At the Washington Monthly, Ed Kilgore notes that there has been an uptick in church foreclosures in the past year. He notes that the usual suspects that see problems for religious liberty in Obama’s religious neutral requirements imposed on insurance plans, don’t seem to have a problem with the banks destroying the religious infrastructure.
Part of me is cheering on the banks. Every church that is boarded and shuttered is one less monument to superstition and ignorance. But there is a real danger here, for in the fine American tradition of monopoly building, it looks like what is going on is a consolidation.
The church foreclosures have hit all denominations across America, black and white, but with small to medium size houses of worship the worst. Most of these institutions have ended up being purchased by other churches.
Bigger churches, no doubt.
Many Protestant denominations have a tradition of local control, an outgrowth of the antipathy toward the bishops and Popes when Protestantism was young. Those were also days when very smart people engaged in endless religious debate, and even the lowly parishioner was well informed about these issues. Doctrinal disputes, at least among the evangelicals, appear to have receded in importance. A shared sense of victimization and fear of the rational unites the religious these days, to the point where the nutcase Protestants are perfectly happy to make common cause with the whore of Babylon. (That would be the Catholic Church, for the untutored) Religion is becoming commodified, and we may have reached a point where the average church going crazy will accept the Wal-Martization of religion with the same sheep like indifference with which he or she accepted the Wal-Martization of the rest of America. In other words, any purveyor of the toxic mix of hate, fear, superstition and ignorance that is religion in America will do.
Religion is big business, so these foreclosures may just be accelerating an inevitable trend: the concentration of religious power and money (in this country, is there a difference?) into the hands of a few powerful men (and as the last few days have proven, they will be men). This in turn poses a threat to the functioning secular majority, as the corporatized churches will make common cause to further their shared business plan. You can’t shear sheep unless you have sheep, and all religions depend on the manufacture of more sheep to grow their businesses. You can’t grow good sheep without inculcating superstition and preserving ignorance, a business plan that sits well with the Republican party and the corporations it is their true mission to support, both of which depend on those same sheep to obtain and preserve power. They may not be a majority, but they will work together to achieve their ends. It’s worked well so far, and as the Mom and Pop churches are replaced by the big franchises it will work even better, as church money flows toward the Republicans and as Republicans, as they have done for the banks and secular corporations, find ways to send taxpayer dollars flowing back to the churches.
