Christian Fundamentalism and the Culture of Disenchantment

By Paul Maltby

Within the familiar clash of religious conservatism and secular liberalism Paul Maltby finds a deeper discord: an antipathy between Christian fundamentalism and the postmodern culture of disenchantment. Arguing that each camp represents the poles of America's virulent culture wars, he shows how the cultural identity, lifestyle, and political commitments of many Americans match either the fundamentalist profile of one who cleaves to metaphysical and authoritarian beliefs or the postmodern profile of one who is disposed to critical inquiry and radical-democratic values.

Maltby offers a critique that operates in both directions. His use of the resources of postmodern theory to contest fundamentalism's doctrinal claims, ultra-right politics, anti-environmentalism, and conservative aesthetics informs his engagement with contemporary fundamentalist painting, spiritual warfare fiction, dominionist attitudes to nature, and a profoundly undemocratic interpretation of Christianity. At the same time, Maltby identifies some of fundamentalism’s legitimate spiritual concerns, assesses the cost of perpetual critique, and exposes the deficit of spiritual meaning that haunts the culture of disenchantment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Release date: Feb 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9780813933467

Book preview

CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISM AND THE CULTURE OF DISENCHANTMENT

Paul Maltby

University of Virginia Press    Charlottesville and London

University of Virginia Press

© 2013 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

First published 2013

9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Maltby, Paul.

    Christian fundamentalism and the culture of disenchantment / Paul Maltby.

        p. cm.

    Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8139-3344-3 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8139-3345-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8139-3346-7 (e-book)

    1. United States—Church history. 2. Fundamentalism—United States. 3. Christian conservatism—United States. 4. Liberalism—United States. 5. Christianity and culture—United States. I. Title.

BR515.M27 2013

    270.8′2—dc23

                                                                                                       2012019122

For Shirley, Zoe, and Lauren

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Note on the Text

Introduction: Creed and Critique

1. Fundamentalist History, Postmodern Contingency

2. End Times Fiction and the Ironic Reader

3. Fundamentalist Exclusivism, Radical Democracy

4. Fundamentalist Dominion, Postmodern Ecology

5. Evangelical Painting and the Ironic Spectator

Conclusion: Disenchanted Christianity

Notes

Works Cited

Index

Preface

Paintings of the Rapture tend to depict the saved not just floating upward but drawn upward, as if caught in a vortex; after all, lifted free of the Tribulation, they ascend to heaven under the prepotent force of Grace. It's hard to imagine another escape from worldly suffering as absolute as this.

Most of us outside the fundamentalist fold will instantly dismiss the End Times scenario of bodies being sucked up into eternal paradise as patently absurd. Yet such a hasty and disdainful response to this key fundamentalist doctrine seems inadequate when it is a matter of faith for tens of millions of Americans and deeply embedded in their culture. Once nonbelievers get over their amused surprise that so many of their compatriots believe in the Rapture, the challenge is how to respond to that momentous fact in a more reflective way. And I invoke this doctrine as just one example of how difficult it is for many of us to come to terms with the tenets of fundamentalism.

The Rapture also marks the total and irrevocable separation between the saved and the unsaved, who remain hopelessly grounded. But for a remnant of late converts to the faith, eternal damnation in a lake of fire is the fate of the unraptured, that is, those who refused to accept Jesus as their Savior. And while many non-fundamentalists will be disturbed by the severity of this order of segregation and by the magnitude of the punishment meted out for the sin of being a non-Christian, the stern piety of fundamentalism rules out compassion for those left behind. Thus, in response to the FAQ, How can we enjoy heaven with loved ones in hell?, a commentator at RaptureReady.com cites Revelation 21:4, reminding the questioner that there are no tears in heaven; that memories of the past, sinful world will be totally erased. The raptured will be oblivious to the infernal suffering of nonbelievers, who are doomed to be forgotten and so placed forever beyond pity.

It was not until leaving my native England, where Christian fundamentalism has a low profile in terms of both church membership and political influence, and moving to the United States that I became acquainted with fundamentalism. But what made that encounter such a singular experience was not simply its novelty but something more like culture shock. Educated and socialized in secular institutions, where I grew up with the tenets of empiricism and, later, materialist philosophies, I found it disorienting to learn that a good percentage of Americans believe in biblical prophecy, the existence of the Devil, archangels, and celestial paradise. (This is not to suggest that secularists should have the last word in such matters; indeed, extended reflections on any religion should, at least, prompt a reexamination of secular assumptions.) I was also troubled by a belligerent post-separationist fundamentalism that has mobilized as the Religious Right. The latter not only seeks to impose its bibliocentric beliefs on high school curricula but also assails gay rights, demonizes liberals, discredits environmentalists, and gives vociferous support to political attacks on welfare programs and efforts to regulate the free market.

My encounter with fundamentalism has provoked three questions: (1) How should I participate in the critique of a powerful creed that aggressively promotes dogma and ethics antagonistic to my own secular beliefs and democratic values? (2) What are the conditions that have enabled this religious extremism to flourish? (3) What are the limits, if not inadequacies, of my own secular positioning, in the light of which fundamentalist tenets may be all too easily brushed aside as absurd or delusional? I devote most space to the first question but, I trust, the second and third receive sufficient attention.

A polemical engagement with Christian fundamentalism must resist the susceptibility to cultural stereotyping and condescending judgment. For example, critical encounters with fundamentalism are often marred by the failure to distinguish between the doctrinal, ideological, and generational differences that divide fundamentalist communities (to say nothing of the differences between fundamentalist and non-fundamentalist evangelicals). This results in a caricature, often found in the popular media, of the fundamentalist as simply a reactionary bigot. And, at times, I have felt that my own disenchanted perspectives on fundamentalism confine me to a lofty position from which I'm looking down at a backward culture. I have tried to avoid these faults or, at least, acknowledge them by frequently reflecting on my own interpretive standpoint.

Although I shall often address theological questions, this study is not intended as an intervention in denominational disputes over Christian doctrine. Rather, it explores and contests, from current critical standpoints that define what I call the culture of disenchantment, those aspects of Christian fundamentalism that are hostile or alien to secular-liberal thought and values. This focus is evident from a summary review of the book's chapters. The introduction, Creed and Critique, surveys the culture of disenchantment as a counterforce to the dogmas and aggressive posture of a resurgent fundamentalism. Chapter 1, Fundamentalist History, Postmodern Contingency, explores a clash of paradigms of history: dispensationalism, whereby history is said to unfold according to a divinely preordained schedule of events, versus a stress on contingency, which substitutes discontinuous microhistories ungoverned by a rational telos. Chapter 2, End Times Fiction and the Ironic Reader, examines the reception of spiritual warfare fiction from the standpoint of the reader nurtured by postmodern irony and self-reflexive aesthetics. Chapter 3, Fundamentalist Exclusivism, Radical Democracy, considers how the pluralism that drives radical democratic politics may serve as an ideal by which to challenge that which is discriminatory and undemocratic in the fundamentalist doctrine of salvation. Chapter 4, Fundamentalist Dominion, Postmodern Ecology, examines how the critical perspectives of a postmodern ecology enable a forceful engagement with fundamentalism's dominionist attitude to nature. Chapter 5, Evangelical Painting and the Ironic Spectator, introduces painters who, but for Thomas Kinkade, are unknown to the secular public and reviews the aesthetics of fundamentalist art through a postmodern lens. I should add that, in the foregoing chapters, the critique is not all one-way; I also consider how fundamentalism provides perspectives that expose some of the limits and shortcomings of the culture of disenchantment. Moreover, the conclusion, Disenchanted Christianity, examines the cost of this culture's disposition to perpetual critique; in particular, the experience of living in a culture characterized by a deficit of spiritual meaning. But it also considers how one vital strain of Christianity can flourish on terms concordant with the culture of disenchantment.

Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to the many people who answered questions or reviewed segments of this study and made helpful suggestions on how to improve them: Leigh Shaffer, Lawrence Davidson, Janet Amighi, Elsa Rapp, Geetha Ramanathan, Christian Moraru, Peter Yoonsuk Paik, Lou Caton, Randy Boyagoda, Brian Ingraffia, Michelle Effron Miller, John Hynes, Anne Dzamba, Karen Porter, Julienne Ford, Brian Baderman, Donna Usher, and Karen Fitts. I am indebted to Cathy Brettschneider, Humanities Editor at the University of Virginia Press, and Ellen Satrom, the Managing Editor, for their valuable assistance through the stages of the book's production, and to Ruth Melville for her meticulous copyediting. I am grateful to Shirley, my wife, for all her moral support and patience during the time I worked on this project.

Portions of chapters 1, 2, and 3 first appeared as an essay entitled Postmodernism in a Fundamentalist Arena, in the collection The Mourning After: Attending the Wake of Postmodernism, ed. Neil Brooks and Josh Toth (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007), 15–51. An earlier version of chapter 4 appeared under the title Fundamentalist Dominion, Postmodern Ecology, in Ethics and the Environment 13.2 (Fall 2008): 119–41, published by Indiana University Press. A portion of chapter 5 first appeared under the title Kinkade, Koons, Kitsch, in the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 12.1 (Spring 2012): 53–81. I gratefully acknowledge the permission to reprint this work.

Notes on the Text

Unless otherwise stated, I have quoted from the King James Version of the Bible. This is the translation historically favored by Christian fundamentalists, largely because of the popularity of the Scofield Reference Bible, which is the King James Version supplemented by Cyrus Scofield's dispensationalist commentary.

Thomas Kinkade, one of the painters discussed in chapter 5 as still living, died in April 2012, while this book was in production.

INTRODUCTION CREED AND CRITIQUE

We're in a religious war and we need to aggressively oppose secular humanism; these people are as religiously motivated as we are and they are filled with the devil.

—Tim LaHaye, on Jerry Falwell's show Listen, America!

We try to arrange things so that the students who enter as bigoted, homophobic, religious fundamentalists will leave college with views more like our own…. We do our best to convince these students of the benefits of secularization.

—Richard Rorty, Universality and Truth

In the current phase of the long-running conflict between religious conservatism and secular liberalism, Tim LaHaye and the late Richard Rorty may serve as this study's emblematic figures. They are contemporaries (LaHaye was born in 1926, Rorty in 1931), and each occupies a preeminent position in his field. LaHaye, fundamentalist activist and coauthor of the best-selling Left Behind novel cycle, has, since the 1970s, been one of the most prominent leaders of the Christian Right. Indeed, since the partial retirement of the elderly Billy Graham, LaHaye's influence among American fundamentalists is matched only by that of Pat Robertson and James Dobson. Rorty, who died in 2007, developed a postmodern, neo-pragmatist strain of thinking that made him a leading voice among his generation's secular philosophers. He advocated a philosophy that helps along the disenchantment of the world, a process that will make the world's inhabitants more pragmatic, more tolerant, more liberal (Philosophical Papers 193).

This book joins America's principal culture war on the side of Rorty and the secularists but with two caveats. First, while some strands of my polemic are informed by Rorty's arguments against metaphysics, this study is not intended as a specifically Rortyian critique of fundamentalism.¹ Second, where appropriate, I enlist the support of religious thinkers whose postmodern strains of Christianity are in sympathy with the critical spirit and ethics of secular liberalism. After all, to side with the latter need not commit one to the view that all religious thinking is erroneous or a type of false consciousness. Rather, my religious target is very specific: a belligerent Christian conservatism and its authoritarian belief system.²

My aim is not simply to explore the collision between Christian conservatism and secular liberalism in the United States, but to do so in ways specific to our present conjuncture of cultural forces and political alignments. For these broad categories conceal what I see as a more profound and, in some ways, fiercer conflict of values and belief systems: one that I shall reframe in terms of a clash of fundamentalism and postmodernism. I employ these alternative terms not as substitutes for the former categories but, rather, to designate powerful tendencies within them. (Clearly, not all Christian conservatives are fundamentalists and not all secular liberals are postmodern in outlook.) The antipathy between the broader categories is harshest and most strident where their fundamentalist and postmodern tendencies collide. And I speak of fundamentalism and postmodernism because I believe these terms more accurately signify the political commitments, attitudes to knowledge, and aesthetic sensibilities that animate much of the Christian conservative/secular liberal conflict today. My alternative terms should enable a sharper focus on the antithetical paradigms that irredeemably separate each side: paradigms of interpretation and knowledge, of history and nature, of ethics and aesthetics. Indeed, fundamentalism and postmodernism are essentially incommensurable ways of thinking insofar as, when brought into dialogue, there can be no consensus among its interlocutors about the force of the stronger argument. Finally, fundamentalists and postmodernists must, in the last instance, be understood as convenient conceptual groupings; that is to say, each cohort is, ultimately, somewhat diffuse at its boundaries, rather than consistently and tightly cohesive. Where appropriate, I shall draw attention to those occasions where features of group identity can lose their resolution.

I think of fundamentalism and postmodernism as powerfully conflicting tendencies, but not as a strictly diametric opposition. Indeed, elements of one tendency may, at times, overlap with the other. Conceivably, there are occasions when fundamentalists think like postmodernists and vice versa. (Think of the fundamentalists who find themselves entertained by the parody of the Rapture in an episode of The Simpsons.³ Think of the postmodernists who, in their doctrinaire distrust of the self-evident or representationalism, betray pieties as rigid as those of any fundamentalist.) I shall draw attention to left-leaning fundamentalists and religious postmodernists. A study with an ethnographic focus would surely reveal that individuals and communities are never permanently or completely fundamentalist or postmodernist in thought and practice. In the case of fundamentalism, these concerns border on issues raised in the scholarship on lived religion; that is to say, studies that proceed from the premise that there is a significant divergence between what adherents state as their religious beliefs and how they actually live; a divergence between the doctrines and discourses of their religious institutions and their day-to-day behavior and contradictory habits of thought.⁴ Yet, while the categories of fundamentalist and postmodernist may not always be hard and fast, they may still serve to signify two kinds of worldview and cultural profile that are dramatically at variance with one another. And in the contrast of the two, we can learn a lot about each.

We also need to be clear about what is meant when some describe fundamentalism as a postmodern phenomenon. Here, postmodern is used only as a periodizing term, and the claim is only that a resurgence of fundamentalism has occurred in the postmodern era. After all, fundamentalism predates postmodernity. Perhaps the only context in which fundamentalism may be said to be postmodern is in its exploitation of the mass media and contemporary marketing techniques for spreading its message and selling Christian lifestyle products.⁵

The electoral mobilization of American evangelicals, which began in the late seventies, marked a new interventionist phase in the political life of the Christian Right. In earlier decades, fundamentalism was characterized by its separationist mentality: the impulse, especially strong since the Scopes trial (1925), to secede from a society that is judged to be not only godless and depraved but actively hostile to the faith; a society that sneers at fundamentalists as gullible hicks, as culturally backward provincials. (For H. L. Mencken, writing in the aftermath of the trial, they were yokels, who swarm in the country towns…. They are everywhere that learning is too heavy a burden for mortal works [and]…mortal minds, even the vague, pathetic learning on tap in little red schoolhouses.) Thanks largely to the organizing efforts of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority and, later, Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, evangelicals were led out of their self-imposed isolation to create a formidable voting bloc and become a vocal counterforce to the culture of secular liberalism. In particular, the fundamentalist wing of the movement advanced its moral agenda through values voting; that is to say, campaigns organized around issues such as abortion, gay marriage, and prayer in schools. Three decades later, the militant fervor has not abated: the fundamentalists' moral crusade remains a fixture of national politics.

Given its vociferous presence in public life, fundamentalism soon became a salient target for critique. Among the sustained and informed critiques of Christian fundamentalism, three types stand out. At the risk of simplification, I shall abbreviate them as (1) mainline Protestant, (2) liberal-humanist, and (3) cultural-historical. Mainline Protestant critique, often employed by ministers with a grasp of scriptural hermeneutics, addresses what are perceived as flawed Bible-reading practices, which give rise to a belligerent and vindictive model of Christianity.⁶ Liberal-humanist critique takes aim at fundamentalism's theocratic policy initiatives (e.g., mandating prayer in schools and the teaching of Intelligent Design) and the strategies by which it seeks to impose its Reconstructionist agenda.⁷ Cultural-historical critique frequently targets fundamentalist metaphysics (e.g., End Times theology) by, for example, explaining its utopian appeal in the context of the pressures of modernization on fundamentalist communities, in conjunction with the latter's evangelical heritage.⁸ However cogent and instructive these types of critique may be, their scope typically excludes vantage points of immense critical potential. I have in mind theoretical positions that, insofar as they converge and often overlap, may be gathered under one hospitable rubric: postmodern critical theory. This study engages Christian fundamentalism through premises and principles drawn from key spheres of postmodern critical theory and practice: notably, discourse theory, radical-democratic pluralism, weak thought, critical pedagogy, and postmodern irony (as found in adversarial forms of self-reflexive art and countercultural sites of popular entertainment).

Here, I should make a case for retaining the concept of the postmodern (although I have no interest in exploring it, given that its contours had been mapped out by the late 1980s). To be sure, since around 2000 the postmodern as a concept has lost traction in some fields of scholarship, notably literary criticism and theory, while it continues to flourish in others, notably theology and philosophy of religion.⁹ I have retained the concept because it has a periodizing function and paradigmatic status that kindred concepts cannot match; for example, postmetaphysical and posthumanist clearly lack the historical resonance, epistemic weight, and cultural compass of postmodern. Moreover, the term effectively designates and connects a range of critical perspectives and sensibilities in ways that make it indispensable to this study as, indeed, to many other recently published studies. Undoubtedly, the concept of the postmodern has galvanized a good deal of discussion about developments in the arts, criticism, and epistemology, and about new kinds of social, political, and communicational experience; indeed, had the term not generated so much debate, it would have been less confusing and less salient and, in consequence, less susceptible to disparagement. (Meanwhile, scholarship continues to embrace enabling umbrella concepts, as evidenced by the current proliferation of studies, across the humanities and social sciences, produced in the name of New Materialism, or by Christian Moraru's recent coinage of the rich concept of Cosmodernism, which may well acquire a paradigmatic force of its own.)¹⁰ However, I do not accept the validity of the concept of the postmodern in toto, and I shall have opportunities to discuss its limitations.

Since its inception, postmodernism has been on the defensive, often dismissed as merely a trendy way of thinking or an anything goes relativism. Thus, one critic recently remarked: [One] reason that drives celebrity drivel is the pseudo-intellectual movement known as postmodernism, the most virulent of anti-science dogma, which proposes that all viewpoints are welcome and none is privileged. Reality is relative (Saad 61). In fact, insofar as relativism implies that all positions are equally valid (a rare stance among postmodern thinkers), postmodernism may be more accurately described as a perspectivism or contingency-oriented thinking. Richard Rorty explains the use of the term postmodernist relativism as just the rhetorical abuse of those who are unsettled by the antimetaphysical claims of something quite different, namely, philosophical pluralism (Philosophy 276). As for the charge of anything goes, it should be evident, by now, that postmodern theorizing typically proceeds from a heightened awareness of limits and boundaries (historical, disciplinary, ethnic, local), as well as the rules of discourse and language games. And against those who argue that postmodernism is a loose, baggy concept, I would point out that the same charge could be leveled a fortiori against modernism, whose legitimacy appears, nevertheless, to be far less fragile. Among the more informed assaults on postmodernism, I would single out Terry Eagleton's The Illusions of Postmodernism and After Theory. Yet, both books are typical of anti-postmodernist polemics in their dependence on a reductionist caricature: postmodernism = anti-foundationalism + relativism + suspicion of metanarratives. This kind of approach to postmodernism would be far more nuanced if it took the trouble to discuss the work of postmodern artists: novelists, painters, filmmakers. In both books, Eagleton does not mention the name of, or discuss work by, a single postmodern artist. Lastly, it is not as if postmodernism has, like some shaky scientific theory, been refuted or even replaced; far from it. In fact, much of its distinctive vocabulary has been assimilated into the mainstream of cultural criticism, film and media studies, postcolonial and ethnocritical discourse, and currents of contemporary theology, to say nothing of its broad diffusion into the arts (especially conceptual art) and popular entertainment.

The Culture of Disenchantment

It was Friedrich Schiller who coined the phrase disenchantment of the world (die Entzauberung der Welt), while, later, its sociological implications would be explored by Max Weber. Disenchantment, at the level of both conscious belief and lived experience, defines the habit of making sense of the world without reference to spirits, demons, moral forces, and, in general, a cosmic order. It voids the world of the sacred and the supernatural.¹¹ However, given the secularizing effects of Renaissance humanism, Enlightenment rationalism, Darwinism, technocratic thinking, and bureaucratic planning, disenchantment is easily confounded with secularization (a mistake that Weber was careful to avoid). Yet, historians of religion have long been aware of how the evolution of religious belief itself has fostered the process of disenchantment. Baldly stated: the rise of monotheistic religion, with its concept of an all-powerful, transcendent God, helped to banish supernatural forces from the world; the nominalism of the Schoolmen deflected attention from the realm of the transcendent to that of concrete experience; Reformation theology rejected the sacramentals as a form of magic, along with the efficacy of acts of propitiating God and the possibility of intercession by saints. Evidently, disenchantment cannot simply stand in a binary opposition to religion. (Indeed, later I shall consider the merits of weak theology, which invokes disenchantment as the starting point for its own religious faith.) Moreover, references in this study to disenchantment or secularization do not assume that either signals the decline or demise of religion. Irrespective of whether the number of adherents to the faiths of organized religion decreases, irrespective of whether the sacred has receded from our public, institutional spaces, religiosity still flourishes. Many people continue, in private, to make sense of their lives and spiritual experiences with reference to God or to some transcendent force (and resist making sense of them in terms of intra-psychic or naturalistic categories). Charles Taylor also identifies an intermediate cohort of unbelievers, which he locates in what he usefully calls the immanent frame, and notes the challenge it faces: [They] shy away from materialist reductionism because of some crucial feature of [spiritual] fullness—our being active, creative agents; our being moral subjects; our ability to respond to beauty—which they see as incompatible with the reductionist ontology (605). Here, unbelievers sense the limits of the immanentist perspective, which denies them understanding of their spiritual experience in terms of reference to some transcendent being or force. Lastly, we must also keep in mind that belief today is remarkably fluid. People move easily between ministries, religions, spiritualities, and secular cults (almost as if shopping for belief); they migrate from religion to non-religion and, often, back again.

In light of these observations, I do not assume that disenchantment and religion exist in a simple zero-sum relationship, such that the expansion of the former entails the contraction of the latter. (Taylor contests what he sees as the common but simplistic subtraction story, whereby science and evolution theory discredit religious thinking, thus leaving a secular world by default.) Moreover, I shall be examining the relationship between a historically and culturally specific type of disenchantment and religion: a postmodern strain of disenchantment and contemporary Christian fundamentalism in the United States. In particular, I want to explore the present culture war in terms of a clash between these two powerful belief and value systems, and to draw on the panoply of critical resources, developed in the postmodern culture of disenchantment, in order to challenge the doctrines and morality of fundamentalism.

To speak of a postmodern culture of disenchantment is to run counter to a common view of postmodernity as a disposition of cultural forces that reverse the disenchanting tendencies of modernity. For example, in Intimations of Postmodernity, Zygmunt Bauman argues that "postmodernity…is a re-enchantment…of the world that modernity tried hard to disenchant. It is the modern legislating reason that has been exposed, condemned and put to shame (x). And the postmodern theologian Graham Ward has written, It is the re-evaluation of ambivalence, mystery, excess and aporia as they adhere to, are constituted by and disrupt the rational, that lies behind the re-enchantment of the contemporary world" (161). Indeed, the view that postmodernity may be understood as a reenchantment of the world is, to some extent, derived from such recurrent post-rationalist terms as euphoria, the sublime, intensities, and ecstasy, which appeared in early discussions of postmodernism.¹²

The idea of postmodernism as a force that fosters reenchantment also derives from scholarship that has identified a postsecular impulse within the postmodern. John A. McClure, the leading theorist of the postsecular postmodern, has argued, with reference to books by Pynchon, DeLillo, and other postmodern authors, that the project of these texts [is] one of reenchantment (Partial Faiths 7). However, he is careful to qualify the postsecular character of such postmodern writing: The break with secular versions of the real does not lead in postsecular narrative to the triumphant reappearance of a well-mapped, familiar, religious cosmos (4); rather, the reader encounters weakened and hybridized types of religious belief (4), and religious experience that