Across the street from my house stands an impressive
church, constructed in modern Scandinavian design with a lofty roof. The Lutherans who used to inhabit it grew
old, their congregation smaller and they sold the building, unable to maintain
this magnificent structure. After months
of emptiness, it was finally purchased by a fundamentalist Oromo Christian congregation made up of local residents, many formerly from Ethiopia. Their SUVs, vans and new cars line our
streets Sundays and even Saturdays. They
seem to be enthusiastically religious, which is somewhat typical of new
immigrants to the U.S. After all,
churches provide a kind of weird community, some bad entertainment and a large tax-free
building!
 |
| Perhaps a good place for the homeless... |
However, the local Minneapolis Star Tribune has been running a series on the ‘Rise of the Nones’ –
i.e. people who have given up on organized religion. At this point, about a quarter of U.S. residents
describe themselves as such. They might
practice yoga, they might be agnostics, nature-worshipers, pagans or
‘spiritual;’ they might be consistent atheists, or they might just spend their
Sundays resting, working, being with their children or drinking coffee and reading
the internet. When you work your whole
life for an employer stealing your time, a church stealing 2-3 more hours to
‘think magically’ is a no-go. Certainly my Sundays have been very enjoyable and
useful, as I have not attended a church since I was 17.
Not pledging your fealty to some religion is
politically fraught however. Atheists
are even more disliked than gay people or Muslims in the U.S., if you
believe the surveys, so don’t mention that while running for office. Socialism has a higher rep than atheism in
the U.S.,
which is certainly an improvement over socialism’s past. Yet atheism is the theoretical opposite of
religion, its anti-thesis, so it actually is the greatest threat to religious
faith on an ideological level.
Philosophy starts where religion ends, as do science and reason. And religion is ending. As Slavoj Zizek noted, the theoretical
synthesis that rises above the false conflicts of religion is no religion at
all.
The Trib
seems to be worried, along with local ‘faith leaders,’ because one of the
pillars of ideological capital is organized religion. Organized religion itself is at fault in this
decline, of course. If you look at the
reactionary role of evangelical Christians like the Southern Baptist Convention
in U.S.
politics, it is abominable. They are one
of the primary mass bases for the vicious Republican Party and its control of
the South and rural areas. They even have their own large sex abuse scandal. The evangelical yellers shilling for your money on TV
don’t help either. Even weird offshoots
like fundamentalist Mormons, who wear odd underwear, believe in multiple wives
and having sex with young girls doesn’t give religion much heft. Or the idiotic essential myth of the Scientologists,
who believe everything started when the earth was occupied by aliens. The Catholic Church has become a pariah for
its hosting of the largest group of pedophiles in the world. This scandal is world-wide. Like Christian evangelicals, the Catholic Church’s positions on
abortion, divorce, contraception, the role of women, pre-marital sex,
masturbation, planned parenthood, pre-marital children, homosexuality – all medieval. Even their occasional opposition to capital
comes from a preference for a pre-capitalist economy – when the Church was the
benevolent ruler of serfs. The new Pope
was ‘hired’ to deflect an understanding of these basic Catholic teachings.
Islam world-wide has ‘puked on its own shirt,’ as its
generally hostile approach to women’s rights is obvious in many countries in
which it dominates. The embrace of bloody
mass terror by fundamentalist political Islam has made religion seem to be the idea of
madmen. Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Gulf
theocracies emphasize the point. Some
schools of Islam support female genital mutilation, which doesn’t help their
brand either. The “Jewish” state of Israel
has endorsed creating Bantustans for
Palestinians, which hasn’t helped Judaism’s reputation. The rabbinical men in Israel who are unable to do anything but read the Torah even have to be trained to earn a real living. Or the dominant Hindutva corporatists in India, worshiping cows and polluting the Ganges on a regular basis, who insist all religions other
than Hinduism are evil. Even Buddhism
now has its own recent crime, as seen in the bloody ethnic cleansing against the
Muslim Rohingya in Myanmar
by ‘liberals’ like Suu Kyi. This follows a similar event in Sri Lanka. The sexual
cults formed by Christian, Buddhist or Hindu gurus are well known, including
the Rajneeshee sex cult in eastern Oregon or the 'hot yoga' sexual predator Bikram Choudhury. Which reminds you again that fundamentalist religions have a DEEP problem with sex and
women. (The film “Wild Wild Country” is about the Rolls Royce guru and his Rajneeshees. Netflix has a documentary on Bikram.)
Fundamentalist religion is digging its own grave, and
this has resulted in the collapse of religion in countries like Ireland or Iran
and now the U.S. Certainly in Europe religion is pretty much already buried – again except
for recent immigrants.
Take a look at this chart which has
information on the issue of class and religion.
A recent NPR media lie is that Trump’s base is ‘working-class, rural
white men.’ It ignores the dominance of large
farmers, ranchers and small town merchants and businessmen in these communities,
along with the professional strata of lawyers, doctors or dentists that most
small towns still have. This is part of
NPR’s job, which is hiding businessmen’s role in reactionary politics,
including in the Republican Party.
This Pew
Research Center
chart is another refutation. It reveals
that the upper class is the most religious and the working class the
least. For the most part, the more
educated, older and wealthier you are, the more religious you are. On the ethnic or color side (here mislabeled
‘race’), even Latino/a U.S.
residents, who were reliably Catholic until recently, are also leaving the
fold. The Catholic Church has been one
of the biggest losers. The figures belie the Pew Survey's stock line that the
unchurched: ‘cross all incomes and education levels’ equally.
Religion is a product of certain material circumstances. It is essentially a ‘political’ cloak that needs to give itself an appearance of ‘godliness’ in order to gain authority. Yet Christian Socialism used to be a current, as was Liberation Theology. Both have largely disappeared. It is clear that being ‘spiritual’ is not a barrier to political action, though it might become one has any class struggle gets more intense. Nor is being religious, as some African-American, Latino, Arab or Native American preachers have shown in their struggles against racism, deportations or the government. But the larger currents of religion are dying and this bodes well for reason, science, Marxism and the working class.
For other reviews on religion, type: “FGM,” “Ireland,” “God
is Not Great,” “Violence” (Zizek), “Libertarian Atheism and Liberal
Religionism,” “Annihilation of Caste,” “Jude the Obscure,” “Spiritual Snake
Oil” "The Dark Side of Christian History" and “Islamophobia.” Use blog
search box, upper left.
Written on a Sunday morning.
Red Frog
November 13, 2018
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