[lit-ideas] Re: The Religious Right Isn't What It Used to Be
- From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 10:51:04 +0900
On 10/29/07, Andreas Ramos <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
>
> But that was a one-last-hurrah: when the USA changed from
> industrialization
> to a globalized service economy, people were dislocated. Trying to
> establish
> meaning, they tried to reestable the old certaincies: bible, family, and
> conservative values.
>
> But that couldn't last. It's hopeless to build "family values" politics
> when
> families have literally disappeared. The classical family model has a
> father
> who makes the household's income while mom stays at home and raises the
> kids. In California, less than 7% of households match that model. More
> than
> 50% of households are single; most women work. "Family values" have no
> reality.
>
I'm inclined to hope that this analysis is correct. I would, however, be
cautious about a meme--the rise of reason and decline of religion--that has
been around at least since the enlightenment and informed the ideas about
secularization that I was taught in college and graduate school in the
1960s. It is worth remembering that the latest efflorescence on the
religious right was only the latest in a series of waves of religious
enthusiasm that have swept what we now call America since the Colonial
period. Wiki (see wiki: revivalism) describes them as follows:
"Since the 16th Century Reformation<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformation>,
some writers identify six waves of special revival or
"Awakenings<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Awakenings>"
in the church worldwide - from 1727, 1792, 1830, 1857, 1882 and 1904."
To these we can add the revivalist movement associated with Billy Graham,
which began in the 1950s, as well as the surge of the megachurches and
televangelism in the 80s and 90s.
Given that the part of the religious spectrum that runs from mainstream to
atheism flourishes best when people feel comfortable with themselves and the
world they inhabit, the sort of economic prospects that Andreas describes
here could be just the soil that the next great wave of revivalism needs to
grow.
John
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
http://www.wordworks.jp/
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