Evangelical teens joining the reality-based community in "droves"

[pat_k]

. . .we've become post-Christian America, like post-Christian Europe. We've been working as hard as we know how to work — everyone in youth ministry is working hard — but we're losing.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/us/06evangelical.html?ei=5087%0A&em=&en=a7abe4a9ae7a0ade&ex=1160280000&pagewanted=print

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. Orrrrr.. it could be they are turned off by the

"check your brain at the door" literalist approach. I know I was.

[pat_k]

2. also, reactionaries surge when people feel threatened by progress. . .

. . .but the world moves forward, and the reactionaries begin to melt away as the "frightening future" becomes the present.

[lvx35]

3. You're probably right.

This is actually probably very good for spirituality in America. The more they question, the more likely they are to get satisfying answers that a close-minded church could never offer. :)

[malaise]

5. They know they've been duped

Whatever happened to their 'Rapture'?

[tanyev]

4. Whaa???

Wearing jeans to church and listening to "hip" Christian rock isn't enough to keep the kids clamoring for more? At least when people stopped going to church in Europe, they still had the history and legacy of all of those beautiful cathedrals. The American landscape is going to be littered with hideous mega-churches. Maybe they could turn them into shopping malls--that seems to be this country's true religion, anyway.

[derby378]

7. "It's better to burn out than it is to rust..."

Unfortunately, that's what Jim Jones and David Koresh thought, too.

But it would be nice to watch the neo-fundamentalist movement implode over the next 5-10 years.

[pat_k]

11. in their fear, they target ever younger with ever more coercive (abusive)

. . .tactics. This is perhaps the most tragic thing about amy group that feels it is under seige.

From http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=2455343&page=1">ABC report on the film "Jesus Camp" (Becky Fischer's "Kids on Fire summer camp").

. . ."I want to see them as radically laying down their lives for the gospel as they are in Palestine, Pakistan and all those different places," Fisher said. "Because, excuse me, we have the truth."

On Sept 27, Becky Fischer appeared on Scarobourgh Country (http://rss.msnbc.msn.com/id/15045587/">transcript. After a clip from the film of a little girl who approached a woman at a bowling alley to tell her what god wanted for her, Becky Fischer gave the following defense:

BECKY FISCHER, KIDS IN MINISTRY INTERNATIONAL: Well, who just sent that little girl? As far as I can tell on that clip, she walked up all on her own volition. That was her free choice. Her father never set her up. Nobody else in that room set her up. That‘s something she wanted to do . .

The NAMBLA defense (from wikepedia):

"NAMBLA defends what it asserts to be the right of minors to explore their sexuality on a much freer basis. It has resolved to 'end the oppression of men and boys who have freely chosen mutually consenting relationships'"

There is no logical difference between claiming that children whipped into an ecstatic religious frenzy in which they are prepared to do violence are "consenting participants" and claiming that sexually abused children are "consenting participants."

When Becky Fischer rationalizes that young children, which civil society recognizes are incapable of consenting for themselves, are acting as "free agents," she is invoking the same abominable rationalization that many child-abusers cling to as they seek to escape their own guilt and shame.

When they invoke this defense, both groups (the people who run Kid's on Fire and members of NAMBLA) show us that they recognize that the coercive techniques they use to indoctrinate children are abusive.

If they were comfortable with what they were doing, they would have no need to delude themselves with the belief that their victims are free agents.

When we are proud of methods we use and the values and beliefs we instill in our children, we have no need to delude ourselves with the notion that "they hit on that themselves." We know that we, the adults, are responsible for what we teach our children.


----------- If this strikes you as an inappropriate condemnation of religion ---------------

The content of the indoctrination is irrelevant. Many of the destructive and coercive methods of influence used by Maoist though-reformers, cults, NAMBLA, and at Kids on Fire summer camp are
exactly the same.

We need to recognize the red flags associated with destructive and coercive methods of influence, whatever the content of the indoctrination. I describe one of those red flags -- the defense invoked -- and point out that we see this red flag in a group that is currently the topic of news and discussion.

That Becky Fischer employs destructive and coercive (i.e., abusive) methods in the service of her religious beliefs is irrelevant to the need to recognize a red flag. I would draw the same parallel if a "Progressives on Fire" summer camp was currently the object of scrutiny, and a founder of that "Progressive" camp invoked the NAMBLA defense.

[ornotna]

17. We do it the other way around in Florida

They turn malls into churches. http://www.fbclakeland.org/p/8018/Default.aspx

I drove pass this place once. They totally redefine the term "mega church", the place is huge.

[stillcool]

6. ah...kids these days...

what happened to sex, drugs, and rock & roll?

[DinahMoeHum]

8. Sooner or later they realize they're living in a social ghetto

or a cult, and they split - although sometimes they need help.

Fundamentalists Anonymous' business must be booming these days.

http://www.fundamentalists-anonymous.org/

:evilgrin:

[hsher]

12. Dear DinahMoe, please help me

I just had a brief fantasy of our Preznit visiting the Fundamentalists Anonymous website. The hallucination developed into a vision of the Preznit becoming a rational human being, and millions everywhere leaving Christianity. What worries me is that for a moment, I actually believed such a thing could be possible. Please advise what to do with my obvious stupidity and naivete.

www.yourmorningleibowitz.blogspot.com
Yer Daily Show comic strip

[DinahMoeHum]

19. Bwahahahaaa!!!

What to do? In a word: NOTHING

The coke and the booze wrecked his rationality a long time ago.

But hell, we can all dream, right?

:evilgrin:

[johnnie]

9. They blew their wad

The fundies thought they have gained control over the country because their leader talked to God. They started to go hog wild and pushed too far too fast and are blowing it.

What's funny is that during the Clinton years, spirituality started making a comeback. It wasn't far out, but it was happening. The kids were wearing their "WWJD" wristbands, people started being more open about it all and it wasn't threatening.

Then bush and his freaks came along and pushed it so far down everyone's throats that they blew the whole deal in a few short years.

[pat_k]

13. With Progress comes reaction -- and reactionaries. . .

. . .but the world moves forward, and the reactionaries melt away has the feared future becomes the present.

The kids are not experiencing their world as the sodom and gomorrah that their parents and grandparents believe it to be.

[riderinthestorm]

10. Kids doing a 180 from their parents

an age old story....

Let's hope they get enough edumacation while out of the evangelical fold to stay out permanently.

[pat_k]

14. Sadly, some of these kids face a tough future. . .

. . .a childhood of oppressive external controls and authoritarian discipline can create a young adult who has difficulty with self-control, which in turn leads to addiction and other life destroying behaviors.

[TahitiNut]

15. Do you want fries with that?

:rofl:

[wholetruth00]

16. Youth are the first to recognize "hypocrisy" even if they can't name it.

this is only the tip of the iceberg for super wealthy evangelical leaders.

[Nikki Stone 1]

18. "Gilmore Girls"?

"Trash cans filled with folded pieces of paper on which the teenagers had scribbled things like Ryan Seacrest, Louis Vuitton, “Gilmore Girls,” “Days of Our Lives,” Iron Maiden, Harry Potter, “need for a boyfriend” and “my perfect teeth obsession.” One had written in tiny letters: “fornication.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/us/06evangelical.html?ei=5087%0A&em=&en=a7abe4a9ae7a0ade&ex=1160280000&pagewanted=print

[JI7]

20. i remember a poll on younger voters from 2004

if it was only that younger age group that voted than Kerry would have easily won including many of the deeply red states.

[AnnieBW]

21. They're Turning Away from Fundamentalism

Not faith or spirituality. Just because the kids aren't going to big mega-churches doesn't mean that they're "sinners".The article said that they're active in mainline Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish organizations. The kids are realizing that you don't have to have a big production number and a circus-like atmosphere to be a Christian.

And, since when are the Harry Potter books bad influences on kids?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

22. The big extravagant religious movements tend to die out as

adherents become burned out on the emotional high.

Upstate New York went through the so-called Great Awakening evangelical movement in the 1740s, and after that died down, the area became so secularized for about 100 years that it was referred to as "the burnt-over area." The most influential institutions in town were not churches, but Masonic lodges.

Then new religious movements, such as the Spiritualists, the Mormons, and the Seventh Day Adventists rose up in a very short time in that relatively small area of the country beginning in the 1830s, as if to fill the religious vacuum.