{"id":539,"date":"2014-07-13T15:51:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-13T15:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/07\/the-tea-party-isnt-a-political-movement-its-a-religious-one.html"},"modified":"2014-07-13T15:51:00","modified_gmt":"2014-07-13T15:51:00","slug":"the-tea-party-isnt-a-political-movement-its-a-religious-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/07\/the-tea-party-isnt-a-political-movement-its-a-religious-one.html","title":{"rendered":"The Tea Party Isn\u2019t a Political Movement, It\u2019s a Religious One"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
America has long been the incubator of many spiritual creeds going back to the Great Awakening and even earlier. Only one of them, Mormonism<\/a>, has taken root and flourished as a true religion sprung from our own native ground. Today, however, we have a new faith growing from this nation\u2019s soil: the Tea Party. Despite its secular trappings and \u201ctaxed enough already\u201d motto, it is a religious movement, one grounded in the traditions of American spiritual revival. This religiosity explains the Tea Party\u2019s political zealotry.<\/span><\/div>\n
The mark of a national political party in a democracy is its pluralistic quality, i.e. the ability to be inclusive enough to appeal to the broadest number of voters who may have differing interests on a variety of issues. While it may stand for certain basic principles, a party is often flexible in applying them, as are its representatives in fulfilling them. Despite the heated rhetoric of elections and the bombast of elected representatives, they generally seek consensus with the minority in order to achieve their legislative goals.<\/span><\/div>\n
But when religion is thrown into the mix, all that is lost. Religion here doesn\u2019t mean theology but a distinct belief system which, in totality, provides basic answers regarding how to live one\u2019s life, how society should function, how to deal with social and political issues, what is right and wrong, who should lead us, and who should not. It does so in ways that fulfill deep-seated emotional needs that, at their profoundest level, are devotional. Given the confusions of a secular world being rapidly transformed by technology, demography, and globalization, this movement has assumed a spiritual aspect whose adepts have undergone a religious experience which, if not in name, then in virtually every other aspect, can be considered a faith.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

America has long been the incubator of many spiritual creeds going back to the Great Awakening and even earlier. Only one of them, Mormonism, has taken root and flourished as a true religion sprung from our own native ground. Today, however, we have a new faith growing from this nation\u2019s soil: the Tea Party. Despite […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Tea Party Isn\u2019t a Political Movement, It\u2019s a Religious One<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"America has long been the incubator of many spiritual creeds going back to the Great Awakening and even earlier. 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