GR 'Streets' (death and/or afterlife)

[Terrance]

> Thus far you have asserted that:
> 
> "in showing how institutionalized religion produces so many negative
> effects, Pynchon's fiction shows some deep-seated
> hostility towards same."
> 
> How do you define "institutionalized religion"?
> 
> What are the "institutionalized religions" in GR?
> 
> What religions in GR that are not "institutionalized religions"?

Page 329 in GR: 

We get the story of Amy Sprue. She was hung. 

Back to page 281 where Slothrp feels his ancestors and beliefs: 

"yet he feels his own, stronger now as borders fall away and the Zone
envelops him, his own WASPs in buckled black, who heard God clamoring to
them in every turn of leaf or cow loose among the apple orchards in
autumn...." 

Definitely very positive images. Puritanism, the Pilgrim, is not on
trial here. This book is not a witch hunt for "institutionalized
religious" crimes. Good god, Pynchon's own ancestors sat in judgment and
sent woman to the gallows. Now, with Geli, a novice he goes atop 
Brocken and he begins to reflect on one of his ancestors, an Amy Sprue,
she was hung too, for antinomianism. Is it the Puritans that hung her
that the text is so hostile toward? Or is it the Pilgrim that stands on
pilgrim hill in central park (one of the Adams family)? are the
anabaptists institutionalized religion or only the Lutherans and
Catholic who murder them institutionalized? 


               AVENGE, O Lord, thy slaughtered Saints, whose bones
                Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
                Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
              When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones,
              Forget not: in thy book record their groans
                                                       5
                Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
                Slain by the bloody Piemontese, that rolled
              Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
              The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
                To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow
                                                       10
              O’er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway
                The triple Tyrant; that from these may grow
              A hundredfold, who, having learnt thy way,
                Early may fly the Babylonian woe.

			Milton