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Ed, you
wrote in reply to KH: I would add to this by suggesting that we need a
system of ethics that gets us away from "looking after number one",
conspicuous consumption and valuing the material. I think there's a
widespread awareness of this. People are searching. They've
discarded much of the old, as conveyed by the established churches, but haven't
really found anything satisfactory to replace it with. …I gather that by research in genetics you mean addressing the
issue of whether the newborn is some kind of tabla rasa onto which almost anything can be written, or whether he or
she already comes pre-programmed to a considerable degree. Would we ever
really be able to find out in time to really make a difference? And if we
did, how would we prevent the madrassas or Southern Baptists or any other
especially holy and fundamentalist group from getting hold of the kid anyhow
and doing their programming? To me, the most important problem currently,
and probably historically, is how to combat fundamentalist theologies and
ideologies and tone down the level of hate and prejudice awash in the
world. The less people hate, the more they are able to talk, and perhaps
even to agree. I have
jumped over two days of emails now after recovering my email Inbox from the deadly
grasp of an apparent corrupted file to pounce upon this random thought. Still don’t have everything back in
place just yet, but wanted to mention to you that in the October issue of The Atlantic Monthly, but not yet online,
is a provocative article called The Next
Christianity which details the author’s exposition that the world is
diverging more into what Arthur Cordell earlier referred to as WW3, or the Fundamentalists
vs the Modernists. This doesn’t
directly tie into the discussion of leisure and modern economics but it does add
to the general question, Where the heck are we going? The
author, Phillip Jenkins, a religion prof. at Penn. State Univ, says “the 21st century will be regarded by future
historians as a century in which religion replaced ideology as the prime
animating and destructive force in human affairs”. Basically, the Pentecostals and
fundamentalists are gaining ground in the southern hemisphere (the global South/Southern
churches) and the more liberal denominations are in decline but holding their
ground in the northern, more industrialized nations (the global North/Northern
churches). He spends a lot of time
in the set up to his premise explaining the contributions of the first
Reformation, to conclude that this new division will create a 2nd reformation
– so we are warned. I also learned
to think of the Roman Catholic Church as historically the first global
corporation in this article. The scary
part of this to me, as a lover of history and raised but now a lapsed S.
Baptist, is that the phenomenal growth of the fundamentalists/ Pentecostals replaces
a belief in the sovereignty of the independent nation state (which would not
have occurred in history without the Reformation). Since the Southern demographics are projected to overrun the
Northern demographics, the prospect of “world Christianity” falling under the
sway of anti-intellectual fundamentalism is growing. In poor countries where governments, famine and its diseases
and traditional authorities have continually failed or caused great suffering, there
is a counter-Reformation underway that can transfer native allegiances and
interests to the authority of what these believers would describe as a return
to the “primitive Church”. Pg. 60: “This
sort of alternative social system, which played an enormous role in the
earliest days of Christianity, has been a potent means of winning mass support
for the most committed religious groups and is likely to grow in importance as the gap between people’s needs
and government’s capacities to fill them becomes wider. Looking at the success of Christianity
in the Roman Empire, the historian Peter Brown has written, ‘ The Christian
community suddenly came to appeal to men who felt deserted…Plainly, to be a
Christian in 250 brought more protection from one’s fellows than to be a civis Romanus.’ Being a member of an active Christian church today may well
bring more tangible benefits than being a mere citizen of Nigeria or Peru.” As one
after another failed dictatorship or faux republic has collapsed or been
overthrown, so it goes, in poor nations of mostly the Third World, the Catholic
Church in particular and the authority of the cardinals have increased. It isn’t just fundamentalist Islam that
has been growing in Africa or SE Asia.
As always, China is the great mystery here. Since
religion is an intrinsic component of social and cultural evolution, and if
these projected demographics hold true, as Buddhism and Hinduism are also relegated
to minority status, then the nature of global relations and current alliances
will truly change. Since you
mentioned the impact that religious groups have on individuals, I thought this
might be of some interest to you. Also of
note is that some of the mysticism and exorcisms associated with tribal beliefs
are being incorporated into Southern fundamentalism and/or Pentecostal growth. But in addition, these fast growing
churches are sometimes merging with apocalyptic and messianic movements that try
to literally bring back the Kingdom of God through armed violence, as we know
all too well. However, in
the Northern churches, the growing trend is not just more liberal on issues,
but away from centralized authority towards more laity participation
(especially now in the US CC) but those reformers are greatly outnumbered by
the dominance of the Southern cultural movements. The impact of technology continues to divide the globe, even
as Northern worlds move to more decentralized and privatized forms of faith and
authority in Southern cultures, some still catching up to the more traditional
world of book learning, become the standard bearers for the older ideas of
traditional authority. In other
words, the cultural gap between North and South will increase rather than
diminish, according to this author.
I also have heard this North/South reference used in global environmental
discourse. I’ll leave
this brief synopsis here: “Ultimately, the first Christendom – the politico-religious
order that dominated Europe from the 6th century through the 16th
– collapsed in the face of secular nationalism, under the overwhelming force of
(what Thos.Carlyle called) “the 3 great elements of modern civilization: gunpowder,
printing and the Protestant religion.”
Nation-states
dominated the world after the first Reformation, but the whole concept of
national autonomy could be under siege in the coming decades partly because the
information superhighway will make it harder for governments to contain or
control information, diseases, migrants, arms, and financial transactions (recent
CIA report cited), further eroding the concept of “belonging” to a particular
state. As Keith has mentioned in
ruminations a couple of months ago about the European view of the influx of
immigrants throughout Europe from the near and middle East, is it any wonder
that social scientists and political scholars, according to this author, are
struck by the similarities to the Middle Ages? And should we be so surprised by the religious mindset of the
current American president, his advisors and his base, that righteousness will
triumph? A few
thoughts, but more than a few words.
Karen |
- Counter Enlightenment ( was Counter Reformations (was T... Karen Watters Cole
