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A New Contingent of Christians
Janel Bakker, 28, a graduate student at Catholic University who attends Washington Community Fellowship on Capitol Hill, an evangelical church affiliated with the Mennonite denomination, said she grew up in a "relatively conservative religious home" where "the big issue was considered to be abortion." Thanks to Laryn, Janel's husband, for sending a link to his wife's post (Janel and Laryn operate together a terrific website) where she writes a comprehensive background to the quote she gave for the article. Janel's insights are valuable because I think they give us a glimpse towards the future, a future where hopefully the political influence of today's Christian Right will significantly diminish. Janel also shows how mainstream journalists often fail to pick up on the subtleties that are so crucial in trying to understand contemporary religious practice in the United Sates. Some excerpts from Janel's post:
The most interesting part of the conversation, for me, was our discussion about terms such as "liberal,""conservative," "religious left," "religious right" and "evangelical." Those familiar with my academic agenda will not be surprised by this; I'm always game to hash out the definitions of these terms, especially with someone else who cares. It's been my hunch for a while now (a hunch I'm hoping to explore in my dissertation) that such terms are largely outmoded and that a new contingent of North American Christians is rising up who simply cannot be placed in any of these categories. Many North American Christians who take their faith seriously, both Protestant and Catholic, don't fit into either the "liberal" category or the "conservative" category, both politically and theologically. I explained to Ms. Murphy that while people like me are certainly not fans of the religious right, we don't fit into the religious left either. The very fact that I disagree with a woman's "right to choose" removes my welcome in the Democratic Party. Considering my impression that Ms. Murphy understood and even resonated with what I was saying, I was a little disappointed that she used the culture war motif in her article anyhow. She didn't challenge the assumption that those who baulk at the idea that "moral issues" consist of abortion and same-sex marriage are card-carrying members of the religious left. Her article perpetuated the idea (popular among scholars such as Robert Wuthnow and James Davison Hunter) that religious left and religious right are engrossed in hurling bombs at each other from either side of an ever widening chasm.
A New Contingent of Christians | 6 comments (6 topical, 0 hidden)
A New Contingent of Christians | 6 comments (6 topical, 0 hidden)
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