SOME QUOTES FROM PEOPLE WHO EXPERIENCED RELIGION IN AMERICA

about the authors (Sayyid Qutb, Surajit Sinha, and Hervé Varenne)

There is no people who enjoys building churches more than the Americans. To the extent that I once stayed in a town with no more than ten thousand inhabitants, yet within it I found over twenty churches! And most of them do not go to church on Sunday mornings and evenings, but instead on general holidays and holidays for local saints, who far outnumber the "saints" of the common Muslims in Egypt. All this notwithstanding there is no one further than the
American from appreciating the spirituality of religion and respect for its , sacraments, and there is nothing farther from religion than the American's thinking and his feelings and manners.

...

If the church is a place for worship in the entire Christian world, in America it is for everything but worship. You will find it difficult to differentiate between it and any other place. They go to church for carousal and enjoyment, or, as they call it in their language "fun." Most who go there do so out of necessary social tradition, and it is a place for meeting and friendship, and to spend a nice time. This is not only the feeling of the people, but it is also the feeling of the men of
the church and its ministers.

...

One night I was in a church in Greeley, Colorado, I was a member in its club as I was a member in a number of church clubs in every area that I had lived in, for this is an important facet of American society, deserving close study from the inside. After the religious service in the church ended, boys and girls from among the members began taking part in chants, while others prayed, and we proceeded through a side door onto the dance floor that was connected to the prayer hall by a door, and the Father jumped to his desk and every boy took the
hand of a girl, including those who were chanting.

The dance floor was lit with red and yellow and blue lights, and with a few white lamp. And they danced to the tunes of the gramophone, and the dance floor was replete with tapping feet, enticing legs, arms wrapped around waists, lips pressed to lips, and chests pressed to chests. The atmosphere was full of desire. When the minister descended from his office, he looked intently around the place and at the people, and encouraged those men and women still sitting who
had not yet participated in this circus to rise and take part. And as he noticed that the white lamps spoiled the romantic, dreamy atmosphere, he set about, with that typical American elegance and levity, dimming them one by one, all the while being careful not to interfere with the dance, or bump into any couples dancing on the dance floor. And the place really did appear to become more romantic and passionate. Then he advanced to the gramophone to choose a song that would befit this atmosphere and encourage the males and the females who were still seated to participate.

And the Father chose. He chose a famous American song called "But Baby, It's Cold Outside," which is composed of a dialogue between a boy and a girl returning from their evening date. The boy took the girl to his home and kept her from leaving. She entreated him to let her return home, for it was getting late, and her mother was waiting but every time she would make an excuse,.he would reply to her with this line: but baby, its cold outside! And the minister waited until he saw people stepping to the rhythm of this moving song, and he seemed satisfied and contented. He left the dance floor for his home, leaving the men and the women to enjoy this night in all its pleasure and innocence!

The passage is from Sayyid Qutb's The America I have seen. ([1951] 2000).  Qutb was born in Egypt and remains an extremely controversial figure as he eventually participated in the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood, and was executed after he was convicted of conspiring to kill the president of Egypt.

Qutb was born and educated in Egypt.  He spent two years in the United States (1948-50) where, among other activities, he attended several churches and eventually wrote about his observatiosn there.  While not an anthropologist, some of his experiences are those an anthropologist would seek.

Every Friday, the local newspaper publishes a Durkheimian statement:

"Strong Church makes strong communities: The Church is the greatest faith on earth for the building of character and good citizenship. It is a storehouse of spiritual values. Without a strong Church, neither democracy nor civilization can survive."

The full-page announcement includes church-service notices for 11 churches in the township: St. Mary's Catholic, St. Mark's Episcopal, First Presbyterian, First Methodist, Trinity Lu theran, First Baptist, Christian (Disciples of Christ), Assembly ofGod, Full Gospel Pentecostal, Seventh Day Adventist, and Jehovah's Witnesses.  These messages are sponsored every week by 23 industries and business establishments in Mapletown. They include a pictorial feature and a lengthy moral message obtained through.... a national advertising service. These announcements say much about the place of formal religion in the community:

(a) It is generally felt that church going generates the requisite individual and social ethics that support "democracy" and "civilization," which are identical;
(b) the business world is behind the church; (c) there is considerable tolerance, on a formal level, of the various churches, denominations, and sects; and
(d) religious life in small communities is guided by a nationwide network of mass communication.

Yet the village president and the village clerk are not church members.
Both of them are highly regarded by the community, not only for their
official position and efficiency, but also for their general uprightness. In other words, churchgoing is not an essential indicator of normal conduct. About ¼ of the adult population of the village does not belong to any church, and another ¼ does not attend church regularly, The hulk of the unchurched comes from the low-income groups. These unchurched people, however, believe in God and want a minister to
preside over their funeral ceremonies.

...

In a farming community with so many churches, one might expect religion to offer some support to farming activities. But the farmer, whether Roman Catholic. or Protestant, does not seek divine help to solve any agricultural problems. Although in the Roman Catholic church there are formal provisions for "blessing of the grape vineyards" and for petition to God on the Rogesian days for bountiful crops, these customs have become completelyobsolete ,in Mapletown in recent years.

According to N. H., a well-known, farmei:, there are still some "folk
beliefs" half-heartedly adhered to by 'some of the old farmers in the area: l think there are still some people who believe that you should plant certain things in the light of the moon and others in the dark phase of the moon. My hired hand did not want to start plowing a field on Friday. It is just the fact of the old saying that if you start something on a Friday, you'll never finish.

The prevailing notions are that "God is not to be manipulated for the purpose of farming" and that "rain falls oh the fields of the virtuous and the sinners alike. God is prayed to in order to build "character" with which to face one's problems. In both the Catholic school and the Protestant Sunday schools, children learn that kindliness, honesty, and obedience to parents are good· and that swearing, drinking, smoking, lying, stealing, and hurting others are sins. The children begin life
with a notion that God is watching their conduct. None of the churches
directly emphasizes worldly virtues such as hard work, thrift. and cleanliness.

The passage is from Surajit Sinha's ""Religion in an affluent society" (Current Anthropology 7, 2:189-195. 1966).

Sinha (1926-2002) was born in Bangladesh, received his PhD in anthropology from the Northwestern University and completed his career as professor of anthropology at the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, India.

While, in the United States, Sinha spent three months (1963-64) with his family in a town he calls Mapletown (Appleton in Varenne's work, later revealed as Paw Paw, Michigan). This is the ethnograpic evidence for Sinha's report on the organization of religion there.

There were thirteen established churches in Appleton when I arrived. They were, as listed in a local publication written for tourists: "Trinity Lutheran, First Methodist, First Presbyterian, Full Gospel Pentecostal, Church of Christ, Church of God, St. Mark's Epis­copal, Seventh-day Adventist, Assembly of God, St. Mary's Catholic, Jehovah's Witnesses, First Baptist, Church of the Nazarene (rural)."

...

A young couple I interviewed who had just moved to Appleton from Detroit, where they had not belonged to any church, decided that they should "because it would be a good example to the children," even though the husband said freely that he did not really believe in the utility of church membership. One Sunday morning, one of them went to a Methodist service, the other to the Presbyterian church. The Methodist minister made a sermon about "preparing a birthday cake for Jesus on Christmas ... Good grief!" The wife decided that it would be difficult to find anybody giving a better sermon in Appleton than the one she heard the Presbyterian minister preach.

...

Building programs played a role, too. Ten years before, the Methodist church had been dominated by older people, had had a mediocre minister, and its church had been old, damp, and dark. (Architecturally, it had been one of the best buildings in town, but that did not count.) A new minister arrived, a younger and more energetic man. He organized membership drives and a very successful building campaign, the product of which was a brand-new church/friendship hall/office/classroom complex with lawns and a large parking lot, at the outskirts of the town. The result was a greatly enlarged congregation that included many younger adults; they worked hard for the church and changed its outward appearance.

...

A minister explained to me that this order of worship depends almost solely on the inspiration of the minister as long as it includes at least some of the various liturgical moments. These are:

1. Invocation. Always at the beginning, recited by the pastor or an elder. This is an improvised prayer to ask God's help that the service be fruitful.
2. Prayer of Confession (not found in all denominations). To ask for God's indulgence for one's sins.
3. Offerings. Consisting of a collection of money and a prayer over these.
4. Readings. Normally one from the Old Testament and one from the New Testament.
5. The saying of the only mechanical prayers recited in Protestant churches (except for the Episcopalian and Lutheran churches). They are the Doxology ..., the Gloria Patri ... , and the Our Father. These prayers are used mainly as transitions from one part of the service to another.
6. Communion (not found in all denominations and in others only once a month). It consists (except among Lutherans and Episcopalians) of pieces of white bread and tiny glasses of grape juice. These are placed on trays and passed from hand to hand among the congregation, who remain seated in the pews. Everybody always partakes.
7. Sermon. "There can be a service without communion, but not without a sermon!" a minister once told me. It is the high point of the service, and all the rest (except perhaps for communion when it is placed after the sermon) is more an introduction to it than anything else.
8. Invitation (not in all denominations). The minister or leaders invites people who want to join the church to come forward and make a declaration to this effect.
9. Benediction. Always at the end, recited by the leader of the service for the congregation. This, too, is an improvised prayer. Like the improvised invocation, the formula may be very stereotyped and repetitive, depending on the personality of the minister.

People move out after the complete singing of a last hymn, and as they do, they pass in front of the pastor, who shakes everyone's hand

This passage is from Chapter 5 0f Herve Varenne's Americans Together (Teachers College Press. 1998).

Varenne was born and educated in France.  He received his PhD from the University of Chicago i on the basis of a year (1970-71) of ethnographic field work in Paw Paw, Michigan.