Such is the potential that could be realized by the Church, in harvesting this to support and grow their community. In typical churches, the content flows “from above”; the “connections” that are “recommended” are from a position of “authority” as filtered through the singular experience of the pastor.

Back to the rant that drove me to this conversation. In the fundamentalist world, the “conversation” is feared. The authority risks too much “assimilation” and challenge from the wider, broader experience of “alternatives” which are eye-opening in such a way to cast a host of questions on the heretofore limited system , based on “limited” and “filtered” news, all “postured” and “tweaked” with the editing of “public relations” pens and “dispersed down to the public. It’s the Music Man mentality, “trouble in RiverCity” that rhymes with “school” and that means “pool”; whipping up fears about consequences based on faulty sociology (or basically NO sociology, since the ability or expectation of the “subjects” in an authoritarian system to “observe” the behavior of their “leaders” is basically sidelined.)

Al Mohler wrote an article earlier this week about how “the media” sounds warnings about “The Religious Right” (as if “The Media” were some single monolithic entity, which they always seem to be saying). Baisically, he takes the comments of some figure, interviewed in the media, and assigns them to be “the voice of the media”, and proceeds to “debunk”, from his collection of mantras, the accusations. The problem with this, obviously, is that these are questions about the tactics and approaches and attitudes of the Religious Right that DO NOT register with the Religious Right’s most outspoken mouthpieces, because they simply don’t do much analysis at all on their own movement. They are blind to the “cultural alliances” they are forging with the Political Right. They are blind to the “financial partnership” with the rich and powerful, who seem to be the only ones benefiting from the massive tax cuts (“only “massive” to the filty rich; everyone below the “serf” line wonders about the beneficial effects this is supposed to have on the economy. The mantra goes: the money pocketed by the people receiving the breaks goes back into the economy, and revitalizes it. But do its prime beneficiaries, the filthy rich, re-invest their extra money into processes that benefit the whole, or into channels that basically only benefit themselves? Do they really want to “even things out” in this society where the gap between rich and poor is the greatest among the Western Nations?

None of this is even on the table in the “issues” that are listed by the Religious Right, nor on the Political Right. It is simpy answered, when the question is put, by re-reciting the same mantras, so far disproven, that the “market” is the great equalizer; t hat “the market” will self-police”. And while Jesus warns us, constantly, that “money is the root of all evil”, we continue to turn a blind eye to the coalitions forged in modern America, and with much greater speed and lack of caution in the “Bush America”, with the “market forces” that are not even accessible to the rank and file of Americans; these “investments” are directly benefiting only the mammoth financial card-holders; it’s like the guy in Wall Street (the one played by Michael Douglas, who says “Greed is good”)