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This isn't so easy a question as it seems, though my own Nothingarian predispositions are rather militantly infidel. We just don't have anything here historically playing the role of Catholicism in France. Anticlericalism is much more important where you have a close identification of the state with a specific religious establishment. There is also no particular connection between evangelicalism and religion generally. Nor between evangelicalism and reactionary politics...or between religion and progressive politics. In a more fundamental sense, people here (and maybe everywhere) don't feel the compulsion many of us have towards intellectual consistency. In fact, most politics here usually involve intellectual leaps of Olympic proportions. So much so that I doubt that there's really a clear connection between their politics and whether they believe in "god" (especially since almost none of the people who use the term mean the same thing by it that someone else means when they use the word). And even less between their politics and whether they believe that spritzing their children at a certain age with a certain kind of water means something cosmic and profound. ML PS: Of course, I would love to go over and make a detailed comparative study of this for the next howevermany years. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
