In the circles I grew up in, “Revival” meant a grand moving of the Holy Spirit. The lame walk, the blind see, the lost are found. God moves in mysterious ways, and the Holy Spirit at a Revival does New Things.
Revivals, in practice, are a series of evening worship services, one after another for several nights in a row. Participants sing the same songs they sang last year (more or less), hear the same sermons they heard last year (more or less), and sit in a sanctuary with the same people as last year (more or less).
And not the same as just last year. The same as every year going back to the year when God actually did do a New Thing. “Remember that year?” they think. “We’ve got to make that happen again.” Every few decades a real Revival happens, and the little revivals play off of it for decades, basking in its half-life glory.
We liberals have prayer meeting revivals just like the evangelicals do—we just call them protests. Once upon a time, Protests spoke Truth to Power. The captives were freed, the war ended, the public’s consciousness raised. The power of the people caused New Things to happen. And we have been trying to make the same thing happen over and over again.
Manufactured dissent is as real as fake authenticity. You can buy it and stick it on your bumper sticker. Or you can organize your little prayer meeting protest that speaks your little truth to either (a) a little power with no power to change things or (b) a Power who isn’t listening because your little protest has no power to make it do so.
A request of revivalists of both camps: Throw your revivals every year, just the same as last, but be honest about what you’re really accomplishing. You’re not making God do a New Thing, and you’re not speaking Truth to Power. You’re reminding yourself of what you’re about, which is a good and fine thing.
So quit acting list the rest of us are a hindrance to Revival or Social Justice because we don’t want to cry when you play funeral or dance when you play wedding. We know the songs too, and we remember the sermons. We just don’t want to rehearse the last New Thing over and over while we’re looking forward to the next New Thing.
If you’re talking about the GA protests here, I believe they’re authentic, and their stand not manufactured.
They’re wrong, but I don’t doubt their belief.
I think they need to be asked would they walk the neigborhood around Meadville Lombard late at night, alone, without a guard, and ask them if that would give them pause on security.
But I don’t doubt their authenticity on this.
[…] If you’ve not read Dan Harper’s blog or Chutney’s blog lately, you really ought to see (respectively) “Problem solved, or denominational politics” and “Manufactured dissent and fake authenticity.” […]
I don’t disagree with you in principal, but it’s interesting to me when people say protests don’t matter. To them, maybe. But to say they don’t matter at all. Who is to say that? And haven’t people always said that?
Protests don’t matter until they do matter. They start to matter when they become a movement. Starting a protest in hopes that it will become a movement is to protest in vain. You have to start a movement (or join a movement) and then protest.
Protest has to be effective, or at least stand a realistic chance to be effective, for it to count as dissent to me. And “anything is possible” doesn’t count as a realistic chance. True dissenters flirt with danger, and their actions provoke a change of heart in the powers-that-be. True dissent is creative and innovative. Picket signs, giant puppets, and “hey-hey ho-ho” haven’t been creative or innovative for decades.
What makes a dissent manufactured is, one, when it is knowingly feckless and, two, when it becomes a hobby. (I mean “manufactured dissent” in the sense of “faux dissent.”) It may be important to the protesters, but why does their hobby deserve everyone’s attention? Why should fellow liberals be negatively judged for ignoring protests that are obviously going to fail? Why do I owe them any more respect than I owe this?
My hobbies are important to me. I think my blogging, to pick one hobby, sometimes has a prophetic edge to it, and I do it because I hope it might lead to change. (It’s been changing-making for me personally.) But you don’t have to think blogging is as important as I do to be a responsible person.
Protest has to be effective, or at least stand a realistic chance to be effective, for it to count as dissent to me.
That’s a heck of a criteria… some of the most noble dissent is for a lost cause.
Given that our UU district is holding a “revival” conference in 2008, I just appreciate your pointing out that “Revival” without some kind of belief in the holy spirit/God is totally inauthentic coopting of Christian language, and it makes me stabby. I’m sure that revival will smack of worshiping ourselves, and I dread it.
Regarding Peacebang’s comments on her district’s “revival” conference, the congregation I belonged to when we lived in Prairie Star District did a Humanist revival worship service as a workshop.
The sermon title was “Believe and Be Damned” — the central point of sermon was that uncritical belief in anything leads to danger. The lay leader in our small South Dakota congregation was the daughter of a Congregationalist minister and she had re-written lyrics for the revival camp meeting songs of her childhood.
Given my UU background and experience with a non-Christian revival worship service, I would say that this was not a “totally inauthentic coopting of Christian language” for two reasons.
(1) Unitarian Universalism arose out of Protestant Christianity and has historical roots within it. Since this history is a shared heritage for Christian and non-Christian UUs, it’s not an inauthentic cultural misappropriation issue.
(2) With Christianity’s past historical association with colonialism and imperialism, I don’t think that borrowing of Christian forms by a group that has roots within the tradition doesn’t carry the “cultural imperialism baggage” that it does when one borrows from Islam, Buddhism, etc.
I’ll have to dig up a copy of the re-written lyrics for “Standing on the Promises,” “I Saw the Light,” and other songs that we used for the worship for posting on my blog.
Just my $0.02 worth here …
We didn’t come from that wing of Protestantism. It’s probably fair to say we even rejected it outright.
Actually, Universalists in my district were doing tent revival meetings 100 years ago.
Perhaps this style of worship is a part of our shared heritage.
Steve, do you have any information about those revivals? The Universalists I’ve studied uniformly hated revivalism. So much so that the one Universalist minister I found that did hold them got the hairy eye-ball from his colleagues, as reported in denominational papers.
On the other hand, through the nineteenth century, and lasting in Texas to the Depression, Universalists couldn’t say no to an extended doctrinal debate — Presbyterians and Methodists were favorite opponents — often lasting several days.