Hegemony

I liked Mark's comment about “meta-discourse” -- perhaps that was was irking me about Crowley. It's especially confusing because she makes a good case for the pervasiveness of the hegemony. She seems to address this for liberals, but not for herself: “Thus the beliefs and practices of Americans who are not Christians are nonetheless affected by the hegemonic status of Christianity in this country.” Is she claiming to be outside that then? And if there's at least one smart person outside the hegemony, does that make it not a hegemony anymore?

I see this as related to Crowley's central problem – she represents Fundamentalist Christians as she sees them, not as they would represent themselves (presumably she can do this because she's outside the hegemony). For example, a Fundamentalist Christian would never claim to have beliefs as Crowley defines them: “views or attitudes . . . that serve the interests of the believer and/or some other person, group, or institution” (68). A Fundamentalist Christian would be offended at the mere idea that they were a Christian because they needed to be, just as I get angry when someone says that they “wish” they could be religious because it would “make everything so simple.” Their focus is on a much larger goal, winning souls for Christ, meaning that their life isn't about them. There's a higher purpose. In fact, living for yourself is just about the worst thing you can do. But Crowley defines the group in the way she sees them as an outsider, such as the paragraph where she equates angels with aliens (75).