentalism. The brain is usually used in service of a very broken human being. Until someone can see and acknowledge that brokeness – no intellectual argument will ever succeed.
I had an interesting conversation last night with my daughter, who is a Christian, a gay parent, and a member of an open and affirming Unitarian Church, about the different kinds of Christianity. Her faith is strong,based on principles of tolerance, acceptance, compassion and love, judges no one, and is a source of joyousness and celebration of shared community. She feels no imperative to “evangelize” anyone, or to run about claiming her beliefs to be superior to anyone elses. It is the opposite of the kind of Christianity in which she was raised, as was I: the harsh, rigid, shame based, fear based, vengence based, fundamentalist beliefs of the Missouri Lutheran Synod brand of Christianity.
Her kind of Christianity brings people together, rather than forces them apart. It offers comfort and celebration, and validation of human worth, not flaming shovels full of shame and sinfllness and fear of being stuck down by a vengeful god. It will inform her child of her goodness, not lead her to self condemnation of her own sinful nature and need to live in a constant state fear such as I lived in, crouched under a grand piano because I was convinced thats the only place God couldn’t see me, and “Strike me dead”, for being such a bad sinner by age 4.
Her kind of Christianity allows for building a close connection with her OWN concept of God, whatever that may be, can you even imagine that? It is to me, nothing less than a miracle to witness such a radical concept of Christianity in actual existance.
It has taken me most of a lifetime to repair devastating damage done to my life, by the fundamentalist form of Christianity. Yesterday, life handed me a chance to see that I have indeed finally healed, via the need to help with funeral arrangements for a 96 yr ol ex mother in law, about to be buried from the very same church in my home town that controlled my entire life for so long.
It wasn’t, of course the same Pastor who sent me home to pray harder when I reported the sexual abuse at age 13, but it was his descendent. Powerful, authoritarian “god-like” character very used to being worhsipped by a grateful congregation. AS these things happen, I ended up seated right next to him, and nearly went outa my skin for a moment. PTSD reactions are no fun.
Then it just stopped. Suddenly, I felt ten times bigger that this puny little “Man of God”. It felt like he literall shrunk in size in his chair, while I grew taller!
Before I left there, I went into the main part of the church and sat alone awhile. I saw bricks and mortar and expensive woods and brass and stained glass, and that’s all. No fear. No more fear. No more nausea and need to bolt for a bathroom. It’s over now. I’m free at last.
The power of fundamentalist Christianity to cause serious psychological damage to human beings needs to be exposed. It is the cruelest kind of abuse and exploitation of children to fill them with the beleif in their badness,and to fill them with shame and fear rather than to validate thier goodness and potential.
It has been especially cruel and effective with women over the ages, as it continues to reinforce within them their subservient roles, and disempowers every other aspect of who women are.
If course, the eulogy that will be given for my ex mother in law on Monday will be filled primarily with praise for her “self sacrifice” for others.Gotta keep it going, you know, so women don’t forget what role God wants them in.
Fundamentalist Christianity is no different than any other cult. It exists to serve itself and it’s leaders, and to maintain power and control over others above all else. It’s methods are high level systematic brainwashing and mind control. It’s avid followers are have tightly programmed minds not open to anything but what they is fed into them by their programmers. If they do not comply, they will suffer the horrors of hell and that’s all there is to it. Thus,in time, the Stockholm syndrome.
I feel like I have escaped a cult, because I have.
Oh Scribe – this made me cry. I celebrate your wisdom, your courage, your strength, your beauty, and your peace.
Madman – I don’t think people have changed much over the eons. I imagine there have been religious thinkers throughout time and a whole lot of people who didn’t spend much time thinking about their religion at all.
I am not sure secular rule of law works very well without the societal glue that religion provides. Religions set codes for behaviors, what is right and good. Culture and religion, particularly in mono-cultures are very blended. Now a society may move away from direct participation in religious institutions, but if it is a stable society, then it seems to me the religious code for behavior still flavors the cultural stories and myths which form beliefs.
Reading about UN10: Liberia in the BT series, I wondered at the struggle to enact and apply secular rule of law on a people who have no foundation of cultural story which would include spiritual beliefs and religious codes for behavior. The reduction of organizational units for survival has gone down to the gang level with its own codes. Family units and clan units have been decimated by fighting and disease – who has been teaching the way to behave in times of peace if there is no memory of peaceful times? Attempting to apply abstract secular laws seems doomed to me.
The bureaucracies created through the secular government to aid people, e.g., welfare, are very inefficient and not very humane. Religious organizations can provide people a community and can offer support for its members – psychologically and materially. (Of course, both secular and religious institutions can (and are) also used to keep people “in their place.”) The importance of community for people, I don’t believe can be dismissed.
I wonder as economic and environmental conditions worsen whether the young people will remain or return to their religious community for survival.
perhaps that is true w/ a monoculture, but this ISN’T a monoculture, and way the world has changed make monocultures almost impossible. Perhaps religions were a net good in the past w/ unified cultures, but in the 21st Century they are, as institutions, dangerous … especially the more dogmatic, patriarchical ones.
I agree that dogmatic, rigid institutions are dangerous – both the religious type and the secular type.
My point was more that religions offer people far more than individual explanations for trials and tribulations. Religions have provided organization and codes of behavior for groups of people, very diverse groups of people, allowing those groups which might have had clan-level differences to join together on another level as members of the larger religious group. Perhaps that is the appeal of Islam in developing nations – Indonesia comes to mind.
Religious organization provides a structure in societal development as the society moves from the tribe to a multi-tribe on the way to secular unity with secular organizations. It seems to me that as things fall apart on the secular level, people can be drawn to or remain in their religious organization because it provides structure and community.
Hood seems to think that you’re being irrational if they way you feel about something depends on anything other than its intrinsic properties (if it depends on the thing’s history, for example). That’s an absurdly narrow conception of rationality, IMO.