Lex Anteinternet: The End of the Reformation II

Lex Anteinternet: The End of the Reformation II:

The End of the Reformation II

I started this thread some time ago, put it aside, and then oddly a few weeks later, heard a Parish Priest make the observation during a homily.

Synchronicity at work?

I've since linked the theme in to another post, which then ends up being published, as it were, prior to what should have been the original entry, that entry being here:

The End of the Reformation I. Christian Nationalism becomes a local debate. . .

So we return to finish our original thoughts.

St. Augustine of Hippo, in The City of God, describes the fact and the era of the collapse of the Roman Empire.

Rome, it is often noted, wasn't built in a day, and it didn't collapse in one either.  People living through the horrible experience knew things weren't going well, but they wouldn't have necessarily thought that "well, it's 450 and Rome is over".  They wouldn't have thought that in 500, or 600 for that matter.

And they might not have really noticed that a lot of old things were passing away.  Christianity was only in its third century when Augustine was born in 354 and still twenty years away from Rome's disastrous 450 when he died in 430.  All sorts of heresies and competing religions flourished in the era.  Indeed, the Council of Nicea had occurred as recently as the summer of 325 and the birth of Mohammed was only a little over a century away at the time of his death.  Looking outward, it would have been hard for Christians of the era to appreciate that many of the early heresies were about to pass away along with the European pagan religions and Christianity explode as the religion of Europe, North African and the Middle East.

Clearing out the thick weeds of the Roman era turned out to be necessary first.

Human beings, having fairly short lifespans, tend to see all developments in terms of their lifespans.  In True Grit the protagonist Maddy Ross states, "a quarter-century is a long time", but in real terms, except for our own selves, it isn't.  Things that occurred only a century ago, and I used only advisedly, didn't really happen all that long ago in terms of eras and changes, although here too we are fooled by the fact that the last century has been one of amazing technological development, which is not the human norm, with this being particularly true of the middle of the 20th Century.

I note this as the entire Western World is in turmoil right now, seemingly without any existential or metaphysical center, which explains a lot of what we're enduring in the world.  How did we get here?

There's a good argument that it's due to the end of the Reformation, or rather, it's collapse.

St. Augustine lived at the beginning of Rome's death throes.  That same era was the birth of the Catholic world, and I say that advisedly.  Some would say the Christian world, but they'd be wrong in the way they mean it.  Christianity, all of it, was Catholicism.  It would be right up until the Reformation.  Even the Great Schism, which was a schism, really only had its final act in 1453, quite close to Luther's famous apocryphal nailing on the Cathedral door in 1517.

The English-speaking world is a product of the Reformation, and while it now seemingly regrets it, the English-speaking world was the major, influencer of the world's history and cultures.  By extension, therefore, the Reformation influenced the entire globe.

That's not praise for the Reformation.  Indeed, I'd have preferred it never have had happened. That's just a fact.

The Christian Era is usually calculated to have commenced at the time of the Crucifixion of Christ, which occurred sometime in the 30s, but it might be more instructive for our purposes to look at the 200s or the 300s, but a person could go earlier. The very first council, a general gathering of Bishops of the Church, occurred in about the year 50, and is reflected in the Book of Acts.  It dealt with some issues that had come up in the very early Church, but for our purposes one of the things worth noting is that it was a Council of Bishops, which means that there were Bishops.  This shouldn't be a surprise, but due to the way the Reformation attacked the history of the Church, it might be to some.  Peter, the first Pope (that title of course wouldn't have been in use) was there.  

The Council of Jerusalem is not regarded as an ecumenical council, as Church historians would note.  The first one of those was the aforementioned Council of Nicea, which occurred in 325.  Some Protestants would date the founding of the Catholic Church to that date completely erroneously, a Reformation era lie, as it's been one that has been particularly attacked by Reformation Protestants at some point. The reasons are fairly obvious, really.  The Council gathered to address heresy, put it down, and it did.  It's noteworthy as a Council for the additional reason that it was the first to occur during the reign of a Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine the Great, who stayed out of it, as is often not appreciated either.

Indeed, going forward, that reflected much of the history of the Church.  If we date the Christian era from, let's say, 100 and go forward to 1517, generally the Church was independent of the state and defined the metaphysical.  

This is significant in that it was universally agreed that there was a metaphysical, or an existential, that was outside human beings, greater than it, independent of it, and which humans had to conform themselves to.  In other words, it was accepted that reality defined humans, and not the other way around.

Luther didn't mean to attack that core principle, but his actions set a revolution against it in motion.  Luther didn't even really mean to separate from the Church at first, but rather to criticize what he saw as abuses.  Things took off, however, mostly as German princes saw this as an opportunity to say that they could define certain things locally, rather than the Church.  After a time, Luther, who didn't find German bishops following him, claimed in essence that the clergy could independently interpret all matters theological, although he himself only attacked a limited number of principals.

Luther was a cleric, of course, and he didn't really start off to, and in fact did not, establish a Church that departed from the Catholic Church in all things.  Indeed, Lutheran services today strongly resemble Catholic ones. But following "reformers" did.  The logic was fairly inescapable.  If Martin Luther, who wasn't a bishop, could tell the bishops what doctrine ought to be, anybody could, or at least any Christian could.  More radical species of revolution, therefore, followed Luther.

In the English speaking world, the Reformation got started with King Henry VIII's desire to secure an annulment, not a divorce, from his wife.  When the Church found the marriage to be valid, he declared that it was he, not the Church, who was the supreme religious figure in England.  That was really a different position than Luther had taken, but Henry opened the door to challenging the Church, which would play out in a particularly odd form in England as various regimes teetered between radical Protestantism and Quasi Catholicism, before settling in on an uneasy truce between the two in the form of the Church of England in England.  In Scotland, which England had heavy influence over, Presbyterianism set in as a form of more radical Protestantism.  In the form of the United Kingdom, coming officially into existence in 1707, the Crown would spread both faiths around the globe, with the unwilling Irish taking Catholicism with them.  In Europe south of the Rhine, of course, Catholicism remained, so French and Spanish colonialism took Catholicism with them as well.

English-speaking colonists were often religious dissenters early on, holding to the more radical form so Protestantism, while later English colonists tended to bring in the "established" church.  In neither instance, however, was it ever the case that there was a rejection of Christianity.  The Enlgisih had, through their leaders, rejected Rome, but they hadn't rejected all variants of the faith.  Be that as it may, the concept of rejection based on independent belief was firmly established, first in 1517, and then in 1534.  The door was open.

When the United States came into being, it did so as a Protestant country.  Canada as well, in spite of a large, but marginalized Catholic population, and so too Australia and New Zealand.  Indeed, anywhere the English went, and they went everywhere, Protestantism went with them.

This is so much the case that American Christians tend to think that Catholics are simply a minority all over the globe and that "Christians", which is how many define themselves, represent the Christian Faith. 

Far from it.

Conservatively, 50.1% of the Christian population of the globe is Catholic.  Another 11.9% of Christians are Orthodox.  Given this, over 60% of Christians are Apostolic Christians who, while not united, generally recognize each other's Holy Orders as valid, and who moreover share the overwhelming majority of their tenants of their Faiths.  I've seen estimates, however, that place 80% of all practicing Christians as Catholics.  Indeed, while Protestant missionaries frequently work to convert Catholics in poor countries, calling into question really their status as real missionaries, the Catholic Church has large numbers of underground Christian members in its ranks all over the globe, and local Protestant conversions in some areas are in reality probably often conversions of convenience and not really all that deep in any form.

Protestants are estimated by Pew at 36.7% of the Earth's Christians, if the Pew figures are otherwise correct.

Maybe that's right, but as noted I've seen other figures that skew the Catholic figure upwards significantly, and the Protestant figure downward.

In the U.S., however, 48.9% of the population is Protestant and 23% are Catholic.  That makes Catholics a large minority, but a minority.  Orthodox are an even tinier minority at .4% of the population.  It's most strongly represented, not surprisingly, in Alaska.  It has been growing, however, due to what we're noting in this threat. As the Protestant faiths collapse in on themselves, some abandoning them go into Orthodoxy.

Indeed, one entire congregation in Gillette did just that.

Luther's biggest accomplishment, one that is acknowledged and celebrated today in some European countries that underwent the Reformation, was to bring about the modern world of individualism.  Reformation Day, for example, is a public holiday in five German states and even Lego put out a Lego variant of Martin Luther in 2017 to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.  What's really being celebrated isn't so much his theology, but the concept of radical individuality.

That same individuality, however, has led to the collapse of Protestantism, or at least a massive contraction from what it once was.  This is constantly in the news, but rarely understood.  In the English-speaking world the urban British began to lose their attachment to the Church of England long ago, which after all had a strong connection with the English establishment, not the English underclass, something that was really the opposite of the oppressed Catholic Church.  Put another way, Henry VIII did not destroy the monasteries to benefit the poor, and they didn't.

Elsewhere, British imported Protestantism was strong, with this particularly being the case in North America, with this most particularly the case with the United States which had large numbers of adherents to Protestant faiths that the British Crown had oppressed.  But by the turn of the 19th/20th Century, things were very slowly changing.  The collapse of the Progressive movement, which was strongly tied to Protestantism, accelerated it as more radical reformers on the hard left pitched for social change.  This trend was strongly in place by the 1930s. 

It took the post-war economic boom to really set it in, however, even thought that, like so many other things, was not apparent at the time. Following World War Two, in fact, main line Protestant churches grew, as newly monied middle class Americans went into them.  The last gasp of Catholics converting to main line Protestant churches as they'd economically arrived occurred, something that came to an end with John F. Kennedy arrived.  By that time, however, the Baby Boom children were coming into their own.

Raised in a Protestant culture but coming into massive societal wealth, much of the Boomer ethos amounted to nothing other than being allowed to do what they wanted to without hindrance.   The table was already set for that by the increased wealth of the post-war era and the arrival of the Playboy era starting in 1953.  They took it and ran with it, rejecting anything that got in the way with license.  Protestant churches, which already had the concept of being democratic, responded by getting on board in many instances.  "Liberal" theology spring up and took root in some, followed by the widespread turning of a blind eye to many other things.  

For example, as late as the 1930s the Anglican Communion rejected divorce to the same extent that the Catholic Church does. As the Sexual Revolution came in, it started to turn a blind eye to this, and now it'd be extraordinarily difficult to find any Protestant Church that cares anything about divorce, something clearly prohibited by the New Testament, at all, save for some very conservative Protestant denominations or semi denominations.

This, in fact, provides a good example.  Christ prohibited divorce.  St. Paul condemned not only sex outside of marriage, but listed specific sex acts and behaviors.  The Anglican Communion now has bishops who engage in the very activities that St. Paul condemned.

It can't really be justified, but it's occurred as these institutions are, at the end of the day, democratic. Religion is not.  And those sitting in the pews, in their heart of hearts, know the difference. The leaders, like leaders of democratic institutions, attempt to do the obvious, which is to modify doctrine to satisfy the cravings of the electorate.

Because religion is existential by its nature, it's not working.

This has seen the massive drop-off of membership in some Protestant denominations.  I'ts also seen ruptures in others, as "conservative", by which is really meant those adherent to basic tenants of the Christian faith, split off.  At the same time it's seen the growth of "non-denominational" churches, some of which chose not to challenge the behavior of the congregants and focus instead, broadly, on the theme that everyone is going to Heaven, something that the New Testament doesn't support at all.

Naturally, as part of all of that, people have been just dropping out, with WASPs dropping out most of all. The white upper middle class, which reflects more than anything else the spirit of the 60s and the Boomers, would rather sit comfortably behind imaginary gated walls and not be bothered with having to have restrictions of any kind.  Not all of them, of course, but enough to have impacted and still be impacting the culture.

It shouldn't be imagined that Catholics have been immune from this, in European cultures.  The spirit of the age took hold to a very large extent, but not the same universal degree, in the 1970s, impacted it as well, with the stage being set, in the U.S. in the Kennedy election of 1960.  Kennedy's election heralded the end of open public prejudice, for a time, against the Catholic Church in the U.S. and Kennedy's Catholic on Sunday declaration essentially muted differences in the Faith from Protestant faiths, which were and are very real, to private ones, rather than the open and obvious public ones they had been. The spirit of the age that took hold in the late 1960s led to blisteringly poor catechesis in the 70s, and a generation, or more, of Catholics that didn't understand that there really were massive differences between Apostolic Christianity and Protestantism. The term "Cafeteria Catholic" came in, in no small part as younger Catholics weren't told they weren't in a cafeteria.  Catholics were almost informed that major tenants of the faith, including the need for Confession, and the prohibition against marrying outside the Faith, were merely options in the 70s and 80s.  Clawing the way back from that has been difficult and massive damage has been done.  Moreover, as Western Catholicism suffers from the same Baby Boomer control that so many other things do, the process of recovery has been slow as those who came up during that age have yet to yield control.

At any rate, this is where the spirit of our age comes from.  It turns out that given time, and money, people's thoughts don't go to higher things, but only to themselves.  Even people immediately around them can be a bother.  Ultimately the generation that had calimed to be for "Love" turns out to be for self love in every way describable, including to its own destruction.

Of course, as noted, people know that something is wrong and that's creating massive social disruption. The problem ultimately comes to be that reconstruction is very difficult.  People lead down the road so far, that then realize they're being led to where they don't want to go, will often just sit down and demand that the new world be built right there.  I.e., divorce was okay. . . but we'll stop here.  Or, homosexual marriage was okay, and we'll stop there.  The problem is that you really can't stop anywhere you want, as it suffers from the same intellectual deficit that going further on the road that you are on, if it's a false road, does.

Hence, as noted, the inaccurate contemplation of Susan Stubson in the NYT that we wrote about the other day.  Not realizing it, her departure from Apostolic Christianity didn't go deeper, as she believes it did, but took her on the path to where she is right now, and where's she's now uncomfortable.  Some roads get rocky.

At the end of the day, however, what this really is, is the collapse of the Reformation.  It's in its final stages.  Having attacked the existential nature of the Church in favor of clerical liberty, and then that in the name of individual theological liberty, it ultimately has to be for radical individual liberty.  But, as we don't actually exists as planetary mammals of our own description with our own universe, to which the laws of the existential must bend, that can't work.

And it isn't.

Collapses are horrific messes.  

At the time that Augustine wrote City of God, the collapse of the Roman world wasn't close to being worked out.  The long slow developments that gave rise to the Great Schism still hasn't been worked out, and it started prior to the Reformation.  The Reformation was a revolution, and looking back from a distant future, it will have been seen to only now being playing itself out.

Revolutions cause causalities. There have been many, and there will be many more to come.  The entire Western World was impacted, to some degree, by the Reformation, some of it more than others.  Its collapse is being particularly felt in the English-speaking world, and interestingly also in the Lutheran world.  This will get worse before it gets better, but as the Reformation turned out to be anti-natural in the end, or took that turn at some point, it will get better as a new Counter Reformation correct the errors now being inflicted upon us. That too is already starting.

Related Threads:

The End of the Reformation I. Christian Nationalism becomes a local debate. . .

Lex Anteinternet: The End of the Reformation I. Christian Nationalism becomes a local debate. . .

Lex Anteinternet: The End of the Reformation I. Christian Nationali...:

The End of the Reformation I. Christian Nationalism becomes a local debate. . .

even though, I'd wager, most people don't actually know what it means.

Indeed, I don't think author Stubson actually does.

Luther at Erfurt. Father of the Reformation, and in many ways the father of the modern world, ironically on both the left, and the right.

Local attorney, expert pianist, and occasional op ed writer Susan Stubson wrote an op ed for the New York Times on the topic of her faith, her political party, and Christian Nationalism.  She is, as noted, a Wyomingite.

Stubson, I'd also note, is part of a political family.  Perhaps for that reason she can do what some even more frequent writers. . . namely me, cannot really, which is to sail into troubled waters under her own flag.  It may be cowardice on my part, but I really don't feel that I can.  I’m blunt to people who know me, but I'm not a politician and, as I recently noted here, while I once toyed with the idea, my time is past.  I still have to make a living, however. 

Anyhow, Stubson's NYT piece stated boldly in its caption was:

What Christian Nationalism Has Done to My State and My Faith Is a Sin

That was bound to provoke a reaction, and of course it did.  One of the reactors was the same letter writing dude who earlier tried to take on the Wyoming 41 in the same journal.  While it's digressing, I'll note what I wrote about that letter at the time, in which he stated as follows:

2. Your self-serving statement that lawyers have done more than any other profession makes me nauseous.  Talk to those who have served in the military to protect our constitutional republic, to include making us a free nation.  Talk to those who have served and lost limbs and have many other maladies that they received in battle.  Talk to the families of those who have given their lives for this nation in war.  Then you should reevaluate your arrogant statement about having done more than any other profession.  You should be ashamed.  You will better understand my ire on this issue when you have read my letter.

This time he wrapped himself in the flag less, and was less antagonist towards the lawyer author, stating:

Dear Editor:

It was an interesting article to read about Susan Stubson, Casper Attorney, saying that Christian Nationalists have “hijacked" the Wyoming Republican Party.  She says that they are, “super engaged are real extreme right, and they are gaining.”  

Apparently, Stubson thinks that it is a terrible thing that what she calls “Christian Nationalists” are involved in being “super engaged” in the political process and are “voting.”  This brings up so many points about the hideous bias of her view that it is quite nauseating.  Here are just a couple of points to consider:

- Her statements make it very clear that she does not know what a “Christian" is. If they go to any church, then they must be a Christian.  This is not true.  As a Christian myself, Stubson needs to understand that a true Christian is one who has put his or her (yes, only 2 genders) faith in Jesus Christ for forgiveness of their sin and then proceeds to love their neighbor.  Because Stubson is misguided…for which my letter calls her out…does not mean that I have a lack of love for her.  I just want her to know the error of her thinking so that she might become a true Christian.

- Her statements also show that she does not know what a “Nationalist” is.  This word is used to try to demean people as being crazy reactionaries who seek to have authoritarian or dictatorial control…kind of like the Wyoming Speaker of the House who won’t even allow debate in the House on issues that that matter to the citizens of Wyoming.  After 26 years in the US Air Force, I consider myself a Nationalist.  My country comes first, but not to the detriment of other countries, or to the detriment of any US citizen…regardless of their political beliefs.  If the US is strong, then we seek to protect other countries as we have  in the past, where tyranny has attempted to take hold.  We didn’t cut and run as Biden did with Afghanistan, which resulted in thousands upon thousands of murders by the Taliban using weapons that Biden left for them.

- Based on Stubson's views, I am a danger to her ideologies in Wyoming.  And to that, I say, “Hurrah!”  I wonder if she has ever written a 1736-word op-ed piece for the New York Times to condemn the riots and horrendous destruction by Antifa and BLM?  Has she ever come out against the disgusting protests at the homes of Supreme Court Justices, and even an attempted murder of one of them?  Has she ever condemned Senator Schumer for his inflammatory comments that he made on the steps of the Supreme Court against Justices in telling them that they would, “…pay the price,” for exercising their judicial responsibilities?  Stubson has been silent on these issues.

When I repeated my commissioning oath to become a US Air Force officer, I always remember that I had to swear to, “protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.” 

As a member of the Air Force officer corps, we knew how to defend our country against foreign enemies.  But a domestic enemy was a subject with which we were never clear about how to defend against them. 

The words of Stubson about what she calls, “Christian Nationalists,” like it is a 4-letter word, contributes to inciting those of the violent left against Christians and Nationalists. 

She sets it forth in such a way that indicates that anyone who would fall into the category of what she considers to be Christian and/or Nationalist should not have a voice and they need to be stopped cold in their tracks by any means possible.

As a so-called lawyer, she should be ashamed.  While she uses her free speech right of the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution to defame a specific group, she wants to remove our free speech rights. 

But I would have to say that is a great thing about the United States.  Susan Stubson has every right to be wrong.

Sincerely,

__________________, Pinedale

Colonel, USAF, Retired

Pretty freaking insulting nonetheless.

While it's not my main point here (I'll get to that) wrapping yourself up in the flag as you were in the service is wearing really think on me.  Last time, I commented on this extensively, and I'll add that and some additional comments down below in the item foot noted here.¹

Anyhow, what did Stubson say, and was it even on Christian Nationalism?

Christian Nationalism is really hard to define.  It's almost more of one of those I know it when I see it type of deals.  We've tried to define it here before.  In its more intellectual areas, it seems to be sort of self defined as National Conservatism, whose manifesto states:

National Conservatism: A Statement Of Principles

A world of independent nations is the only alternative to universalist ideologies seeking to impose a homogenizing, locality-destroying imperium over the entire globe.

JUNE 15, 2022

12:01 AM

THE EDMUND BURKE FOUNDATION

NOTE: The following statement was drafted by Will Chamberlain, Christopher DeMuth, Rod Dreher, Yoram Hazony, Daniel McCarthy, Joshua Mitchell, N.S. Lyons, John O’Sullivan, and R.R. Reno on behalf of the Edmund Burke Foundation. The statement reflects a distinctly Western point of view. However, we look forward to future discourse and collaboration with movements akin to our own in India, Japan, and other non-Western nations. Signatories’ institutional affiliations are included for identification purposes only, and do not imply an endorsement on the part of any institution other than the Edmund Burke Foundation.   

We are citizens of Western nations who have watched with alarm as the traditional beliefs, institutions, and liberties underpinning life in the countries we love have been progressively undermined and overthrown.

We see the tradition of independent, self-governed nations as the foundation for restoring a proper public orientation toward patriotism and courage, honor and loyalty, religion and wisdom, congregation and family, man and woman, the sabbath and the sacred, and reason and justice. We are conservatives because we see such virtues as essential to sustaining our civilization. We see such a restoration as the prerequisite for recovering and maintaining our freedom, security, and prosperity.

We emphasize the idea of the nation because we see a world of independent nations—each pursuing its own national interests and upholding national traditions that are its own—as the only genuine alternative to universalist ideologies now seeking to impose a homogenizing, locality-destroying imperium over the entire globe.

Drawing on this heritage, we therefore affirm the following principles:

1. National Independence. We wish to see a world of independent nations. Each nation capable of self-government should chart its own course in accordance with its own particular constitutional, linguistic, and religious inheritance. Each has a right to maintain its own borders and conduct policies that will benefit its own people. We endorse a policy of rearmament by independent self-governing nations and of defensive alliances whose purpose is to deter imperialist aggression.

2. Rejection of Imperialism and Globalism. We support a system of free cooperation and competition among nation-states, working together through trade treaties, defensive alliances, and other common projects that respect the independence of their members. But we oppose transferring the authority of elected governments to transnational or supranational bodies—a trend that pretends to high moral legitimacy even as it weakens representative government, sows public alienation and distrust, and strengthens the influence of autocratic regimes. Accordingly, we reject imperialism in its various contemporary forms: We condemn the imperialism of China, Russia, and other authoritarian powers. But we also oppose the liberal imperialism of the last generation, which sought to gain power, influence, and wealth by dominating other nations and trying to remake them in its own image.

3. National Government. The independent nation-state is instituted to establish a more perfect union among the diverse communities, parties, and regions of a given nation, to provide for their common defense and justice among them, and to secure the general welfare and the blessings of liberty for this time and for future generations. We believe in a strong but limited state, subject to constitutional restraints and a division of powers. We recommend a drastic reduction in the scope of the administrative state and the policy-making judiciary that displace legislatures representing the full range of a nation’s interests and values. We recommend the federalist principle, which prescribes a delegation of power to the respective states or subdivisions of the nation so as to allow greater variation, experimentation, and freedom. However, in those states or subdivisions in which law and justice have been manifestly corrupted, or in which lawlessness, immorality, and dissolution reign, national government must intervene energetically to restore order.

4. God and Public Religion. No nation can long endure without humility and gratitude before God and fear of his judgment that are found in authentic religious tradition. For millennia, the Bible has been our surest guide, nourishing a fitting orientation toward God, to the political traditions of the nation, to public morals, to the defense of the weak, and to the recognition of things rightly regarded as sacred. The Bible should be read as the first among the sources of a shared Western civilization in schools and universities, and as the rightful inheritance of believers and non-believers alike. Where a Christian majority exists, public life should be rooted in Christianity and its moral vision, which should be honored by the state and other institutions both public and private. At the same time, Jews and other religious minorities are to be protected in the observance of their own traditions, in the free governance of their communal institutions, and in all matters pertaining to the rearing and education of their children. Adult individuals should be protected from religious or ideological coercion in their private lives and in their homes.

5. The Rule of Law. We believe in the rule of law. By this we mean that citizens and foreigners alike, and both the government and the people, must accept and abide by the laws of the nation. In America, this means accepting and living in accordance with the Constitution of 1787, the amendments to it, duly enacted statutory law, and the great common law inheritance. All agree that the repair and improvement of national legal traditions and institutions is at times necessary. But necessary change must take place through the law. This is how we preserve our national traditions and our nation itself. Rioting, looting, and other unacceptable public disorder should be swiftly put to an end.

6. Free Enterprise. We believe that an economy based on private property and free enterprise is best suited to promoting the prosperity of the nation and accords with traditions of individual liberty that are central to the Anglo-American political tradition. We reject the socialist principle, which supposes that the economic activity of the nation can be conducted in accordance with a rational plan dictated by the state. But the free market cannot be absolute. Economic policy must serve the general welfare of the nation. Today, globalized markets allow hostile foreign powers to despoil America and other countries of their manufacturing capacity, weakening them economically and dividing them internally. At the same time, trans-national corporations showing little loyalty to any nation damage public life by censoring political speech, flooding the country with dangerous and addictive substances and pornography, and promoting obsessive, destructive personal habits. A prudent national economic policy should promote free enterprise, but it must also mitigate threats to the national interest, aggressively pursue economic independence from hostile powers, nurture industries crucial for national defense, and restore and upgrade manufacturing capabilities critical to the public welfare. Crony capitalism, the selective promotion of corporate profit-making by organs of state power, should be energetically exposed and opposed.

7. Public Research. At a time when China is rapidly overtaking America and the Western nations in fields crucial for security and defense, a Cold War-type program modeled on DARPA, the “moon-shot,” and SDI is needed to focus large-scale public resources on scientific and technological research with military applications, on restoring and upgrading national manufacturing capacity, and on education in the physical sciences and engineering. On the other hand, we recognize that most universities are at this point partisan and globalist in orientation and vehemently opposed to nationalist and conservative ideas. Such institutions do not deserve taxpayer support unless they rededicate themselves to the national interest. Education policy should serve manifest national needs.

8. Family and Children. We believe the traditional family is the source of society’s virtues and deserves greater support from public policy. The traditional family, built around a lifelong bond between a man and a woman, and on a lifelong bond between parents and children, is the foundation of all other achievements of our civilization. The disintegration of the family, including a marked decline in marriage and childbirth, gravely threatens the wellbeing and sustainability of democratic nations. Among the causes are an unconstrained individualism that regards children as a burden, while encouraging ever more radical forms of sexual license and experimentation as an alternative to the responsibilities of family and congregational life. Economic and cultural conditions that foster stable family and congregational life and child-raising are priorities of the highest order.

9. Immigration. Immigration has made immense contributions to the strength and prosperity of Western nations. But today’s penchant for uncontrolled and unassimilated immigration has become a source of weakness and instability, not strength and dynamism, threatening internal dissension and ultimately dissolution of the political community. We note that Western nations have benefited from both liberal and restrictive immigration policies at various times. We call for much more restrictive policies until these countries summon the wit to establish more balanced, productive, and assimilationist policies. Restrictive policies may sometimes include a moratorium on immigration.

10. Race. We believe that all men are created in the image of God and that public policy should reflect that fact. No person’s worth or loyalties can be judged by the shape of his features, the color of his skin, or the results of a lab test. The history of racialist ideology and oppression and its ongoing consequences require us to emphasize this truth. We condemn the use of state and private institutions to discriminate and divide us against one another on the basis of race. The cultural sympathies encouraged by a decent nationalism offer a sound basis for conciliation and unity among diverse communities. The nationalism we espouse respects, and indeed combines, the unique needs of particular minority communities and the common good of the nation as a whole.

I'd bet dollars to donuts that most of the local populists who conceive of themselves of adhering to Roosevelt's 1912 cry "We stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord" would probably agree with the manifesto and not really put hardly any thought into it.

So what did Stubson say?

We've linked her article in up above.  Here's what she started off with:

CASPER, Wyo. — I first saw it while working the rope line at a monster-truck rally during the 2016 campaign by my husband, Tim, for Wyoming’s lone congressional seat. As Tim and I and our boys made our way down the line, shaking hands and passing out campaign material, a burly man wearing a “God bless America” T-shirt and a cross around his neck said something like, “He’s got my vote if he keeps those [epithet] out of office,” using a racial slur. What followed was an uncomfortable master class in racism and xenophobia as the man decanted the reasons our country is going down the tubes. God bless America.

I now understand the ugliness I heard was part of a current of Christian nationalism fomenting beneath the surface. It had been there all the time. The rope line rant was a mission statement for the disaffected, the overlooked, the frightened. It was also an expression of solidarity with a candidate like Donald Trump who gave a name to a perceived enemy: people who do not look like us or share our beliefs. Immigrants are taking our guns. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. You are not safe in your home. Religious freedom is on the gallows. Vote for me.

I know what she is talking about, as that was 2016 and in the Obama era of politics.  To my enormous surprise, the election of Barack Obama brought out racism in the country at a level that I thought long past.   A lot of the visceral reaction to President Obama was because he was black.

I don't think that has anything to do with Christian Nationalism, however.  That's rather deep old fashion racial prejudice, and frankly it reflects what Ronald Reagan did to the Republican Party, something that Republican Conservatives like the Stubson have still never really acknowledged. Reagan wasn't a racist, but he invited them into the party by courting disaffected Southern Dixiecrat's and Rust Belt Democrats.  Modern populism has a lot of the thin thinking, bad beer consuming, football watching Rust Belt culture that was Democratic in it.  Indeed, it's brought actual Rust Belt Republicans, former Democrats, at least demographically, directly into the party everywhere.  Jeanette Ward is a Rocky Mountain Republican, but a Rust Belt one.

Here's something that I’m going out on a limb on next:

The messages worked. And in large part, it’s my faith community — white, rural and conservative — that got them there. I am a white conservative woman in rural America. Raised Catholic, I found that my faith deepened after I married and joined an evangelical church. As my faith grew, so did Tim’s political career in the Wyoming Legislature. (He served in the House from 2008 to 2017.) I’ve straddled both worlds, faith and politics, my entire adult life. Often there was very little daylight between the two, one informing the other.

If Susan wants to avoid Christian Nationalism, she ought to come back to the Catholic Church.  Evangelical Christianity has always been more racially divided than the Universal (Catholic) Church.  I don't know how many black African pastors Evangelical Church's in Wyoming have, but they are a presence in Catholic ones, along with Vietnamese, Filipino and Hispanic pastors.  People being what they are, individual churches and diocese have never been perfect, but it's always been a hallmark of being a Catholic in Wyoming that you were going to Mass with the businessmen, the ranchers, and the sheepherders. . . all at the same time.

Indeed, well into the 20th Century "main line" Protestant Churches were associated with the Republican Party here, as they were everywhere else, and Democrats stood a good chance of being Catholic.  There were certainly exceptions, and after the Clinton era the Democratic Party just died here.  The point is that the fusion of secular interests with religion has long been a feature of American Protestantism in a way it has not been with Catholicism.

Anyhow.

I'm not going to quote the entire article.  But I'd note where she picks back up.

What’s changed is the rise of Christian nationalism — the belief, as recently described by the Georgetown University professor and author Paul D. Miller, that “America is a ‘Christian nation’ and that the government should keep it that way.” Gone are the days when a lawmaker might be circumspect about using his or her faith as a vehicle to garner votes. It’s been a drastic and destructive departure from the boring, substantive lawmaking to which I was accustomed. Christian nationalists have hijacked both my Republican Party and my faith community by blurring the lines between church and government and in the process rebranding our state’s identity.

Wyoming is a “you do you” state. When it’s a blinding snowstorm, the tractor’s in a ditch and we need a neighbor with a winch, our differences disappear. We don’t care what you look like or who you love. Keep a clean fence line and show up during calving season, and we’re good.

But new sheriffs in town are very much up in their neighbor’s beeswax. Legislation they have proposed seems intent on stripping us of our autonomy and our ability to make decisions for ourselves, all in the name of morality, the definition of which is unclear.

All that is very true.  When the movie Wind River used the line of "This isn't the land of waiting for back up. This is the land of you're on your own.", it was very true.

Stubson next makes this comment.

Rural states are particularly vulnerable to the promise of Christian nationalism. In Wyoming, we are white (more than 92 percent) and love God (71 percent identified as Christian in 2014, according to the Pew Research Center) and Mr. Trump (seven in 10 voters picked him in 2020).

Hmmm, here's where I think Stubson goes off the rails, because I don't think what we're seeing in the populist camp is Christian Nationalism.  Maybe that is, however, because I'm an Apostolic Christian, which looks outward towards something larger than the nation to start with, and which was also historically oppressed by the Protestant culture, and frankly is still held in contempt by it.²

Tell people you are a Catholic, even though we are the original Christian religion, and pretty soon some Protestant will tell you that you are not a Christian, and frankly even doubt a little that you are a real American.  And in Wyoming, you'll be in a religions' minority in a state which, in actuality, is the least observant tin terms of religion in the United States, something that Stubson didn't address in her comments.  This isn't new here, either.  With a high transient population, and a lot of unattached men laborers who work miles from any city, Wyoming has always been only loosely religious.  Being a member of a really adherent faith group probably by default meant that 1) you were a  Catholic, 2) you were Orthodox or 3) you were Mormon, all three of which are overall minorities in the state, although Mormon's are a majority in some communities in the southwest.

Nonetheless, up through the 1970s the "main line" Protestant churches remained the churches of wealth, and this was very much the case up until after World War Two, which was true for much of the United States as well.  Simply being a Catholic in Wyoming limited your economic possibilities until after the war.

Wyoming is overwhelmingly white, although what that means in Wyoming is a little confusing.  I doubt actually that he figure is anywhere near 92% in reality.  In part, that's because long time Hispanic (Catholic again) communities in Wyoming probably self identify as white, even though they certainly aren't WASPs  Most of the local politicians who cite religion are undoubtedly Protestants, although one is a California Hispanic.  The state has a large Native American population that is probably undercounted in statistics such as this.  Half of the state's population at any one time, at least, is transient and from somewhere else.  I'd guess that probably 70% of most of the state is "white", but no more than that.  Probably less.

My own place of work is probably a good example.  No matter how people might identify, ethnic minorities are strongly represented.

I do agree with what she next states.

The result is bad church and bad law. “God, guns and Trump” is an omnipresent bumper sticker here, the new trinity. The evangelical church has proved to be a supplicating audience for the Christian nationalist roadshow. Indeed, it is unclear to me many Sundays whether we are hearing a sermon or a stump speech.

As an Apostolic Christian, I find the phrase "God, guns and Trump" absolutely abhorrent.  I'd be less offended by "guns and Trump", even though I don't think the Second Amendment and support for Trump in an existential sense are linked, but to link in God strikes me as approaching blasphemy, and it is emblematic of a major problem.

Skipping way ahead:

Yet fear (and loathing for Ms. Cheney, who voted to impeach Mr. Trump and dared to call him “unfit for office”) led to a record voter turnout in the August primary. The Trumpist candidate, Harriet Hageman, trounced Ms. Cheney. Almost half of the Wyoming House members were new. At least one-third of them align with the Freedom Caucus, a noisy group unafraid to manipulate Scripture for political gain under a banner of preserving a godly nation.

The impact of this new breed of lawmakers has been swift. Wyomingites got a very real preview this past legislative session of the hazards of one-size-fits-all nationalized policies that ignore the nuances of our state. ‌Last year, maternity wards closed in two sparsely populated communities, further expanding our maternity desert. Yet in debating a bill to provide some relief to new moms by extending Medicaid’s postpartum coverage, a freshman member of the State House, Jeanette Ward, invoked a brutally narrow view of the Bible. “Cain commented to God, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’” she said. “The obvious answer is no. No, I am not my brother’s keeper. But just don’t kill him.”

This confusing ‌mash-up‌ of Scripture (Ms. Ward got it wrong: The answer is yes, I am my brother’s keeper) is emblematic of a Christian nationalist who weaponizes God’s word to promote the agenda du jour. We should expect candidates who identify as followers of Christ to model some concern for other people.

Okay, sound familiar? 

If you read the entries here, it should, as I made this same observation at the time.

Stubson notes:

I am adrift in this unnamed sea, untethered from both my faith community and my political party as I try to reconcile evangelicals’ repeated endorsements of candidates who thumb their noses at the least of us. Christians are called to serve God, not a political party, to put our faith in a higher power, not in human beings. We’re taught not to bow to false idols. Yet idolatry is increasingly prominent and our foundational principles — humility, kindness and compassion — in short supply.

The answer here is obvious.

Susan, come home to the Church.

“It was a great day!” one of our pastors proclaimed on social media last year when Mr. Trump came to town to campaign against Ms. Cheney. Though many agreed with him, some of his pastoral colleagues grieved, traumatized by the hard right turn in their congregations.

Yup. and again. . . .  

She concluded.

This is the state I cannot quit. I rely on those gritty and courageous leaders who hold tight to our rural values. They are the Davids in the fight against the Philistines. They are our brother’s keeper.

So I'll go from here.

I don't think what we're seeing in Wyoming is actually Christian Nationalism.  Like it, hate it, or fear it, it's actually too intellectually deep for what Stubson is observing.

What she's actually observing is something that's been in the American culture for a long time. The Midwestern lower middle class WASPs and Southern WASP cultures, but just imported here. It's always been  here, but the state's insistence on never taking a second look at its economy has reinforced it.

Which is not to dismiss it.

The interesting thing about it is that the rage it is expressing, and it is rage, is in reaction to the same thing that Christian Nationalism is reacting to, which is the forced radical liberalization of the culture. A development decade in the making, but which finally really burst out in the open with Obergefell.  Ironically this comes out of the very same WASP culture, and its' interesting to note that this trend exists most strongly in the world where 1) the Reformation succeeded, or 2) the secular Reformation of the ideals of the French Revolution succeeded.

Their ultimate problem, at the end of the day, was the rejection of a greater existential reality.  Catholicism and Orthodoxy, like the more conservative branches of Judaism, and Islam, hold that there's something greater than us and that we in turn fit within that greater reality's organization.  We may be the greatest of the creatures, but we're still a creature, and as a creature, have what is set within us. We don't get to define it.

That's been discussed here in many threads, and it explains in the case of the Apostolic Religions and Judaism the strong attachment to science.  The "reformed" branches of Christianity, and for that matter the more liberal reformed branches of Judaism, lack those guide rails as they took them down.  When Luther started that process, he didn't mean to dismantle them as to Faith, but it happened pretty quickly, at first with any number of reformers declaring that they knew what the Faith was and rejecting what came before.

It was inevitable that ultimately that process would be self consuming.  The Protestant churches started dismantling themselves some time ago, most notably with the sticky topics of sex, which they made concessions on in some instances nearly immediately.  Luther through he'd discovered the Church was wrong on some things regarding the Bible and almost immediately thereafter discovered women, and that his vows could be booted on that topic, for instance.

Starting at some point, perhaps as early ago as the beginning of the prior century, the WASP culture in the US began to fatigue.  It was always the wealthiest section of the population.  Having eons earlier rejected Rome, it ultimately began to reject Canterbury, and anything else inconvenient. The wealthier its members are, the more likely this is true.  At the lower ends, it simply weakened things to where today, for many Protestants, the clear prohibitions on sex outside of marriage, remarriage and the like just don't exist. There are Protestant church goes who have been married multiple times, or who attend weekly with their "partners" who are not married at all.

That sort of faith is emblematic, in some ways, of where we are.  It's all internal, just like my definition of myself.  I'm okay as I'm not a sinner as I say so.  And if some want to say that they're girls if they're boys, well who is to stop them?

A recent editorial on something else I read stated, and here I agree with it, that at some point you know that things are just flat out wrong, and that's where we are now.  The remaining Protestant faithful know that something is wrong and are strongly reacting.  Those in the WASP rejection camp know it too and keep grasping, just like an alcoholic who hasn't had enough, for anything consumable.  That's' why we simultaneously see an explosion of ridiculous made up gender categories, with new labels weekly, at the same time we see both Christian Nationalism and populist who cite to their religion.

That's also why people like Stubson are baffled.  Many of those, indeed a very large number of  them, on the populist right will cite religion while at the same time seemingly not grasping it.  The religion of the populist right is a right wing conservative variant of the American Civil Religion. That explains why the same people can worship a political leader who is a serial polygamist or have local leaders who have been accused of icky behavior.  It explains why, as Stubson has noted, that some of them can quote sections of the Bible, but also hold the poor and needy in disregard.

But that's not actually Christian Nationalism.  That's populist right wing American politics of the Southern variety. Southern populism would be a better name for it.  And that it had arrived was clear with the campaign of Foster Freiss.

That doesn't say anything for or against Christian Nationalism.  That'll have to wait for another thread.  But we should make no mistake. When Ronald Reagan adopted the Southern Strategy, it helped lead to this point.  This is what was going to occur, at least to some extent.  Of course, it took the urban WASPs getting really wealthy first, at which point we learn that when a large section of the population becomes well off in real terms, its mind doesn't turn to higher thoughts, but the lowest of them.

Footnotes:

1. We earlier stated:

First, let me note that I looked this individual up, and he's a retired Colonel in the USAF.  A report on his career provides:

He is still fond of many of his UW instructors. After graduation, Steve received commission as a second lieutenant in the Air Force. He served as a contracting officer through his 26-year career, had 13 moves throughout the U.S. and spent about a third of his assignments in Europe. He also earned his master’s from the Air Force Institute of Technology.

A contracting officer for 26 years.

He ain't Audie Murphy.

Audie Murphy, then a lieutenant, wearing his awards.  All of these, it might be noted, are real combat awards.

They also serve who sit and work on contracts, but that's not exactly facing down the Red Coats at Bunker Hill, now is it?  Nor is it manning a cross road in the Ardennes, firiing your M1 Garand at the Red Chinese in Korea, or going on patrol in Vietnam.

It's service, but it points out something about the U.S. military that most people don't really like to consider, that being that the era when most servicemen filled a role like that portrayed in The Sands of Iwo Jima was so long ago that, well, it wasn't even the case in the era depicted by The Sands of Iwo Jima.

I might as well point it out here.  Do I think my six years of being an artilleryman during the Cold War are more significant and valuable service than 27 years of being an Air Force contracts officer?

Well. . . quite frankly I very well might.

It was, in a real sense, more military.

So, do I still feel that way.

Yep, more than ever.

What does the Air Force say about this position:

SECURING WHAT WE NEED

In order for our Airmen to complete their missions successfully, they need dependable, high-quality equipment at the right place and the right time. Responsible for securing and skillfully negotiating the sale of these necessities, Contracting Officers help ensure command units are well stocked with everything they need. Whether it’s planning, evaluating or awarding, these experts manage contracts for commodities, services and construction to properly oversee the contracting process every step of the way.

And:

QUALIFICATIONS SUMMARY

• MINIMUM EDUCATION

  • Bachelor’s degree in business, economics, math or engineering
  • Degree must include a minimum of 24 semester credit hours of study in any of the following: accounting, business, law, contracts, purchasing economics, industrial management, marketing, quantitative method and organization and management

• QUALIFICATIONS

  • Knowledge of contracting process fundamentals, federal acquisition and contracting directives and publications, budgeting and funding procedures and contract pricing
  • Completion of the Mission Ready Contracting Officer course
  • Completion of Officer Training School (OTS), Air Force Academy (AFA) or Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps (AFROTC)
  • Must be between the ages of 18 and 39

And at this point, I'll probably make everyone mad.

One of the things about the modern military has been the massive growth of non combat jobs.  Even during the Second World War, most American servicemen didn't fight, weren't going to fight, and were not at risk of dying in combat whatsoever.

Any conscripted serviceman of any kinds deserves a measure of our respect simply for doing something they didn't want to do, because their country asked them to.  That doesn't make them a hero, however.  And opting for a military career, as a career, has always been a solid career decision that a lot of people have made over the years, but that's what it is, taking it no further than that.  Most service jobs in the U.S. Military frankly aren't all that risky, and they haven't been since some point prior to World War Two.  Back in the day when Doonsbury was still funny, there was a classic instance of the cartoon when an outraged Vietnam vet calls into to complain about somebody being hosted on the radio, and it turns out they both spent the war in their domains smoking weed and listening to Jimi Hendrix.  An exaggeration, but only so much.

Combat vets, and veterans who have served in combat arms are, in my mind, a different deal.  Searching out contract details in an air-conditioned office is one thing, getting shelled or potentially getting shelled is quite another.  If your job could just as easily be done by a civilian, you ought to really rethink claiming special status.

2. The line that Anti Catholisim is the last acceptalbe prejudice in the United States is more than a little true.  It's not only accepted, but it's almost mandatory in some quarter, both from the right and the left.

Related Threads:

Confusing politics with religion.