Religious Boundary Keeping
Posted: Thu May 21, 2009 7:14 pm
I have been listening to a lot of Christian radio the last little while. I was struck by something strange. They have many Christian programs that are positive and “uplifting” but a lot of their focus on the outside world tends to be really negative and dark. This is both in their newscasts and segments where they discuss the world or social issues. And by dark I mean it. In the last few days I have heard programs focusing on suicide, ritualistic killings, rape and homicide. News reports tend to be very foreboding and seem to pick the worst of the worst in human behavior (as opposed to what is most likely). There is also a repeated theme of the spiral downward, that things are getting much, much worse.
I was mediating on this today. In particular, why Christians, who should be focused on the “good news” and the positive influence of their religion on society, tend to focus on just the opposite. Something dawned on me. It is all about boundary keeping. To a large extent they are forced to artificially create an "us and them", an “other world” because one naturally doesn’t exist.
If one compare the values of mainstream Christians, mainstream Muslims, mainstream Buddhists, mainstream Hindus and even mainstream Humanists one will quickly come to an obvious conclusion—they all pretty much believe the same thing about personal morality and what is good behavior. It is really just in the realm of metaphysics that they differ. They don’t really disagree on values, just where those values come from. I used to attend the Mormon Church and now I attend a very liberal Unitarian Church. Even our reverend is a black, gay, woman. I don’t know how you could get any further from Mormonism. But the truth is, if you didn’t know any better you couldn’t tell the difference by interacting with the people. They all believe in charity, honesty, duty, loyalty, personal integrity, human value, etc. on both sides.
So if you are “selling” your religion on Christian radio what are you going to do, since they values you are packaging are really pretty universal? You are going to try to juxtapose your religious package against something horrible. So for our Christian radio the choice is evangelicalism or a murder and rape filled, demon-haunted world. Who would chose that?
You can then judge how interested a religion is in proselyting their religion by how dark they paint the world. Interestingly, religions that aren’t interested in such things today, such as mainstream Hinduism or Judaism do very little in terms of doomsday theology and bogeyman preaching. So if you want a stronger “us” you must make a stronger “them”.
I was mediating on this today. In particular, why Christians, who should be focused on the “good news” and the positive influence of their religion on society, tend to focus on just the opposite. Something dawned on me. It is all about boundary keeping. To a large extent they are forced to artificially create an "us and them", an “other world” because one naturally doesn’t exist.
If one compare the values of mainstream Christians, mainstream Muslims, mainstream Buddhists, mainstream Hindus and even mainstream Humanists one will quickly come to an obvious conclusion—they all pretty much believe the same thing about personal morality and what is good behavior. It is really just in the realm of metaphysics that they differ. They don’t really disagree on values, just where those values come from. I used to attend the Mormon Church and now I attend a very liberal Unitarian Church. Even our reverend is a black, gay, woman. I don’t know how you could get any further from Mormonism. But the truth is, if you didn’t know any better you couldn’t tell the difference by interacting with the people. They all believe in charity, honesty, duty, loyalty, personal integrity, human value, etc. on both sides.
So if you are “selling” your religion on Christian radio what are you going to do, since they values you are packaging are really pretty universal? You are going to try to juxtapose your religious package against something horrible. So for our Christian radio the choice is evangelicalism or a murder and rape filled, demon-haunted world. Who would chose that?
You can then judge how interested a religion is in proselyting their religion by how dark they paint the world. Interestingly, religions that aren’t interested in such things today, such as mainstream Hinduism or Judaism do very little in terms of doomsday theology and bogeyman preaching. So if you want a stronger “us” you must make a stronger “them”.
