Post by PaulsLaugh on Sept 5, 2023 7:07:58 GMT
From Digby’s Hullabaloo
Predictions of calamity always attend change, be it cultural, economic or political. Preachers love to associate natural catastrophes with God’s judgement against unbelievers (until the storms and floods strike their own communities). Somehow, change always seems to bring out the doomsayer in us.
So, it’s interesting that as church attendance declines, former churchgoers still maintain their sense of morality despite theocrats’ claims that that’s not possible. Daniel K. Williams writes in The Atlantic that, if nothing else, people shedding their churchgoing identities does not means losing their moral and political ones:
So, as church attendance declines even in the southern Bible Belt and the rural Midwest, history might seem to suggest that those regions will become more secular, more supportive of abortion and LGBTQ rights, and more liberal in their voting patterns. But that is not what is happening. Declines in church attendance have made the rural Republican regions of the country even more Republican and—perhaps most surprising—more stridently Christian nationalist.
Williams suggests taking part in a church community may have a moderating effect on one’s politics:
In fact, people become even more entrenched in their political views when they stop attending services. Though churches have a reputation in some circles as promoting hyper-politicization, they can be depolarizing institutions. Being part of a religious community often forces people to get along with others—including others with different political views—and it may channel people’s efforts into charitable work or forms of community outreach that have little to do with politics. Leaving the community removes those moderating forces, opening the door to extremism.
I didn’t see that coming. Church communities may not be as diverse as the Bronx, but membership does require a modicum of tolerance.
So perhaps it is not unsurprising that people without a lot of tolreance to spare are not regular churchgoers, as PRRI found earlier this year. While they attend church more than the average American, “roughly half of all Christian nationalists rarely, if ever, go to church.”
The nation’s most historically Catholic states, such as Massachusetts and Rhode Island, have retained the Democratic leanings that they had half a century ago, when more residents went to church. As white Catholics left church, they continued to practice the values of the Social Gospel that perhaps they or their parents or grandparents had learned there, and they channeled those energies into the political community. Although perhaps breaking with the church on issues of sexuality, gender, and abortion, they continued to embrace the ethic of concern for the poor and marginalized, and insisted that the government champion these causes. But among dechurched white evangelicals (a group heavily concentrated in the South and rural Midwest), the political values that remain are focused on culture wars and the autonomy of the individual.
Unless you’re an individual female.
Perhaps it is not so surprising. The influence of regional settlement patterns carry induring weight in local culture, folkways and mores. They even influence how we die. What religious beliefs settlers brought with them, or what cultures relocated with them from settlers’ (and the enslaveds’) places of origin may be too deeply intertwined to separate. Chicken or egg?
As Jamelle Bouie implied the other day (or as I read in), in places settled by enslavers those atop the social hierarchy never quite shed their feudalism whetever their Bibles tell them about Jesus setting men free. It is not as surprising, then, that in the region that brought us The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, states now insists they may control what women do with their bodies far beyond their borders.
So, it’s interesting that as church attendance declines, former churchgoers still maintain their sense of morality despite theocrats’ claims that that’s not possible. Daniel K. Williams writes in The Atlantic that, if nothing else, people shedding their churchgoing identities does not means losing their moral and political ones:
So, as church attendance declines even in the southern Bible Belt and the rural Midwest, history might seem to suggest that those regions will become more secular, more supportive of abortion and LGBTQ rights, and more liberal in their voting patterns. But that is not what is happening. Declines in church attendance have made the rural Republican regions of the country even more Republican and—perhaps most surprising—more stridently Christian nationalist.
Williams suggests taking part in a church community may have a moderating effect on one’s politics:
In fact, people become even more entrenched in their political views when they stop attending services. Though churches have a reputation in some circles as promoting hyper-politicization, they can be depolarizing institutions. Being part of a religious community often forces people to get along with others—including others with different political views—and it may channel people’s efforts into charitable work or forms of community outreach that have little to do with politics. Leaving the community removes those moderating forces, opening the door to extremism.
I didn’t see that coming. Church communities may not be as diverse as the Bronx, but membership does require a modicum of tolerance.
So perhaps it is not unsurprising that people without a lot of tolreance to spare are not regular churchgoers, as PRRI found earlier this year. While they attend church more than the average American, “roughly half of all Christian nationalists rarely, if ever, go to church.”
The nation’s most historically Catholic states, such as Massachusetts and Rhode Island, have retained the Democratic leanings that they had half a century ago, when more residents went to church. As white Catholics left church, they continued to practice the values of the Social Gospel that perhaps they or their parents or grandparents had learned there, and they channeled those energies into the political community. Although perhaps breaking with the church on issues of sexuality, gender, and abortion, they continued to embrace the ethic of concern for the poor and marginalized, and insisted that the government champion these causes. But among dechurched white evangelicals (a group heavily concentrated in the South and rural Midwest), the political values that remain are focused on culture wars and the autonomy of the individual.
Unless you’re an individual female.
Perhaps it is not so surprising. The influence of regional settlement patterns carry induring weight in local culture, folkways and mores. They even influence how we die. What religious beliefs settlers brought with them, or what cultures relocated with them from settlers’ (and the enslaveds’) places of origin may be too deeply intertwined to separate. Chicken or egg?
As Jamelle Bouie implied the other day (or as I read in), in places settled by enslavers those atop the social hierarchy never quite shed their feudalism whetever their Bibles tell them about Jesus setting men free. It is not as surprising, then, that in the region that brought us The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, states now insists they may control what women do with their bodies far beyond their borders.