May 29, 2005
Widening the Cultural Gap
May's Harper's Magazine examines the Evangelical movement in Colorado Springs, with an article by Jeff Sharlet titled Soldiers of Christ -
Inside America's most powerful megachurch
Certainly the Evangelical movement and its presence in The Springs is a topic worthy of attention, and people everywhere should have a good understanding of it. This article, however, might do more to hinder understanding than help.
Let's take a look at some bits:
They are drawn as if by magnetic forces; they speak of Colorado Springs, home to the greatest concentration of fundamentalist Christian activist groups in American history, both as a last stand and as a kind of utopia in the making. They say it is new and unique and precious, embattled by enemies, and also that it is “traditional,” a blueprint for what everybody wants, and envied by enemies. The city itself is unspectacular, a grid of wide western avenues lined with squat, gray and beige box buildings, only a handful of them taller than a dozen stories. Local cynics point out that if you put Colorado Springs on a truck and carted it to Nebraska, it would make Omaha look lovely. But the architecture is not what draws Christians looking for clean living. The mountains help, but there are other mountain towns. What Colorado Springs offers, ultimately, is a story.
[...]
Crime, of course, looms over this story. Not the actual facts of it—the burglary rate in and around Colorado Springs exceeds that in New York City and Los Angeles—but the idea of crime: a faith in the absence of it. And of politics, too: Colorado Springs’ evangelicals believe they live without it, in a carved-out space for civility and for like-minded dedication to common-sense principles. Even pollution plays a part: Christian conservatives there believe that they breathe cleaner air, live on ground untainted by the satanic fires of nineteenth-century industry—despite the smog that collects against the foothills of the Rockies and the cyanide, from a century of mining, that is leaching into the aquifers and mountain streams.
That description may bear no resemblance to the Colorado Springs you will see if you visit. The Springs has wide, pedestrian friendly boulevards in the downtown area, grand views of Pike's Peak from every part of town, new residential neighborhoods of the sort that many Americans aspire to move into, and architecture that you would expect in a city of that size.
But what really caught my eye was the part about pollution. Cyanide is used in gold extraction, and the Springs was never much of a gold mining town. A quick search reveals that, sure enough, the locals are baffled by Sharlet's claim. Also, air in The Springs is some of the cleanest in the nation. The citation of burglary statistics is vexing, too. Violent crime rates there are low.
But wait, there's more:
The cover image of Our City, God’s Word is a surreal photo collage in which the Air Force Academy chapel—a row of silver, daggerlike structures that is probably the cruelest-looking church in America[...]
Here's the Chapel -
The results on your cruel-o-meter may vary.
The bulk of the article deals with the nutzo fundies around The Springs, scary stuff, and I'd rather they kept religion out of politics, but my impression is that Jeff Sharlet isn't a reliable source. He's got a thing about religion, it seems, and perhaps he's just playing to the prejudices of Harper's readers. You can find a website he runs here.
Posted by Walter at May 29, 2005 06:49 PMYeah I wish he had made at least some attempt to portray Colorado Springs a bit more accurately, because it does take away from his entire piece. And the subject is important. I come from a family of these fundie zealots. His description is pretty much spot-on. But he only portrays Colorado Springs through the lens of the fundies, with the addition of the aforementioned inaccuracies. He also omits the recent statistic I remember seeing about Colorado Springs having one of the lowest church-going rates in the nation. The fact that he leads the piece with this myopic view of Colorado Springs and keeps going back to it over and over really casts doubt on the veracity of the entire essay.
I don't subscribe to the notion that having an opinion about a subject automatically disqualifies one from talking about it. But I do think that blatant inaccuracy in one part of an argument can and does handicap the rest of the argument. And it's a real shame in this case, because it's vitally important for people to realize that these freaksters are not in favor of liberty, and neither are those who profess liberty but ride the freaksters' gravy train to Washington.
Posted by: Michael Ditto at May 29, 2005 09:00 PMI encourage you to check out a friends blog. He's been hanging with the New Lifers as an interested outsider and has written a few pieces on them and Jeff Sharlett.
Posted by: Curious Stranger at May 29, 2005 09:17 PMI do indeed "have a thing about religion" -- I love it, which is why I spend my life writing about it and talking with religious people. On my site, which you seem to imply is anti-religious, I've published a wide range of believers, including many evangelicals, liberal and conservative, and conservative Catholics, such as Rod Dreher.
As for Colorado Springs, I'll tell you what I told Bill Vogrin, the Gazette reporter who called (and did not publish what I told him): I quite like the city, although I'll stand by my opinion that it's not architecturally impressive, and that the Air Force chapel is a mean piece of work, an impression reinforced by your photo. As it happens, the Springs has a higher than average murder rate and a rape rate more than twice the national average (http://coloradosprings.areaconnect.com/crime1.htm). But that's neither here nor there; cities have crime.
My story wasn't intended as a travel piece about Colorado Springs; it was about New Life Church and how they imagine their city. The many New Lifers I spoke to -- a few dozen -- think of it as a utopia unlike any other place in America. They call other cities dirty, immoral, and violent. Most don't even like their own downtown, which does indeed have wide boulevards.
I'm certainly not "playing to the prejudices of Harper's readers." If we're going to go by stereotypes, I'd suggest that the typical Harper's reader imagines that fundamentalists -- I'd never call them "nutzo," as you do, which seems much nastier than anything I wrote -- are kind of dumb. I wrote that it's an intellectually vibrant movement. It's true that I don't agree with the ideas coming out of it, a fact I don't try to hide, but my portrait of fundamentalism -- intellectually animated, internationalist, conflicted -- is hardly "playing" to the prejudices of anyone.
Posted by: Jeff Sharlet at May 30, 2005 04:46 PMI was deliberately ambiguous when I wrote that you had a 'thing' about religion, as I don't know enough about you to narrow down your beliefs and biases. I can tell that you have strongly held opinions about it, and about the politics of religious groups. As do I.
My take on your article is that you see these people as a bit unhinged, and you lay the groundwork by portraying Colo Springs as a dismal place, and that the influx of residents can best be explained by the odd religious organizations there.
Posted by: Walter at May 30, 2005 10:05 PMWalter, I usually agree with you, but not this time. The Revealer is an excellent site, and as you can see from its "about page" it is a publication of NYU's Department of Journalism and NYU's Center for Religion and Media, conceived of by Professor Jay Rosen (see his blog Pressthink)
As for the Springs, it does have a high violent crime rate--and what the police would say is a significant gang problem.
It is not an attractive city and the fundamentalist mindset is bizarre I thought Jeff's article was quite good.
Posted by: TalkLeft at May 31, 2005 12:16 AMJeff loves my neighborhood in Colorado Springs (Historic West Side). Unfortunately it is full of methamphetamine labs which I suspect are a big part of the crime problem that we do indeed have here.
Walt,
I thought you might be interested in this article about megachurches from Business Week:
http://www.businessweek.com/@@IMlph4UQQ0@wzhoA/magazine/content/05_21/b3934001_mz001.htm
The article is titled Earthly Empires if the link doesn't work. As churches try more and more to compete with secular recreation it shouldn't come as any surprise that embellished propaganda about a city or a church is part of the package.