Edward
Bartender
- Messages
- 25,069
- Location
- London, UK
I've been in "mobile home communities" with golf courses and tennis courts and swimming pools. And I've seen some newer manufactured houses that in no way resemble trailers. Indeed, most people would have to be told that such structures were built indoors rather than site-built.
Given the increasing sophistication of mobile homes in comparison to the sometimes crippling or unreachable cost of a fixed home, I've often wondered why we don't see more of these sorts of community. Granted, it's probably not an option in the same way in high-density urban areas like London, but I suspect we'll have to see some sort of radical re-imagining of the home ownership concept if prices keep going as they are. Last night, we watched Prime Suspect 1973 (which bears the same relationship to the Prime Suspect show as did Endeavour to Morse). Depicted in that was a notorious Hackney sink estate: during an advert break, we googled it and found the search return full of records of 1980s calls for the whole estate to be levelled as the only solution to its crazily high crime rate.... and current listings, with two-bed ex-council flats on that estate now selling for GBP400,000. London in a nutshell!
The "prosperity gospel" of today must have direct lineage to the favored by God/wealth line of thinking. I dislike hearing people say things like, "yes, we have a nice house and this new truck. We've really been blessed." The notion that those who have material wealth must be favored by God or have been materially "blessed" because they have a stronger faith or live right carries the cruel opposite that those who struggle must have some deficiency in faith or belief or behavior. "I got mine, what's wrong with you that you don't have all this?"
This is popular among the charismatic churches in the UK. A Christian friend of mine who has particularly severe medical issues has been told, quite unashamedly by some (who have invariably never had long-term health problems of their own) that her severe health conditions are her own fault, because she doesn't believe enough to be healed. She's well able to give them what for for that nonsense, but it still hurts of course.
In the United States, all Christians tend to get lumped into this group in conversation, it seems.
Increasingly, a certain US stereotype of Christianity is seen globally as "what Christians are like". I find people here in the UK who believe all Christians are YECs, for example, whereas only a minority are, though six day creationism is a much more mainstream belief in the US than the UK. I can only assume it's down to what is the dominant image in the media. Hollywood?