FRIGHTENING FORMS OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE UNITED STATES

“Cultural war” is lost, white Christians are dying out, the number of parishioners is steadily falling. These are the modern realities of the United States, once the most religious country in the Western world. It is not surprising that practicing Protestants and Catholics are preparing for the transition to a catacomb position. In place of their faith is already in many ways similar, but rather terrible ideology of the new American life.Back in 1976, eight out of ten Americans called themselves “white Christians”. Even ten years ago, “white Christians” accounted for more than half of the country’s population. Today they are only 43%. This is the largest religious minority, but it is still a minority.

This is not just about religious decline. Middle-aged Americans notice how quickly the literary and aesthetic Canon of their country disappears, how traditional behavioral norms are eroded, how everyday trifles go into oblivion – an integral part of the cultural code of the nation.

It has become difficult to exchange with colleagues quotations from school classics, because it is all written by “dead white men” and is not mandatory to study in a multicultural community.

Today, an enlightened us citizen can no longer just wish a seller in a supermarket or a passer-by on the street: “merry Christmas!”And suddenly this banal phrase is someone insulted?

The fastest way to” Judeo-Christian values” part young people

Christian choice is replaced either by atheism or Islam – this religion is more rapidly overgrown with neophytes.

However, de-Christianization has not yet touched the establishment. The authorities in America are filled with practicing Christians, and every presidential candidate must testify to the nation’s firm belief in God. There was not a single atheist in the Supreme court in its history. Atheists are still not in the Senate, and in Congress – only one, the representative of Arizona Kirsten cinema. She is also the first openly bisexual to be elected to Congress, and soon expects to become a Senator, somewhat “diluting” their ranks of Protestants and Catholics.

At the same time, it is these adherents of Christianity in power who paradoxically impose on the American people laws that clearly do not fit into traditional Christian ideas. It is with their support that sexual minorities are literally terrorized by the lawsuits of businessmen who refuse to serve gay marriage. It is with their consent, raised the hype over the TRANS and fabricated sex scandals involving the clergy.

This is why ordinary American Christians – from fundamentalists from rural provinces to enlightened intellectuals in big cities-admit that their “cultural wars” have been hopelessly lost. Against Lom there is no reception, even the most famous and influential religious preachers, gathering the whole stadiums, there is no chance to overcome the propaganda, which is fed by the population of mass media and Hollywood.

Yes, conservative Evangelical Protestants look quite resolute in their struggle with modern “Sodom and Gomorrah.” However, their success is as small as that of liberal mainstream Protestants. Here and there the demographics of both the youth polls is issued from the Christian ranks, and a flock of middle-aged mows increased mortality.

Not surprisingly, the part of the faithful now confess full of defeatism. The historian of religion Robert Jones in his 2016 book “the End of white Christian America” invites Christians to recognize that with their notions of morality they look like absolute freaks against the background of modern society, and, accordingly, to realize themselves as a cultural minority, a counterculture. Especially to accept defeat will be quite Christian, because the Church was originally persecuted.

The status of today’s persecuted believers, and it is proposed to freeze. Bullying others over to their way of life, faith and shrines are included.

Such a masochistic trend would look wild in relation to any other world religion. I wonder what they would say about the author if he offered the Jews to accept their “marginality” on the grounds that their faith had been persecuted for centuries.

Another version of” Christianity 2.0 ” is ghettoization

Her apologist was a prominent religious blogger and journalist Rod dreer, author of the bestseller “Benedict’s Option: the strategy of Christians in the post-Christian nation.” The name mentioned by Benedict of Nursia, the Holy of the VI century, which is not so pleasant to live in debauched Rome that he went out with a bunch of followers and founded the first in the history of Christian monastic order.

Drier complex religious biography. He was raised in the Methodist faith, but converted to Catholicism in his youth. Embarrassed by the incessant scandals and accusations of priests of pedophilia, he abandoned Catholicism and in 2006 adopted Orthodoxy. Today, he offers the Americans to use the “Benedict option” – to leave the big cities and create something like modern monasteries. It can be residential complexes or cottage settlements inhabited by religious families. There will be its own Church, its own school, the entire infrastructure, and the education of children can be put under control, freeing them from the “lessons of tolerance” and the like.

Such communities already exist

Usually these are cottage settlements, where representatives of the middle class live. There are Catholic settlements, there are Protestants. Dreyer goes on them and talks about them in his blog. These stories make a dual impression.

On the one hand, the courage of people who have decided to radically change their way of life and devote themselves to faith is respected. On the other hand, this voluntary ghettoization looks frankly depressing. It seems that modern life has literally pushed hundreds of thousands of smart and successful people to the side of the road, and they are not even trying to fight it.

Dreer’s favorite metaphor is the flood and the ark. He compares the modern mass culture with the flood, which is impossible to resist. The duty of believers, in his opinion, is to build a cozy ark in which they can hide from the present. All this is frankly reminiscent of the ideology of “survivalists”, different forms of which are increasingly distributed in the United States.

For centuries, Christianity has been a powerful tool in shaping American society. With it, white Protestants built the United States of America as we know it.

Despite the apparent decline of the Christian faith, this latent, generations transmitted religiosity can not just ” go into the sand.” Until now, it permeates literally the entire life of the United States, but in some perverted forms. And still its main function is the stratification of society into more and less righteous, the expulsion of heretics and a fierce witch hunt.

Scandals with harrasment in Hollywood painfully reminiscent of the story of the Salem witches. The same mass hysteria, the same division into goats and lambs, the same indicative public execution of “heretics”.