Put the lie to the light, and it shrivels. A conspicuous one this century is that “America was founded as a Christian Nation.” No. That’s a lie. A convenient lie for those nutjobbers who want to float racist ‘identity’ in a rickety canoe of religion. Rather, the first few English colonies were founded as christian refuges, notably by heretics of the day.
But “America” was founded 160 years years later as an explicitly non religious nation. Part of the genius of the enlightened scions, aside from what is obvious crime today, the founding of the USA was a step forward for all humanity. Looks like a baby step from today’s 20/20 hindsight, how lucky are we to have a political system survive so long to have even a shred of it to stand upon, to look back?
We have to keep repeating it until everyone knows it by reflex: the USA is not a christian nation. By original design, it is not a racial Christian Identity nation. It was On Purpose that the US was not founded as an explicitly christian nation.
Reagan’s unholy reach-around with the evangelicals is finally bearing mis-shapen fruit which is unable to propagate itself without depleting the soil it grew up in. Most political movements only need simple manure, but this one now requires outright cheating to survive.
So it will pass. Trouble is, that the nebulous feelgoods of the left are not going to succeed as a replacement. The religious hotheads in today’s America are certain what they want, and although that agenda is anathema to diversity and tolerance, good old D & T are not as eye-catching. You can’t rally behind them. Slogans don’t work: “I Will Accept Only Tolerance!!” Uhhh, what? “There Is No Room For Non-Diversity!!” Riiiight, ok nutso.
And yet, we see it all around us every day, religious hardliners increasingly lusting after political power. Leave the web of beliefs intact but incrementally marginalize it, if you want it to blow up into extremism. This happened last century: petrol multinats used dictators to marginalize islam, and it blew up into a festoon of jackassery. Here and today, there must be a new chord of christianity to accompany the fading of the previous note.
A more productive way, the forward thinking way, would be to cobble together a perfectly reasonable flavor of christianity via synods of perfectly reasonable widely respected church leaders. This is the perfect way to fail utterly. Making a new religion by consulting experts is exactly the right way to make it fall flat on its face, and waste a buttload of money meanwhile.
No, the next religions have to rise organically. And they will. The brightest billboard from the last two communication revolutions, glaring now in our 20/20 rearview mirror, is the profound changes they brought to religion. Writing collapsed polytheism in to mono-. Printing dropped the god –> community relationship down to god <–> me. Obviously, the primary social effect of our current communications revolution will be to rebalance reality and mysticism.
Nobody can stop the new religions, not even a vestigial Asian communist party which can force both Hollywood and the NBA to drop balls. Certainly not a vestigial communist party which has no qualms averse whacking a rival don at mass. Chicago had a Ness, the Big Apple had a Giuliani (wince), so one prelate in St Petersburg with the balls of Thomas Beckett could change that nation more, and faster, than Gorbachev. If only he’d have the balls to die for it… but isn’t that kinda what christianity was all about in the first place?
Replacements are coming, for christianity, for islam, for hinduism, for buddhism, and for liberalism and for conservatism too. There will be dozens of them. Hundreds. But, if history is a teacher, only a handful of them will survive to grow. I predict that none of those will preach: “it’s OK to poison your political rivals and their daughters with polonium.” That strain of evil thought will persist in the dark dreary NrChans of the future, but it’s going to be wiped out from the global mainstream.
How can we be sure? Because the new religions are going to be “new”. Thus all the converts will be new converts. And we all know what that means: zealots. New belief is always the strongest. Born Again sometimes lasts a lifetime, but newborn life is the strongest.
Can’t tell you where the new religions will rise from, the new communication regime makes Zaire just as likely as Zurich or Zanzibar. Can’t say which blends of god/person/science will make it past their first year. No idea what role sex will play in the final handful, nor how that topic will mutate between the prophetic phase and the pontifical phase. Only thing we can see for sure now, is that there will be a lot of them to begin with and we’ll get a spate of miniature crusades while the field winnows itself down. Pity that, but we are just monkeys after all. Messy critters who find inexplicable mirth in poo.