Re: Counter Reformations (was The blindspot of Heilbroner)

[Ed Weick]

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”.  As a northern Baptist, unlapsed, I did mission work for a month in the slums of Sao Paulo and had to opportunity to observe, first hand, the charismatic stuff that was going on in Brazilian churches, both in the slums and middle class suburbs.  Some of it was downright silly, a promise of instant salvation the moment you crossed the threshold of the junky little scrap lumber slum church.  Much of it was far more impressive.  A thousand people in an evangelical Baptist church singing to the Senhor, arms waving in the air, a true and marvellous happening!  I wondered what was going on and reached a couple of conclusions.  One was that it was anti-establishment to at least some extent.  The Catholic Church was the church of the rich and powerful, the establishment.  The establishment, along with the Catholic Church, had promised but not delivered, so people were turning away from it, and they were doing so en masse.  My other conclusion was that the charismatic church provided people with a focus around which to order their lives.  Sao Paulo, a city of some twenty million, had grown very rapidly as people came in from a countryside no longer able to support them because of mechanization and economic change.  The Catholic Church, even though it tried in various ways, could not really provide that focus.  It's theological concern was essentially vertical, on the relationship of man to God.  What was needed was something that provided a horizontal man to man relationship as well as a vertical one, but which moved the vertical one from an emphasis on the individual an emphasis to the community as a whole.  As well as charisma, all kinds of community based self-help programs were underway.  I didn't see this as a new Reformation.  It was very similar to what had happened in Europe some five centuries ago. 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 There would appear to be a trend in human affairs.  Someone comes up with a new perspective, a set of ideas or a way of thought that is appealing and draws a following.  Like Richard Dawkins's memes, it begins to spread, become powerful and then, if certain things happen, official and the perceived truth.  So it was with early Christianity, the Protestant Reformation, and Marxism.  Once it has become official, it's both the view and tool of the state.  People who do not accept or adhere to it are persecuted, excommunicated, executed or sent to the Gulag.  So it was with Catholicism, Calvinism, Russian Communism and indeed all forms of religious and secular fundamentalism.  My view is that this kind of progression, from the simple and honest to the absurdly official has to be broken if we are to become truly human. Ed Ed Weick 577 Melbourne Ave. Ottawa, ON, K2A 1W7 Canada Phone (613) 728 4630 Fax     (613)  728 9382