Salon Takes On Mars Hill
Come as you areAt Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Snoop Dogg figures in sermons, housewives cradle babies in tattooed arms -- and religious fundamentalism rules. Meet the Disciple Generation, the fierce new face of American evangelism.
By Lauren Sandler
Sept. 13, 2006 | SEATTLE -- It's Father's Day and Mark Driscoll is blessing babies. A stocky, square-headed figure in a black shirt and jeans, with a leather cord around his thick neck, Driscoll stands against a backdrop of a giant brushed steel cross and a phalanx of electric guitars, praying over the "lovely wives and godly husbands" lined up on the stage of Mars Hill Church. Located in a former warehouse in Seattle's hip Ballard neighborhood, where drive-through espresso joints out-number churches ten to one, Driscoll's megachurch is a sprawling industrial space of corrugated steel, painted charcoal and muted taupe. Inside, the walls are hung with a member's graffiti art, lit by Starbucks-style colored glass fixtures blown by a congregant...
Anyone want to take a crack at this? -- Christina
posted by Christina @ 6:59 AM
1 Comments:
Angie,
Thank you for your insightful comments! I had a similar response to Lauren Sandler's article - specifically regarding the approach that all women must check their brains at the door before entering "the Jesus club", where they will be forced to bear children against their will, all the while longing to get their graduate degrees. I found a link to Jen's blog (http://www.thispile.com/archives/lauren-sandler’s-righteous-illustrates-that-hatchet-jobs-sell-books) - who believes that Lauren had a hidden and very specific agenda when she interviewed Jen's friends Ted and Sarah for the article (and book: Righteous : dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement), and then distorted their responses to highlight her secularist philosphy. Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, was featured on the back cover of her book, with this quote, "“Lauren Sandler obliterates the naïve and complacent hope that keeps most secularists and religious moderates sleeping peacefully each night-the hope that, in 21st century America, the young know better than to adopt the lunatic religious certainties of a prior age. The young do not know better. In their schools, skate-parks, rock concerts, and in the ranks of our nation’s military, our children are gleefully preparing a bright future of ignorance and religious fascism for us all. If you have any doubt that there is a culture war that must be waged and won by secularists in America, read this book," which is so broad in its alarmist hand-wringing that I laughed out loud. I am interested in reading her book though. Perhaps she will present a more balanced viewpoint in long-form?
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