God has a very grim sense of humor
• Christian Fundamentalism
Given my personal interests I've always known the fundies are there, always have been. They are becoming more visible and vocal. And will do much to shape the coming decades. If you are a liberal, a humanist, an agnostic, an atheist you should be very, very afraid (or move to Europe).
The most successful Southern churches preach a deep personal faith, communal orthodoxy, mysticism, and puritanism, all founded on obedience to spiritual authority.... Whereas Americans imagine a Church freed from hierarchy, superstition, and dogma, Southerners look back to one filled with spiritual power and able to exorcise the demonic forces that cause sickness and poverty. ...
Let's start with Catholicism. In the global South you have almost a pre-Vatican II, old-world kind of Catholicism. Catholics there are more concerned with the traditional, more willing to accept authority and leadership, more prepared to insist on orthodoxy. Whereas in America and Europe we tend to have cafeteria Catholicism, as in, I'll take a little bit of this, a little bit of that, throw in a bit of Wicca, and see what we come up with. In terms of Protestantism, a lot of the mainstream churches, like Episcopalian and Methodist, have a real presence in the global South. The Anglican Church, for instance, is a real force in Africa and in large parts of Asia. But some of the fastest growth has been in newer denominations, and they're usually called Pentecostal. ...
... I sometimes say that God has a very grim sense of humor, because so many of the areas on these religious fault-lines are also the key oil-producing regions. So religious politics are oil politics. I'm not sure how much we've taken that fact aboard. ...
... You'd never guess from looking at history that through most of the twentieth century at least half of American Christians were evangelical/Pentecostal fundamentalists. They really got lost to the media between the Scopes trial back in 1925 and the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976. And suddenly people discovered them and thought, My God, there are millions of these people out there, this must be a right-wing explosion. No, they've always been there, you've just never noticed them. ...
A really fine interview: Philip Jenkins, the author of The Next Christianity in the October Atlantic, argues that most Americans and Europeans are blind to Christianity's real future
Comments
Posted by: JAMES | October 19, 2003 9:56 AM