Religion

There must have been a real dearth of religion pieces in OpinionJournal’s slushpile, because today’s (Christian Teens? Not Very.) was blipping weak.

We’ll charitably pass over the author’s brag about his Sunday School class to get to the meat of the complaint:

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…and it’s only Monday: Texans wary as polygamous sect moves in

The population of this drowsy West Texas town hasn’t done much but dwindle in recent years, so its residents grew pretty curious in March when a pilot shot some aerial photos showing construction of several huge dormitory-style buildings on a sprawling ranch just outside town.

The curiosity soon changed to concern when anti-polygamy activists from Utah showed up for a news conference to reveal the identity of the group that had bought the 1,600-acre ranch: the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or FLDS, a secretive Mormon sect that practices polygamy and marriages involving underage teenage girls.

Now, with construction on the buildings nearly complete and the first of an expected 200 church members about to take up residence, the 1,951 residents of Eldorado are trying to make their peace with new neighbors many regard as followers of a strange cult.

I’m given to understand that the polyamory folks* aren’t too thrilled with the FLDS, either – hey, these massive understatements are pretty easy, once you get into the swing of things**! – indeed, the FLDS is pretty much defined by their enemies, huh? Polyamorists, mainstream LDS, anti-polygamists, battered women’s networks, cult awareness groups, mainstream liberals, mainstream conservatives… the list goes on, and, with all due respect to the First Amendment, quite deservedly. I mean, I’m sure that the cult’s a fascinating sociological study and everything, but it’s a little hard to get past the entire “indoctrinate 15 year olds until they’re ready to be the fourth wife of some guy in his fifties” thing without getting squicked out, not to mention the controls put on the rest of the members.

I wonder how long that the FLDS will last at that ranch before they get evicted. Or the leadership gets indicted.

Moe

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Actually, it was the third rail of Left-wing online political discussion – religion – but I’m trying to keep the titles shorter. Besides, Kevin didn’t grab it so much as he brushed against it lightly:

This doesn’t mean you can’t fight religious groups on substantive grounds, of course, any more than strictures against mocking blacks mean you can’t oppose affirmative action. I’ll never give an inch to the creationism/Intelligent Design crowd, for example, but you can do it without ridiculing anybody’s actual religious beliefs — something that will win neither arguments nor friends in any case. My advice: the next time you’re tempted to mock somebody or something on religious grounds, just substitute “Hispanic,” or perhaps “Hindu,” and see how it sounds. If it sounds like something you probably shouldn’t say, then you probably shouldn’t say it.

And if that still doesn’t convince you, remember Amy Sullivan’s advice: just think of ’em as an interest group and pander to them. We libs know how to do that, don’t we?

It was probably that last paragraph that set certain elements of his comments section off so. ‘Pandering’, after all, is what the Other Side (however you want to define it) does. It’s interesting to consider, though, how little of an issue all of this is in the offline world. Contrary to popular online belief, there are quite a few evangelicals and fundamentalists in the Democratic Party, and luckily for said party the more… vehement… rants of certain secularists tend not to impinge on the Evangelicals’ / Fundamentalists’ radar. This is unlikely to change dramatically in the next decade, although I make no promises after that. Still, Kevin’s advocating a good habit to get into*.

(Via Kikuchiyo)

Moe

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Sorry about the title, Good Readers, but I seem to be always encountering people online who react to That Word in much the same way that a vampire would react to a garlic crucifix, or possibly me towards the Special Limited Edition of Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers, provided that such a mythical thing existed (WHICH IT DOESN’T).

Umm.

Right. Moving along, Andrew Sullivan linked today to an interesting Boston Globe article by Alan Jacobs about evangelicals, fundamentalists and why Bush is one but not the other: Apocalyptic president?

AS THE PRESIDENTIAL election draws closer, some people are asking, in ominous tones, a question: What impact does President Bush’s evangelical Christianity have on his administration’s policies? As an evangelical, an interpreter of literary and cultural texts, and a long-time observer of the evangelical world, I have both a personal and a professional interest in this question. And I’m here to offer an answer: Probably not much.

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Anne Cunningham’s One-Sided Wonder points out an article dealing with the fallout of France’s recent ban on religious symbols in public schools: French Sikhs Defend Their Turbans and Find Their Voice:

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There have been a bunch of articles about Howard Dean’s religion over the last two weeks, most of them negative. The main knock on Dean is that he switched denominations (from Episcopal to Congregationalist) in the early 1980s in part because of a dispute over a bike path. This doesn’t seem like much of a story to me–he switched churches/denominations, not religions, because he had a strong dislike for some of the leaders of the church. Is this really so uncommon among Protestant denominations? I’m not the best judge, since my parents treated religious affiliation like George Steinbrenner treated managers in the late 1970s and 1980s–I was raised (more or less chronologically) Catholic, Episcopal, Quaker, Catholic again, Methodist, Unitarian, Episcopal again, and will probably be a reform Jew in a few years. But I know many more people who switched denominations at one point or another. My husband’s family goes to a Conservative synagogue on the high holy days because their local Reform rabbi is underwhelming. President Bush was raised Episcopalian and is now, if I remember correctly, Methodist. Other friends switched from Congregational to Unitarian because of a minister they really admired. For that matter, the Episcopal church began for pretty worldly reasons (though the Anglican church says it’s more complicated than that).

Some of the articles also make it sound as if the Congregational Church is some newfangled, leftist, hippy denomination. Frankin Foer’s New Republic article says:

As he shopped around for churches, it was natural that he turned to Congregationalism, a denomination famous for its informality and liberal stances. Last November, Dean told a reporter from the Forward that he liked that “there is no central authority” in the tradition. By the time Dean joined the church, Congregationalists had already authorized the ordination of gay ministers. Yoga is taught in the church. Sermons sometimes make the case for lefty causes, especially the plight of the Palestinians.

And here’s the always-charming Cal Thomas:

Dean is from a Congregationalist background, a liberal denomination that does not believe in ministerial authority or church hierarchy. Each Congregationalist believes he is in direct contact with God and is entitled to sort out truth for himself.

I would just like to point out that this zany hippie religion is more than a century older than our country is. The first American Congregationalists were the pilgrims–as in the Mayflower, Plymouth Rock, the first Thanksgiving, the whole bit. The Puritans of Massachusetts Bay Colony were also Congregationalists; so were more heretical sorts like Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson. So was Mr. “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” himself, Jonathan Edwards. (It’s rather more complicated than I’m making out, since there was no centralized authority, and I think the Presbyterian church has some deep roots in Puritanism too. You can read more here.)

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