I went to church today. The lecture, in between chants, was about the need to recognize family. I couldn't help but think that the intense primacy the pastor spoke of regarding the family as a unit is similar to the kind of emphasis evolution has given us regarding our families. I also couldn't help but think about how easily such lectures, about the need to respect and listen to your family members, demarcate an us/them split, and even utilize that split rhetorically to back into defensive posturing about the family. There's no need to use defensive statements if what you want to do is assert the power and magic of a good healthy family.
There's also weird "call out" type prayers:
Praise Emily and Bill and Jason and Rolanda, and the people of this congregation, and their relatives, and this town, and this city and all people.
Seems like we could cut it down to praising all people, right? That might include Emily and Bill and Jason and Rolanda.
Anyway, as the pastor lectured, I thought about his arguments, and remembered how kids who I knew in law school who also were highly religious in their upbringing, were fantastic law students. Doctrines rule. I felt like I was in some kind of bizarro law school, to be honest. The funny thing, again, is that religion is very much a set of organizing principles for survival in the world. The way to do it, what's most important, how to think, what to think when you have doubt about it all, and one central tenet: sin.
Going to church, as I've done a handful of times in the last year, is not as frightening or as potent as it used to be. Now, I'm kind of a detached observer. Here's a note for you before I go: religious people donate more money to charities both religious and secular than do non-religious people (self-identified_).
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