I’m deeply immersed in my U. S. religious history readings, and I find myself continually amazed at how relevant to the here and now all this old stuff is. For example, The Democratization of American Christianity recounts the religious revolution of the early to mid- 1800s revivals, when uneducated, rural preachers rebelled against the coastal seminaries of the establishment. Within a generation, the Christianity of the ragged circuit riders and shouting Methodists dominated the American scene. I see many parallels in the current rise of Evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity in the U. S. and in the world.

The book that has me really thinking this week is Women, Family, and Utopia: Communal Experiments of the Shakers, the Oneida Community, and the Mormons by Lawrence Foster. The author does a great job of handling these communities and their alternative sexualities with respect (with this topic, it’s easy to sensationalize or write voyeuristically). It’s a compassionate but honest history.

What’s more, Foster is a fellow pilgrim. I don’t know what his personal thoughts on religion are, but his emphasis is more on the journey than on the destination, and he’s very interested in his fellow travelers.

There are also various tensions that he explores: community v. individuality, stability and order v. dynamism and creativity, idealism v. pragmatism. I want to touch on some of these tensions in the next couple of posts, using Foster as a springboard. I may also insert a couple of his more critical observations concerning Mormonism.

Like the leaders and members of these utopian communities, I struggle with the tension between ideal vision and day-to-day living. I’ve always had a hard time living in this world–the systems that power its ethics, social dynamics, politics, and economy are imperfect and hypocritical. They tend to empower the few to exploit the many. The luxury and ease of a few is fueled by the suffering of the masses. It seems that the only way I can live according to my ideals is to separate myself completely from society. Since I’m not willing to do this, I find myself compromising my ideals. The darker side of this is that I numb my conscience by immersing myself in various escapist activities. The brighter side is that by remaining within society, I can try to gently nudge the behemoth in the right direction.

Successful religious movements tend to have an idealist, charismatic prophet-founder and subsequent leaders that are realists and pragmatists. I feel like I’ve got a prophet and a diplomat within me. For the moment, the latter is prevailing. Maybe the prophet is just taking a nap.