August 2005 Archives

A new Newsweek/Beliefnet poll is garnering a lot of attention for its finding that 68% of US evangelical/born-again Christians affirm the idea that "good people" of other faiths can gain salvation, despite evangelicalism's frequent emphasis on the necessity of accepting Christ as savior. 91% of US Catholics agree. Now I'd say any sign that Christianity might be opening itself up to pluralism is good news, but Beliefnet's Steven Waldman's proposes an interesting explanation:

"Americans have become so focused on a very personal style of worship—forging a direct relationship with God—that spiritual experience has begun to supplant dogma. Other results from the poll indicate that the appeal of religion is more spiritual than cultural.Thirty-nine percent said the main reason they practiced their religion is to “forge a personal relationship with God” while only 3% said it was to be part of a community. This would help explain why many people report having a regular prayer life but not attending church. Seventy-nine percent said they pray at least once a week compared to 45% who said they went to worship services during that time.

I'd love to believe that the affirmation of individual religious experience may indeed help challenge the abuses of centralized religious authority, and help people get beyond narrow dogmas like Christian exclusivism. But I think Waldman overstates his case. To me, the poll doesn't indicate that religion's appeal is more spiritual than cultural, but instead reflects a shift in the content of the broader culture, towards spiritual consumerism; a person's spirituality is defined by which products she chooses to consume. Maybe it's The Purpose Driven Life, or it might be the Dalai Lama's latest. The shelves at any Barnes & Noble are flooded with books & CDs allowing you to choose your individual spiritual path, and sales are skyrocketing. The process of choosing a congregation is now less about fidelity to a denomination or community , and more about "shopping" for a place that has the "features" you want, as if it were a kitchen appliance.

I suppose, in a way, this is potentially empowering for some people. Want an ecofeminist spiritual path? You can find it, as long the culture industry thinks there's a market for it. What gets lost in all this is the supportive interpersonal connections, the direct exchange of ideas unmediated by the corporate filter, the dialogue between people of different backgrounds and ideologies. It's also harder for religion to engage in the kind of prophetic discourse that shakes people up and pushes them beyond their own individual desires. That stuff is impossible to market.

Another study: this one I discovered via Boing Boing. It tracked eye motions of subjects shown photographs, and concluded that people raised in Asia took in more detail in the background and more information about the relationship between the foreground and background objects than did people raised i America, who focused largely on foreground objects. The researchers claim that this is the result of a more cooperative culture in Asia that is driven by higher population density and historical communal modes of production (shared irrigation systems for rice paddies), while western culture is more individualized.

Nisbett illustrated this with a test asking Japanese and Americans to look at pictures of underwater scenes and report what they saw.

The Americans would go straight for the brightest or most rapidly moving object, he said, such as three trout swimming. The Japanese were more likely to say they saw a stream, the water was green, there were rocks on the bottom and then mention the fish.(read the rest)

As Nisbett says, it seems we literally are seeing the world differently.

Harper's magazine has impressed me with its religion coverage lately, centering around several stories about the Christian right.

"Three quarters of Americans believe the Bible teaches that 'God helps those who help themselves.' That is, three out of four Americans believe that this uber-American idea, a notion at the core of our current individualist politics and culture, which was in fact uttered by Ben Franklin, actually appears in Holy Scripture. The thing is, not only is Franklin's wisdom not biblical; it's counter-biblical. Few ideas could be further from the gospel message, with its radical summons to love of neighbor."

- Author Bill McKibben, in his Harper's magazine essay, "The Christian Paradox"

I think a lot of people go through a stage of being really into individualism. It's sort of an adolescent thing, asserting yourself as independent from your parents and upbringing. In this country it hits a little harder, because we have this strong laissez-faire economic streak, as well as the whole romantic idea of the rugged individualist as popularized by the transcendentalists. Thoreau seems so badass when you are a sophomore in college and you enjoy thinking of yourself as iconoclastic and revolutionary. These days though, I am really loving the secret truth that his mom was visiting him at Walden and bringing meals of fresh bread. The big secret is that people rely on each other for everything.

We are told this story and tell each other this story about the great transcendent artist who changes perception. I can think of a couple of really clear cases in our shared music culture where this is the story but not the reality ... the great artist was a product of a community, what made them great was that they succesfully took the insights of the community to the larger world. Examples from our shared musical culture being for instance Fugazi who when they came out it seemed like such a revelation - eight-beats, loud/quiet, a dub approach to punk, a layered vocal. When I started to see that Fugazi were a product of Rain, the Bad Brains, Happy Go Licky/Rites of Spring it really changed this perception for me. They created their style within a community of people exploring these ideas. Same with Beat Happening with the antecedent being Supreme Cool Beings (and others). Something hits the larger world and when it resonates -- Fugazi, White Stripes, the perception is - OK this is what the idea is, but instead it's one subset of a mass of connected ideas and approaches that are being explored by that community.-Al Larsen

Granted, my experience of Christianity has been way different than a lot of people in my peer group (i.e. mostly positive) but it's weird for me to realize that for many others Christianity is being conceived as this springboard for individualism. For most evangelicals the pivotal religious moment is the individual born-again experience, when they personally accepted Christ. It was never like that for me. Most of my memories of going to church over the years are of feeling I was part of something larger, feeling connected and supported. Singing together. Sharing stories (and cookies). Little old ladies complimenting me when I played the piano at the 9:00 service. Standing in a circle and linking arms, heads bowed.

Funny thing: this entry started out about me thinking about social consequences of individualism, but now I am thinking more about very personal connections and the lack of community in my own life. I think I'm going to try to start going to church regularly again. I will keep you informed.