More Ramblings on Faith

I think I've pinpointed what it is that I can't deal with about religion in America. The entire thing has just reached such a level of excess that it isn't even religion anymore; it's purely an institution. You have mission trips that are valued to the point that it's a borderline modern day plenary indulgence. Evangelicals have a high rate of divorce (for a bit of irony, the lowest divorce rate is among the college-educated elite they typically scorn). Its public face is one that pickets funerals of dead soldiers, despises intellectualism, and has lost sight of what Christianity is.

My problem is that people do what they do because it provides them with a sense of self-satisfaction, a sort of holier-than-thou feeling about their faith and themselves by proxy. This is where I find myself loving Niebuhr even more simply because he condemned this sort of behavior. Their charity work serves a practical good that ought to be valued, but to think this makes you any better or holier in God's eyes is absurd. The thing that keeps drawing me back to Christianity is the bond it builds between people, not the sense of self-gratification I get out of being more faithful than those who aren't.

I'm living in a society that obsesses about public displays of faith. The zabeeb, the callus men develop after excessive praying, is popular here in Egypt. Women pray just as much but rarely have it. There are rumors that men use sandpaper to make the callus more prominent. Women in the 20th century rarely wore the hijab. It's a recent trend. And in Turkey, women don't want it allowed in public places because they fear their colleagues will guilt them into wearing it, just like what has happened here in Egypt. These trends aren't Egypt-specific. The fact that atheists are the least-trusted group in American society should make that apparent.

I want people to return to a style of faith that is more personal, that is about living the good life and drawing the satisfaction out of faith, not that you are holier than your neighbor. There needs to be a true return to genuine humility in service that the sensory overload megachurch and institutionalized religious orthodoxy cannot provide.

Post-Election Thoughts (Ikhwan Edition!)

Well, the elections have come and gone and they were relatively uneventful. They weren't particularly strange, and unless you lived in Shoubra or Giza, there was very little in way of activity. I didn't notice much of anything downtown other than the plethora of posters for Tagammu, which is Egypt's pseudo-communist party (one of which I took off the wall in front of my flat - might take some more, let me know if you want one). I think elections were more interesting in poorer districts and outside of the city where there was more controversy regarding electoral tactics and greater political mobilization.

The biggest news seems to be that the Ikhwan didn't win a single seat outright, losing the 88 seats they had gained in 2005. They are now pulling out of the runoff elections this coming weekend, which comes as little shock. The Brotherhood took a particularly big hit in the opposition community for not joining the el-Baradei-led boycott and pursuing their own agenda. Some have taken this as a sign of the Brotherhood's increasing irrelevancy, though I'm not entirely sure I'm willing to make that claim yet. They are in the midst of a sort of soul-searching following the departure of Mehdi Akef as Supreme Guide and no one, even within the organization, thought they would win a single seat this election. They still remain the only major organized opposition movement that hasn't been co-opted by the NDP. Granted, this slide into irrelevancy comes at an awkward time with the parliamentary elections having passed and presidential elections next year, though I don't see the long-term prospects changing for the Brotherhood. They are, and likely will remain, the dominant force in Egyptian opposition.