Adam Kotsko has been reading about neo-Pentecostals in Guatemala (doesn’t everyone?), whose response to the political situation in that country runs to prayer, speaking in tongues and spiritual warfare.
This seems to me, as it does to Kotsko, to be a recipe for massive political quietism. But along the way, he entertains some doubts about his own position:
I’m not convinced that these people have chosen the most effective route to help their country — though Guatemala is in such bad shape I’ll admit that I don’t know what would be effective — and I suspect that at least some of my students will be skeptical as well. Partway through the book, though, I had an epiphany. My own practice of citizenship consists, aside from voting every couple years, of reading a lot of stuff so that I can stay informed, then forming opinions about public policy and arguing with people on the internet about it. Like the Guatemalan strategy, this approach is premised on individualism: if the debates have a point, it is to change people’s opinions, one by one, so that they will then vote the right way.
When I look at things that way, I wonder if maybe prayer and fasting is the way to go.
I’m not quite at that point, but yeah. What is the alternative to an individualistic, change-one-heart-at-a-time strategy?
Maybe I ought to write a book on that. Then everyone who reads it can make up their own mind and…d’oh!
