Archive for February 14th, 2007

If you haven’t seen the documentary, go check it out. Basically it takes a look at the Evangelical Right in America by looking at various organizations and leaders throughout the movement. Including, Ted Haggard.

The first caveat would be I don’t think this is fair representation as a whole of this group, but it certainly gets at some of the major themes. In particular they follow one Pentecostal minister (They speak in tongues and is the denomination of John Ashcroft, so they aren’t that far removed.) from Lee’s Summitt who also runs a camp in the Dakotas. Now, this lady is a piece of work. The language and rhetoric she uses mimics anything we would hear from Islamic fundamentalists, especially monologues on training the young and creating warriors for Christ.

What really surprised me was the postmodern nature of the movement. Popularly, the religious/evangelical right is lumped into a fundamentalist movement. Fundamentalism, as a Christian doctrine is usually seen as around a century old, if not younger. In its base form, fundamentalism is a rejection of modernism, which is why academics often make comparisons between fundamentalist Christianity and Islam. It is the rejection of modernism and not the basic religious teaching which truly define the movement.

Throughout Jesus Camp, various forms of media and techniques are used in order to persuade this kids to turn into little god warriors, now, for me this is fundamentally (no pun intended) contrary to the idea of what fundamentalism. In many aspects it is the appropriation of modernity and postmodernity which is aiding the cause of the preachers. An interesting thought.

Now, this isn’t the first time that Christianity has entered into this world. Revivals and revivalists were often maligned by more conservative members of Protestantism for introducing tracts (advertising) traveling shows (licentious theatre) and religious novels (books are bad, except for the bible) into the mainstream. In the mid-late nineties, the GodSpeaks advertising campaign was introduced which riled some more conservative and liberal religious types. So, I’m not saying that we somehow lose our religion when we go mass media, rather it is the confluence of the modern and the fundamental which may be new, and we can then assume that this may be the first American postmodern religious movement.

Now, we can also use Pierre Bourdieu here and talk of the need for a spokesperson. Bourdieu saw the division of social classes very much defined by taste, a way of discerning one group from the other. In general, taste is defined by the strata, whether it by social, economic or cultural capital, directly above you. Now, for all of you hipsters out there, taste can also be a rejection of that stratum.

What Bourdieu states, is that it is the people in the interstitial, floating between two stratum which are the most powerful individuals. This are the linkers, they are able, in essence, to speak two languages, and the only way for group B to speak with group A is if the spokesperson is able to translate. For those in the lower strata aren’t able to intelligibly understand the motives, nature and ideologies of the group above. Now, this is a loose description of Bourdieu, but I did find it interesting in relation to viewing these current evangelicals as some sort of spokesman between the modern and the fundamental.