There was a faculty-student happy hour event last week for St. Patrick's Day, and I spent a bunch of time drinking Irish beer, listening to Irish music (one of the English department faculty is an accomplished piper, and brought a bunch of other local musicians in to play for the party), and talking to some students from one of the local fraternities. Inevitably, one of them asked me what I really think about frats.
This is a hot topic on campus, because fraternities have historically been huge at Union, but there are a number of people on the faculty who make no secret of their opinion that fraternities and sororities are a blight on the campus. Their feeling is that the only way for the institution to move forward is to get rid of the Greeks, the sooner the better.
As I told the student who asked me about this, I'm not in that camp. Williams doesn't have frats (they got rid of them in the mid-60's), but I've always said that the rugby club was about the closest analogue. My dinner talk at ΔKE a couple of weeks ago pretty much confirmed it. The WRFC had pretty much all of the same characteristics-- the quasi-hierarchical structure (seniors boss everybody else around, freshmen and sophomores fetch and carry), the silly rituals and traditions, the fondness for beer and off-color humor. There were a few differences-- we didn't have a long formal initiation process, we took pretty much all comers, and we didn't have group housing-- but most of the major elements were there. The same was true for a number of other groups on campus-- the football team was probably more frat-like than the rugby club, frisbee somewhat less so, and the crew team was like a frat without the booze.
That experience gives me a somewhat different take on the fraternity question than many of my colleagues. I've heard lots of stories about the horrible things that they get up to on campus (I try to stay away from campus on Friday and Saturday nights, so I have no first-hand knowledge), but nothing I've heard has really shocked me that much. A lot of the stories involve tremendously stupid activities, mind, but none of them are all that much dumber than what we used to get up to in my rugby-playing days.
My opinion, in the end, is that a lot of what people find objectionable about fraternities and sororities is not an inherent property of the organizations, but rather an emergent property of large groups of 18-22 year old Americans. Banning Greeks would make some cosmetic changes in the life of the campus, but most of the objectionable behavior would still crop up, just in a different form. Some other organizations on campus would become more frat-like, or new organizations would appear, and fill the same social role, more or less.
So what's this got to do with religion? Other than some lame college-preacher "Jesus is the Eternal President of the Universal Chapter of Α Ω" analogy (they throw bitchin' parties-- every time you think they're out of booze, they find more...), that is? I was reminded of this when I started thinking about how to respond to some of the comments to the church wedding post, specifically this one from John Larson:
If you are an atheist being married in a church, with a traditional religious ceremony, you are at least implicitly seeking the approval of God and an institution that exists in his name. Depending on the ceremony, this request may in fact be quite explicit. And you are doing so while privately denying the big guy's very existence. This is not honest conduct. This is living a lie.
The thing is, I don't actually disagree all that strongly with what Johan says. Where I disagree is about the importance of this stuff. I would agree that it was a major problem, if I thought that belief in God was the most important part of church ceremonies. But I don't.
My personal inclination, as I've said before, is to give much greater weight to the social and communal aspects of religion than the mythological ones. That is, I think that the biggest attraction religion has for a lot of people is not the metaphysical certainty provided by belief in God, but rather the idea of membership in a community. In which case, the important part of a wedding or other ceremony is the public gathering. The private thoughts of the participants really don't make that much of a difference.
I find support for this view in a lot of things, but nothing is more important than the fact that people shop for churches. As I've said before, when I was a kid, and we would go to church with my grandparents, we would drive past two or three Catholic churches on the way to St. Stan's. If belief in God and doctrine were the most important feature of religion, there was no need for that trip-- all of those churches featured the same Mass, with the same readings, celebrated by priests reporting to the same Pope. We made the drive, though, because St. Stan's was the Polish church, and the center of the community that my grandparents were a part of. It was a matter of community and ethnic identity-- they were members of the subset of Catholics who attended St. Stanislaus Kostka Church on Sundays, and that was more important than the content of the Mass.
You see the same thing with other groups as well. every few months, there's a story about some pastor who made a political statement of some sort, and saw half his congregation disappear. Depressingly, these usually involve preachers saying sane things and seeing their flock flee to churches with crazier views, but there are examples of the opposite, as well. And either way, it points to the supremacy of community over doctrine-- if belief in God were the crucial factor, it wouldn't matter where people went to church. What's really important, though, is for people to belong to a community of believers, and religious people are more than willing to move from church to church in an effort to find a group that believes the same things they do.
(For that matter, if doctrine and belief were everything, there wouldn't be any need to go to church at all-- it's right there in the Bible, Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 6. "But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.")
So, that's why I'm not particularly bothered about having a church wedding, and my reasons for it (as explained in the earlier post). The tribute to the group identity is the important thing, and God is secondary. (For the record, my personal beliefs are probably best described as Apathetic Agnostic-- I don't really care whether there's a God or not. If there is, I figure he's busy hiding evidence of the Higgs Boson, and has better things to worry about than my state of belief.)
This is also where the fraternity connection comes in. In the same way that I think frat-like behavior is an emergent property of large groups of 18-22 year olds, I think religious behavior is an emergent property of humans in large groups. People in general feel a need to be a part of some sort of community, and religions grow out of that need. Belief in a particular form of God and a particular set of rituals is more about membership than metaphysics. They're the secret handshakes of the religious fraternity.
(This is about the point where some Pharynguloid usually pops up and announces that they feel no such communal need, so let me step aside to speak to that person for a moment: I'm not talking about you. You are a strong, vibrant individual who needs nobody else. Your intellect, strength of will, and enormous genitalia are an inspiration to us all. A shiny gold star for you!)
This is why I find the endless online discussions of religion so incredibly frustrating. As I see it, the whole argument is about something that's just a few steps above a sideshow-- they go round and round about the irrationality of belief, and the stupidity of various elements of doctrine, and never touch the community stuff. Which, to my mind, is the most important aspect of the whole thing
Trying to get rid of religion by telling believers that their beliefs are stupid is like trying to get rid of fraternities by telling frat boys that the whole enterprise is silly. The smarter ones will shrug and say "Yeah, so?" or invent endless arguments as to why they're not silly. The less-smart ones will bristle and bluster and tell you to fuck off, and draw into a seige mentality that will make it almost impossible to effect any kind of useful change.
When colleges want to change the worst aspects of fraternity and sorority culture-- and there are things about Greek organizations that I agree are pretty unsavory and ought to be changed-- the way to do it is not by attacking the trappings, but by working on the environment. These organizations exist because they fill a social need, and if you want them to change, you need to approach the problem with an awareness of that.
If your objection is to big keg parties with unsafe drinking behavior, the solution is not to ban large parties outright-- for whatever reason, college students are happiest when they congregate in enormous groups. The way to deal with the unsafe behavior is to encourage and empower students to fill that need in less objectionable ways-- create new organizations that throw big parties in a manner more to your liking. That will provide an outlet for the students who weren't totally invested in the status quo, and over time, it will drag the original organizations in the direction you want.
This is the element that I think is missing from the whole atheist project online. Religion exists in large part because it fills a social need for believers, and attacking the silly and objectionable beliefs directly isn't going to change things. What you need to do is to encourage or create new communities that fill the same social needs without the objectionable beliefs. If you do that, you'll provide an outlet for people who aren't entirely happy with their current church, but who don't see any alternative that provides similar community benefits.
There is a little of that going on on-line, in the form of the comment sections at Pharyngula and elsewhere, which have turned into communities in their own right, with in-jokes and rituals, and even occasional get-togethers. That's been almost entirely accidental, though, and is far too limited in scope to do much good. I'd love to see what could be accomplished with a concerted effort in that direction, with a broader appeal.
As it is, though, I think the vast majority of the effort that goes into the atheist project online is misspent, if not actively counterproductive. And that's a shame.
- Log in to post comments
Well said.
Sociologists formalize this as The Law of Conservation of Bongs.
It's about time someone on ScienceBlogs recognized my genitalia as their inspiration...
I will admit that the one thing I really miss about going to church is that sense of belonging to a community that has fun together and can provide support when the going gets tough. There just doesn't seem to be the equivalent if you're not willing to go along with the religious trappings as well (and I'm not).
I think you're on to something here. My parents brought my siblings and me to church when we were growing up, in part so that we could get that sense of community. None of us took to it. Indeed, I have been to only one religious service in the last ten years, which was the funeral of my neighbor. (The last wedding I attended was explicitly non-religious.)
As Natalie points out, there are few outlets in this country for finding a sense of community. This is particularly true out in suburbia, and I suspect it's a big reason for the rise of evangelical megachurches in the last 20 years. They are filling a need that nothing else comes close to filling. Those of us who live in university towns have the university community to be part of, and I have an alumni club that I'm involved with. But if I were stuck out in the middle of miles-from-anything suburbia, there wouldn't be very many options: the Baptist church, the Methodist church, the Lutheran church, and maybe a few others. Which would be a problem for me, because like Natalie I'm not willing to go along with the religious trappings.
Nice post. Also, interestingly, this provides an answer to a (bogus) criticism sometimes directed at atheist groups...i.e. "What is the point of having a group organized around not believing in something?". Part of it is clearly community.
Higher education trains slaves, sororities train trophy wives, and fraternities train masters. All is well in the world.
Bush the Lesser's Yale degree compares well with that of Albert Gore, Jr. One would be mad to put either one in charge of anything valuable as other than a purchased voice.
Two thoughts:
First, I am in agreement with you on the community thing. I lost my faith long before (Catholic) high school was over for me, but I sang in the choir all the way through. Some people have told me they find this hypocritical, but I contend that it was no more hypocritical than making weekly Mass compulsory for the entire student body in the first place. If I had to be there, I might as well be doing something that (a) I enjoy, and (b) serves the community I was a part of, belief or no belief. I got to sing, and the believers in the audience got to enjoy a celebration of their faith. Everyone wins.
So yeah, it is about community. The problem I see here (and this is my second thing), is that while you may be correct that the community is the thing, moreso than the actual belief system being espoused, that doesn't mean that the religious folk involved actually acknowledge that. Or even realize it, maybe.
My point being, trying to devise "replacement" social groups as an alternative to folks going to church to fill that need only works if the folks in question know (or admit) that it's the community aspect of it they want more than the worshiping-of-God part.
Don't believe me, try asking your average devout church-goer which bit is more important, and see what party line you get.
My point being, trying to devise "replacement" social groups as an alternative to folks going to church to fill that need only works if the folks in question know (or admit) that it's the community aspect of it they want more than the worshiping-of-God part.
Don't believe me, try asking your average devout church-goer which bit is more important, and see what party line you get.
I agree, to a point. Creating an "Anti-Jesus Social Club" with the express purpose of providing a non-religious sense of community isn't going to be tremendously successful. But, sticking with the original analogy, creating an "Anti-Fraternity Social Club" with the explicit intention of breaking the back of the Greek organizations isn't going to be a huge win on a college campus.
If, however, you work on providing alternative options, open to everybody-- Christian and atheist, frat boy and science nerd-- and you make those options good, a lot of people who have been getting their social needs filled by the existing organization will find that they can get what they need from the alternative group, and their ties to the original crowd won't be quite as strong any more.
a lot of people who have been getting their social needs filled by the existing organization will find that they can get what they need from the alternative group
I have to say, I can't imagine what this theoretical alternative group would be, though.
Well, here's the thing. Things, actually.
I agree with Larson. Initially it was a mild agreement, but the more I think about it, the more I agree, for the following reasons:
First, I don't know if it's a regional distinction, a demographic distinction, or if you're just weird (because surely it can't be me) but I don't get the whole "Community trumps religion" face of Catholicism. As background, the parish I belonged to as a misguided youf was about 90% Italian, typically whose parents or grandparents were immigrants, and has since transitioned to about 50% Italian, 50% Mexican (who typically are immgrants.)
I gaurantee you, for them, community is an important aspect, but it does not trump the religious aspect. So this may be a Midwest vs Northeast thing, or a demographic-ethnic background thing, but your take just doesn't match what I've seen here.
Second, though... well, I'll try not to sound like your stereotypical Pharynguloid, but I don't need that community. (You are still welcome to admite my genitalia, but you'll have to do it from afar.) I'll add some nuance to that, in both directions. I don't need that community, becuase I belong to others-- science and engineering communities, hobby communities, friend communities, etc. None of those have both the critical mass and interest in validating a life-long commitment like marriage, but that's okay by me.
Although I agree with Larson, I'm not going to make an absolute statement. If my mother were sufficiently Catholic that she'd have a stroke if I weren't married in the Church (she's not) then I'd consider it. If a prospective wife or members of her family were the same way, I'd consider it, too, as the lesser of evils, but I wouldn't be happy about it. (And to be honest, I expect my overt preferences in women select away from that problem as a matter of unintended but happy consequence.)
But as I said, I wouldn't be happy about it. I'm not happy about an organization with such a grip on (some) peoples' minds that they go into near panics at the thought that I'll be going to Hell if I don't take part in their rituals. And I'm not happy with the community-trumps-religion aspect when I'm also told that I basically need a priest's stamp of pre-Cana approval before getting married. Yes, their ceremony, their rules, but the fact that these rules exist and are enforced really argues against the idea that Catholicism is more about the community than about the religion. (Or at best, it makes the community aspects of it pretty damn creepy and conformist to my ears.)
It bothers me deeply enough that I make an issue out of it, in the same sense that I won't call myself a Democrat or a Republican, and won't vote in their primaries. I don't think Democrats or Republicans all suck, and I don't think Catholics or Christians all suck. But I'm not one, in the way that matters most fundamentally. This absolutely prevents me from seeking their approval, but it also prevents me from misrepresenting myself as one and taking part in their rituals for all but the most dire of externally-imposed circumstances.
Thanks for articulating something I've long believed about religious groups (and other groups). I think a part of the need to find community may be fear-based. Fear of an uncontrollable world. While many people understand they cannot totally control their world and accept that they cannot, and others simply refuse to acknowledge they cannot control all aspects of their world, there must be many more people who realize their lack of control and fear it. It is their insecurity that brings them together and the sense of safety as well as acceptance that keeps them in the group. If one follows this thought, it's easy to see how actively recruiting conversions becomes necessary. The more people who believe what you believe, the safer you are, the safer the world becomes FOR you.
In my childhood experience, my church was not at all about community. I didn't know anyone, and church was simply a place where some guy's voice echoed incomprehensibly, and I wasn't allowed to sleep. If all those congregants needed community, most of them weren't getting it. My college experience is different. The religious groups form much more of a community. I enjoy going to their socials (which have the advantage of being non-alcoholic). I skip their prayer meetings. It works out well.
If, as you say, communities are an emergent property, shouldn't they arise naturally the help of new atheists? Sure, someone has to work on creating communities, but do you really think new atheists would be the best people to do it? The best they can do is form some sort of freethought community, but you yourself pointed out some problems with the idea. And if the same people formed any other sort of community, they wouldn't be doing it under the atheist label, would they?
I'm a pretty thorough materialist, and have been for a long while. I got married in a church. Hypocrisy? I don't think so - the church was a U-U church, and so supernatural "stuff" had nothing to do with the ceremony and the "community" before whom we pledged to stay married (it has been working for almost 27 years now...)
In the city where I live, (Grand Rapids, MI), we are favored with both a Unitarian-Universalist church AND a very active and vibrant Center For Inquiry, which are complementary organizations in my life. I'm glad that they both are here, but not so I can conform to any loopy ideas (neither one tries to enforce any, anyway).
Just sayin'
\KMJ
there are a number of people on the faculty who make no secret of their opinion that fraternities and sororities are a blight on the campus. Their feeling is that the only way for the institution to move forward is to get rid of the Greeks, the sooner the better.
Amen to that. My father was a physics/math graduate from Union, so I was under some pressure to follow him there.
Union's Greek scene kept me from even applying to the school.
Yes, boys will be boys, and downplaying fraternities won't eliminate adolescent hijinks - but really, there's no need for an institution of higher learning to institutionalize and encourage juvenile behavior.
Personally, I am against the whole Greek like thing, just for the fact that most people buy into it for the wrong reasons. If more people joined a Fraternity for the service aspects (community service, tutoring, etc.), maybe I would have a different view. The sad reality is that most people do it to drink and use their affiliation as a resume booster, or a tool to sway women.
I was watching hoops away from the computer, and then out to dinner with my parents, so I'm late getting to responding to these:
John Novak: I don't need that community, becuase I belong to others-- science and engineering communities, hobby communities, friend communities, etc. None of those have both the critical mass and interest in validating a life-long commitment like marriage, but that's okay by me.
That's exactly my point. You don't feel the need to belong to a religious community because you have other groups that fill that need for you. I feel basically the same way-- I'm part of the college community, I have friends from college that I stay in touch with, I've got the whole Internet/ blog thing going, etc.
In a sense, this is also a partial answer to Leigh's question about what an alternative community would look like: to some extent, you're looking at it. Back in the day, r.a.s.w.r-j provided a lot of what I would get out of being part of a church, and these days, blogs and LiveJournals fill that niche.
miller: If, as you say, communities are an emergent property, shouldn't they arise naturally the help of new atheists? Sure, someone has to work on creating communities, but do you really think new atheists would be the best people to do it?
Well, OK, the high-profile "New Atheists" would be a lousy choice, because the communities that they've evolved naturally tend to be kind of toxic, in the same way that religious communities go bad.
I think, though, that while communities will form spontaneously, they also tend to nucleate around smaller organized groups. If you want a particular type of community to form, you can either wait for it to form naturally, or you can hurry it along with a little well-placed effort.
Part of the problem, though, is that religions have a built-in incentive for people to go out and organize communities-- all that "do unto others" stuff and commands to spread the good word. If you just wait and watch, you're as likely to see more religious communities spring up as non-religious ones.
Going back to the college analogy, if you wait around and watch, you will see non-fraternity organizations spring up from time to time, and if you wait long enough, those organizations may move the culture of an institution in one direction or another. Union's campus-wide recycling program exists because of a very small number of students, who got together and got things rolling without any prompting or support from the administration, and eventually got it to the point where it has become and official program. They also launched a weekly organic cafe that's become wildly popular.
For every success like that, though, there have been a half-dozen groups that briefly flourished, and then vanished again when the founders graduated, becuase they didn't have anything to keep them going. They did some great stuff, but never really changed the culture, because there wasn't a coherent push behind them. We've made a lot more progress in recent years by making a concerted effort to direct resources and institutional support to student programs, and I think that will continue to pay off.
Bob Oldendorf: Yes, boys will be boys, and downplaying fraternities won't eliminate adolescent hijinks - but really, there's no need for an institution of higher learning to institutionalize and encourage juvenile behavior.
To some extent, it's like college sports. If I were sitting down to start building a national educational system from scratch, I wouldn't design in fraternities and sororities, any more than I would tie in a system of semi-pro athletics. While you can rationalize those parts of the American college system, neither really makes a whole lot of sense, and those functions could perfectly well be filled by outside organizations.
We don't get the chance to design the university system of our dreams, though-- we have to work with what we've got. And while we might be better off without institutionalized adolescent hijinks, we've got them now, and have to make the best of it that we can. At the moment, banning those organizations would be way more trouble than it's worth-- seven or eight years ago, the college made some moves that were interpreted as action against the Greeks, and poisoned the campus culture for years. The resulting alumni outrage also blew a hole in the budget that we're only just recovering from.
The right way to go at this is to accept that there will be Greeks on campus for the forseeable future, and work to push the system in a more acceptable direction. Which we're doing reasonably well with at the moment, I think.
Rob: Personally, I am against the whole Greek like thing, just for the fact that most people buy into it for the wrong reasons. If more people joined a Fraternity for the service aspects (community service, tutoring, etc.), maybe I would have a different view. The sad reality is that most people do it to drink and use their affiliation as a resume booster, or a tool to sway women.
Enh.
It'd be lovely if everybody did things for good reasons, but that's not how the world works, in academia or out. I mean, look at all the people who go to law school in order to make shitloads of money, rather than to do good for society.
There is no activity so noble and selfless that no nineteen-year-old will ever attempt to use it as a way to impress women. You just have to accept that some people will be involved for the sake of the free beer, and do what you can to make sure that it's not just sex and drugs and rock&roll.
I agree completely w/ the community aspect. I'm an agnostic (a failed Episcopalian if you will [Catholic lite]), but we were married in a Catholic service - it was an important moment for my wife and her friends and family (and my family as well). And consider: if there is no God, then no harm no foul. If there IS a God, then you've covered your bases. And no, I was not required to convert to Catholicism.
"I think that the biggest attraction religion has for a lot of people is not the metaphysical certainty provided by belief in God, but rather the idea of membership in a community."
- Interesting counterpoint to my own viewpoint. I remember telling an acquaintance in college that I envied the religious their certainty. At that time I gave religions more credit for having an empirical or logical basis for that certainty. I never found the community of the religious of any sect to be attractive to me. As my view of religion - and the certainty of the religious - changed I had even less desire to enter such communities. (The acquaintance mentioned was the daughter of a Missouri Synod lutheran minister.)
I never had a desire to join a frat either, possibly because the community didn't appeal to me.
I do wholly agree that banning Greek life would do essentially nothing to reform young peoples' behavior. I also know people who found frats the best part of their college life and maintained lifelong friendships with their brothers.
I was a very committed, very liberal Christian for about 30 years; a little over a year ago I decided that I didn't really believe in God ... it just didn't make sense. But I needed the community aspect of religion, especially singing in the choir. Immediately after the Christmas cantata at my Christian church, I started attending a Unitarian Universalist church (and singing in the choir). I feel very comfortable there ... there is essentially no pressure to believe in God, or in anything for that matter, although many people seem to be looking for some sort of spiritual foundation for their lives. Mainly the people say "I don't care what you believe, let's get out there and try to stop the war and world hunger and water shortages and white slavery so on." And they're mostly nice people, and very intelligent.
I'm new to Unitarian Universalism, so I can't say that all UU congregations are like the one I found, but it seems to be the religion that isn't a religion. In that sense it's an institution that already exists that fulfills Chad's desire for a community without the objectionable obligatory belief system.
That's exactly my point. You don't feel the need to belong to a religious community because you have other groups that fill that need for you.
Okay, but that wasn't my main point. My main point was that for whatever reason (and I suspect it's just one of those geographic difference things that accrete over time) the notion of Catholicism as a social rather than a religious community is just... weird to me. (And I meant to add a third point of reference in my initial post, about the high school community I was a part of. Given that there were high school boys involved, there were lots of people less than serious about it, but there was always the sense of not advertising the less-than-seriousness to the other half of the community. And I don't just mean the priests and the lay teachers, I mean the half of the student body that was serious. I wish I remembered enough of my college parish to ocmment reliably-- it'd at least get me out of the same twenty mile radius-- but I lasted there less than three months before I stopped going, and less than an academic year before I formally broke. That alone makes me an unreliable witness for those years....)
Still: Sufficiently weird that to this day, I can't imagine myself taking advantage of the social aspects without first reconciling myself to the religious aspects, no matter how much I might desire the social aspects.
My main point was that for whatever reason (and I suspect it's just one of those geographic difference things that accrete over time) the notion of Catholicism as a social rather than a religious community is just... weird to me.
Ah.
Well, I have no idea how to reply to that, because I can't really conceive of the alternative. It's just always seemed clear to me that part of the point of going to church was to see the other people who went to the same church-- we always spent some time before and after Mass chatting with other people in the parish.
That's been true for all three of the churches I attended semi-regularly (in my home town, my grandparents' Polish church in Johnson City, and my grandmother's church in Mineola). And even in places where we were just passing through, there were always all sorts of community announcements and so forth, often read from the pulpit after Communion, about bake sales and charity drives and bingo, and all the rest.
The idea that that might not be an important part of the Catholic experience (or religious experience in general) is as alien to me as the opposite is to you.
Chad - I take your point.
By way of analogy:
back in the '50s, Ford started selling the 2-seat T-bird: one of the greatest things they ever built. But then they started doing exit interviews with the people who looked but didn't buy - and found that they were NOT selling them to the people who really wanted a back seat. So Ford ruined the T-bird, redesigning it to be a four-seater: to please the non-buyers, they utterly pissed off the buyers.
I guess Union is in a similar situation with regard to Greek culture. The system self-selects for people who like the Greek system. (Which I'm glad you explained to me - I had missed that, as that's too far from my own attitudes.) The people who dislike the Greek system (like the 17-yr-old me) go elesewhere - and there are limits to how much Union can do to attract them, instead of the people who view the fraternities as a feature rather than a bug.
(But then again, I remember when Union had the exact same arguments about going co-ed. Sometimes the institution HAS to take steps that piss off the alums, just to join the current century.)