Nov 16, 2023·edited Nov 16, 2023Liked by Colin Wright
There's a lot here, and at least some of it seems to be tied to a beef with a (former) friend of yours, so I'll just lay out some objections to the idea that Wokism isn't filling a god-hole. (BTW, I'm an atheist, but a reluctant one--I wish there was a benevolent father figure looking out for at least some of us. I'd love to believe that. There just isn't.) Since October 7, we've watched Westerners demonstrate that they are suicidally committed to something (Queers for Palestine marching for people who explicitly tell them that they'd love to toss them off the nearest building; young women chanting "They've got tanks; *we've* got hang-gliders" about rapist-murderers). Wokism has original sin in varying degrees by identity caste except black or brown women, preferably ones born male or engaged in sex work. Unlike Christianity, however, there is no redemption from the original sin. What word would we give to a belief system so all-consuming that it can cause people to believe in original sin and take positions as dramatically opposed to their self-interest that it might as well be "Chickens for KFC" or "Mice for Outlawing the Spaying and Neutering of Cats"? If not religion....what, exactly, do we call that? Some would call it a lack of reason, but these people universally believe that theirs is the reasonable position, which is why Colin, the owner of this Substack, literally cannot get a job at a university because he believes in biology. If this isn't a religion, it's something so like one that saying it's not a religion seems like a distinction without a difference.
Thank you for this response to Ayaan Hirsi Ali's recent article regarding her conversion to Christianity. I will start by saying that, like Ayaan, I would love to be able to be a part of a spiritual community, but I have never been able to squeeze myself into the thought prisons that organized religions generally become. The same is true with respect to political parties.
I do not have the privilege of knowing Ayaan and I do not want to criticize her choice of religion. What struck me most about her article is its similarity to other recently published accounts of conversions of former "Progressive Democrats" to GOP or "conservative" affiliation. (Sasha Stone, for example).
I can appreciate the felt need to belong to something bigger than oneself, an intellectual and emotional "home" that includes the perceived power of numbers and longevity to oppose woke tyranny. There is a lot of felt tension for many of us in not being able to enter such a home. Yet all of these systems have tended to develop the same authoritarianism and internal pressure towards conformity that repels individuals like me. Those tendencies appear to not be accidental, but rather are essential elements of what appeals to so many members of religious and political organizations.
As our society continues to disintegrate, we are seeing more attempts at self-conversion to thought constructs that offer a promise of being safe harbors from the vulnerabilities of uncertainty, isolation and attack by outsiders. I kind of envy those who can pull off this kind of conversion, but adopting the beliefs of Old Time Religion is not the answer for me.
Nov 16, 2023·edited Nov 17, 2023Liked by Joseph (Jake) Klein
"Every single one told me this wasn’t sufficient to be a Christian" because they aren't 1st century Christians. Early Christians did indeed attempt to convert others to a mystical or symbolic idea of Jesus. They quickly found that literal-Jesus was much more impressive to the unconverted, and so the gospels reflect a literal belief, calling anyone who says that Jesus has not come in the flesh (i.e. literally walked the earth) "antichrist."
From your writing I expected more depth of thought, but you failed here I'm sorry to point out. Why would you expect Ayaan to put her entire understanding of theology in a piece written for a different purpose? You did catch that purpose (atheism is insufficient to help in difficult times) but expected more? The way I read her piece suggests she is happy to have something in her understanding that will help her in the current madness, not that a "Christian resurgence" is necessary. And your grasp of Christian faith is also uninformed. The deity of Christ is a central tenant, so why expect anyone to bless your 'metaphor' idea? You are better than this, I've seen it in you.
I am struck by "every single one told me this was insufficient to be a Christian". I lead children and youth ministry at an Anglican (Episcopal) church, where I am careful to teach kids that the supernatural stuff in the Bible is indeed metaphor. I explain the concept of myth (which they no longer learn about in school) -- that certain kinds of stories are not meant to be literally true, but are spiritually true because they tell us something important about the human experience. I emphasize that faith does not require total certainty, and that total certainty is not the point of faith. Salvation in the "afterlife" is irrelevant compared to spiritual salvation in this lifetime -- freedom from despair, and from behaviour which draws us out of "alignment" with God, ie with what our deepest selves know to be right. So it would seem that you spoke to a fairly narrow sampling of Christian, Jake, because I know many who would not care whether you believe in the factually if a virgin birth or a literal rising from the dead. There are Christians who do not believe those are the principal tenets of belief. To be frank, I think such people have little imagination, and religion is an outflow of imagination. We may think of imagination as being the source of invention only; I say it can also be what uncovers deeper truths... If someone wants to participate in church on the basis of their belief in the importance of the Christ concept, as opposed to belief in a supernatural occurrence, why the HELL should that matter to people who DO believe literally? I know for sure that my church is full of people who are there for different reasons and believe in different ways. The important thing is that we *show up for each other*. We walk the walk much more than we talk the talk.
wait a second, the last time this was tried repackaging Christianity into an ethical system without "untenable faith claims" it came-out as wokeness... am I wrong? Tell me how I'm wrong! Christianity is the extended phenotype our genome needs to thrive, that's been demonstrated.
Atheists in my feed are really coming out of the woodwork in response to Ali’s announcement. They seem desperate for it not to be true.
I’ve got a lot to say and might come back later, but for now would just like to point out that I clicked on the author’s link to an article that claims to have found a list of “errors” in the Bible. The first one I bothered to look into (that the Bible mentions Kings before there was a king in Israel) is nonsensical because God was telling them what to do in the future. Presumably the article fits with the author’s confirmation bias and therefore there was no need to actually look into any of the claims. You could say the author accepted the claims “by faith”
Just 31% of Evangelicals accept the preposterously weak argument that climate change is predominantly driven by human activity. Yet 90% of atheists accept it--and thus many of the insane policy prescriptions that go with it. Your theory that that American Christianity is impotent and easily co-opted has holes in it.
What you refer to as "secular Christianity" was the norm for most of the 20th Century. Neither I, my parents or grandparents believed in the literal truth of the bible although we went to church every Sunday, and we were like most Americans in that respect. When biblical fundamentalism emerged in the 1960s and 70s its adherents were referred to as "Jesus freaks" precisely because their beliefs were considered freakish (ie rare). Fundamentalism reached a pinnacle when Jimmy Carter was elected President but part of his unpopularity came from his fundamentalist religious views which most Americans considered embarrassing. Biblical fundamentalism continued as a cultural phenomenon on TV for several decades but most Christians did not embrace it. The fundamentalist minority only created a straw man for the "New Atheists" to attack as they hacked away at the Christian foundations of the nation. They "killed God" by questioning the literal accuracy of a scripture that few believed to be literal anyway, and in the process gave birth to the wokeism, neo-Marxism and neo-feudalism of their corporate masters. Now we all have to live with the consequences of a civilization bereft of its divinity. Perhaps we can restore stability to our civilization by returning to the secular Christianity you have rediscovered, but it is far easier to destroy magnificence than to resurrect it.
I recently read Stephen Meyer's "Return to the God Hypothesis". It is a strong hypothesis that there is a Creator. A Creator who can create out of nothingness - who is there - outside of time and matter, is so outside my ability to truly comprehend, I need to give my respect. The complexity of this world and universe can be watched through the lense of math and science but it's full understanding of why can only be explained by The Creator. Why did the Creator make earth with all of its beauty, love, ugliness and hate. Why not create beings who had no free will? I work in the medical field and I see good and evil in humanity (myself included) everyday. Everyday I help people and show my capacity to love and forgive. Everyday, I swear under my breath at some policy, person or frustration. I look over my mistakes and failings and hang onto the failings of others. I am imperfect like the rest of mankind. Why did the Creator allow for this? It did not have to be designed this way.
The Bible states that man was created in God's image. A Creator with such abilities is certainly not a programed robot. I am not a programed robot, a Stepford wife. I have the capacity for love and hate, forgiveness and anger.
Because of the works of John Lennox, Sean McDowell, Stephen Meyers, Greg Koukl, Christorpher Yuan, Chuck Colson and many others, I do believe in the God of the Bible. I believe Jesus died, was buried and rose again - witnessed by many. His disciples never swayed from this (Wow!) nor did the early believer's first opponent, Saul (changed to Paul). I feel the need to point out where my view differs from the author. I do believe there is evidence has demonstrates the fact-claims in the Bible to be plainly TRUE. I don't think that is a stretch for a Creator that can pull off the Universe and Earth with all of its complexities.
Help me to understand why a political party has do be aligned with a religion? Acknowledging the legacy of the Christian community does not make you a Christian, ask Tom Holland. Stating that you are a Christian does not necessarily make you a Christian. Many people use that definition for themselves because of family tradition, not true understanding of the Nicene Creed. I could actually repeat the Nicene Creed faster than anyone I knew, long before I had an understanding of it.
I am grateful for people like this author who want to explore the definition of words and motives for beliefs. That character trait reflects a Creator who thinks, cares and has substance behind what is done in their name. At the same time, the Creator sees that heart and The Creator will decide the eternal fate of all of us: professing Christians, Atheist, Communist, Marxist and Woke-ist.
I will pray for American and all of it's people. What I know in my heart is that even if I am killed by some radical group, God's remnant will remain until we are all taken home - where all of these image bearers can express to The Creator their true gratitude for this amazing world.
This is an excellent essay but wrong. Not wrong in the binary true/false way but it misses the mark subtly and it will be a challenge to explain why. It would take hours to do it properly but let me just take a few potshots:
> While far-leftism may be a disproportionately atheistic movement, if Christianity is supposed to be a bulwark against it, it’s historically done a terrible job.
An abandoned fortress can't protect anything. Christianity is not a 'thing' it is only as strong as the people who comprise it. Because Christians have not stood strong against wokeness, wokeness has prevailed. The fault is not with Christianity but with Christians. As the Bible continually points out, the Believers fail more often than they succeed and this is an example.
> The allegation that far-leftism arises in secular nations because people need to find something to fill the god-hole simply isn’t true. On the contrary, far-leftism predominantly arises in Christian nations
Sure, but that's because wokeness (and communism really tho it's harder to see) is a Christian heresy. One expects Christian heresies in Christian lands, no? Just as atheism opens the door to Nazism so Christianity opens the door to all variations of leftism. It is not the 'fault' of atheism that some people will take 'survival of the fittest' and build a political movement around it -- there's no helping that. Nor is it the fault of Christianity that the 'socialist' values that it embodies will give birth to certain deviations such as communism. One might say that communism is an overly idealistic Christianity without God.
> This fundamental belief ties together both classical Marxism and its modern, woke, culturally Marxist variant.
Exactly. They are Christian heresies.
> how could she so wrongly come to believe that Christianity is an effective bulwark against leftism?
As a parent is responsible for both her child's bad behavior, and yet is the one tho has the responsibility to discipline that child, so Christianity both gave birth to leftism but also is best positioned to correct the errors of the left.
> It’s not that we need to create values, it’s that Christianity is failing miserably at sustaining the ones we already have.
As above, no, it is Christians who have failed. They were unprepared for the assault the left waged on them. They ignored Jesus' command to 'keep on the watch'. They did not realize until it was (almost?) too late that the left intended to destroy the foundations of western civilization. Waking up, they panicked and, unforgivably, ran into the arms of the Disgusting Thing for comfort.
> I believe that when you’re trying to sail across an ocean, you don’t attach yourself to a sinking ship just because it’s always sailed well in the past.
On the contrary, the ship is sinking *because* the crew have abandoned their duties to sail her. One might say that she is not abandoned because she is sinking, she is sinking because she has been abandoned.
The remedy is community, and recognition of the rights of those communities to exist and exercise their values in the public square. Our federalist system makes that possible, but it has been dismantled. We have discredited the legitimacy of religious institutions and even made illegal/immoral their participation in the public sphere--simultaneously we made the national government the sole arbiter of truth. Of course this was hijacked as a tool for political power, which has now gone off the rails of reason.
No, a national theocracy is not the answer, but a simultaneous dismantling of the power of the national government and empowering of state and local governments--that also show deference to the religious and non-religious beliefs of their respective communities, is.
It occurs to me that there is an interesting angle to Ayaan’s conversion. In a world where so many people believe that men can become women without actually changing their sex, it should be even easier to believe that atheists can become Christians without actually believing in God. We live in a postmodernist paradise,it seems.
After WW2, anthropologists like Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead made great progress by developing more nuanced, pluralistic (postmodern), ecological understandings of non-western cultures (primitive, pagan, etc.).
The Hindu sacred cow was one example. Mead/Bateson saw sacredness as having an unexpressed, natural, environmental and evolutionary logic: by prohibiting the death of cows, milk and fertilizer would always be available, or something like that, ensuring survival of the peasants.
That kind of early postmodern anthropology could have been extended to more complex, nuanced understandings of the ecological evolution of western religion*, but instead it mutated into the cancer of neo-marxist "wokeism".
-----
* the theoretical framework of ecological-evolutionary ideas was well developed anyway by Gerald Lenski:
One feature of Lenski's work that has won fairly wide acceptance among sociologists, as reflected in its incorporation into leading introductory textbooks in the discipline, is his ecological and evolutionary typology of human societies ...
This typology is based on a combination of two elements: (1) the kind of environment to which the society must adapt, and (2) its level of technological development. In its most basic form, Lenski identifies seven types of societies:
re: "it is the ethics of self-sacrifice, of altruism, that one should live for others rather than themselves (reread Jordan’s quote above). All Christians properly following their doctrine believe in the ethics of altruism; it’s the core “virtue” of the faith represented in Christ on the cross. It’s what separates a society of Christian ethics from its Greco-Roman predecessor. "
-----
Christian (and all Axial-contemplative religions, including Buddhism) are separated from previous religions (and the previous mode of tribal-dynastic social forms) by SALVATION and the ritual RENUNCIATION of evil, since and depravity. (like it or not)
As explained in another comment, science tells us that ALTRUISM (inhibition of self) is an evolved, biological moral in humans (as applied within kinship groups), and thus a universal.
What Axial (see Karl Jaspers) Renunciate-Contemplative religion did was to increase the circle of social trust beyond kinship groups.
Purity myths (which hold that the world is spiritually impure and full of evil and sin) evolved into RENUNCIATE, SALVATION religions to enable agrarian city states to further expand the circle of social trust across multiple tribes, forming a larger social systems that were more able to repel nomadic "pagan" marauders of the kind that began to flourish after the Bronze Age Collapse.
Note that the "pagan" culture system had been disrupted by techno-economic change (farming, settlement), just as the agrarian social form later was disrupted by industrialization.
This morning I “wrote” a few books of short stories (before driving to work) in the style of Franz Kafka, one German one in English, with a toolkit I’ve been refining since 1993 that creates literature with an network of AI agents - a 150 page paperback by any author is about 20 minutes (without synthetic illustrations, midjourney stretches the automation to an hour) and I discovered my new favorite word, dystheism.
The stories were quite beautiful. A bit:
“In the hushed corners of St. Raphael’s, where the stained glass cast a mosaic of guilt across the pews, Father Josef found himself in uncharted repentance. Upon his decision, a black box had been installed — a flawless cuboid of silence, save for the whirring of circuits and the glow of a soft blue interface. This was the modern confessional, an Artificial Intelligence programmed with the vast canon law and penitential consolations, ready to absorb the sins of a troubled flock.”
We of course know where that’s going....
Ayaan has a bad case of dystheism perhaps.
“Belief” if that’s what it is, in a disembodied chaotic all-powerful intelligence... Philip K. Dick called it “Valis”. Rational people got past that hopefully at the end of childhood or before. Children think all objects are animate, that behavior sort of disappears with nervous system remodeling at puberty.
There's a lot here, and at least some of it seems to be tied to a beef with a (former) friend of yours, so I'll just lay out some objections to the idea that Wokism isn't filling a god-hole. (BTW, I'm an atheist, but a reluctant one--I wish there was a benevolent father figure looking out for at least some of us. I'd love to believe that. There just isn't.) Since October 7, we've watched Westerners demonstrate that they are suicidally committed to something (Queers for Palestine marching for people who explicitly tell them that they'd love to toss them off the nearest building; young women chanting "They've got tanks; *we've* got hang-gliders" about rapist-murderers). Wokism has original sin in varying degrees by identity caste except black or brown women, preferably ones born male or engaged in sex work. Unlike Christianity, however, there is no redemption from the original sin. What word would we give to a belief system so all-consuming that it can cause people to believe in original sin and take positions as dramatically opposed to their self-interest that it might as well be "Chickens for KFC" or "Mice for Outlawing the Spaying and Neutering of Cats"? If not religion....what, exactly, do we call that? Some would call it a lack of reason, but these people universally believe that theirs is the reasonable position, which is why Colin, the owner of this Substack, literally cannot get a job at a university because he believes in biology. If this isn't a religion, it's something so like one that saying it's not a religion seems like a distinction without a difference.
Thank you for this response to Ayaan Hirsi Ali's recent article regarding her conversion to Christianity. I will start by saying that, like Ayaan, I would love to be able to be a part of a spiritual community, but I have never been able to squeeze myself into the thought prisons that organized religions generally become. The same is true with respect to political parties.
I do not have the privilege of knowing Ayaan and I do not want to criticize her choice of religion. What struck me most about her article is its similarity to other recently published accounts of conversions of former "Progressive Democrats" to GOP or "conservative" affiliation. (Sasha Stone, for example).
I can appreciate the felt need to belong to something bigger than oneself, an intellectual and emotional "home" that includes the perceived power of numbers and longevity to oppose woke tyranny. There is a lot of felt tension for many of us in not being able to enter such a home. Yet all of these systems have tended to develop the same authoritarianism and internal pressure towards conformity that repels individuals like me. Those tendencies appear to not be accidental, but rather are essential elements of what appeals to so many members of religious and political organizations.
As our society continues to disintegrate, we are seeing more attempts at self-conversion to thought constructs that offer a promise of being safe harbors from the vulnerabilities of uncertainty, isolation and attack by outsiders. I kind of envy those who can pull off this kind of conversion, but adopting the beliefs of Old Time Religion is not the answer for me.
"Every single one told me this wasn’t sufficient to be a Christian" because they aren't 1st century Christians. Early Christians did indeed attempt to convert others to a mystical or symbolic idea of Jesus. They quickly found that literal-Jesus was much more impressive to the unconverted, and so the gospels reflect a literal belief, calling anyone who says that Jesus has not come in the flesh (i.e. literally walked the earth) "antichrist."
From your writing I expected more depth of thought, but you failed here I'm sorry to point out. Why would you expect Ayaan to put her entire understanding of theology in a piece written for a different purpose? You did catch that purpose (atheism is insufficient to help in difficult times) but expected more? The way I read her piece suggests she is happy to have something in her understanding that will help her in the current madness, not that a "Christian resurgence" is necessary. And your grasp of Christian faith is also uninformed. The deity of Christ is a central tenant, so why expect anyone to bless your 'metaphor' idea? You are better than this, I've seen it in you.
I am struck by "every single one told me this was insufficient to be a Christian". I lead children and youth ministry at an Anglican (Episcopal) church, where I am careful to teach kids that the supernatural stuff in the Bible is indeed metaphor. I explain the concept of myth (which they no longer learn about in school) -- that certain kinds of stories are not meant to be literally true, but are spiritually true because they tell us something important about the human experience. I emphasize that faith does not require total certainty, and that total certainty is not the point of faith. Salvation in the "afterlife" is irrelevant compared to spiritual salvation in this lifetime -- freedom from despair, and from behaviour which draws us out of "alignment" with God, ie with what our deepest selves know to be right. So it would seem that you spoke to a fairly narrow sampling of Christian, Jake, because I know many who would not care whether you believe in the factually if a virgin birth or a literal rising from the dead. There are Christians who do not believe those are the principal tenets of belief. To be frank, I think such people have little imagination, and religion is an outflow of imagination. We may think of imagination as being the source of invention only; I say it can also be what uncovers deeper truths... If someone wants to participate in church on the basis of their belief in the importance of the Christ concept, as opposed to belief in a supernatural occurrence, why the HELL should that matter to people who DO believe literally? I know for sure that my church is full of people who are there for different reasons and believe in different ways. The important thing is that we *show up for each other*. We walk the walk much more than we talk the talk.
wait a second, the last time this was tried repackaging Christianity into an ethical system without "untenable faith claims" it came-out as wokeness... am I wrong? Tell me how I'm wrong! Christianity is the extended phenotype our genome needs to thrive, that's been demonstrated.
Atheists in my feed are really coming out of the woodwork in response to Ali’s announcement. They seem desperate for it not to be true.
I’ve got a lot to say and might come back later, but for now would just like to point out that I clicked on the author’s link to an article that claims to have found a list of “errors” in the Bible. The first one I bothered to look into (that the Bible mentions Kings before there was a king in Israel) is nonsensical because God was telling them what to do in the future. Presumably the article fits with the author’s confirmation bias and therefore there was no need to actually look into any of the claims. You could say the author accepted the claims “by faith”
Just 31% of Evangelicals accept the preposterously weak argument that climate change is predominantly driven by human activity. Yet 90% of atheists accept it--and thus many of the insane policy prescriptions that go with it. Your theory that that American Christianity is impotent and easily co-opted has holes in it.
What you refer to as "secular Christianity" was the norm for most of the 20th Century. Neither I, my parents or grandparents believed in the literal truth of the bible although we went to church every Sunday, and we were like most Americans in that respect. When biblical fundamentalism emerged in the 1960s and 70s its adherents were referred to as "Jesus freaks" precisely because their beliefs were considered freakish (ie rare). Fundamentalism reached a pinnacle when Jimmy Carter was elected President but part of his unpopularity came from his fundamentalist religious views which most Americans considered embarrassing. Biblical fundamentalism continued as a cultural phenomenon on TV for several decades but most Christians did not embrace it. The fundamentalist minority only created a straw man for the "New Atheists" to attack as they hacked away at the Christian foundations of the nation. They "killed God" by questioning the literal accuracy of a scripture that few believed to be literal anyway, and in the process gave birth to the wokeism, neo-Marxism and neo-feudalism of their corporate masters. Now we all have to live with the consequences of a civilization bereft of its divinity. Perhaps we can restore stability to our civilization by returning to the secular Christianity you have rediscovered, but it is far easier to destroy magnificence than to resurrect it.
I recently read Stephen Meyer's "Return to the God Hypothesis". It is a strong hypothesis that there is a Creator. A Creator who can create out of nothingness - who is there - outside of time and matter, is so outside my ability to truly comprehend, I need to give my respect. The complexity of this world and universe can be watched through the lense of math and science but it's full understanding of why can only be explained by The Creator. Why did the Creator make earth with all of its beauty, love, ugliness and hate. Why not create beings who had no free will? I work in the medical field and I see good and evil in humanity (myself included) everyday. Everyday I help people and show my capacity to love and forgive. Everyday, I swear under my breath at some policy, person or frustration. I look over my mistakes and failings and hang onto the failings of others. I am imperfect like the rest of mankind. Why did the Creator allow for this? It did not have to be designed this way.
The Bible states that man was created in God's image. A Creator with such abilities is certainly not a programed robot. I am not a programed robot, a Stepford wife. I have the capacity for love and hate, forgiveness and anger.
Because of the works of John Lennox, Sean McDowell, Stephen Meyers, Greg Koukl, Christorpher Yuan, Chuck Colson and many others, I do believe in the God of the Bible. I believe Jesus died, was buried and rose again - witnessed by many. His disciples never swayed from this (Wow!) nor did the early believer's first opponent, Saul (changed to Paul). I feel the need to point out where my view differs from the author. I do believe there is evidence has demonstrates the fact-claims in the Bible to be plainly TRUE. I don't think that is a stretch for a Creator that can pull off the Universe and Earth with all of its complexities.
Help me to understand why a political party has do be aligned with a religion? Acknowledging the legacy of the Christian community does not make you a Christian, ask Tom Holland. Stating that you are a Christian does not necessarily make you a Christian. Many people use that definition for themselves because of family tradition, not true understanding of the Nicene Creed. I could actually repeat the Nicene Creed faster than anyone I knew, long before I had an understanding of it.
I am grateful for people like this author who want to explore the definition of words and motives for beliefs. That character trait reflects a Creator who thinks, cares and has substance behind what is done in their name. At the same time, the Creator sees that heart and The Creator will decide the eternal fate of all of us: professing Christians, Atheist, Communist, Marxist and Woke-ist.
I will pray for American and all of it's people. What I know in my heart is that even if I am killed by some radical group, God's remnant will remain until we are all taken home - where all of these image bearers can express to The Creator their true gratitude for this amazing world.
This is an excellent essay but wrong. Not wrong in the binary true/false way but it misses the mark subtly and it will be a challenge to explain why. It would take hours to do it properly but let me just take a few potshots:
> While far-leftism may be a disproportionately atheistic movement, if Christianity is supposed to be a bulwark against it, it’s historically done a terrible job.
An abandoned fortress can't protect anything. Christianity is not a 'thing' it is only as strong as the people who comprise it. Because Christians have not stood strong against wokeness, wokeness has prevailed. The fault is not with Christianity but with Christians. As the Bible continually points out, the Believers fail more often than they succeed and this is an example.
> The allegation that far-leftism arises in secular nations because people need to find something to fill the god-hole simply isn’t true. On the contrary, far-leftism predominantly arises in Christian nations
Sure, but that's because wokeness (and communism really tho it's harder to see) is a Christian heresy. One expects Christian heresies in Christian lands, no? Just as atheism opens the door to Nazism so Christianity opens the door to all variations of leftism. It is not the 'fault' of atheism that some people will take 'survival of the fittest' and build a political movement around it -- there's no helping that. Nor is it the fault of Christianity that the 'socialist' values that it embodies will give birth to certain deviations such as communism. One might say that communism is an overly idealistic Christianity without God.
> This fundamental belief ties together both classical Marxism and its modern, woke, culturally Marxist variant.
Exactly. They are Christian heresies.
> how could she so wrongly come to believe that Christianity is an effective bulwark against leftism?
As a parent is responsible for both her child's bad behavior, and yet is the one tho has the responsibility to discipline that child, so Christianity both gave birth to leftism but also is best positioned to correct the errors of the left.
> It’s not that we need to create values, it’s that Christianity is failing miserably at sustaining the ones we already have.
As above, no, it is Christians who have failed. They were unprepared for the assault the left waged on them. They ignored Jesus' command to 'keep on the watch'. They did not realize until it was (almost?) too late that the left intended to destroy the foundations of western civilization. Waking up, they panicked and, unforgivably, ran into the arms of the Disgusting Thing for comfort.
> I believe that when you’re trying to sail across an ocean, you don’t attach yourself to a sinking ship just because it’s always sailed well in the past.
On the contrary, the ship is sinking *because* the crew have abandoned their duties to sail her. One might say that she is not abandoned because she is sinking, she is sinking because she has been abandoned.
The remedy is community, and recognition of the rights of those communities to exist and exercise their values in the public square. Our federalist system makes that possible, but it has been dismantled. We have discredited the legitimacy of religious institutions and even made illegal/immoral their participation in the public sphere--simultaneously we made the national government the sole arbiter of truth. Of course this was hijacked as a tool for political power, which has now gone off the rails of reason.
No, a national theocracy is not the answer, but a simultaneous dismantling of the power of the national government and empowering of state and local governments--that also show deference to the religious and non-religious beliefs of their respective communities, is.
But yeah, good luck with that.
It occurs to me that there is an interesting angle to Ayaan’s conversion. In a world where so many people believe that men can become women without actually changing their sex, it should be even easier to believe that atheists can become Christians without actually believing in God. We live in a postmodernist paradise,it seems.
After WW2, anthropologists like Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead made great progress by developing more nuanced, pluralistic (postmodern), ecological understandings of non-western cultures (primitive, pagan, etc.).
The Hindu sacred cow was one example. Mead/Bateson saw sacredness as having an unexpressed, natural, environmental and evolutionary logic: by prohibiting the death of cows, milk and fertilizer would always be available, or something like that, ensuring survival of the peasants.
That kind of early postmodern anthropology could have been extended to more complex, nuanced understandings of the ecological evolution of western religion*, but instead it mutated into the cancer of neo-marxist "wokeism".
-----
* the theoretical framework of ecological-evolutionary ideas was well developed anyway by Gerald Lenski:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Lenski#Ecological-evolutionary_theory
excerpt:
One feature of Lenski's work that has won fairly wide acceptance among sociologists, as reflected in its incorporation into leading introductory textbooks in the discipline, is his ecological and evolutionary typology of human societies ...
This typology is based on a combination of two elements: (1) the kind of environment to which the society must adapt, and (2) its level of technological development. In its most basic form, Lenski identifies seven types of societies:
Societies of hunters and gatherers
Horticultural societies
Agricultural or agrarian societies
Industrial societies
Fishing societies
Herding societies
Maritime societies.
...
re: "it is the ethics of self-sacrifice, of altruism, that one should live for others rather than themselves (reread Jordan’s quote above). All Christians properly following their doctrine believe in the ethics of altruism; it’s the core “virtue” of the faith represented in Christ on the cross. It’s what separates a society of Christian ethics from its Greco-Roman predecessor. "
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Christian (and all Axial-contemplative religions, including Buddhism) are separated from previous religions (and the previous mode of tribal-dynastic social forms) by SALVATION and the ritual RENUNCIATION of evil, since and depravity. (like it or not)
As explained in another comment, science tells us that ALTRUISM (inhibition of self) is an evolved, biological moral in humans (as applied within kinship groups), and thus a universal.
What Axial (see Karl Jaspers) Renunciate-Contemplative religion did was to increase the circle of social trust beyond kinship groups.
Purity myths (which hold that the world is spiritually impure and full of evil and sin) evolved into RENUNCIATE, SALVATION religions to enable agrarian city states to further expand the circle of social trust across multiple tribes, forming a larger social systems that were more able to repel nomadic "pagan" marauders of the kind that began to flourish after the Bronze Age Collapse.
Note that the "pagan" culture system had been disrupted by techno-economic change (farming, settlement), just as the agrarian social form later was disrupted by industrialization.
This morning I “wrote” a few books of short stories (before driving to work) in the style of Franz Kafka, one German one in English, with a toolkit I’ve been refining since 1993 that creates literature with an network of AI agents - a 150 page paperback by any author is about 20 minutes (without synthetic illustrations, midjourney stretches the automation to an hour) and I discovered my new favorite word, dystheism.
The stories were quite beautiful. A bit:
“In the hushed corners of St. Raphael’s, where the stained glass cast a mosaic of guilt across the pews, Father Josef found himself in uncharted repentance. Upon his decision, a black box had been installed — a flawless cuboid of silence, save for the whirring of circuits and the glow of a soft blue interface. This was the modern confessional, an Artificial Intelligence programmed with the vast canon law and penitential consolations, ready to absorb the sins of a troubled flock.”
We of course know where that’s going....
Ayaan has a bad case of dystheism perhaps.
“Belief” if that’s what it is, in a disembodied chaotic all-powerful intelligence... Philip K. Dick called it “Valis”. Rational people got past that hopefully at the end of childhood or before. Children think all objects are animate, that behavior sort of disappears with nervous system remodeling at puberty.
Dystheism.