In the biological sciences, there are a group of measures used to test the health of an ecosystem or the health of a species. In the case of a species, estimates of the population are usually the starting place. Then it may be the population density of the species, which can determine if the pressure is the loss of habitat or some unknown environmental factor that is lowering fertility. It is assumed that a declining population relative to territory is always a sign of crisis in a species.
Of course, these measures are never used to test the health of European populations because that is a conspiracy theory. Everyone knows that all you have to do is utter the abracadabra phrase “conspiracy theory” and all of the related things that are easily observed can no longer be mentioned. Putting that aside, the same measures we use to test the health of a species could be applied to humans. In fact, we could have much more granular and accurate measures.
For example, we cannot know the total fertility rate of a frog species, but we do know the fertility rate of humans. In fact, we could break it down by race and ethnicity if we really wanted to know the answer. We know that the population of European people, relative to other populations has declined significantly over the last century. We also know the population density of Europeans in Western lands, relative to other races has also declined significantly over the last century.
Unlike frogs or bats, humans have quantifiable social habits that are tied to the health and wellbeing of the people. Church attendance in the West, for example, correlates with fertility rates. Across the West, church attendance has been in decline and along with it the overall fertility rate. In parts of Europe, churches are now museums used at Christmas and Easter for largely secular ceremonies. In the United States, the ruling classes mocks and ridicules Christians.
This overall drop in church attendance tracks with the growing social unrest and the alarming decline is social trust. Put another way, a healthy society can have a good government or a bad government, but it can thrive because it has an abundance of social capital as measured by trust its primary social institution. On the other hand, a society in crisis has declining social capital. Trust in the organic institutions like the church, declines, reflecting the collapse in social trust.
There is a lot here, but the one thing we can know for certain is that Christianity in the West is in crisis. That crisis seems to parallel the crisis facing European people, which suggests there is a connection. Maybe the decline in faith is a symptom of the overall decline in the people or maybe all of these measures have a common cause that lies upstream from the culture. The “who decides’ answer is controlling the “how things are decided” side of the formula.
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This Week’s Show
Contents
Direct Download, The iTunes, Google Play, iHeart Radio, RSS Feed
Full Show On Spreaker
Full Show On Odysee
Viewed another way… if you turn your back on God, He will turn his back on you.
Enjoy your fake and gay society, America!
😆😆
24
1
Au contraire. God allows one to feel the pain of their folly, but welcomes the contrite back after the “lesson” is taught. God never abandons his creation.
10
Hmmmmm. I woulda thunk our Maker turned His back on those that refuse to repent…?
I am new at Christianity – not trying to be a jerk or tick anyone off…
1
Failure to repent is a “lesson” not learned, but that does not equate to abandonment by God. The difference is subtle I admit.
This abandonment you speak off is really not on the part of God, but on the part of man. Man is given free will. He may choose. Sometimes unwisely, but that is his choice.
1
And thus Calvin and Hobbes had lost all spirit like being trapped in an elevator with Muzak doing Jimi Hendrix. It was a poison that would kill them both and they knew it.
Similarly they both knew that going to church was equally suicidal in that they would suffocate in an atmosphere of anti-Christ political Zionism trying to pass itself off as Christianity.
The coroner’s report for both would read “Died of an unknown cause” because all medical examiners had no knowledge or awareness of an anti-Christ culture or its infectious nature. They did however know that something was wrong with society, culture, media and government. They just couldn’t put their finger on it except around Christmas or Thanksgiving when a slight disturbance in the world became noticeable or when old folks spoke of the Son of God and something called the ‘Resurrection’.
16
In the movie “War of the Worlds”, people returned to religion when all else had failed.
6
The study of the ‘end of the world’ in Biblical terms is called biblical eschatology. It has the ability to cause a conceptual look beyond what one can normally see in the world and yet create vast abuse and manipulation with fear and anxiety upon the unstudied.
This has been seen disproportionately in the English speaking world with the likes of heretics William Miller (1843/44), Hal Lindsey (1980/81) and recently Harold Camping (2011). There are many many other examples of this heretic eschatology that has also created cognitive dissonance and reformulated religion. The Seventh Day Adventists can trace their background to the William Miller heresy.
The Church of Sci-Fi Hollywood isn’t much different.
7
funny how the failures of christianity and conservatism parallel each other so closely.
10
Zman: “Christianity is fading, as is the West.”
Alzaebo: “Christianity is being murdered in its sleep.”
Christians: “That’s why we need more of it!!”
1
FWIW. I belong to a Russian Orthodox parish in a large Southern city. We have been seeing a huge inflow of converts, mostly from the evangelical churches, most of whom (in aforesaid Southern cities at the least) took a total knee to the “powers and principalities” represented by BLM and Antifa. I’d expect this trend to continue.
14
Correlation does not equal causation. The decline in European fertility can’t have anything to do with declining religious faith, because fertility has been declining everywhere in the world outside of sub-Saharan Africa, including in militant theocracies like Iran. The true cause is the modern lifestyle, which makes it difficult and expensive to have children. Unique in the world, the people of sub-Saharan Africa lack the intelligence to create societies that support the modern lifestyle for most members of those societies, and this social failure is being rewarded with massive reproductive success. This is Darwinian natural selection turned on its head, and this, rather than climate change, is going to be the defining crisis of the 21st century.
19
Without imported food stuffs from the West, sub-Saharan Africa population growth would be famine-limited. This artificial population bomb will eventually flood into Europe and kill off those Western societies thereby limiting the food production available to ship to Africa. My guess is that the Cloud People intend to use genetic engineering to solve this problem via covert intervention in African fertility dynamics. mRNA-based vaccines can be a vector for this type of population control.
10
I feel like the Clouds are working to starve Africa because the Africans largely rejected the coof injections.
1
Wild Geese: Do you really think so? I think they’re working to starve White people. Africans are always starving (at least since my earliest memories) but this will further impel them to Europe and America and the further erasure of White, Western civilization. In other words, if some brown/black people starve, that’s a bonus, but the main goal is the elimination of Whites. And Whites – particularly throughout Europe – are the most vaxxed.
1
Agree totally. The only thing I’d add are a few. Often overlooked in the fertility decline is the widespread availability of artificial birth control.
Also, Africa’s and to a lesser extent other regions’ phenomenal population growth is substantially completely due to outside technology and aid. These regions have never been capable of supporting themselves (at current or recent population levels.)
Without exception, ALL of the above were Western inventions and/or the aid comes from the “West” (affluent nations.) This, of course, is unnatural. Nevertheless, Darwin’s principles are always and everywhere active. As noted, what has been “selected for” the most, in past few generations, is primarily the ability to breed. If and when the outside support is lost, there will be a catastrophic culling.
8
JEB, pretty much my thinking as well. Children no longer have an economic benefit in a rich welfare State, and that’s most everywhere now. Even third world holes like India.
4
Connecting dots.
In a democracy, selecting political leadership is largely determined by voting patterns and the degree of election fraud that is permitted by law enforcement organizations. Voting patterns are largely determined by the quality of the electorate, their susceptibility to media indoctrination, and habit. For example, stupid people tend to be easily bribed for a few shekels. Same for being influenced by targeted media campaigns that push the right buttons. And, of course, tribalism is why 90% of blacks always vote Democrat. This fraction of the electorate has now been dominant for over half a century and will only increase with illegal immigration. But overriding all that is the influence of organized vote fraud campaigns. A sea change occurred in 2020 when massive and overt vote fraud was perpetrated in numerous states as documented in “2000 Mules.” More specifically, this fraud was enabled by both political parties and the complicity of the Stasi. The latter is why social trust can never be restored within the current system of government.
We are now in the throes of a vicious cycle in which we proactively elect corrupt politicians that print fiat money to bribe for votes and then covertly do the bidding of the Cloud People. This can continue as long as living standards are rising and even the poorest fraction of society can easily get obese and have a free cell phone. But the plates are now wobbling on their sticks and the world is waking up the reality of the counterfeit dollar.
The bubble will eventually burst and then things will get interesting. Methinks the Year of Living Dangerously is nearly upon us.
17
The main flaw I note in today’s essay is this: Zman seems to implicitly assume that the entirety of the West’s decline can be laid to the loss of Christian faith. I realize there are a lot of believers here. I am not one of them. With that caveat, I hope you will still consider my argument. Christianity can and does offer a moral, social, etc. framework for a society. But it does not have sole claim to that. I can cite you numerous other cultures in world history that are non-Christian and yet those cultures survived and at times even flourished, heathen though they may have been. Equivalently, I could easily find you myriad historical examples where nations suffered chaos, revolution, war, and other unhappiness, despite the fact that they were predominantly Christian (or any other religion, for the matter.) Perhaps they were not Christian enough, or were the wrong type of Christian? In brief, what I assert is simply that religion is more likely a product of a particular culture and not its cause.
5
1
Actually, I said no such thing. I explicitly said the decline of the church is a symptom, not a cause.
17
I think it’s a symptom and a cause. Over the mid to long term, people who lose faith have nothing left except the immediate gratification of entertainment and shopping. Kids don’t fit with this.
8
You are being disingenuous, Zman. I count at least seven (7) cases where you specifically cite Christianity or Church in your essay. I concede that you do not explicitly claim loss of religious faith as a primary cause, but I stand by my claim that you imply this; my observation supported by your heavy emphasis on the decay of religious observance. “Getting Preachy”? Just so*.
Despite my nit-picking, I fully agree with your conclusion, that “[m]aybe the decline in faith is a symptom…” and that it may be due to a “common cause that lies upstream from the culture.” That is closer to what I meant. Religion is an effect from a prior cause. As support for that, consider that both Christianity and Islam are the products of earlier belief systems including Judaism.
*”It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up till now has consisted of—namely, the confession of its originator, and a species of involuntary and unconscious auto-biography.” Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (I, 6).
1
You use a semicolon wrong. “my observation supported by your heavy emphasis on the decay of religious observance” is an absolute phrase, not an independent clause.
1
I strongly suspect that the it is more than a symptom. At least a strong contributing factor.
2
Actually, he explicitly notes correlation, not causation: “That crisis seems to parallel the crisis facing European people, which suggests there is a connection. Maybe the decline in faith is a symptom of the overall decline in the people or maybe all of these measures have a common cause that lies upstream from the culture.”
3
The Western Civilization cannot be restored without Christianity. That’s because the Western Civilization is, roughly, the Christian religion + the White race + the cultural and philosophical legacy of the Greco-Roman world. Strip out any of those elements, and what you will have will no longer be the Western Civilization, but something else. That something else may be good or bad, but it cannot be the Western Civilization.
Your aims may be different than mine, but speaking for myself, what I am interested in is the restoration of the Western Civilization, of which I am inordinately fond.
21
Is the Muslim culture a product of Islam, or is Islam its cause? The only point Z man made wrt Christianity and European civilization/culture is that the two appear inextricably intertwined. Like Anti-Dem points out Western Civ = Whyte Pipo + Xtianity + Greco Roman Legacy.
Correlation may not prove causation, but correlation is a necessary, if not sufficient component of causation.
4
Ben: Religion and culture are certainly entwined, but that does not automatically negate the reality and truth of either. Those Westerners who adopt Islam also consciously choose to adopt Arab cultural habits and behaviors, which are further reinforced by the religious/cultural community. The problem in the Christian West was the assumption that spreading religious faith would lead to the automatic assumption of western culture. That, of course, did not happen. For every Christian who marvels at the number of oriental “Christians,” I can show you all the specifically named “Chinese” or “Taiwanese” churches in America – with their entirely oriental members and newly painted roofs/doors in accordance with the principles of Feng Shui.
2
The part about participation in the rules of a Church is also very open to chicanery by people in power. The people running these “listening sessions” always design it to come to their predetermined conclusions. There were a couple cases of Bishops getting together for a Synod and meeting documents leaking that literally had nothing to do with what happened in the Synod, likely because they were written before the Synod ever started.
Then after they publish their “findings”, usually with some sort of policy change, they’ll finger wag the conservatives with “consensus” or “obedience”, to get them to fall in line. Note this never happens the other way around. It’s a classic example of manipulating procedural outcomes to get your way.
This is universal too, as you will see the same thing happen in corporations and governments. Once you see how the sausage of democratic procedure is made, you can’t unsee it, which is why democracy only works in small, homogenous, very high trust groups.
10
The reproduction rate is below replacement in nearly every country in the world, except for sub-Saharan Africa. Japan’s population is already declining, as is the White population in the US. Whites are a minority in the under 15 age group.
The cause of the reproduction failure in most of the world is most likely the education of women. In Western countries, which generally lead the world in women’s education, there is a direct negative correlation between years of education and reproduction. Women with PhD’s or MD’s or LD’s usually have no children.
There is no mystery about this. Women’s reproduction potential is maximal between about 14 and 25, and it declines steadily thereafter, reaching zero fertility about age 40. Of course, in modern societies, 14 to 25 are the ages women spend in school, 14 to 30 for doctoral students.
The real conclusion is that humans are maladapted to modern society, and especially to its educational programs. In Darwinian terms, modern society is an environmental disaster for humans, a slow moving Extinction Level Event, like the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, and every bit as effective.
37
It seems to be a multip-pronged issue. Environmentally, I’m not sure the stats, but there are a shocking number of people in my social circle who haver fertility issues, and these aren’t the typical people who went on birth control until 35 or are morbidly obese.
There’s also a psychological softness of modernity that perhaps makes people not have children because they are too mentally soft to handle the grueling nature of raising children every day. The girlboss can fell powerful in her make work PM job, but make her get up 5 times a night to feed a fussy child and watch her crumble. The classic rat utopia experiments come to mind when their pampered lifestyle made the rats psychologicaly incapable of raising offspring.
The last is good old-fashioned power. There’s an urge to reproduce when you can look ahead for greatness for your people. The Bible is littered with examples of men whose main goal was for their seed to spread across the world. If a modern mongol culture started conquering and subjugating people left and right, rest assured those people would have an exceedingly healthy fertility rate.
20
Chet: Wholeheartedly agree.
2
The gap between industrial civilization and agrarian civilization is just as great as the gap between agrarian civilization and tribal hunter-gatherer societies that preceded it. The last 150 years or so (230 for the UK) are freakish and totally unique to history, there are no useful historical precedents to judge this kind of society against, and we have absolutely no idea how its all going to end up. Instead people tend to take modernity for granted, and believe inevitable and easily predictable march of progress.
6
We can continue to enjoy the benefits of modern civilization while also thriving as a society if we just have the fortitude to put women in their place.
15
1
So very much this.
7
1
Women are crazy, given. Maybe exacerbated by knowledge, I’m not sure. I think being an intelligent woman must be a burden in any case. It’s the license to be crazy they’ve been given. I’ve known a few women I would’ve been happy to marry, except that they had no sense of how to treat a man. Drive you away and at best wonder why, at worst punish you for it.
14
1
We really need someone with the skills to explain the Japanese collapse.
It started sooner than it did in the West and went much faster.
Yet so far as I know this happened without a noticeable collapse in religious observance (harder to measure in Japan).
Japanese women were not subjected to Judeo-feminism, either. At least not in any way.
I have heard snatches about policies instituted during the US occupation, but can’t really point to anything.
3
My guess: they wanted to be ‘western’ after the war and, being Japanese, purified and perfected the essence of it.
5
I’m pretty sure, but not certain, that McArthur had the Japanese Constitution rewritten to give women the vote. Not feminism as we currently experience it, but the starting point that most everyone mentions of our decline. It also took us about 50 years after to reach Gloria Steinem type feminist philosophy/antics.
1
The most recent polls taken in Japan indicate they are 88% atheist. The only nation with a higher percentage than this is China (at 91%).
Mind you, that’s atheist; a much stronger term than “irreligious.”
Have you ever watched any Japanese anime? I’ve watched some with my 16 year old son. That stuff runs the gamut from silly secular fun to fetishistic perverted to satanically immoral. (I don’t watch any of the vile stuff; I’m a Christian). If the anime is an indicator of what is going on in the minds of creative Japanese people, then all they’ve got going for them is a 15 hour workday and a love of money. Millions of cute girls, and nobody dates anybody.
A nihilistic void, with the Shinto spirits floating around ominously in the neighborhood shrines. But no God or Messiah to talk to.
Such a strange place. To be admired (in some areas) but never to be copied.
Spot-on.
If bull giraffes in sub-Saharan Africa started having anal intercourse with each other instead or mating the cow giraffes, or if the cow giraffes started killing their offspring and reproduction rates declined precipitously, university biologists would fly in from around the world to determine what the source of the problem is and try to implement breeding programs to prevent the giraffe from going extinct.
When white humans start having anal intercourse with each other and aborting their offspring… U.S. Embassies fly the gay pride flag and lefty nutjobs try to assassinate Supreme Court justices.
25
I’ve found it odd that the most demonized early theraputics for the coof are also powerful anti-parasitics.
One could view the response to those theraputics as an organism moving to protect itself against a threat.
Then again, it may just my tinfoil hat constricting the flow of blood to my brain.
3
Like Belloc said, the Faith is Europe and Europe is the Faith.
8
If that’s true, then the state of affairs is sad indeed. I believe the level of ‘belief’ ignoring it’s manifestation in church attendance, in Europe is even worse than in the coloniies.
3
He said “the Church,” which is a little spicier of a take.
1
Good podcast
Concerning the condition of the church a couple of thoughts
Christ Himself said that not all who call me Lord Lord will enter the kingdom of God and Christs message to some churches in John’s Revelation vision was not very positive and even hostile in some cases.
Christ’s message to one church in particular if my memory serves me correctly was that He would spew it out of His mouth.
Concerning the rainbow churches and multiculturalism.
The Apostle Paul did not travel around to Athens and Corinth and Ephesus declaring you guys need more Vandals and Egyptians here! And why doesn’t everyone accept homosexuals?
That was NOT the message of the epistles of Paul.
Today we have an apostate Christian church in some cases and church related organizations influenced by liberal Democratic morality.
And it’s a big part of our problems.
8
This phenomenon has been already been analyzed by someone who knows what he’s talking about.
4
The decline of Christianity in the West is a death from a thousand small cuts. It was clear, even in the late 20th Century, that there was something seriously wrong with society. In one sense, this is nothing new. Christianity often appears to have one foot in the grave and seems to leap from one crisis to another. Vibrant Christian societies are the exception to the general rule. A decaying Christianity is often a symptom of a decadent culture, propelled by the energy of its past. The path forward lies, in part, by founding and organizing new organizations and, if possible, reforming old ones. These organizations step into the breach when the old order finally fades away.
3
Here are my predictions for how religion will develop in the US over the next few decades:
-Liberal Catholicism will eventually exhaust itself and the leadership of the church will start to get more conservative/trad-leaning. It will look more like the current leadership of the USCCB (Abp. Gomez, a conservative, is President, the bishop of the Anglo-Catholic Ordinariate created by Benedict XVI–which explicitly does not use the Novus Ordo Missal in favor of what is basically the TLM in English–is the head of the USCCB’s liturgy committee), than the crop of liberal US Cardinals Pope Francis has selected, all of whom are libs. In the meantime, the libs will push “reforms” but never go so far as to explicitly perform gay marriages or ordain womenpriests, which would provoke a schism. The size of the church will decline noticeably but it will remain the largest single denom. in the US, and basically everywhere else in the West and Latin America, due to the fractured nature of Protestantism.
-The main conflict within the RCC decades from now will be trads v. charismatics, not trads v. libs. These are the main two growth areas in the Church, maybe the only growth areas. There are self-described “Tradismatics” out there who try to balance liturgy with speaking in tongues, but its a small niche and the friction between the two tendencies is obvious.
-Liberal Protestantism will basically die out and the mainline denoms might merge.
-Conservative variants of traditional Protestant denoms will also decline, like the LCMS and the PCA; the distinctions between different protestant traditions being meaningless to all but a small niche of intellectual types. “Calvinists” in 2022 exist only online and maybe in a few graduate programs. Normies are conditioned to church-hopping and view the traditional denominations are interchangeable.
-Protestantism will instead be characterized by low-church, Baptist/non-denominational congregations. Many if not most of these churches will be charismatic/Pentecostal. Others will be low-church but entirely anti-charismatic (i.e. John MacArthur). Others will be somewhere in the middle.
-The prevalence of both Pentecostalism and the lack of centralized authority will lead to some of these churches developing into Mormon-ish offshoots of Christianity that introduce novel doctrines, or even new scriptures, to the point that they will become non-Christian.
-In the immediate future being associated with a conservative Christian denom, including the RCC, will be a social handicap. Big corporations will not want to hire “bigots”. This really isn’t a prediction, as its already going on. I think the reason why Amy Coney Barret and David French adopted African children was because BigLaw firms were adverse to hiring Evangelicals/Catholics, and having a Black kid was a way for a potential hire to balance things out.
-Islam’s growth in the US and Western Europe will be entirely fueled by off the boat immigrants. Few natives will convert and there will a high attrition rate of second/third generation immigrants who leave the faith.
10
1
If the gays and the chosen people are any indication, it’s actually more effective to have a small, radical contingent that can efectively organize and infiltrate institutions than a plurality of milquetaost people.
Grill Americans are mostly useless even when they agree with us, except for the small portion that can be radicalized.
9
Chet Rollins: “So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.” Revelations 3:16
1
Chet, in case my meaning is unclear (which upon later reading I realize it might be) I am trying to demonstrate that Scripture confirms what you wrote. Zero criticism implied, but rather confirmation.
1
Loved this show. Spot on. I’m hopeful that legacy Christians — the descendants of Christendom — return to our Monarch by the hundreds of millions. Probably not in my life time and it won’t be peaceful. But it is necessary. There can be no Christian church, in the long term, without Christians nations (bloodlines/races) with a corresponding state that supports that goal. The Christian reconquest of Iberia (~710 to 1492) from the Muslims is the role model, even if it takes seven centuries.
7
A re-Christianization of the West is nowhere near a close reality. When it does occur it will be from a small remnant living in a new dark ages. It is at that point population growth will begin after a nadir of population, as will a restoration of civilization and science.
The imperial decline of the United States and its puppet states known collectively as Western Europe are all part of this great cycle. We have a long way to the bottom, and most people still don’t recognize the danger signals. It can still be saved but the chances of that grow dimmer by the month.
Considering that just about every large denominations are having losing people, especially the young, and their publicly well-known corruption, and don’t know if they’re in the position to do anything constructive. For example, most Southern Baptists will repeat some mantra an “elder” told them to parrot, and really aren’t capable of seeing the problem much less recognizing it.
It wouldn’t surprise me that in some post West world, the various Orthodox Churches will re-Christianize the West. They seem to be the most solid and viable with a resolute direction right now..
8
Every Orthodox Church I’ve seen is set up as a colony. Total refusal to adopt the local culture, language etc. Zero efforts at evangelism. Their nationalist tendencies keep them away from Globohomo but also thwart them from being Christian towards outsiders.
The neighborhood I grew up in is now Armenian Orthodox. Even their architecture is in-your-face anti-American.
7
Gunner Q: There was always an ethnic aspect to the split between the Western and Eastern branches of Christianity. Some excellent insight into this in the defunct but still archived blog “FaithandHeritage.com” which defends both Protestant Christianity and kinism.
1
I don’t think there is a tremendous difference between what the Soviet Union did to the Orthodox Church and what the United States has done with Christianity in general. Both absorbed the church and turned it into an agent of the State, although in the early days of the USSR there was violence that has not come to the United States yet (I think the totalitarians who run this country will focus more on individuals than organizations for the foreseeable future). American churches, with courageous exceptions, basically are public schools now–hotbeds of indoctrination and propaganda. As you mentioned, the focus for the moment is on bringing White Christians to heel, because, reasons.
The United States is an end stage empire, though. There has been a tendency of past totalitarian states, including the aforementioned Soviet Union, to re-embrace past institutions like religion as the unraveling begins. That may happen here.
10
I’ve been saying for a while now that a smart Apparat — please note the caveat — would embrace all the old symbols, as a way of papering over the fractures with a veneer of unity. All revolutionary movements have to create their own unifying symbols (say what you will about what the Soviet hammer and sickle stands for, it’s a hell of a piece of iconography).
But the clowns who run AINO are all nihilists; they’re physically incapable of creating anything. So what they should do, and I think will do, is try to repurpose the old symbolism. Whatever freaky fossil the Dems roll out in 2024 will wave the flag, support the troops, thank-you-for-your-service harder than Toby Keith on a three day bender. I’d wager long money they’ll also get “religion,” too. They just sent up a trial balloon about it, in fact, with the Archbishop of San Francisco “denying” Nancy Pelosi communion re: Abortion.
Oh, really? You’re just noticing that now? She’s been completely consistent on that for 50 years. In other words, it’s a stunt — let’s see if we can’t lay the groundwork for our Elites to find religion in a physical “worship” space, an official American Religion (as opposed to Dinduism, which has been the unofficial state religion since the first time Nancy was elected to Congress).
8
It would be the right move but that faction is not in control. As it is, you will be expected to stand for the Rainbow Ol’ Glory at the XPA golf tournament while LIFT EVERY NATION AND SING is belted out, and, if you must celebrate at all, a Holiday creche complete with Three Wise Non-Binaries with a pansexual in the manger.
I’m glad, really, because I have a VERY time celebrating the Fourth with friends and family these days.
1
Absorbing not the same as repression. The church thrived in the Communist block, albeit underground. The people clung to it as they experienced the horrors of communism. Poland is a very good example. Even when still officially communist, they could not resist the Pope visiting and saying mass to a million+ believers. I’ve never thought of the church in the USSR as being an agent of the State, rather an alternative to the secular government. But I’m not a scholar in that area.
4
As Russia appeared on the ropes in 43/44, Stalin readily absorbed the Orthodox Church into the State. The Patriarch more or less was a KGB functionary who paid lip service to Christianity. When Kerensky died in the United States, not a single Russian Orthodox Church on American soil would give him last rites or a funeral service, and he wasn’t even a Marxist although he was blamed for the corruption of Christianity even still. Kerensky had to find a Moscow-friendly church in London. That schism between the collaborating Russian Orthodox and its American counterpart lasted until Putin.
1
So one man in Communist enthrall constituted the entire Orthodox Church? Hell, today we have a Pope Francis. Does that mean the entire Catholic Church is now some budding socialist-homosexual enclave? One man is just that, a man, not the church per se.
1
Jack Dobson: Excellent insight. And, forgive me for noticing, but the inherent antagonism to Christianity in both the former USSR and the former USA – while couched in terms of political philosophy – in reality sprang from the same ethnic and religious roots. Any history of who challenged early American state laws regarding religious oaths and requirements for office holders, or “blue laws,” or school prayer, demonstrates this decisively. Same as any slight delving into the ethnic background of the most militant ‘atheists.’
5
The Welsh really have wrecked Christianity, haven’t they?
2
Don’t you mean neo-Palestinians?
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My wife and I moved south a few months ago. We were already in the process of withdrawing from our liberal Presbyterian USA church – could not take the politics, heresies, and covid bs any longer.
In the south, we have visited a number of conservative bible-based churches which are great. Missouri Synod Lutherans, Presbyterian Church in America and ECO Presbyterian churches. There is even an Anglican Province of America church nearby that still uses the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer for worship.
The difference in the community is noticeable.
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Enoch Cade has related his experience with the Russian Orthodox church in his city down South. Maybe worth adding to your search. Russian Orthodoxy suffered a lot of tribulation with the advent of communism in the homeland, and perhaps experiencing such persecution had a long-run beneficial effect on the doctrine and practice.
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Somebody should produce a study showing where each denomination falls on the politcal spectrum. If accurate, it would save many people a lot of time and trouble.
Here in Europe especially Britain Christianity has been in decline since 1918. The First World War fatally holed the good ship Christianity below the waterline. Many who lost fathers,sons,brothers,uncles and nephews asked themselves why a good all merciful God would have permitted the horrors of the trenches and the slaughter on an industrial scale. Mothers,wives could not come up with anything faintly resembling a satisfactory answer. Google The Somme and Verdun,look at the images of the trenches,the vast ocean of mud,the landscape dotted with blackened stumps of trees. Soldiers with that ‘thousand yard stare’ poison gas attacks, deliberate attacks on civilian populations and 24 hour artillery bombardments and you’ll will see why Christianity started to die in Europe.
In Europe,particularly Germany in the early to middle 19th century there arose the distinct feeling that Christianity had become weak, wishy-washy and uninspiring and this had caused a social and cultural malaise. To counteract this, intellectuals tried to reintroduce the old Greek Gods and Greek heroes only to realise that Zeus,Apollo were as dead as the dinosaurs and no amount of pushing the Greek world upon the public would work.
I strongly,and yes,sadly fear that we won’t see any sort of return to Christianity in Europe.
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I wonder how many Christians actually read that Bible, much less study it. People seriously expect God to protect them as they do the most unbiblical and ungodly things. My mother in law did that: her youngest sone was born with heart problems and when he passed – she threw her morals and faith out the window. In her case it was just as well, she was one of the holier than though types. Without religion to abuse she actually became a tolerable woman for awhile… and then progressive femcnut shitlib wokism came along and she jumped right aboard and became an obnoxious cankle blossom again – and that destroyed what was left of her family. Now she hangs out with a coven of angry old hens and I have told the wife she is not welcome in my house anymore. Say what you want about faith and christianity and the bible as an atheist or agnostic… but the bible is bang on the money about queers and contentious women.
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It may be true that lots of people figured God was the kind of guy who would make every day wonderful – a sort of 20th century Prosperity Gospel, teleported to the UK from Alabama, I guess – but I never had much sympathy for that viewpoint. Sympathy for the suffering, of course, which is profound. But those villages in England who lost every young man aged 18-30 are not the first villages to be so afflicted, neither will they be the last.
But it does seem that a people who obviously never thought about the problem of evil until it landed with a thud on their own doorstep decided that, rather than consult a couple thousand years of Christian thinking on the matter, they would throw the culture and belief of 50 generations of their forefathers overboard, instead.
Maybe that proves the rot of democracy goes back a little further than the 1960s.
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Superb post. As dreadful as the Great War undoubtedly was, does anybody imagine it was as horrific as the Black Death? Yet the latter apparently occasioned no crisis in Christianity, let alone its demise.
The World Wars are surely a partial explanation for Christianity’s disappearnace in its homeland, but only partial. Other more important forces are at work.
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Some earlier, trumpton I think, suggested it was the proliferation of mass media including film starting with WWI. Sounds quite plausible.
2
Why does God allow “bad things” to happen to “good people” is a tell of sorts for a child-like understanding of God. Not much can be said to those people, except that they were raised with a fragile and very breakable understanding in their faith. Such people are like leaves in the wind, they blow hither and yawn. To such, I can only recommend more study—say starting with the book of Job, under a good and experienced pastor.
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“Not much can be said to those people. . .”
Too flippant. I think they’re waiting for a half-way decent answer that isn’t some wordy blather about the gift of free will, mysterious ways, or something.
“The more words you speak, the less they mean. So what good are they?”
Ecclesiastes 6:11
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The book of Job has the official “answer”. God’s reasons/reasoning is unknowable and that is the Word. Therefore faith comes in and must be relied upon. The reason these “believers” have this question is that they never developed an mature understanding beyond that of a child, i.e., that God is like a powerful parent that will protect them from all evil and the invariable mishaps of life.
Free will is not a “gift”. Your understanding is faulty if you believe that. Free will is an essential part of man and the basis for belief/faith. Without free will there is no belief—because belief encompasses the possibility of “non-belief”. One is not possible without the other. Nor is either one meaningful without the other.
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Some people have no interest in God’s willingness to allow abject horrors to happen, do not take solace in knowing “Oh it will all make sense one day” while you watch true suffering and slaughter. I say this as someone who fully supports, this as the basis of Western Civilization. That isn’t a child like understanding, that is a realistic human desire to question, Job’s trials or not.
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What’s really odd is how that type of person never asks himself why he allows bad things to happen to other people. Of course answering that question answers the other question, which is probably why it’s never asked.
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Stephanie G: Blaming God for the moral failings and evil choices and actions of men is merely another iteration of “MY God wouldn’t do ‘x’.” Expecting the world to be both rational and moral is to ignore human nature. People aren’t looking for genuine faith, they are looking for magic answers and cures. Incantations to create paradise on earth. Except humanity is flawed and always has been. People have individual will and have always exercised it. The constraints that used to be imposed by community and faith have been discarded and Clown World is the result. War and slaughter and death and despair is not God’s work, it is Man’s.
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Really, the question is, “why doesn’t God do more than issue commands to prevent men from doing evil?” Or, “why is God’s attempt to prevent evil limited to merely having a law against it?” It really clears up the situation to ask it this way.
1
My understanding–and correct me if I’m wrong–is that, while belief in God is declining in Old Europe, it is holding relatively firm in AINO. (Canada, New Zealand, Australia, I do not know.) However, in AINO church attendance is certainly in decline. This suggests to me that people in AINO who used to attend churce, now worship privately, or in small groups of likeminded souls. Christianity, in other words, has separated from the Church.
My personal situation reflects this. Prior to the Covid Captivity, I attended a Methodist church regularly. Imposition of the mask, however, put the kibosh on that. Simultaneously with this development, the minister resigned and was replaced by a younger guy who occasionally brings in a negro BLM activist to harangue the overwhelmingly white congregation. Suffice it to say, I haven’t returned, nor will I. I suspect my situation is anything but unique.
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Ostei: I believe there is a decline in Christian belief, not merely church attendance, in AINO. A significant part of this is population replacement, of course. Add in the destruction of the nuclear family and the church’s embrace of popular culture to attract the crowds, and of course sleeping in on Sunday seems more appealing.
We stopped attending our Episcopal church years ago when it pushed women ‘priestesses’ after initially standing firm against homosexuality. We tried various other churches, both independent and denominational, but really never felt any of them were ultimately more than any other social group or club sharing the same old pabulum. Love and mercy without righteousness and justice are mere sentiment. Once again, “Who decides?” and “What are we?”
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Ever looked at the Eastern Orthodox Church?
I’m asking for a friend.
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Bilejones: I’ve visited a number of them here and abroad and they are beautiful, but from a very different cultural tradition. And I seriously doubt my husband would be on board.
3g4me, where do you place yourself in the Catholic-Protestant divide? Can you give your thoughts on why you are Catholic or Protestant?
You are one of the few Christians whom I find credible and I am curious.
Line: Thank you for your trust in my credibility. I am definitely a Protestant, but I really don’t fit into one single category. I find the historical structure of the catholic (deliberate small c for traditional meaning of universal rather than modern sectarian definition) Christian faith very appealing. The multiple traditional daily prayers or ‘hours,’ the feast and holy days of the liturgical calendar, various cultural traditions transmuted into religious ones – all these seem, to me, to give a very logical structure and order to individual and social life. I don’t observe most of these, but I that’s due to ignorance and modern exigencies. Let’s just say I see a real value in them for daily human life.
At the same time, however, I find much of the structure of the modern Catholic church to be very much man-made, rather than biblically ordained. I am not a Catholic and intend no offense to any here (my husband was baptized Catholic as a baby and my older son has gone through the Catholic ordinariate classes). My independence of thought leads me to the ‘sola scriptura’ side, but I readily recognize my ignorance of so much of church history and theology and am willing to consider other viewpoints.
At its heart, my belief is based on personal experience and grace – believe me, I was the original skeptic. And even when it comes to religious traditions or rules, they have to pass the smell test for me. If one believes (as I do) that the human capacity for reason, such as it is, comes from God, then I hesitate to ascribe irrational things to Him. Not to say I understand everything or ever could as a mere human, but still most things need to make sense. I am most comfortable with the traditional and historic Anglican understanding of the three-legged stool – Scripture, tradition, and reason. (Yes, I know Henry VIII wasn’t motivated by these things, but God makes use of many and can turn to good that which was intended for evil.)
As an example – the historical Christian practice (still followed by Juice and I believe Mohammedans) of ‘rest’ on the chosen day of the week. Certainly when life consisted of heavy physical labor to survive, one day a week to just sit and rest was a blessing. I don’t think Sunday ought to be devoted to mammon and shopping – but the other habits I’ve read of where children had/have to sit quietly and sedately for the day, as well as modern orthodox Juice equating the flick of a light switch or turning an engine key to the historic labor of laying and starting a fire) seem to me more form than function. I separate faith from dogma.
I mentioned in another comment the old website FaithandHeritage.com. I don’t agree with everything they wrote ( I believe many of the principle writers were Dutch Reformed?) but their posts on race and culture, and particularly the cultural roots of modern Protestant Christianity were absolutely excellent (the posts on “Ethno-Christology).
I really don’t take a side in so many doctrinal disputations – some arguments make more sense to me than others, but I don’t see the point in fracturing over so many of them. If someone believes in Christ and the Bible, regardless of denomination, then I accept them as a fellow Christian. I suppose I wouldn’t make a good religious zealot!
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Thank you. When “Faith and Heritage” was active I was a regular reader as I was with “The Thinking Housewife.” Gosh, that’s 10+ years ago. I found both by reading Laurence Auster’s blog.
I hope your views become more influencial among Christians.
The Methodist Church, interestingly given its Woke/Marxist leadership, is in the midst of a schism and it looks like the traditionalists have the whip hand. This is in no small part due to individual congregations owning their own property. The Woke/Marxists, of course, have insisted on keeping the name so they can wear the skinsuit until it disappears altogether. It is an interesting study in how to combat this evil across the board but the final chapter hardly has been written because certainly the tax authorities will be turned on the traditional Methodist majority.
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That’s right. I remember several years ago the Methodist council shot down heauxmeaux becoming preachers. That was a proud and glorious day for the church.
i’m an agnostic so take what I say with a grain of salt. My view is that if you’re a pastor – speak from the heart and be sincere. Like it reminds me of the king of the hill episode where Hank says “you’re not making Christianity any better but you are making rock music worse .”
It’s one of those things where if you’re trying to write a book and you have an idea of what you want to write and try to fit everything through that square peg – you might not like what you end up with. Or going on vacation with a grocery list of things to do – you’re not going to end up with a vacation but basically all the stresses of day to day life without all the comforts of home.
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What a spectacular post, Z. It is a rather big piece of meat to tear into with only an hour for your presentation. There is a lot going on here.
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One of your best, Zman.
Get to a certain age and you think “maybe I’ll go back home to my faith now that I’m older and wiser”….only to discover it’s turned to ashes in your absence.
Also: Every time I hear “diversity is our strength!!!”, I remind myself God destroyed the Tower of Babel for a reason.
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Church and denomination splits are going to keep happening. Even to the Catholic Church eventually.
The pattern that will keep repeating:
Church splits between the traditional bible-based and the woke.
The lefty church goes off to die a slow death because why bother? If I want to worship the state and celebrate homos, I could stay home and watch MSNBC.
The bible-based church grows quickly until the woke types start causing trouble – rinse and repeat.
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Maxda: In church as elsewhere – White people urgently need to relearn social exclusion and shunning. The genetic aberrations and spiteful mutants used to be marginalized; now the putatively normal abandon everything to them and start anew . . . again and again and again. Spandrel’s bio-Leninism or Ed Dunning’s mouse utopia – our social environment is killing us.
Without a Christian moral compass or historical cultural traditions (Zman’s “who decides”) White people have lost their moorings. Mengele was not evil because he was a notsee, but because he had no moral limitations regarding medicine and ‘science.’ Yet today those who rent out women’s wombs or chemically and physically mutilate children’s bodies are celebrated.
Yet tell your average Christian that you oppose all reproductive technology and they mourn that you somehow oppose motherhood. Story at Daily Mail today about a mother of multiples who just bore her daughter’s child for her and I’m supposed to feel tugging on my heartstrings, instead of visceral disgust.
Either humans are mere biological animals – mammals like any other – or we are somehow set apart. If a cockroach is a rat is a dog is a boy, then medical experimentation on people (within limitations of pain and/or with the goal of ‘science’) is generally considered ethical.
Those who revere ‘science’ claim what sets us apart is language or use of tools, although there is increasing evidence of the same among various other species. Christians like myself believe there is a soul. Dissidents who agree man is more than merely homo economicus also need to agree man is more than merely an amalgamation of cells. If there is human sentience and a human spirit, even if we disagree on its origins, it has been debauched and desecrated.
The vital question inherent in “Who decides?” is “Who and what are we?” If you waffle in your answer regarding the truth of race, sex, or the biological hierarchy created by God (or by happenstance for those who consider religious belief mere superstition), then you follow Dostoevsky’s conclusion that without God, all things are permissible. I do not concur, and I will not comply. There are limits, and they are knowable and morally justifiable. Ultimately, God will not be mocked.
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Hard to say what the answer is. Canada has even less Christian influence. It is somewhat similar to what KL described. (I am ignorant about Catholicism so I won’t talk about them here).
There are a handful of non-denominational / former Baptist churches around with conservative messages. They don’t have much influence on greater society, but more as clubs for White people with common sense (ie. not totally insane). These aren’t a bad thing.
There are also some Pentecostal / charismatic churches. Don’t know much about them except that they seem to be for mentally ill / insane people. Hey, better for low IQ rural White people to be jumping on the pews speaking in tongues than to be opioid addicts, so whatever.
There are also handfuls of other sects, Jehovas Witness, Mormons, and Mennonites around. Again nothing wrong with them but they don’t have the numbers to have much influence. Mennonites/Amish have a super high birth rate but such low starting numbers that it doesn’t matter much. I suspect they will be pushed out of Ontario over time due to development and land prices.
Finally there are the immigrant churches. This is where immigrants go to church, their kids almost never stay Christian and become assimilated anti white, godless, haters. These churches are transient and change ownership depending on which demographic is immigrating to white area.
These are fine but I don’t think they have the will or the numbers to change much. The good thing is that alot of them seem to have completely ignored the political process. That mega church guy is right, churches becoming too politically intertwined with the Right is just as bad as becoming intertwined with the Left. As the Americas naturally balkanizes, becoming disconnected from greater society and focusing on our own community is good.
Unfortunately it means the remaining churches appear to be small oases of sanity on a dying desert. I don’t know what the solutions are, but I’m not convinced it’s Christianity. That said it’s currently the only tool we have.
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The Mormon church recently renovated their temple located in DC. After remaining closed for several years due to covid and then the reconstruction, it is now open to the public before it’s upcoming “dedication”. Some friends who are members of the LDS faith walked through recently and told me that the only major difference they noticed is fact that the walls are now plastered with artwork displaying black families and mixed race couples.
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I can believe it. Seems that many mainstream denominations have “written off” their once White constituency and are in overdrive to replace them with the new population of minorities. Butt’s in pews are all that counts it seems—which is why I’m non-denominational.
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Mainline denominatins are part of the anti-white Power Structure. There’s really nothing more to it than that.
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Is that the one you can see from the Beltway? Where back in the day some wag spray-painted “Surrender Dorothy” on the side of the overpass? That was pretty funny, TBH.
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RoBG: I remember when that was under construction. We used to refer to it as Cinderella’s Castle or The Emerald City.
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Churches around here are flying pride and tranny flags. That tells me all I need to know.
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Churches should be separated from faith I think.
The church (in the various guises) as a function was to my mind essentially a pre-electonic media.
The church was in every village and town, broadcast the instruction messages to the population while clothed in the vestments of faith.
Particularly in Europe one can see that the church’s decline is correlated time wise with the increasing access to the TV/Print control paradigm, so was not really needed anymore and is withering away as the modern “religion” messaging is passed through media instead.
The TV and personalities are no different than priests and bishops of earlier incarnations in the pulpit every day at broadcast time..That modern churches ape the evil is not a surprise if one considers that it has never been about faith, but about managing populations. So it remains in a weakened role echoing the current control.
The faith part in some people survives, but it seems to me that the churches were really early media and should not be confused with a religious faith.
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The backstory to that is that for most of it’s history, the Mormon Church officially viewed Blacks as second-class citizens, on the reasoning that they had been cursed by God. Both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young defended the institution of slavery. Blacks could attend Church but were not allowed to join the Priesthood or enter the Temple.
It was only in 1978 that Church leadership announced that God had changed his mind about Blacks, and revealed that change to Church leadership: Blacks were now free to be full participants.
So it makes sense that the LDS Church is bending over backwards to display their “anti-racist” creds….
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The real Bill: The LDS leadership has been groveling for years now. Most of their converts are non-White – bringing lots of Mestizos and Samoans to Utah to marry their White daughters and erase their original sin of raycissm. Beyond sad. The Mormons I’ve known were generally solid people, but I can’t say their beliefs ever appealed to me.
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Ja, that was the old “Children of Ham” doctrine concerning blacks. When I was in college, Haverford to be specific, in the early 70s, some earnest young male Mormon missionaries visited the campus center. They got a lot of grief from the black students, as I recall.
To flee l’ennui – that’s the name of the game
We do it – the Universe does it
You can elaborate – there’s no need to complicate
The Everlasting Dissatisfaction keeps things in motion
That’s all there is to it – it’s all we ever need to know.
(to be forgotten is to be forgiven)
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That the plutocrats, kritocrats, kakistocrats, “democrats”, faucicrats, gate-o-crats and other schwab-o-crats are insufferable SOBs is by now a more than widely agreed upon opinion (in these circles, I mean); eventually we will have to move on from there and do something, or nothing.
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You somehow omitted the Kikeokrats.
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You have Andy Stanley and other megachurch pastors dead to rights. A couple of things to point out, these churches have been hammered by their long Covid shutdowns and are only running at about 40-50% of their pre Covid attendance levels. Stanley’s eight locations are probably only getting 15,000-16,000 per week now. Willow Creek Church in suburban Chicago recently announced they are laying off 30% of their staff. These churches all have names that either make them sound like a country club or they use a random action verb like “Embrace” or “Celebrate.”
Pastors like Stanley aren’t all that concerned about the attendance drop because they have already established themselves on the celebrity pastor circuit and make far more money from book and Bible Study sales than they do from their churches. These churches are entertainment driven instead of participatory worship driven. After a year plus of telling people it was ok to watch at home they have had a hard time convincing them to come back. Their response has been to up the entertainment level even further, earlier this year Stanley had his worship service open with their band playing a Led Zepplin medley. It would be good for this model of church to fail and fade away, but I fear for the societal impact if the people attending abandon the faith rather than find their way into solid churches. Pastoral quality has been declining rapidly, with the primary reason being most of the seminaries are as bad every other level of higher education.
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This LGBTQ+P is a shit-test. If they do not kick out all involved, they will have failed the shit-test. Even if they “win” the battle, the war will be lost. Everyone involved must be excommunicated. It’s the religious equivalent of conservatives who are only concerned with “yelling stop,” it is not enough. You must impose a large cost.
These LGBTQ+P don’t care about the religion. They care about themselves. Their sex lives and their anti-Christian so-called “lifestyle” are their primary focus. You don’t join a church so you change it to be more to your liking.
The church can either crush them or admit defeat.
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Sorry Barnard, I have no idea how this ended up being a reply to you.
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Tars: Not just the aggressively sexually confused – but also the parents. Of the handicapped, or severely allergic to PB, or whatever. “I’m terribly sorry your child suffers from ‘x.’ How disappointing you can’t conceive. How awful you suffer from addiction to ‘x.’ I understand it must be a burden – we each have our own, albeit some lesser and some greater. I can offer you sympathy, but not social compensation. Human society will not reformulate to best serve your personal interests and needs. Look not to man to make you ‘equal’ but to God for empathy and compassion and ultimate righteousness.
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It’s funny to me how so many people love to bear a cross, so long as that cross is paper mache and doesn’t actually weigh anything. Whether it’s a handicapped person or a PB allergy, they proclaim their cross loudly, but then expect everyone else to change so that carrying that cross is no real big deal and many cases, greatly benefits them over where they would be without the cross.
Take the T in LGBT. Why is it not “acceptable” to carry the very small and light cross of not being able to compete in amateur or professional sports? We’re not asking them to carry an enormous cross made of the densest wood and even this cross the size of a rosary is too much for them to bear.
You are absolutely correct. Plus, the moment you give in to one demand, everyone else starts making their demands and each new round of demands becomes ever larger and more disruptive.
We as a society need to re-learn to say “tough, get through it!” You want to live as your “authentic self,” it means you give up the right to compete as an athlete. It is a small price to pay.
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Good grief. Do you know how long it took Mayor Pete to learn to chestfeed?
Tested, he was! Strained to his very limits!
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I just watched a bit of Andy Stanley for the first time. What a joke. Says so much without saying anything. Very modern and unmasculine way of speaking, in that as an authority figure, he can’t make an authoritative statement (give any opinion / make any point) without spending 60 tedious seconds apologizing and qualifying the opinion. That cycle repeats for an entire sermon. 1,2,3. Pre-point qualifications. Brief point. Post-point apologetics.
Speakers are hyper-aware and intimidated by the societal spotlight on them. Pleading before the current values. They know that the values are feminine-driven now, so whether in speeches or interviews, the content of the talk amounts to: “I think X” for 5% of the talk.” And 95% of the rest is variants on, “But I’m still good and nice. I’m still good and nice. I’m still good and nice.”
Also there are truly anal retentive speakers. That may be what this guy’s deal is. All is lead up to the point. I guess he thinks because he’s an enthusiastic speaker, that he’s got you on the edge of your seat waiting for the big point. But everyone who’s not a complete moron is just bored to tears. Professional speakers are odd. The better they are at it, the more psychopathic they probably are. I think Z mentioned that last week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kORT_FYCpHU&t=1587s&ab_channel=AndyStanley
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More accurately, the more animated and theatrical public speakers are, the more psychopathic they probably are.
I have heard his sermons compared to TED Talks before, I agree and don’t think he would be offended by the comparison. Andy Stanley is the son of Charles Stanley who was a prominent pastor in Atlanta. He had a TV and radio ministry similar to what the Zman described starting in the 1970s. Andy just followed in his footsteps and took it to the next level. The last 10-15 years he has consistently moved left as the popular culture has demanded it. It is ridiculous to describe what he is promoting now as Christianity.
In college, we would watch Jimmy Swaggart, pre-scandal, for the comedy. He was very energetic and entertaining.
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If anybody’s looking for a solution to the human condition, the Creator gave you one:
White People.
Famine, pestilence, want, violence:
Buddy, we do it all. Even speed, or flight, or air conditioning.
We can’t eliminate these things, but, by gum, we sure do get a handle on them.
Waiting for the cavalry?
You were already sent.
You ARE the cavalry. So get to it.
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Nothing new in this article, Z-man. We KNOW the demographic catastrophe was all engineered with primarily 2 basic steps:
1) Transfer TRILLIONS of dollars from family-formers to incompetents, idiots, and criminals.
2) Create feminism to explode marriage and teach women it’s better to double the labor force, pay taxes, and decrease wages than to take care of kids.
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The fundamental corrosion of feminism is that it teaches young woman that marriage is a competition rather than a union. Woman now marry for reasons of economic security (enforced by divorce laws) and the husband is just a vehicle for this journey to economic independence. Young men are figuring this out now and the result is that most woman (even the few remaining good ones) get treated like whores rather than wife material. This vicious cycle is another factor in declining fertility.
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It’s pretty telling that the system has been configured to heavily incentivize one party to break the marital contract to their great benefit.
Somehow fixing that would be a great start in moving back to a healthier culture and society.
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https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2022/06/in-america-but-not-of-america these folks are reproducing . they have some issues , but they are a ongoing concern. there are things to learn here.
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Faith is part of positive identity. Skepticism would be part of negative identity. Multi-faith, like multi-culture, is no identity.
The strange part, on the surface, is that faith by definition is unproven. So positive identity would also be, in part, unproven. But I suppose that would be the aspirational part. The creative part that by will changes conditions.
I guess that’s lefty’s opening, the aspirational and the need to believe, which righty has neglected in recent decades. Which also seems to be taking the initiative rather than passively waiting for the other side to piss the public off. I’d also guess that’s why lefty had reputation as the good guys for so long. They had vision, however twisted, for the future that went above the practical.
Or something like that, off the top of my head.
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Denominational splits are nothing new. I believe the first wave of them happened around the time of the War of Northern Aggression, when many (perhaps all?) American denominations split over the issue of slavery.
The Presbyterian church split into two main factions, which today are known as PCA and PCUSA. PCUSA is the liberal, gay-lifestyle-affirming, gay-ordaining branch, five times as big as the PCA, but declining in membership.
What it means for a church to affirm and embrace woke liberal values, of course, is that they are choosing to ignore the plain words of both the Old and New Testaments. Affirming radical feminism means ignoring the clear New Testament mandate for male headship; and embracing homosexuality requires ignoring numerous passages in both the Old and New Testaments which unequivocally condemn it.
And yet, these liberal denominations all continue to affirm the Bible as God’s inspired word. How they can claim that, yet also ignore those parts of it they don’t like, has never been clear to me.
If you truly believe that the Bible was inspired (“breathed-in” in the original NT Greek) by the God who created everything— who spoke the entire Universe into being!— wouldn’t the logical response be to try and follow ALL of it? And not— whenever the latest progressive cultural beliefs collide with Biblical injunctions— rush to ditch what God said, and embrace progressive dogma?
Be that as it may, liberal denominations have no problem doing exactly that: embracing and affirming the full range of progressive beliefs and causes: radical feminism, anti-White “anti-racism”, biological egalitarianism, gay (and now “trans”) rights, “social justice” and “equity”, “hate speech” laws which effectively negate the 1st Amendment.
So when we’re considering the collision of values between the Church and liberal democracy, I think it’s helpful to make a distinction: between ‘woke’ denominations and ‘traditional’ denominations.
The woke congregations will have no problem abandoning traditional Christian values and embracing liberal/progressive democratic values; for the most part they already have.
It’s only those denominations and congregations that take the Bible seriously, and hold to traditional values, that will rightly see the values of liberal democracy as opposing and threatening their way of life.
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Churches around here are flying pride and tranny flags. That tells me all I need to know.
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Where is around here? What denominations?
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I have Unitarian and Mennonite hives that are both flying the alphabet soup flags within blocks of me.
This is on the city line of a blue zoo in western NY.
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Not Eau Claire.
Please, gods, not the most gorgeous place in all creation.
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St. Johnsville?
You must live in a Blue s***hole. Here in the rural South there are no faggot flags flying on the churches.The
BTW, the best “conservative” TV show on the air Tuesday and Thursday nights is not “Tucker” it is “Flashpoint”. These guys(the four regulars are all pastors)are rock hard conservatives and one, Lance Wallnau , is as knowledgeable and based as they come.
Watch it if you dare.
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It is the mainline denominations in anything larger than a small cities. I doubt there is a Congregational Church in a town of more than 100k that isn’t flying the alphabet soup flag. I am in a red state in the Midwest and they fly it here.
Congregational, ELCA, and Episcopalians are among the worst.
1
Do they discuss racial differences? If not, they will lose regardless of how rock hard their conservatism is. It’s all been tried before and failed. That’s why we are where we are now. Aside from the defence of the 2A, conservatives have done nothing but lose.
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Frankly I don’t see any hope for Christianity unless they do something like “Christianity 2.0: Screw the meek.” Nietzsche was on to something with the idea of slave morality. You make the traits of losers into moral virtues in order to attract all the resentful peasants under one banner to overthrow the strong, but the problem for Christianity is that they got outplayed by leftism which had an even bigger tent by adding the kinds of perverts that the Christians couldn’t tolerate. Now they’re trying to play catch-up by including the perverts as well, but that just makes Christianity another flavor of leftism.
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Satan is real. After last night’s tv programming, I’m starting to believe it.
https://youtu.be/Jefl9jdOfpY
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Yes, He is.
“Our J6 coverage tonight brought to you by Pfizer…”
Wait, you thought the Antichrist was a man?!
4
It is interesting, is it not, that the 3 main religious factions in the USA (Orthodoxy is an ethnic niche for grandparents and Episcopalians angry about women bishops but who don’t want to become papists) each is tasked with promoting one element of our doom:
Catholics: mass immigration
Mainline prots: globohomo
Evangelical prots: Zionism
Of course, there are overlaps, but as I say, each seems to specialize in one strand.
Now, the comeback is “But… they have been infiltrated and subverted from within.” Well, if that’s true, then that shows they cannot and never were able to “protect society” or whatever it is that conservatives think their role is.
So, Christianity is either a (presumably, Jewish) weapon of destruction itself, OR is incapable of defending society from such weapons.
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Excellent observation regarding the trichotomy. Once you point it out, it almost seems like a division of labor, although I doubt that it was consciously planned.
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I attend a Latin Mass and although we are a small congregation, I can tell you that we – including our priest – recognize the tribe for what they are, the people of the lie.
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First of all, you are an idiot.
Second of all, it is not the role of religion to “protect society.” The role of religion is render due worship and service to God.
Third of all, the rules of society are not something posited by men. Society has a form of its own, which is actualized by men living by natural virtue. Christianity assists with this and even commands it, but that is not the reason for its existence.
Fourth of all, the rot that exists, either in the Church or in society, is in each case cause by men not living up to the standard, either natural or divine as the case may be.
Gay marriage and stripping religion from public schools were not 50% plus 1, they were 5-4 affairs that never had anything like popular support. Even one of the most progressive states in the US, California, strongly voted against gay marriage.
Quite a bit of the evil of the last 77 years came from the bench overturning what voters thought. Really, we have FDR to thank for this (not to mention the tribe’s influence in the court). There is a reason all this stuff started in the post war period. By the time he died, he had appointed the entire supreme court and probably thousands of federal judges. Their rulings became classwork in law school. Their progressive legal theories basically took over law schools. They had many thousands of clerks they heavily influenced. The average bar association in the US is probably more progressive than the average state university in the US.
There is a reason child molesters can get any lawyer they can afford or even free private defense lawyers who volunteer for them and Chris Cantwell and his ilk either can’t get a lawyer at all or they end up with a clown with no real standing in the legal “community” Cantwell talked about that on his “show” at the time. He said he called a lot of lawyers, lawyers who represented truly awful people, but who would not represent him at any price.
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Christ was not well-known for his self defense. He prayed for those murdering him. Good thing he came back to life tho!
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Z, Trump was brought up in a Presbyterian family. (Shudder.)