THIS IS A MINI-LECTURE ON THE AFFIRMATIVES OF POSTMODERN RELIGIOUS SENSIBILITY...ENJOY, TRYoung

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POSTMODERN SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION:
advantages and problems for the hard core atheist

Advantages of Church Membership

Problems of Church Attendance

1.  One can find out just who, what and where help is needed in a community of believers; praxis requires more than just lip-service to global issues...it requires progressive action, personal action in your own community.

2. One can develop a support group of good people from among a congregation...support groups, friendship groups outside academia are most precious to the spirit...they provide both reason and means to 'be' in the community.

3. One can join in on the many community and foreign projects supported by the church members.  Many support food, clothing, emergency funding and medical aid for transients.  Some support shelters for battered women.  A few have sister churches in the same poor countries exploited by world banks, IMF and the Big Seven.

4. Many churches, especially Unitarians and Friends offer great opportunity to members for designing and producing Sunday Services.  If one finds the canned programs of established churches too narrow and too remote from the lived needs of a membership, one can create entirely new programs.

5. In times of personal trouble, one can find support and succor among the membership.  Accepting help from others ratifies their existence as moral human beings and brings needed comfort and support to you, yourself.

6. In times of trouble for others, one has opportunity to expand one's own soul and heart by giving that support needed in times of death, natural disaster or disease.   As Millay said, the world is only as wide as is the heart is wide.

7.  The physical setting of many churches has a beauty and a solace unto itself.  It stills the heart and comforts the soul just to sit quietly in chapel, church or temple and let the sunshine filter in through stained glass windows, to hear the great silence of one's own heartbeat and to light a candle for one you loved so much for so many years.

8. The music of many churches is magnificent.  Some of the best musicians in the community practice their fine art on a Sunday morn or Wednesday concert.  St. Martin's in the Fields has monthly concerts which move the soul and warm the heart.

9. Some ministers challenge the intellect.  Services as the great churches in New York, Dallas, Detroit or Denver reflect upon economic and political issues with little god-talk and a great deal of wisdom.

10. Each congregation, each denomination, each religious tradition is a cultural life-world in itself.  One cannot be a good anthropologist, sociologist, political scientist or psychologist without knowing, intimately, the very different pathways to the Holy embodied in diverse religions.

11. Every service embodies the major social psychological concepts taught in class.  Face rights, social boundaries, hierarchy, status-role, deference and demeanor, opening moves, disengagement routines, boundary Collusions, toy involvements, unique symbolic sets such as body talk, argot, clothing and behavioral routines all help students see the sociology of it all in everyday life.  I have attended almost every church in town and have sent students to more as teaching and learning adventures.

12.  If one is single, one can find companionship; if one has a partner, one can support their partner's needs for spiritual and communal growth.

 

1.  Too often established churches are racist, sexist or elitist and smugly go on with their support of decidedly anti-humanist behavior as if it were a virtue.

2.  Much of what one hears in established churches...especially fundamentalist churches...is an insult to one's knowledge and intelligence.  Myths long demolished by research and science are presented as if they were incontrovertible truth...and non-believers threatened with still more nonsensical promises of hell fire and damnation.

3. There is, in addition, a singularly barren run of interaction...members are permitted but brief and well scripted interventions into a service.  Considered conversation, reasoned dissent or democratic processes are excluded from too many religious services...an interactional feature which does not sit well with educated parishioners.

4.  Many congregations separate adults and children...instead of a family experience, church often institutes a division of labor which fractures an already frail family form.  The result is a congregation of increasing older persons; increasingly female and increasing unable to enjoin a full and lively community program.

5. Much of the music is glorious but some of text of songs speak of a different time with different problematics in a foreign voice...rather than current problems and current solutions in current voices.

6. The concept of a godhead is a two edged sword...on the one hand, it bring comfort and compliance to those who need transcendent authority...on the other hand, it subverts human agency for the good we might do and human responsibility for the evil we do...a most serious disadvantage.

7. Some churches, especially teleminsteries, are little more than con games, defrauding their audiences and collecting millions in unaccountable funds.  They are below contempt.

AND FOR THOSE OF US WHO ARE CELTS!!

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ALL RED FEATHER MATERIALS ARE ALWAYS FREE TO STUDENTS AND TO THOSE WHO TEACH THEM....T R Young