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Oct. 24th, 2007 04:38 pm. . . American religion is weird.
I don't just mean nowadays, with the Christian right (Right?). I mean historically, our relationship with religion -- and moreover, religion's relationship with us -- is really weird.
I mainly draw this conclusion due to the unusual number of churches that have sprung up since the Great Awakening in the 1740s that all have this huge emphasis on America, starting, most notably to my mind, with the Mormons. Mormonism could've just been another Protestant church with some new rules about marriage and diet; there were several of those in the early 1800s.
But instead, Joseph Smith anchored it geographically in America. Presbyterianism has roots in Scotland and Ireland; Anglicanism is, obviously, English; Lutheranism is German; all of them, though, have roots in the Roman Catholic Church, which has its roots in Jerusalem. And then you've got the Mormons who were, are, and ever shall be North Americans.
Add to that the westward journey to seek their fortunes (and ignore for the moment that the Jews sewed up the wandering in the desert niche centuries earlier), and you've got a religion that's colored red, white, and blue.
And on top of that, I've just been reading about premillenial groups like the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Pentecostals, who insisted for a long while that the chosen would be coming from America (best: "premillenialists could identify the 'remnant' [those who would go to heaven at Armageddon] with those who cried when they heard the strains of 'America the Beautiful'") and interpreted Revelations's two-horned lamb as America. Sometimes they even managed to stop being sectarian long enough to embrace all Americans, gentile, Jew, high and low, because they all "swear allegiance to the same country," as Aimee Semple McPherson, a Pentecostal minister, said -- ie, even though you might not be chosen to go to heaven, you were okay in her books, as long as you weren't a Communist.
(The way Communism affected the premillienial churches, btw, is pretty stunning. They went from being very anti-patriotism and very anti-big government, very pro-labor movement, to embracing American capitalism and associating the USSR with the Antichrist. Communism: bringing families together since the 20th century.)
It's not just that our legislation, especially lately, has had a lot of emphasis on Christianity; it's that Christianity has had a lot of emphasis on our country.
Do denominations in other countries have this same kind of nationalism? Obviously, my information's skewed, because the course is called Religion in American Society.
I don't just mean nowadays, with the Christian right (Right?). I mean historically, our relationship with religion -- and moreover, religion's relationship with us -- is really weird.
I mainly draw this conclusion due to the unusual number of churches that have sprung up since the Great Awakening in the 1740s that all have this huge emphasis on America, starting, most notably to my mind, with the Mormons. Mormonism could've just been another Protestant church with some new rules about marriage and diet; there were several of those in the early 1800s.
But instead, Joseph Smith anchored it geographically in America. Presbyterianism has roots in Scotland and Ireland; Anglicanism is, obviously, English; Lutheranism is German; all of them, though, have roots in the Roman Catholic Church, which has its roots in Jerusalem. And then you've got the Mormons who were, are, and ever shall be North Americans.
Add to that the westward journey to seek their fortunes (and ignore for the moment that the Jews sewed up the wandering in the desert niche centuries earlier), and you've got a religion that's colored red, white, and blue.
And on top of that, I've just been reading about premillenial groups like the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Pentecostals, who insisted for a long while that the chosen would be coming from America (best: "premillenialists could identify the 'remnant' [those who would go to heaven at Armageddon] with those who cried when they heard the strains of 'America the Beautiful'") and interpreted Revelations's two-horned lamb as America. Sometimes they even managed to stop being sectarian long enough to embrace all Americans, gentile, Jew, high and low, because they all "swear allegiance to the same country," as Aimee Semple McPherson, a Pentecostal minister, said -- ie, even though you might not be chosen to go to heaven, you were okay in her books, as long as you weren't a Communist.
(The way Communism affected the premillienial churches, btw, is pretty stunning. They went from being very anti-patriotism and very anti-big government, very pro-labor movement, to embracing American capitalism and associating the USSR with the Antichrist. Communism: bringing families together since the 20th century.)
It's not just that our legislation, especially lately, has had a lot of emphasis on Christianity; it's that Christianity has had a lot of emphasis on our country.
Do denominations in other countries have this same kind of nationalism? Obviously, my information's skewed, because the course is called Religion in American Society.
