Articles of Faith

Much has been remarked about the growing power of the American Evangelical movement, and its growing power within the Republican party. No religious practice or philosophy, however, is historical (arguments for the eternal truth of a metaphysics not considered here). Religious practices arise, change, and cessate depending on external societal, economic, environmental, and political conditions. Of course, religious beliefs effect these factors as well, creating a complex feedback mechanism where inputs are everywhere but a linear 'beginning' and 'end' is nowhere.

Contemporary Evangelicalism provides a fascinating example of a belief system where foreign, but deeply ingrained, societal and political ideologies have become so incorporated into the religious doctrine that the order of their inception has been inverted, and the external political ideology has become a central, internal, metaphysics. The outside has become the inside.

Looking at the vast megachurches especially predominant in the South and West, we witness the commercialism of religion. These communities are fostered with an eye towards the maximization of spiritual consumers, with a delectable, metaphysically cheapened message edible for common consumption. We are asked to give nothing but a few hours of our time a week in exchange for eternal salvation. Religion is compartmentalized--the sacrifices asked of us are few, but the ostensible benefits are manifold.

Here I may be accused of being anti-religious, or condescending towards 'people of faith'. On the contrary, my critique is aimed at pulling out the inconsistencies of modern faith in America to allow for the reemergence of a new, invigorated American spirituality. Our shared faith in democracy and egalitarianism should not be confused for a metaphysics. Indeed, it is the infiltration of these political and social ideologies into religion and their seemingly God-given status that retards our ability to think beyond them, and towards the cultivation of the religious, and towards a betterment of liberal democracy. If democracy is taken as religion, then there will be heresies taken advantage of by politicians attempting to subjugate the people. It works to their advantage to take certain choices from us completely by pretending that they are not in fact choices. Couple this with these very political ideologies masquerading as intrinsic articles of faith, and a very dangerous, if not ironic, subversion of democracy occurs from the purported guardians of faith and politics, our spiritually democratizing megachurch pastors preaching a cheapened and impotent faith, and our democratically elected leaders that work systematically to suppress true democracy, both at home and abroad.