Over at Slate, Jeremy Stahl has written a fabulous piece — Inside the Bizarre Tourist Trade at Harlem’s Sunday Church Services — that will greatly interest cultural anthropologists. The article hits on several hot button concepts for culturals — tourism, commoditization, race, authenticity, tradition, identity, ritual, gazing, etc. Sensing these issues, Stahl is reluctant:
Though I [...]
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In a curiously titled (“Congregations Gone Wild“) op-ed piece for the New York Times, pastor Jeffrey MacDonald bemoans the pressures that now assail the American clergy. What are these pressures? Entertaining the flock. Selling religion as a commodity for comfortable consumers-parishioners.
Despite the title tease alluding to a sophomoric video series in which college-aged women bare [...]
Tags:clergy burnout·Congregations Gone Wild·entertaining religion·fear based faith·fear based religion·Jeffrey MacDonald·liturgy·marketplace of faith·Peter Berger·puppets·religion as commodity·religious entertainment·sociological theory·soothing religion·The Sacred Canopy
The story is a familiar one: a new religion is founded — or, as the sociologist Rodney Stark would say, a new sect is born from an older tradition — and over time it becomes successful. By success, I mean that it grows, becomes popular, and shows few signs of slowing down.
At some point during [...]
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