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Embedded in Jesusland
By Ned | April 24, 2008
Matt Taibbi goes undercover in Hagee’s church so you don’t have to. So what’s it like in there?
Ridiculously weird.
The whole thing is worth reading to take in all of the hilarity/sheer terror, but here’s the moral at the end of the story:
By the end of the weekend I realized how quaint was the mere suggestion that Christians of this type should learn to “be rational” or “set aside your religion” about such things as the Iraq War or other policy matters. Once you’ve made a journey like this — once you’ve gone this far — you are beyond suggestible. It’s not merely the informational indoctrination, the constant belittling of homosexuals and atheists and Muslims and pacifists, etc., that’s the issue. It’s that once you’ve gotten to this place, you’ve left behind the mental process that a person would need to form an independent opinion about such things. You make this journey precisely to experience the ecstasy of beating to the same big gristly heart with a roomful of like-minded folks. Once you reach that place with them, you’re thinking with muscles, not neurons.
Exactly. Look, religion isn’t a rational thing - it’s a limited surrender to the irrational and unknowable. That’s not a curse from the depths of cold atheist reptile heart, it’s just true. That’s why it’s called a leap of faith. And if people have no problem with making that leap, cool. But Hagee’s church and radical religion in general are all about taking that leap a lot further and letting it demolish the ability to think critically about things. Because people who can’t do that are a lot more pliable and easy to dominate.
This is the kind of mindset that the Enlightenment was supposed to get rid of. It’s downright medieval.
Topics: Religion |