Excess bloggage - brief edition
By Libby
I've been pressed into rendering some emergency assistance today so I'll be offline for a few hours at least, and I only have a moment right now. I've been posting some stuff that's worth reading. Here's a few links.
Searching for unity in Leftopia has been well received. Well except at Protein Wisdom who thought it was just hiliarious. Link to PW at the post.
Over at DetNews, I've been putting my pledge to practice, with an an Iraq review and note that it's time to get some answers from McCain along with my take on the Wright kerfluffle.
Okay, gotta go.
I've been pressed into rendering some emergency assistance today so I'll be offline for a few hours at least, and I only have a moment right now. I've been posting some stuff that's worth reading. Here's a few links.
Searching for unity in Leftopia has been well received. Well except at Protein Wisdom who thought it was just hiliarious. Link to PW at the post.
Over at DetNews, I've been putting my pledge to practice, with an an Iraq review and note that it's time to get some answers from McCain along with my take on the Wright kerfluffle.
Okay, gotta go.
posted by Libby Spencer at 10:32 AM
6 Comments:
ot- here's something I just wrote
"I saw some guy on the Daily Show a few years ago who had a book out about churches and church attendence. In europe, the government subsidizes the churches and they aren't as well attended as here.
Here, the free market has resulted in the tailoring of Christ's message to correspond with the needs of the respective congregations. mega churches were the example this particular author gave.
Are guys like Rev Wright and John Hagee not responding to the market? would they not have much smaller congregations if they were less outspoken?
is it worth having a large congregation to resort to the types of things these guys say?
and yet, people have free will and could go to any other church but they choose to attend these sorts of services by the thousands.
I think the problem is not the churches choveling propaganda down peoples throats but the society that seeks that out"
I think that the kind of subsidy you see in Europe is used to maintain edifices like Notre Dame or Chartres as the cultural property they are. Private donation simply aren't enough. In England I see all sorts of beautiful old churches being used as restaurants or auction rooms, etc.
It isn't religion the governments support, it's history and the kind of history that brings in tourist dollars.
But here's one of those places where I agree with you. People seek out confirmation of what they want to hear. That's what made Reagan, Rambo and John Wayne popular. Farrakhan isn't persuading people so much as people want to hear their prejudices justified. It's the down side of freedom, but I think we have to put up with it.
well, the fact that the churches are being transformed into resteraunts instead of put in the hands of visionary preachers is the same sort of thing.
as for the dubious quality of our megachurches and so forth, the free market solves theproblem of filling the pews and thus keeping "religion" alive, but quality of the institutions is determined by the free market as well, and without seeming sbobbish, it would appear that we , as a society, have a weak imagination when it comes to religion.
"snobbish"
Snobbish?
But I agree, the patrons of these discount churches usually know less about the history and theology than almost anyone.
They don't read Augustine or Eusebius in Sunday Shcool
I don't know that the free market has anything to do with filling churches. That's a sociological phenomenon that speaks to the average Jake's need to feel like they belong to something. I think these megachurches are largely made up of people who don't think too much and are easily swayed by a forceful speaker.
People join the big churches because they have all the fancy bells and whistles and that's where everybody else goes. A herd mentality of sorts.
That being said, I think as the hypocrisy of the church leaders becomes revealed, the older members are leaving or dying off and the young people are turned off. Religion isn't a growth industry. Even the fundies are losing some support at this point.
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