I am in NYC with a cold! But, luckily a former student of mine just sent me an interesting reflection on leaving College and returning home, only to find that what he criticized in his Senior Thesis (a particular type of "religion" game) is one of his long time friends. So, in lieu of my own ramblings this evening, I am posting Tom's:
Last night I encountered an old friend at the bar. The conversation was brief, but the little that was said started gears in my head spinning for the rest of the night and into today. I graduated from high school with JT and she was one of the most intelligent and artistically (especially performing arts) inclined people I’ve ever met. Simply speaking to her gave you the inkling she’d go on to do great things…not to mention the fact she is one of the nicest and most personable people I’ve been privileged to know. She attended a Christian college in Western Pennsylvania for the last four years and recently graduated with a degree in music. Outstanding, she’s on her way to fulfilling her dreams…so I thought. But then, the clincher, she’d just returned from Colorado Springs where she interviewed for a position as a youth music director. Ok, so Colorado Springs isn’t my favorite city in the world…but it may have its bright spots, right? Well…the interview was with a 5000-member mega-church.
I didn’t know how to react; I didn’t know what to say. It dawned on me later in the evening that the most important question to ask and discuss when it comes to “the religious right” might be this: “How do we talk to (or interact with) them?” In previous works and conversations about the staunchly conservative evangelical movement it was easy for me to set them up as the other, as those fanatics out West or in DC that are essentially bullshitting us all with their anti-intellectual, anti-democratic, anti-political version of faith. I wasn’t likely going to come face-to-face with them at Gettysburg College. There are conservatives, without a doubt, but mostly of a different breed. Looking back, it seems that in my mind evangelicals became a force to somehow oppose. They took on a singular identity, a stereotype.
So when confronted with this old high school friend I was taken aback. I was forced to reevaluate everything I’ve thought to this point. They’re not some vague other; they’re my friends and my neighbors. This complicates the problem exponentially in my eyes. It’s easy to discuss a faceless other, but much harder to look a friend in the eye and say “That’s just not so, you’re just not examining what you believe.” My only reaction was to quickly turn the conversation to pleasantries of “how’s your family?” and “have you seen so-and-so?” and avoid the problem altogether. But it remains: How do you talk to someone so embedded in their web of beliefs, their faith, that they don’t allow room to question and examine it without coming across as utterly and overtly offensive to them? How do I point out to my old friend my ideas about the evangelical movement without destroying the friendship?
So these are my most recent thoughts and ramblings; the most recent unanswered questions drifting in my mind.
That's a great and very timely post! (and a thoughtful and intelligent student, too.)
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure exactly what the cause and effect relationship is, or if the two phenomena are sides of the same coin, but one present obstacle to substantive dialogue and a truly democratic community is that we learn that it is impolite to talk about politics and religion in all but the most intimate company. In polite company we are supposed to nod and smile and, particularly with religion, vaguely affirm their faith lest we offend someone's deeply held beliefs.
Since when is engaging in a reasonable discussion offending someone's beliefs? You've quoted Mill a good bit lately...wouldn't you think Mill would say that a discussion of someone's beliefs actually *honors* them because it considers them worthy of being put to the test? And yet, if we even begin to challenge a faith-based assumption, we are somehow engaging in offensive behavior.
Now, as you know and have well-noted here, my faith extends to the animal variety: I believe the chair I'm sitting on is an actual material object independent of my experience of it. But I don't get offended by phenomenologists (okay, not for this reason, anyway :-) ) for asking me to explain why I think this is a worthy--though unprovable--belief to hold. So why can't we ask somebody about their bases for believing Church dogma, *particularly* when they use such dogma to make political decisions that affect us??
There's my morning rant. I'm sorry to hear you have a cold, and I hope you feel better. I enjoyed reading your student's post...espeically the part about how the enemy is not some faceless other but your friends and neighbors. I think that is the concept NOW and DFA are working from.
Um, Yehuster, are you developing multiple personality disorder? Some inner turmoil going on, and is that inner bete noir an anti-semite? (Or do we have a real psycho on our hands in this hate-heals-the-heart person?)
ReplyDeleteNow, onto more interesting things, namely philosophy and phenomenology:
1) please note you misrepresented my assertion. I did not say a phenomenologist would tell me I didn't know a chair was a chair. I said a phenomenologist would question whether I might assert that said chair (whatever it is in truth) was a real in-itself material thing independent of its phenomenal appearance for me, or whether when I claim to know said chair that what I am knowing is the material entity itself (however imperfectly) rather than its status as a phenomenal object of experience.
I don't dislike phenomenologists per se, I dislike a certain aspect of many real--not imagined!--followers of phenomenology, and it's the same thing that pisses me off about the religious faithful. (And it's also why I steer clear of SPEP....speaking of church.) When I try to explain any beliefs that don't meet the philosophical/methodological/political status quo, I am often pooh-poohed, dismissed, or hostilely treated, as if I have spoken heresy or am simply one of the unfortunate who have not "seen the light." There were many such church followers in our long island branch....sounds like you don't have a denomination out in Oregon. Lucky you! :-)
This is fun!