{"id":13687,"date":"2014-04-22T09:26:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-22T13:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=13687"},"modified":"2014-04-22T09:26:00","modified_gmt":"2014-04-22T13:26:00","slug":"the-political-advantages-of-organized-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=13687","title":{"rendered":"the political advantages of organized religion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A piece of mine entitled &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/national\/religion\/commentary-if-millennials-leave-religion-then-what\/2014\/04\/21\/5c6619d0-c98b-11e3-b81a-6fff56bc591e_story.html\">If Millennials Leave Religion, then What<\/a>?&#8221; was published by the Religion News Service and picked up by the Washington Post yesterday. In it, I acknowledge the drawbacks of religion (viewed from a secular, political perspective), but I also catalog its advantages and argue that we don&#8217;t yet have a secular alternative that fills the traditional civic and political functions of churches and other religious congregations.<\/p>\n<p>The piece had to be cut for length, which is fine (and I was able to select the cuts). But here, I would like to share one section that was deleted for length. In the published version, I alluded to the &#8220;depth&#8221; of religion. This is what I meant:<\/p>\n<p>Mark Warren\u2019s wonderful book about faith-based organizing, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Dry-Bones-Rattling-Community-Revitalize\/dp\/0691074321\">Dry Bones Rattling<\/a>, begins with a vignette of Father Al Jost reading from the Book of Ezekiel to a group of Latina parishioners from poor neighborhoods in San Antonio. He chooses the version by African-American songwriter James Weldon Johnson: &#8220;Ezekiel connected dem dry bones.\u201d Those lyrics derive from the Shakespearean poetry of the King James Version: \u201cAgain he said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.\u201d Father Jost\u2019s listeners might hear those resonances, or some might recall the Spanish (\u201c<em>\u00a1Huesos secos!<\/em>\u201d) or the Latin of the Church in which they were raised.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, the effects are palpable. The women are nervous before Father Jost speaks, but they respond \u201cwith a resounding \u2018Amen\u2019 and [stride] onto the stage to the sounds of a mariachi band \u2026 exuding confidence and collective determination.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I propose that the original quality and the long history of Ezekiel\u2019s poetry explain its political power. Secular equivalents must match this depth of resonance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A piece of mine entitled &#8220;If Millennials Leave Religion, then What?&#8221; was published by the Religion News Service and picked up by the Washington Post yesterday. In it, I acknowledge the drawbacks of religion (viewed from a secular, political perspective), but I also catalog its advantages and argue that we don&#8217;t yet have a secular [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civic-theory"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13687"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13690,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13687\/revisions\/13690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}