Had an unpleasant dream last night, sort of a long series of historical snapshots about genocide. The point was that it's as natural as sunrise. And if your people aren't feared, you'll be erased. That's the law.
Could it be that prosperity, combined with the absence of a commonly understood external enemy, is destructive to human societies? That peace is a problem?
Every human society exhibits corruption. (Some would use Ex Cathedra as an example.) But when a society allows vast wealth and huge public celebrity --without opprobrium-- to a Kanye West and his Kardashian baby mama, you have to wonder if the bottom has fallen out.
One virtue of Gnosticism, and of classical Christianity, is that it holds high ideals but does not expect the mass of men to live that way. Gnostics divided themselves into the adepts, who were wholly devoted to the religion by withdrawing from the world, and the learners, who adapted what they could in their workaday world. Buddhism and Hinduism have a similar strategy. Catholicism and Orthodoxy long divided reality into what was Caesar's and what was God's. Monasticism and the priesthood was held in high esteem as ways of perfection, but the life of ordinary people in the world was less stringent because ordinary life is a messy business. There was a recognition of the limits of real life.
With the liberal-democratic reduction of the sacred after Vatican II, we now have the universal call to holiness and the attempt to enact the Sermon on the Mount into law. What this has turned out to mean, for example, is that American nuns have become an arm of the Democratic party, Jesuits warnus not to be happy that Osama bin Laden is dead, and bishops lecture Paul Ryan on how to make a budget. Plus, every feminist harridan with baptismal certificate tells the Church of Rome What Jesus Would Do.
Time for coffee.
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4 comments:
Hey!
Ok, this post of yours just reminded me of a debate I have been having with some of my professors - that protestantism (especially calvinism) fuses the religious and the secular into one sphere, which produces a culture that confuses "God" with its political and social opinions; that the Reformed tradition reduces Christianity to moral prescriptions, that (especially calvinsim) it Islam 2.0. And some other things.
BUT! While searching for more concrete evidence to support my claims, I just read some books that I find really interesting, and one of them I would love to hear your thoughts on at some future point.
Philip Greven's "The Protestant Temperament: Patters of Child-Rearing, Religious Experience, and the Self in Early America". This is the one I would love to hear your thoughts on some day, it is about how patterns of parenting affect self-image and thus shape religious preferences, etc. I think you might find the "Genteel Temperment" to reflect a lot of this liberalism that seems to be blind and unthinking that is ruining everything. And I think that the discussion about the Evangelical Temperament's understanding of gender and power, particularly at the end when it talks about how important the Evangelical Temperament was in creating the Revolution and establishing the Republic, would be of interest to you (at least considering what I gather about your views on gender traits and such).
Andrew Greeley's "The American Catholic, A Social Portrait". This helped me articulate what I hate about protestant culture (its modernism, workaholism, "high-minded-moralism", its belief that it can "improve" humanity and built the kingdom/a utopia by "educating away" its sinful racism, particularity, irrationality, etc, etc.
Robert Wuthnow's "The Restructuring of American Religion". THis one is long and dry... but it shows (what I interpret to be, after reading Greven's book) a massive Temperament shift in the American population after WWII - basically, huge portions of the population born after the war developed into the "Genteel Temperament" (those who can't fathom power being used against them and dont seem to be able to discern true threats, and values formalism politeness and diversity over substance, among other things).
Anyways, if you ever get around to reading any of these (especially the first one), I would love to know what ideas and connections it sets off in your head.
Best,
AD
Advocatus, Catholics can tell you that there has long been tension between religious and secular leaders. Without getting into too much detail, kings often tried to take power from the pope, and the pope made decrees that stepped on kings' toes. While it was not unusual for cardinals and popes to wield huge political power, the two sides, altar and throne, were just as frequently opposed as they were united.
The problem with Protestantism was that it had a strong political aspect to it. Most of the German princes who sided with Luther were already hostile to Rome, whereas the southern German and Austrian princes were on good terms with Rome. Add Calvin and the Genevan theocracy, and you have a recipe where the leaders really refer to themselves when they talk about "God."
Besides the avowed heretics (Obama posters, anyone?) next door, my family are the only Catholics on the street. And the only family that makes their kids do yard work. Wonder if there's something to that, that ties into the Genteel Temperament. The evangelicals across the street always watch with a mixture of bewilderment and envy.
-Sean
Thanks Sean! That is interesting. You should pick up those books too if you have the time, they are quite fascinating and really makes the entire religious, social, and political scene in the US (both today and across history) seem SO much more intelligible. I went from
"the US is the biggest cluster**** in history" to "Ah, I now understand the universe" (well, thats a bit of an exaggeration, but I think you get the point).
Advocatus,
His Holiness' theory that the idea of America itself is "an act against nature" is getting a lot of traction with me. Maybe our current problems are a result of the people no longer having the characteristics needed for the existence of a republic, and we are transitioning to a government that we, as a group, are able to sustain. Sad, if where we are going is all we can handle.
-Sean
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