America has massaged Christianity into something special that it wasn't always. Many varieties of Christianity that spring up here are explicitly non-hierarchical: that's American populism at work. (And actually you probably could interpret Jesus as having advocated that sort of thing.) There's also some weird underlying theology here in some of those independent churches that essentially identifies the Invisible Hand with God and says, well, if you're wealthy it must because you've been favored by God, so let's all celebrate American prosperity! And there's a sort of nauseating emphasis on The Family, by which they mean Mom, Dad, and kids, that feels sort of alien to anyone who remembers that bit about abandoning your family to follow Him. So there are a lot of ways that Christianity and American culture conflict, and America has tended to solve this by changing Christianity.
I was talking to a cool divinity student not too long ago that had a name for this way that cultural values get infused into religions. I see it happening today both with American cultural values I like (the Episcopalians, with their ordination of women and gays) and with the above values, which generally I don't like.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2008-08-12 09:15 pm (UTC)I was talking to a cool divinity student not too long ago that had a name for this way that cultural values get infused into religions. I see it happening today both with American cultural values I like (the Episcopalians, with their ordination of women and gays) and with the above values, which generally I don't like.