Monday, May 26, 2008

What is the greatest spiritual threat to our nation?

Coral Ridge Ministries, the prototypical rightwing Christian outfit, has released its annual survey of spiritual threats. Drawing a little attention is Question 2: "How dangerous are the following to the spiritual health of America?" Responses to fourteen subparts are recorded, ranked by the number calling the threat very dangerous. All of the responses were rated somewhat or very dangerous by 98-99 percent of respondents. The report does not indicate that anyone failed to respond to any question. But I have not seen the original survey, and I've assumed that these fourteen all represent prompts in the survey, but there could have been other prompts. No n is reported, or any margin of error. So, at the point of highest concensus (95+% argee very dangerous) we have (1) the ACLU and similar groups and (2) Pro-homosexual indoctrination.
The second order of threats (90+% agree very dangerous) are (3) Abortion and (4) Islamic terrorism.

I'm not really sure why Islamic terrorism is considered spiritually dangerous, unless you're a Muslim and you think that the mystique of martyrdom in the lesser jihad is apt to lure people from the true path. Or if you're a sincere Christian who believes in foregiveness, and see how Islamic violence is exploited to create fear and hatred.

By the way, one ambiguity to note here: how dangerous are bears to health? The answer could be very, or not very, depending on whether one is rating the scale of the threat each time it appears, or whether one is factoring the rarity of its appearance.

Third order threats: 80%+ very dangerous: (5) Hollywood, (6) News Media, (7) Darwinism/evolution, (8) Cults and false religion, (9) Atheism, (10) Courts. The relatively moderate threats (67%+) are (11) Apathetic/uninformed Christians, (12) Colleges and Universities, and (13) Public education (K-12). Congress (14) is relatively un-feared. Obly 63% consider it a very serious threat.

This presents an interesting question: what are the real spiritual threats? I happen to think that the lust for money is the root of most evil, and that it is rivaled only by other false pursuits that absorb us: classical deadly sins like jealosy and wrath, and modern obsessions like drugs. For America, we have the the adversarial system of doing everything competatively, which results in preoccupation with victory and comparative measures of success, and obsessive promotion of the market as savior; excessive nationalism, including national security extremism and anti-immigrant hysteria; the urge to punish; the reification of conceptual liberty and individualism, divorced from the real world, and perversely implemented to protect freedom to exploit others; consumerism, globalism, and attenuation of responsibility, that allows everyone to participate in violent and unsustainable modes of life by consuming at a distance from the conditions in which our products are made.

Even among the Christian right, one wonders if, allowed to pick their own answers, the laity would identify internet pornography or drug addiction as threats. One might imagine that it would be a particular threat to spiritality to have corruption in the heirarchy of the church, such as insincere televangelists who are motivated by the desire for personal wealth, or sex offenses by clergy against parishoners. Those who come back traumatized from war might see war and the experience of killing or entering mortal combat as having been an impediment to their spiritual wefare. Racial minorities might have some understanding of how racism eats away at our national soul.

If I had a regular sermon to give every week or every day, I would spend every sermon decrying some threat to the nation's spiritual welfare. I would have to perform a reality check every now and then to see that I was addressing the most important matters. It wouldn't be a list of angry political wedge issues or anything as stupid as fighting the science of evolution.

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