Joel Blau wrote: > > The difference is that in England, religion helps to > constitute a real working class, while here, Evangelism gives expression > to what might best be described as deformed class feeling. >
This is probably correct, but the proper response is to work on building political consciousness, not attacking religion directly, which is so much wasted breath. (Qualification: in private conversation with religious people _already_ beginning to have qualms about their 'faith' it is proper to try to strengthen those qualms.) The expression of anti-religious feelings on this list is mere pointless self-expression -- but so are generalized statements about how "most" leftists or "The Left" responds to religion: such statements are mostly a pastiche of urban legends. Most leftists in their practice respond very sensibly to religious people. Whining over evangelicals electing Bush is also silly. It took an awful lot of the regular "secular christians" also to elect him. It's always silly to ascribe an electoral victory (or defeat) to any one component of the votes for the victor. There are 10s of millions of americans which the left can reach before it has to worry about converting evangelicals to secularism. Carrol (Re England: Religion helpED not helps there, I suspect.) Carrol > Joel Blau >
