evangelicalism - Falwell, harding Flashcards
1
Q
the account involves
A
- Evangelicals’ use of language
- Evangelicals’ use of history
- How Jerry Falwell built up the movement using language and history
2
Q
how the evangelical world of language and meaning
A
- Evangelical talk = comprised of narratives
- Personal testimony draws in hearer. Learn language of faith
- Bible read generatively = presume God’s design
- Christian world is created and shared
- Conversion = taken on dispositions e.g. taking on Bible
- Christianity is about speaking. ‘speaking is believing’
- Language is non-reductive
- Narrative instability of teachings of preachers. Anomalies.
- Opens up space for supernatural action
- Poetics of faith vs. hermeneutics of suspicion
3
Q
how US fundamentalism in 20th century is constructed as a moral vision
A
- History = constructed as a moral vision. Draws on scientific thinking
- Scope’s Trial – legitimacy of teaching Darwin
o Symbolic movement
o Weight of interpretation = significant.
o US = secular. Xians expelled from modern life
o Conservative Xians turn inwards
o Frame of interpretation
♣ Separation of evangelicals vs. mutable Xians
♣ This is a myth for Harding. Conservatives changed as much as everybody else
♣ Myth was effective. Provided presuppositions for growth - Work of Falwell to reverse exile of conservativism
o History of fundamentalism
o Cultural refashionment of Bible believers
o No longer separate from the world
Falwell = powerful leader. Modern prophet
4
Q
Harding’s account of Falwell’s ministry within the Church and Falwell’s external engagements
A
- Falwell draws out possibility of miracles
- Choice of believers in their interpretation of leaders.
o Falwell self-presentation
♣ Sinner chosen by God
♣ Opportunity for others
♣ Portrays himself as a fallen Biblical figure like King David
♣ Must choose whether he is a sinner. Ambiguity binds believers. Decisions become active
o Sacrificial giving of Church members exemplifies people’s decision to believe (i.e. £££)
5
Q
Narrative instability = internal and external impact on relations
A
- Internal
o Falwell uses the same practices to draw in wide field of evangelicals.
o Field is not stable, allows for new alliances.
o Objectives = change rhetoric of separation from society
o New form of Xianity emerges = born-again Xian
o Struggles between leaders’ views - External
o New engagement needs new rhetoric pointed outwards
o Movement has power to exclude. Response to secularism is to expel outsiders
o Imagination moves boundaries
o Falwell builds external instability to interact with outside world
♣ Debates about gender and family
♣ Debates about science and religion (Scope’s Trial)
♣ Rapture as a new form of political time
6
Q
intro
A
- Harding visited Thomas Road Baptist Church in 1982
o The people were not traditional
o They enjoyed ‘magazines, television… which they appropriated selectively and Christianised with great skill and zeal’ (ix) - Harding was invited to interview by Falwell so that he could ‘vet’ her
- ‘His language has the creative quality of the Bible itself’ (x-xi)
- ‘I came to know… that everything… has a purpose. I did not convert, but I was learning their language of faith’ (xi)
- Focus = language of preachers
o ‘As they teach their language through sermons, speeches… they mold their church into a Church, a living sequel to the Bible’ (xiii)
7
Q
fundamentalism means:
A
- ‘Bible believing’ Protestants
- ‘A particular subset of white Bible-believing Protestants who represent themselves as ‘militantly antimodernist’’
- Fundamentalism = evangelicals. Modern concoction
- fundamentalism = term inside Bible-believing discourses
8
Q
haunted house
A
- Youth group of Thomas Road Baptist Church host Xian haunted house
o Filled with pictures of death and JC saving grace
o Finishes with 3 min Gospel and they ask you to repent. Few do
o ‘Scaremare is a piece of our church’s philosophy in acion. We don’t practice a stay-at-home Christianity. We’re militant and aggressive in getting out Christ’s message’ (4) - Theme in TRBC to mix elements from the world and Xianity e.g. haunted house
o Surprising. Still subscribed to fundamentalist church in US which promoted separation from the world
9
Q
liberty Baptist college
A
- They owned Liberty Baptist College
o Put on pageants for girls who showed the ‘spirit of liberty’ (5)
♣ Women are judged on to what extent they show virtue as shown in Proverbs 31
♣ Diverse group inc. ethnic minorities and disability
10
Q
Falwell and business
A
- ‘Falwell’s fundamentalist empire was thus a formidable one as measured by standards of personnel, money, and organisational wherewithal. It was also an immense empire of words’ (15)
- ‘It was a factory of words, a veritable Bible-based language industry’
- Grew up in business environment. Combined this with preaching
o ‘Falwell was specifically predisposed to adapt modern business techniques and concepts to his evangelistic projects’ (16)
o In a speech in defense of church-building, he cites shopping centres as a prime example of uniting several services in one location. Wants to apply this to Church
o Congregation = increasingly middle class
11
Q
1980s fundamentalist reform movement
A
- ‘Together, the 1980s movements rearranged the boundary between fundamentalism and post-war evangelicalism, fashioning a new constituency composed of newly engaged fundamentalists under leaders such as Falwell and conservative evangelicals who were discontented with their more irenic leaders’ (18)
- New Christian Right emerges
o Xians become defined as sinners who willingly repent and accept JC’s saving
12
Q
Shift in Falwell
A
- Falwell’s view on religion and politics shifted. In 1976, he said they should be kept completely separate
o Started campaigning against homosexuality/women’s liberation
o Reflected Fundamentalist opposition to people’s views of Fundamentalism as extremism. This goes back to the Scope’s Trial of 1925
o Compares separation of fundamentalists and modern Americans to racial segregation
o New Xian Right = shocking
♣ Falwell often compared it to the Civil Rights Movement
• H… CRM = high risk and cost action
• NCR = low cost, no risk, did not have strong leader like CRM.
♣ Nonetheless, both movements heavily linked to use of language and rhetoric
• H… King ‘spanned traditions… historically and socially separated’ (25)
• Falwell ‘stitched together rhetorics and styles across the divide between (moderate) fundamentalist and (conservative) evangelical traditions, but the divide was recent in origin, partial at best, and always sustained a good deal of low-profile traffic back and forth’ (25)
• Both did act as ‘pivotal figures in the dramatic transformation of their peoples’
13
Q
aim of book
A
- Aim of book: to ‘trace the emergence of the composite cultural formation known as ‘born again Xianity’ in the 1980s from the point of view of one pivotal network of discourses. They show how an old-fashioned culturally and politically disenfranchised fundamentalism morphed into a nationally franchised ‘fundamentalist evangelicalism’’ (28)
o Part 1 = language of witnessing/language of Scopes trial which produced Fundamentalism
o Part 2 = language and context of Falwell’s community in 1970s/80s
o Harding argues that the sermons etc. are ‘culturally productive rituals’ which allowed Falwell and his community to ‘recast and resituate themselves as a people in history’ (29)
14
Q
Harding near-death experience
A
- Harding had near car accident. Led her to ask religious questions about God’s intention with her. Fleeting nature of life
- Harding argues that she was in the first stage of ‘conversion as a process of acquiring a specific religious language or dialect’ (34)
o Need an unbeliever to begin to recognise voice of God
o Once Holy Spirit is in their heart, the new believer will begin to speak about their experience and faith. Build a relationship with God
o ‘Conversion… enables (believers) to approach the Bible as living authority’ (34) - There has been a suggestion that people who are successfully converted possess an element of vulnerability e.g. previous conditioning, stress
o Links do not seem legitimate
15
Q
Witnessing and language
A
- Attempts to rewrite the unsaved’s perception of reality
- ‘The reality, or truth, constituted in witnessing is, in part, a linguistic one: the supernatural manifests itself as God’s voice and his spirit is communicated and experienced through words’ (37)
- Their rhetoric is ‘formalised’, allowing them to ‘appropriate the listener’s dialogic imagination’ (37)
o Involves gospel story and conversation between witness and listener
o Holy Spirit makes you realise your sins
o ‘Conviction effects a deep sensation of one’s own impurity and separation from God, or one’s sinfulness, one’s sin nature’ (38)
o Individuals enter liminal state before they convert. They hear the voice of the HS
o Rite for sinners, cause the ‘very terms of physical existence… to alter’ - Hard for ethnographers and fundamentalist. Dichotomy of saved and unsaved.
Harding realised she could not be an ethnographer without participating in their culture. They did not believe she was purely investigating. Her interest indicated something further
16
Q
Harding witnessing with Campbell
A
- Following her near-accident, Harding had a witnessing with Reverend Campbell
o Harding was then asked to place herself in the position of narrator
o ‘Numerous poetic and performance features teem on the surface of Campbell’s speech. There are verse markers, special codes figurative language…’ (42)
o use of collective pronouns includes both speaker and listener
o Campbell likens his conversation with God to the setting of Harding’s conversation with Campbell.
o Harding describes it as a non-consensual ‘metamorphosis’ (45)
o The Holy Spirit transforms the unconscious mind to a conscious mind