Why there are so many Evangelicals in the US today

[zulchzulu]

I just watched a documentary called "Affluenza", which featured the idea of people wanting too much in our consumer society.

Oddly, one of the examples of people who are trying to stop "affluenza" are evangelicals that channel the xburbans to give up on their next SUV to fill their three-car garage in the burbs and use that money for Je$u$. Not the real Jesus, but...Je$u$.

It's a perfect plan. These people have shitty jobs or are laid off with kids and watch Fox News. After all, Fox News is VERY entertaining. Plus, as you well know, it's "fair and balanced".

These people use religion and church as a Unifying Glue to shut up the rug rats as well as bond within the Keeping Up With The Jones parking lot envy before and after church service. Plus the child care is damn cheap. Free coffee and donuts ain't a bad price to pay in order to get the flyer about the pro-life rally next Thursday. Heck, they'll even pick up the kids.

You just have to brainwash your kid that being "pro-life" is the best way to clam them up so they don't boink in Dad's car at Lovers Lane on Friday night.

Their jobs will get shittier. The cost of school will rise. The nurse will start charging more for pills and crap. Fueling minivans and SUVs to show off at the church parking lot will become prohibitively expensive. The priest might even try to feel up their kids at summer camp.

Eventually, they will see the light and see the new Democratic "brand" of proving that Repugs are evil sumadobeeches.

[kodi]

1. you mean you really don't know?

its because they recruit, and they are in the business of selling that night light called hope against the darkness of the big sleep.

people don't want to die and will try just about anything to negate the acknowledgement of it.

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. Plenty of liberal evngelicals, though. And we don't buy into the

crap the Pharisees put out.

-------------------------------------
Would Jesus love a liberal? You bet!
http://timeforachange.bluelemur.com/

[dogman]

3. It was all the brown acid in the 60s & 70s

They need their security blanket.

[zulchzulu]

6. You have a point there

The few people I know who became Evangelicals used to be major cokeheads...usually they were in shitty rock hair bands that went nowhere. They married their coke dealer, bottomed out and then became Jesus freaks.

Now they love the Chimp.

[IndianaGreen]

4. The chemicals in the water makes people stupid

Well, that's my tinfoil theory!

:tinfoilhat:

[HR_Pufnstuf]

5. and u cant tell me that the Osama vid didnt...

... help consolidate the religious base in the last election. rove was genius on that move, if he was involved in its release/timing. the christians needed to be reminded that the devil was still around. perfect move.

plus, it buried the missing 380 tons of explosives.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

7. You're not far off

There's a reason that evangelicals are so strong in the suburbs, especially outer suburbs.

First of all, people often flock to these new "edge cities" because they're afraid of "crime and drugs" (i.e. dark-skinned people). (A former teaching college who had just moved to Oregon from the Atlanta area told of having a blind date with a man who admitted that his company built "white flight subdivisions.") There's a conservative bias right there.

The trouble with these brand-new suburbs is that all the owners of the trophy houses are spending most of their time either at work or in the car, plus there's no real town, just houses and strip malls. The type of community you find in my neighborhood, where everyone patronizes the same coffee shop, the food co-op, the library, and the locally-owned hardware store as well as sending their kids to the same school and attending the neighborhood festival, doesn't exist in Shady Acres.

Well, people need something in their lives besides TV and driving, and the evangelical churches fill a void by providing a ready-made social group. All you have to do is show up, participate, and not rock the boat. You have all sorts of services to attend, social and support groups for every age and situation, daycare, perhaps a full-fledged school, and recreational facilities. The price is that if you disagree with the minister, you risk losing all your friends.

Note that fundamentalist churches in the city are located almost entirely in poor neighborhoods, where they provide an emotional outlet for people who lead tough lives, but in the suburbs, they're located in affluent areas, too.

[zulchzulu]

10. My assessment is based on recent travels in "white flight" zones

The pattern, as you suggest and I caracitured, is always the same.

Why go downtown to the Symphony and dinner when Fr. Wingnut is having a free concert and bake sale a mere 3 miles down the road from the big mall. Just don't forget to shut up if you voted for Kerry.

[RPM]

8. two ideas

1) People find their consumption based existence empty and search for the first thing that fills them up (drugs, affairs, alcohol, excessive eating, FUNDAMENTALISM)

OR

2) A country in economic and educational decline creates persons who are ready for a message of hope and who are hopelessly unable to read and reason through the doctrine and writings of the religion; as such they take whatever is told them as gospel, especially when the message confirms their prejudices or gives them an opportunity to blame someone else for their 'plight'

we have them both - i think 1 explains what happens in the upper-middle class who are 'making it'; 2 applies to those being crushed by the system

[Hamlette]

9. America has a history of religious "revivals"

There was a similar trend in the 1830s which left us with the mormon church.

I think having our #1 enemy for so many years be a atheist country helped.

Evangelicals are different from fundamentalists. Some evangelicals are not fundamentalist. Fundamentalism is on the rise worldwide as a reaction to change. It has happened historically before.

[KitSileya]

11. I think it's been part of the American psyche since the puritans.

As has been mentioned by previous posts, the country has a history of revivals, but they go back further than the 1830s. The Great Awakening, anyone? If you go back and read the literature of the initial settler, you will see the same fervor. It's all about blood and gore. They delight in scaring the hell out of people, literally, scaring them away from a path towards hell. A professor at Georgetown University has written a book about this, about how the horror genre, in the USA at least, is a continuation of the awe-ful. I think that by now, it's a built-in reflex of being scared, that Americans turn to fervent religion when frightened.