The ABC News clip provided below references the massive "evangelical subculture" and its growing collection of institutions, cultural objects, and celebrity figures, as if this were a new thing. That just shows that the news media is beginning another discovery cycle of the evangelical subculture. In reality, this subculture has been part of the mainstream society for at least 30 years. At one point in time this was my dissertation focus; why that crashed and burned is subject of another post.
Incidently, one of the more irritating things in the news clip is the interview with the author Lauren Sandler (described as a secular liberal feminist who says:
Voice Over: She says the evangelical youth movement will have a negative impact on this country's future because even the most moderate young evangelicals are inflexible on issues such as abortion and gay marriage.
Sandler: It's an absolute, straight up, us-against-them. You're with us, or you're against us.
Uh.. you mean like the [ fill in your group here ] rights movement? The thing that frustrates me to no end about any social movement is this artifically sustained us-against-them mentality. If you strip out the substance and just look at the rhetorical style, there's very little difference between an abortion rights activist and an anti-abortion activist. And to call attention to this pisses people off. You can't reason with true-believers. That's the true shame here.
Anyway, check out the ABC news story for yourself.
1 comment:
Religious fervor has always ebbed and flowed. In the 1930s during the Great Depression, it was raging full steam with tent revivals all over the place. Coincidentally, the KKK was also raging and growing in numbers and power. An unwillingness to at least note identical process dynamics is often accompanied by an almost total lack of historical perspective. The Klan is for all practical purposes defunct, and practical is the operative word here. The revivalism of the Dirty 30s subsided with some prosperity but has arisen again amidst the so-called war on terrorism and high oil prices and talk of WMD and it too will subside. Rigid moral codes don't flow too strongly in open societies for long. They simply are not fun and interesting and challenging. I've always loved the bearded hermit/prophet on the street corner with the sign that says "The End Is Near", mostly because everyone ignores him. I watch such hermits and if crowds ever begin to assemble around them, then we have cause for real concern. The Jesus campers are ignoring the man with the sign too. They will fade and again find some meaning grubbing in the aisles of Wal-Mart.
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