In No Depression in Heaven; Alison Collis Greene demonstrates how the Great Depression and New Deal transformed the relationship between church and state. Grounded in Memphis and the Delta; this book traces the collapse of voluntarism; the link between southern religion and the New Deal; and the gradual alienation of conservative Christianity from the state. At the start of the Great Depression; churches and voluntary societies provided the only significant source of aid for those in need in the South. Limited in scope; divided by race; and designed to control the needy as much as to support them; religious aid collapsed under the burden of need in the early 1930s. Hungry; homeless; and out-of-work Americans found that they had nowhere to turn at the most desolate moment of their lives. Religious leaders joined a chorus of pleas for federal intervention in the crisis and a permanent social safety net.They celebrated the New Deal as a religious triumph. Yet some complained that Franklin Roosevelt cut the churches out of his programs and lamented their lost moral authority. Still others found new opportunities within the New Deal. By the late 1930s; the pattern was set for decades of religious and political realignment.More than a study of religion and politics; No Depression in Heaven uncovers the stories of men and women who endured the Depression and sought in their religious worlds the spiritual resources to endure material deprivation. Its characters are rich and poor; black and white; mobile sharecroppers and wealthy reformers; enamored of the federal government and appalled by it. Woven into this story of political and social transformation are stories of southern men and women who faced the greatest economic disaster of the twentieth century and tried to build a better world than the one they inhabited.
#207731 in Books Olivier Roy 2014-01-16Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 5.60 x 1.00 x 8.50l; .80 #File Name: 0199328021288 pagesHoly Ignorance
Review
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. "Deculturalization" as "Delamination" : A VisualizationBy Bob HoffmannAs a follow-on to the previous reader reviews of "Holy Ignorance"; I would like to add some thoughts from my interpretation of the book; which did not gel until I drew a diagram in an attempt to visualize and conceptualize all the mass of details presented by the text of the book.In particular; I like a reviewer's use of the term "delamination" of religion from culture; which works better for my amateur background than "de-culturalization".So to view "culture" in a historical sense up until the Napoleonic era; three layers of socio-economic activity were able to communicate and participate within territorial regions of a few hundred miles. Through the use of shared geography; history; symbols; norms of behavior; and means of expression; and a common sense of values and transcendence was able to develop over generations; which formed unique and distinct "cultures".Beyond the individual and the family; these three layers consisted of: (1) Community; (2) Society; and (3) Nationality; each being an enlargement of population and scale from the previous. Parallel to the secular (practical) aspects of each of these are the extensions of belief; as (1) Faith by the individual; (2) the collective Church as a single point of assembly; and (3) the preservation and continuity of dogma in a far-off sacred place by an elite in the name of a Religion. These laminations were able to maintain a continuity through centuries in the various continental regions by the slow pace of travel and communications; and all connected within a common culture.World War Two destabilized all that; however; through the forced pace of marine travel; radio communications; and the global clashes among cultures that had been relatively stable for millennia.In the following decades; an "internationalization" of markets and economies by corporate organizations further destabilized the territorial cultures in ways that: (1) individuals began to doubt their faith in an orthodoxy that could not explain the fear and evil that had come over the horizons; (2) the local congregations could no longer find shared values within the "culture"; since some of those priorities of daily living were being modified by commercialization outside the church; and (3) the remote centers of Truth could no longer impose the dogma; the history and traditions; nor the education system that perpetuated it all through generations.It was in the "jet age" and the "age of television" in the 1960s and 70s; that the cultural layers became delaminated; or "deculturalized". Faith; Church; and Religion had lost the binding glue that had held it all together with Community; Society; and Nationality in earlier communal times and spaces.Yet the need for religion still persisted in the human hearts; so the essential core features of each religion became a "fundamentalist" effort; in which; to preserve the "purity" of the definition of the sect or cult; forced an internal identification with specific "markers" against an external banishment of the "pagan" or "heathen".These now became "salient sales points" that could be used to attract new converts on a global scale; since all the specifications and mundane details of how to interact within personal and social spheres had been stripped away; along with all the time-consuming study and education that had been required before in the process of "becoming".With the transportation and corporate globalization of the 1980s; then; the most missionary; partisan; and militant in each of the "universalist" sects that had begun to flake off the traditional "mainstream" cultures could now re-enter other cultures; competing through media as just another advertiser selling it wares. Thus; we get "multi-culturalism" returned back into each territory from various other sources; with each having its own "bells and whistles" to attract new converts to the message.But that message is no longer as rich and nuanced as its original form; but merely a plastic; "neo-version" artifact of the archetype. The virtual has now become the real; just transformed and transposed to new markets.So where do we go from here? It appears that; with economic mobility and current migrations away from danger spots; many individuals and families have since sorted themselves into new communities (roughly 7;000-10;000 each). With their own sense of shared values and traditions; they may be able to choose among the palette of multi-cultural options to select their priorities for new generations. Communities may return again to flourish; or may split into partisan factions of perpetual strife by attempting territorial control. Stay tuned.8 of 11 people found the following review helpful. The God That Broke AwayBy henryOlivier Roy recalls a time when religion and culture lived together harmoniously. Religion was embedded in culture and culture was permeated with religious values. Not any more. "Deculturation" is upon us. Religion has been wrenched out of its natural habitats and is no longer tempered by local custom and tradition; and secular culture is driven by the imperatives of the market. This has led to the spread of fundamentalist religions; which are not new cultures but "pure;" extreme movements like the Taliban; "refusing all reference to history and culture." Globalization is a major force behind these developments as it scatters products; ideas and people without regard to their cultural origins and offers fundamentalism "a new space." It is therefore not a clash of civilizations that causes religious violence; but religion stripped of culture; including religious culture. Zeal replaces doctrine as the test of true faith; producing "holy ignorance." This is a bold departure from conventional thinking and Roy presents an encyclopedic range of data; observations and anecdotes to support his thesis. So should we change our minds about the roots of violent fanaticism? Not really. One difficulty; amply documented by Roy; is that deculturation often fails to bring either extremism or violence. Whether it takes the form of separation from the surrounding culture; as with the Amish; or of a break with a religion's own origins; as with the Hare Krishna; who are not very Hindu; or of a rejection of all profane culture; even sometimes including reason and language; as with Pentecostal speaking in tongues; it can lead to very pacific outcomes. Deculturation is obviously not sufficient to cause violence; but nor is it necessary. Tribal areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan; steeped in Moslem tradition; are more abundant sources of Jihadis than the Moslem suburbs of western Europe. And there was religious violence before there was globalization. Deculturation; with resentful alienation can be a source of violence; but it's the cultural context that makes the difference; including economic factors; such as youth unemployment; and political factors; such as conflicts over Kashmir and Palestine and between Shias and Sunnis. Moreover; religious deculturation in the West is associated with the free flow of ideas and a fragmentation and fluidity of personal identity. Urbanization; specialization and consumerism are also parts of the picture. Which is to say that deculturation is itself a cultural phenomenon. It could not have thrived in closed; homogeneous communities. Escape from culture is harder than Roy supposes.2 of 3 people found the following review helpful. An interesting analysis of the interaction of religion and culture ...By suzanneAn interesting analysis of the interaction of religion and culture with a different slant than most books on this topic.
