313 thoughts on “The Future Christian”

1. “Baring a cataclysm that derails modernity, institutional churches are doomed. That will leave the believers to fend for themselves as ad hoc communities.” In other words, Christianity will have to return to what it was supposed to be all along: communities of worshippers, not organisations and hierarchies. Yashua never mentioned anything about churches. The word “ekklesia” meant those who were faithful to him, not buildings and priests. In fact, he never wanted to create a new religion at all.

2. Hey ZMan, perhaps you should read this:

   https://tinyurl.com/4xt79ye5

   Also, what you didn’t mention is that among white nationalists, a large number reject Christianity as not authentically white. After all, it worships this guy who was one of (((them))), you know. Better to identify with Norse gods, yggdrasil, etc. I would really like your take on that.

   And as one of the few Tribe members following your blog (and sympathetic to most of what you say), you might want to cool it a bit–there are a lot of us who could be allies.

   • Pretend not to notice who is almost universally behind every anti-White agenda in the hope of retaining the alleged support of a handful of based jews? That is a bargain on par with trading an international arms dealer for a gangly lesbian basketball player.

3. The Church needs to go back to the catacombs for a while. The sheep will be separated from the goats.

4. The type of Christianity, that’s most likely to survive, is the one, that’s already thriving today – Amish, Mennonites, even Mormons (if you consider them Christian) etc. The more conservative it is, the higher the chance of survival. Same for Jews, the orthodox sects will become majority, as the secular ones disappear. In the meantime, the majority of people will fall for various neo-gnostic woke movements and Gaia worship cults until some new fundamentalist religion gets codified and installed by the elites.

   • don’t forget pope francis’s most hated , “rigid” trad Catholics. we’re a very small part of the flock , but he never misses an opportunity to diss us . doesn’t matter to me , we’ve had bad popes before. The young families who are trad or latin mass tdo tend to have a pack o’ kids. but we are still a relatively small part of the overall church .

5. Andrew shue can’t jack shit about anything
   If he gets another girl then coal burner gets kicked his ass with alimony
   Whatever he does coal burner get everything

   Are white women are all the coal burning backstabbing whore waiting the right moment to betray their kins?

   • @Hamato

     I recommend you re-read your response (typed above), OUT LOUD, to yourself, before pressing “post comment.”

     My vain attempts at Swahili would make more sense than whatever it is you just attempted to communicate using –I think– English.

   • Someone get turned down for a date?

   • senator fetterman? is that you?

6. This fight will be spiritual and it’s not the Catholic Church’s first rodeo. New Hampshire’s attendance numbers paint a bleak picture but to see it in person you realize an important aspect to this problem. Attendance is down, but those who are attending are families with lots of children. A future full of young families in a church the might of the Roman Empire couldn’t kill is a good future to have.

   • ave Maria . my friend

7. Organized Christianity will survive for many years. Single mothers need a place to meet financially solvent single men and need an institution that will direct those men to marry single mothers.

   Israel also needs an unquestioning base of gentile support.

   As for real Christians, the future isn’t all that rosey. There will always be a group of real Christians. The question becomes whether they will have the numbers and strength of their convictions to be an important cultural force and able to withstand persecution. After the way few churches of any type fought back and refused to go along with the COVID tyranny, that looks doubtful.

   • Who said that christians had to be a “cultural force”? Yashua said “Wherever a few are gathered together in my name”, not “Where enough are gathered to be able to change the culture”.

8. Great post Zman. Although I’m an American and a practicing Orthodox Christian (my family attends church on a weekly basis, my kids attend Catholic school, etc.), I’m quite pessimistic about the survival of Christianity in the West. I see its survival lying in Russia. I don’t argue this from a LARPy or “based” Russia perspective. I simply think that it will only survive with state support and the Russian state and its people are not predispositioned towards collective suicide. Christianity can clearly survive in this environment so it will adapt.

   • The Russo-orthos survived some of the worst persecution ishort of nuclear annihilation; still there. Christianity will survive, it’s een through much worse trials amd tribulations than the onslaught of atheism, gays, and trannies. But the institutional aspect is going kaput. I don’t think the e-christian thing currently fashionable with this side will go on forever, but the seed is there nonetheless.

9. The churches that resist evil will survive, and the West with them.

   If no churches or Christians resist evil then the meek will inherit the gulag.

10. ” Of course, the Catholic church long ago succumbed to the pink mafia that took over the clergy.”

    A popular view, but inaccurate. The Church remains officially anti-homo, but only as part of the hiding in plain sight tactic that has succeeded for centuries. “He’s not a homo, he’s a priest!” The Church’s “timeless” teachings on sex and marriage were, in fact, cobbled together by women-and-marriage hating homos in the 1930s, led by Jacques Maritain. Hence, no divorce, no birth control, and a church run by “celibate” clergy. Gotta keep those filthy breeders in line!

    Vatican II is another popular target, but isn’t it interesting that they changed everything BUT the teaching on marriage and family? Due to the personal intervention of Paul VI, who later reaffirmed the ban on contraception. He and his advisors, all disciples of Maritain.

    Today, the Church is full of homos, but the more “conservative” the priest, the more likely he is to be gay; conservatism is their cover story. For example, Cardinal Burke, Steve Bannon’s pal and leader of the “conservative” cardinals.

    https://tictocministries.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/raymondburke_crossdressing_14_hq.jpg

    “Trad Queen Story Hour: Papa Francesco vs. Steve Bannon’s Army of Cath-Boys”
    https://counter-currents.com/2020/06/papa-francesco-vs-steve-bannon/

    • If all they’re (allegedly “conservative” homo priests) are doing is going through the motions of orthodox Catholicism in order to maintain their cover while engaging in perversion and degeneracy in their private life, then they are every bit as abominable as the “loud and proud” priests who actually run the joint under the heretic Pope Francis. Sorry, no sale. Roman Catholicism is overrun with homos and of no real help to our thing.

    • James, I am headstrong Catholic and attend both Latin Masses at the SSPX and N.O. masses (not the clown type) at my local parish. It is abundantly clear that the San Gallen Mafia (this is the gay mafia Z-man speaks about) has taken control of Rome by office.
      Yes the Church’s Dogma has not fallen, but many of it’s leaders have.
      By the way I am NOT a Sedevacantist, but you can call me a Benevacantis (however this term is not right as Benedict is still Pope.
      https://www.barnhardt.biz/the-bergoglian-antipapcy/

      PS: You are wrong about Burke being gay. Very wrong. He is one of the better US Cardinals and a defender of the faith (one of four the Dubia Cardinals”. That picture you link is not one of a Cardinal dressing gay, but instead a Cardinal dressing in red (as they do) with traditional Dominican celebratory outfit.

      • @PatS
        Your observations are astute and spot-on.
        Thank you for sharing.

        Most mainline Protestants (still protesting, eh?!) are unfamiliar with what REALLy has been happening inside The Church (note use of capital letters to define the one true church).

        And that’s OK. They have their own issues. 🙂

        Yes: Benedict XVI is still the one and only living pope, and Jorge is a NWO interloper designed to slaughter souls and schism people.

        I must however disagree with you about Burke. He’s a good-for-nothing, unfortunately.

        As Miss Barnhardt has aptly pointed out on more than one occasion, all Burke has to do is have someone hold an iPhone up, press record, and say that “significant irregularities wirh the resignation of Benedict XVI have been found, and further investigation is required.”
        Then send that video in an email to all the major Remnant Catholic outlets, plus Twitter.

        Yet he continues to do nothing.

        Which makes him worse than useless in my opinion.

        Cardinal Vigano is the ONLY one who is at least speaking out and telling the Truth, at great risk to himself.

        Yet Burke sits comfortably in … wherever the hell he is now…. and continues to say nothing.

        There wil be a faithful Catholic Remnant. Holy Mother Church can never be destroyed.

        (But with that being said, I’d be totally OK wirh Rome, the Vatican, et al., and all the other “Catholic” hives of iniquity on the planet being burned to the ground, so that we may all start over wirh strong Christian men and Catholic Priests who are real warriors.)

        But it won’t be the Novus Ordo people!

    • I’ll file “conservative homo” priests under “All are equal before the law” DoJ officials.

    • The churches “timeless teachings” on sex and marriage were cobbled together by Paul as put forth in Corinthians 7 where he allows for marriage and sex as a concession to prevent immorality, but very clearly says that it’s not the optimal way for people to live.

      Paul also says that you should not divorce (Corinthians 7: 10-11). That’s a long time before the 1930’s.

      It was reaffirmed by St. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica where he addressed the question of priestly celibacy. Because the priestly calling is a higher and more important calling than marriage a priest cannot marry, and a man that becomes a priest after marriage is expected to remain celibate.

      Just want to throw that out there for you as food for thought.

11. Christ is in the heart. No one needs a robed homo defining and manipulating his message. We all know, intuitively, right from wrong, moral from immoral. Now as slaves on a jewplantation, we’ve lost our mooring, our culture, our reason for being. God has not forgotten us, we have forgotten ourselves.

    • It is precisely that sentiment that got us where we are. If “Christ is in the heart” then from where does our mooring come? If the pink haired crossdresser sincerely believes “Christ is in zir’s heart” how do you contradict that if all you got is the “Christ in my heart” says otherwise? Whose heart is right?

12. Putting this on top because it answers the question. Euro-Christianity, even the supra-Biblical.Enlightenment denomination, was defeated by universalism.

    Return of MWV:
    “It was my understanding that all Orthodox congregations have an ethnic aspect to them.”

    That’s it! That’s the solution.
    A friendly rivalry because the hard limits and firm grounding of identity are built right in.

    • Oops. Not that everybody should be Orthodox, but that the ‘ethno-‘ aspect should be cultivated and promoted.

      • To some extent, you had that in the RCC until modern days – i.e., post 1950s. Only it wasn’t on a Church-wide basis, but rather the Polish parish here, the German parish there, Irish at the pub, etc. Less familiar with Protestant local structure, but I would venture a guess it was similar.

        The challenge is that you no longer have the Polish/German/Irish neighborhoods that gave rise to the respective parishes.

        • And even to this day, the Catholic Church does have “ethnic” churches through the various churches that are in communion with Rome, such as the Maronite, Syrian, the Coptic, Greek Byzantine, etc.

13. “If you want to be my disciple, you must, by comparison, hate everyone else—your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even your own life.”

    Jesus always suicide cult psyop against roman people

    You guys never answer to my question
    Back to the Amy Robach story, are white women are natural born traitor?
    Why white women are so traitorous?

    • My guess is that most women inherit a war bride tendency: a desire to mate with whomever they perceive to be the winners, with little concern for tribal loyalty. It’s probably true that loyalty was bred out of women in that any woman who remained loyal to their conquered tribe was killed instead of bred, so their genes did not get passed down.

      Are white women the worst? Are they worse than asian women who were so ready to abandon their yellow men for whites? It may be true that white and asian women are the worst because asian and white peoples may be the most conformist races.

      • So what white men tactic will be if white women can’t be trusted?

        pump and dump or chivalry for whore, just plain simple overthrow system
        You guys have some opinion of it, teach some lesson to me

14. “Looking at survey data, just three states, Alabama, Tennessee and Utah, have a weekly church attendance over 50%. On the other side, New Hampshire is the only state that has a majority who never attend services at all. Vermont, Maine and Massachusetts are all in the high 40% range and on their way to being majority non-Christian. Given that Yankeedom has ruled the country since Gettysburg, it is no wonder that the rest of the country is slowly losing its religion too.”

    Make of this what you will, but the New England states are the oldest and shedding population. They greatly resemble Europe in that way. The three states where weekly church attendance exceeds 50 percent are growing and younger (although not by much), and while less White than New England still largely White by comparison to the West and South.

    I suspect there is a very strong correlation between White religiosity and TFR, which might give some clue as to the reason behind the largely successful war on Christianity.

15. This post brought out a different cast of commentators. Glad to hear from them, but find myself befuddled. Keep hearing we are in a spiritual battle from people I respect. Alas, I’m hopelessly a tooth, tong, claw kind of guy. Do I fit in with your plans? I suggest an auxiliary of my kind be shoehorned in somehow.

    • Sid…..women favor the tooth-tong-claw type of guy. You’re a guy. As long as you love her up, she absolutely loves you up and demonstrates solid values and total loyalty, then ease her into setting the moral standards for your home for your kids, back her and she’ll do the same, and both of you church up the kids. Either solo Christianity or remnant brick&mortar. You must be the strength for those kids to watch and learn. Men and women are separate yet equal “facilities” and both fall without the other. Both of you have different life chores to do.
      Don’t get hung up about this time of history being a spiritual battle. It is. Just go for the ride. Keep open. Use your discernment, eyes wide open, and you’ll see it. Sooner or later if you don’t see it, it’ll bite you awake anyway. Best to you!

16. the orthodox jews have enormous families , as do Amish . Overseas the Muslims do to , but not so much in the us . the future will belong to those who show up for it . All the dog people in the suburbs will not last once things get a little spicy. sadly I don’t think most of them care .

    • At the rate they have been growing for the last 60 years, by 2100 the USA will be a majority Amish country

    • The future will belong to those who can figure out 7th grade biology and have children.

17. I’ll take this moment to repeat the very faddish and completely unoriginal idea that nonetheless is probably closest to the truth.

    Wokeness is Christianity 2.0 and it’s wildly successful.

    • But lacking the ‘be fruitful and multiply’ directive, in fact having the opposite sensibility, its staying power is less assured. On top of which, its core principle of valuing other cultures above its own pretty much guarantees its own extinction.

18. Protestantism won’t survive; I think it can be argued from a theological point of view that Protestantism in “america” stopped being Christian a long time ago. The liberal wing worships blacks and gays, the “conservative” wing worships Israel.

    However, the Orthodox church I attend in a Deep South state has had to add a second liturgy on Sundays because membership has more than doubled. Same thing with the parish next door. Most are refugees from Protestantism who just all the sudden realized how thoroughly it had been “Americanized,” that is, stripped of all meaning and utterly degenerate and corrupt.

    I tend to think people who are “serious” about Christianity — even weird little people like Rod Dreher — will end up Orthodox.

    • Agreed about the bankruptcy of Protestantism. My own son moved to the Orthodox Church many years ago.

    • It was my understanding that all Orthodox congregations have an ethnic aspect to them.

      If you aren’t Greek/Serb/Russian/etc, how does one go about becoming Orthodox?

      • Depends on the patriarchate. The Lebanese and Greeks tend to be ultra tribal. The Russians and Antiocheans, not so much if at all.

        • Lebanese much more so than Greeks in most areas, speaking from first hand knowledge.

          • Yes, definitely agree about the Lebanese – they track village relationships generations back. Nothing wrong with that at all but makes it a challenge to become part of a majority-lebanese parish. My parish is “Antiochean,” but there’s a huge variety of people of European descent (sorry, hate saying “american” except as a term of abuse) and a smattering of Middle Easterners. I formerly attended a Russian parish, liturgy in English, with maybe 30% Russian and the rest converts.

          • Most Greeks are pretty diverse at this point as well, outside of direct major metro areas (LA, being a good example that was VERY Greek in my time there)

      • That’s it! That’s the solution.
        A friendly rivalry because the hard limits and firm grounding of identity are built right in.

      • In America, it really depends on the Patriarchate.

        Greeks – It’s all Greek all the time. Maybe they do services in English, but that’s because the Greeks have Americanized and their ethnic Greek congregation doesn’t teach their kids Greek anymore.

        Russians – It’s mostly Russians, but has a handful of converts. They do everything in Russian or Old Slavonic though, cause they keep to the traditions.

        OCA – The American Church. All in English, form is Russian, and a lot of older converts among the clergy and laity. Pretty good, tend to be smaller.

        Antiochian – In America, almost completely convert churches. Lot of young families, lot of growth, everything in English but not watered down.

        There’s some smaller ones like the Serbs and Bulgarians, but those are a lot more variable in my experience. I tend to tell people to steer clear of the Greek churches, cause the Greeks have had a lot of success in America and are most likely to be “fashionable” in all the worst American ways.

    • Christianity cannot survive as the foundation of our civilization not because it is ‘woke’, but because too many dogmas do not conform to reality, natural history.

      Such as: Adam and Eve as cause of Original Sin and Jesus as the new Adam Redeemer, Sacrifice as absolving sin.

      Sin and Death was built into the entire system of life from the start before Man.

      Is the story of virgin birth truly necessary? What for?

      A number of other issues, doctrines make Christianity irrational when only one ‘irrational’ thing matters – is Jesus God now? And that can be answered by simply seeking, asking, knocking sincerely for the Truth.

      • I couldn’t disagree more about Genesis. It perfectly illustrates men and women’s natural roles on earth and serves as both a warning against and explanation of the nature of sin. Sin, thus misery, enters the world when man chooses to play God instead of love God. And it’s through women that darkness enters the world, with men calling out to that dark nature. It’s simple, brilliant, and contains more life lessons in just those few pages than you’re going to get in 10 years at any university.

      • How would there have been sin before Adam and Eve? Did the dinosaurs sin?

        • Lucifer and the fallen angels sinned before the creation of man, you idiot. Learn some basic theology before you pipe off again.

      • “Is the story of virgin birth truly necessary? What for?”
        – Yes it is necessary, today we celebrate the Immaculate Conception. Think about this: Christ is the new Covenant. The Ark carried the Jewish covenant (and a couple other items – Hebrews 9:4). The Ark is a solemn (holy) place. It contained God’s force on earth. Mary, who carried God into this world must be solemn as well.
        I can get deeper but I hope this answers your “What for”.

    • Curious what jurisdiction you attend? I live in a small town in the Deep South. I travelled about 45 minutes to visit both an Antiochian and OCA Divine Liturgy. Both groups are small congregations with make-shift churches. I wish there was a larger orthodox congregation closer to me. I have to admit orthodoxy is somewhat foreign to my southern sensibility, but I am intrigued. It is neat to see its growth in the South.
      https://southernorthodox.org/

      • I’m in Texas. As the FBI probably monitors, I don’t want to say more. It’s a church with a very large and beautifully decorated church (brilliant icons) and one of the best choirs in the South of not all of the administrative area known as the “united’ “states.” This is something of an exception; most churches are missions, operating from store fronts. But the one I attend really provides a sense of the grandeur. It ain’t that Protestant youth pastor worship music bullshit or “liturgical dance”

        • I enjoy listening to Father John Whiteford of Spring, Tx. I’ll have to visit some of the larger Orthodox churches here in South Carolina. I was raised in a mainline protestant denomination which my family remains strongly committed. Any serious study of the early Church and the church fathers tends to lead one to the Orthodox way of life. Thanks for sharing.

    • Bolsheviks conquered Russia and the Hagia Sophia is still a mosque. Orthodoxy survived.

      I realize Protestantism is the butt of jokes these days, but let’s see how it fares.

      • Islam was Protestantism 1.0

        You see how that fared.

    • Do you attend an OCA church?

    • I would throw the Tradition Latin Mass Catholics in that mix. It’s a church within the church that has a good chance of survival. If Rome completely looses its mind and soul, they have little problem going it alone as have the SSPX and some other sedevacantist groups that are growing like crazy. If Christianity survives, it will be a smaller but much more conservative/ traditional type of faith…which is a good thing in my opinion.

      • The true Church is the one that retains what Christ taught fully, the dogma. The Church is the Bride of Christ and it’s mission is to both retain the dogma unblemished but also propagate those teachings. Other things such as Sacraments are to help this effort and are important but not the top importance.
        You are right to point out the SSPX, but the Church must have a vicar of Christ. When that falls we are in Revelations with or without SSPX as the Church will have lost it’s master and need Christ to come and take his holy See back from the evil one.
        So you see the sedevacantist have left the boat as have the Orthodox (I am mindful how they both preserve most of the dogma, but the Papal authority is key to the dogma).

    • I may give ‘er a run after I move to Florida. The owner of the Vineyard of the Saker website seems to attend a Russian Orthodox church in SW Florida. Of course, I think he is Russian.

      All things being relative, I enjoy Vlad’s subtitled speeches that I can find easily on the Vineyard’s site. I find him smart, thoughtful, reflective, and disciplined he seems to love his people, their culture, their history and their religion.

      Of course, you get in big trouble saying that out loud or even thinking it. I do believe our leaders hate us and want us dead. I hope Vlads gambit is not some EU/WEF psyop. Anything is possible.

19. What I was thinking about was belief itself.

    This audience illumined me as to its function: belief is fast information, when one doesn’t have all the facts.

    If you know how you *feel* about something, you know what to do.

    Thus, religion.

    • “Tradition is what you call the solution to a problem after the problem has been forgotten. When tradition is abandoned, the problem returns.”

20. The ruling elites have an all-consuming and universal hatred of Christianity and Jesus Christ; even the ones who profess to be Christian openly mock and subvert it. All this tells me that going to church is probably the right thing to do. The same people who celebrate pornography, drug use, rampant crime, promiscuity, empty consumerism, endless war, sleazy grifts, and violent/degrading entertainment don’t want me to go to church on Sunday? Hmm, interesting.

    The simplest thing that Christians can do to start solving these complex problems is to go to church. It’s not hard. It’s an hour once a week, and you will likely meet decent people far removed from the deranged perverts the system puts in front of you on TV and social media. If more people in, say, Ireland, were still going to church, it wouldn’t be such a political basket case now, nor would the ruling class be seeking to completely eliminate that nation’s religious tradition with globohomo.

    • “The simplest thing that Christians can do to start solving these complex problems is to go to church. It’s not hard.”

      This, with a caveat. I meet new people taking part in an activity. One Sunday morning advised a participant, “have to wrap by 11:00”. “Why?” Going to noon Mass. Guy says, “you go to church?” “Yes.” Incredulous, “every Sunday!?!” “Yes.”

      Has 2 young kids at time. Follows with “we don’t have time for that.”

      Another time, same setting guy says he is getting married. 40ish, first marriage, says he and bride to be are both Catholic. “Getting married in the church?” “no.” “How come?”

      “They lost my paperwork.”

      Now it doesn’t make my wife and I heroic because we got our 4 kids up and out Sunday mornings. Thought it was default setting years ago, so world slid south on us. But really, this idea that it is “easy”, cannot buy into that from what I see and hear. Then again, I live in burb of big shitlib city.

      Meanwhile, get to church, praying to a certain Archangel these days to help us in “battle” against the evil spirits so that can fit a lot situations. I cannot help but think the word “clintons” though, when we hit the part about the evil ones going around the world consuming souls…although they are low level soldiers.

      St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him we humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.
      Amen.

      • I’m with you their brother. Four cubs up and out to weekly mass.

        • *there (sorry, early public school education.)

        • Cheerios in a ziploc.

21. The German people, the English people, the American people, We were all against the wars that our states waged amongst us. We are all members of the same nation, an extended family.

    It is the crafty ones who step in and create division among family members. We need be wise and reject their invitations of division. Our strength comes from unity.

22. Pbbbbffbfbfbfbfbfffttt!

    Globohomo and the Jewry are dead men walking. Look at their families and communities. Their finances. Ugh…look at their women and parodies of women. They are collapsing as we speak.

    We have to define our terms. What is a church? To me it can be an elaborate cathedral – or a comfy log with a cleric on one end and his students on the other. Just because you shut the church down doesn’t mean there are no Christians. They just don’t go to fallen churches. They’ll just do their thing under the radar. They home school their kids, they meet in homes and hold services on zoom. Rest assured, we are not about to throw out our faith because some filthy jew or trannie thinks we should.

    It’s always darkest before the dawn. You can’t run a nation like this. The idiots think they are fundamentally changing the nation and I am happy to let them enjoy their moment. They’ve not only pozzed the churches…they’ve pozzed the schools, the courts, the mediia, the govt…and that all ends only one way.

    The writing, as they say, is on the wall. Don’t worry about us Z! Look after yourself and stay close to Torba and the other dissidents at Blab. There is light at the end of this tunnel.

    • Christianity wasn’t always an Establishment institution. For more than two centuries during the Roman empire it was way out on the fringe, ignored or persecuted by the majority, and seems to have been a genuine spiritual experience for many of its followers.

      Being once again a despised minority may not be comfortable for today’s traditional Christianity, but it may continue as an “underground,” authentic movement in common with the vitality of its early origins.

      • Caught noted Biblical Scholar & author John MacArthur on a YouTube post talking about how we now inhabit a “Pre-Christian” era, his point being most have gone paganist.

        A wise man once said (paraphrasing) “The problem with religion is the church”; I follow The Gospel (good news) of Jesus Christ & attend a local Baptist church. They’re traditional conservatives but too many churches have gone around the bend (like the Episcopalians).

        It was all predicted in The Bible; we will be hated & persecuted for who & what we believe in.

        I find atheists fascinating & always leave them with this delectable morsel, I tell them “okay, if you’re right & I’m wrong – this is all there is – then that’s it. Game over. However, if you’re wrong you’re in deep sh**…for eternity.”

    • Great comment Glen. A congregation is simply where the people meet. I like the comfy log

23. Considering every church and synagogue congregation seems to believe that importing dusky unwashed foreigners into our neighborhoods is a core tenet of the faith, I’m fine with their dissolution.

    • Where I live there are too few Jews to constitute any kind of non-profit entity, so the importation of our replacement population is laundered entirely through Christian (any denomination you can think of, including obscure orthodox/nationalist) church organizations. Do they do anything else? Not that can be felt. Their “charity” consists solely of our death.

      …

      Honestly, I can’t say anything about Christians that isn’t wildly hateful, so—

24. Someone once said: “There are two countries that should always remain democracies – Switzerland, as proof that the idea *can* be made to work, and America, as a warning to everybody else.”

    In a similar spirit, I have a bad feeling that the experience of Europe and America in rejecting Christianity (or at very least, a strong revealed religion) as the basis of the moral system that guides their civic life will end up being a warning to everybody else – for a long, long time to come.

25. I don’t see Christianity surviving from the standpoint of organized churches and communities. Just like normal White people, Christians will be next. While the war on Christians is already well underway, eliminating ALL bad whites (regardless of whether they are Christians or not) is the priority. After that, any remnants that are left that are Christians will be rounded up too. All of this will be done while the younger generation with blue hair and men in dresses cheer it on with their pitch forks.

    The churches that do remain will really be woke churches. Since wokeness is a religion, why not have churches where you can go to worship? You can go to these churches and instead of celebrating the word of Christ, you can celebrate live sex acts between 50 year old “men” and 5 year olds. A normal, bad-White will be sacrificed on the alter once a month for failing to meet their jogger worship quota. Blacks who win the homicide sweepstakes for that month will earn a financial reward.

    • Don’t give them any ideas!

    • I think we have the church already. It is the Ubiquitous Church. It is at the stadium, the church, the cafe; on the hospital forms and stenciled on the sidewalks. It is in the advertisements, your entertainment, the workplace.

      It is the State in service to The Brand. I always felt an intense foreboding whenever I heard the term, “Branding is everything.” The new religion’s aspiration is not character and community, it is creating in the paritioner a feeling of emptiness and longing. It’s sacrament and edification can only be the dopamine hits of consuming your favorite brands and professing your adherence to the cult. It isn’t the flesh that is branded, it is chemical electrical system of the animal whose soul in their ideal case, is never awakened or revealed.

    • If things ever got that dire with Christianity, I wondered what percentage of religious minded people would start considering Islamic conversion. Say what you will about Islam’s many faults, but at the bare minimum, you have a tribe very willing to actually fight for your traditional beliefs and way of life.

      • For as degenerate as the men in dresses are, the Christians are even more degenerate for losing to them.

        I find Christian pacifism even more disgusting then leftist sexual degeneracy.

        When I see people on the right predicting all sorts of future horrors and then still refusing to take any action, I conclude they are somehow getting off on their future destruction. Perhaps they want to Christlike by being humiliated and destroyed in all sorts of perverse ways just as Christ was nailed on a cross.

      • “I wondered what percentage of religious minded people would start considering Islamic conversion.”

        Virtually no-one. Islam diminishes the mind and soul. Islam was finished centuries ago. Now it is merely a zombie.

        • Fascinatingly however, you carry the online moniker of one of their most famous prophets.

          Ali is umm, not European. 😉

          Not saying every Middle-Easterner is an Islamic Radical and many are actually quite against the damage it has caused the region. But it is fascinating to hear “Arshad Ali” rail against Islam.

          Would be like “Martin Luther” railing against Protestantism, basically.

          • Somewhat like a philandering, conniving, blank-slate believing Martin Luther (King).

          • “But it is fascinating to hear “Arshad Ali” rail against Islam.”

            I’m not railing against it — merely describing fact. People in the Occident seem to think that everyone from that part of the world is a froth-at-the-mouth Islamic fundamentalist. The bankruptcy of Islam was recognised a long time ago by the people of the region — the Ba’athism of Iraq ans Syria, and other secular movements were the consequence of that. Is religious fundamentalism of any sort — Christian, Muslim — the road you want to go down?

      • We have a real-life example as to the result.

        What would happen?
        Albania.

        (Then, after enough time, Afghanistan- formerly Bactrian Greeks, from Alexander’s army.
        Alabama not approve!)

      • And Muslims actually fight for their beliefs. Look at the WC in Qatar. Those dudes don’t take any crap about rainbow armbands or other perverted garbage from the West.

26. “The recent gay marriage bill made possible by the Republican party, allows the IRS to strip churches of their tax exempt status if they are not willing to play along with the homosexual marriage charade”

    I’m no constitutional expert and i know we only pay lip service to it these days, but it seems this would be rather easy to defeat in court via separation of church and state.

    • Won’t the mostly commie controlled courts simply go, “Lol, you have no standing, case dismissed.”

    • “I’m no constitutional expert… but it seems this would be rather easy to defeat in court via separation of church and state.”

      The phrase “separation of church and state” does not appear in the Constitution.

      • No, it doesn’t, but in this case it surely falls afoul of “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

        • KGB –

          That is what the good old Commerce Clause is for. Anything unconstitutional can be made so because of interstate commerce baby!

    • You’re probably right, but also missing the point. This is like the pro-Israel anti-BDS loyalty oaths that state governments have been putting into law. To the best of my knowledge, 100% of them have been struck down by the courts, yet they keep passing them. The point is to demoralize, and to waste peoples’ times. All globohomo has to do is write one stupid law it knows will get struck down and it drags people into years of time-wasting, energy-sapping, money-draining litigation.

      And hey, who knows? Maybe it takes five years for the legislation to get to the SCOTUS and by then their people are in. It’s happened plenty of times before.

    • No such thing as law, Constitutional or otherwise. Only judges, their opinions, and what bureaucrats are willing to enforce.

27. I would just simply add that certain denominations claim that these things would happen long ago. The cavorting of false religion with the government, the deep iniquity of the average person, and the winnowing of the flocks of “Believers.” Those groups also claim that no salvation from Man’s hand is forthcoming – that the entire world will be destroyed if God does not finally step in. Just food for thought: not all Christian denominations believe Man can save Man through organized religion. This is really a byproduct of Renaissance Humanism. Certain revival groups, particularly the Unitarians denominations, completely agree with Z’s assessment, in contrast to the “Christian” majority.

28. The one reason Christianity will survive is :The church is not the people.

    • You might want to read an old book The Canticles of Leibovitz by Walter Miller. The Catholic Church is all that holds the remnants of Western civilization together after a nuclear war. Much like the Dark Ages, widely scattered monasteries try to preserve and interpret artifacts from earlier time periods.

      • As someone who has never read the book but is very familiar with the title itself, a question. Is there ever any explanation why the book revolves around the Catholic faith as the last hope for the preservation of civilizational knowledge but features an egregiously Jewish name as it’s centerpiece. The disconnect is massive and seems intentional.

        Is this perhaps a subversive sub-narrative that only through the coopting of everything by J power will anything survive in the end?

        Inquiring minds want to know…

        • Apex Predator: I second the question. Have heard the book referenced often before but have never read it, and wondered at the title.

          • it basically the wandering jew as science fiction

        • Canticle – very hard to find a copy, no Kindle version for some odd reason

        • “Catholic faith as the last hope for the preservation of civilizational knowledge but features an egregiously Jewish name as it’s centerpiece”. You mean Jesus, aka Yashua?

      • Read it more than once. Nice tale. In essence it’s just a repeat of how the Catholic Church served as a repository for the cultural artifacts of the Roman Empire. Except this time they’re trying to preserve circuit diagrams.

29. Zman: Excellent post asking vital questions. Thank you for raising the issue in a rational and reasonable way. Now I’m off to read the comments before adding my two cents worth (and I’m trying hard to limit that as much as possible).

30. Non-whites: religion is very important, in some cases race is not important (Islam)
    Whites (especially Nordics and Germanics): race is more important than religion

    I think that whatever religion we follow going forward, it will have to be racially explicit. Race has been the prime motivator behind Nordic and Germanic peoples since the beginning. I personally feel much more in common with any White person, regardless of their religion. Even Good Whites. I feel almost nothing for Christian Africans or Filipinos, despite them being my “brothers in Christ”.

    NorthWest Europeans are just different, and alien, to the peoples in most of the rest of the world. There’s a reason that non-Europeans assimilate so poorly in our countries, but assimilate fine in Latin America. It is what it is.

    Race was just assumed and implied for most of Christian history among Whites. Today, in the world of open borders and globalism, that has been challenged, and it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

    • I think this is very important.

      It seems for many ancient pagan peoples like the Greeks, Romans and Northern Europeans the religion appears to be an aside to their tribal identity and life or even a family thing, rather than as we understand monotheistic religious placed front and center as a worship.

      Like many commenters I doubt a resurgent paganism is possible, but a tribal identity spanning parts of Europe seems very doable.

      It existed in that state over large areas of Europe for a long time before formal countries came into being.

      However, can one can exist without the other?

      Would a new religion come into being as an offshoot of that?

      maybe something like an ancestor religion?

      • Nothing made up, no pathetic larping.

        An adult understanding of the Bible would be better.

        It taps into what this audience is looking for; it works for either the intellectual or the simpleton.

        After all, Whites wrote most of it, the good stuff especially. Born atheists like myself instinctively reject the false reprogramming.

        It was Skinsuited, simple as.

        We need to take it back, as our other gods are found there as well.

        • I was not really thinking about larping around like the victorian druid stuff.

          More like if through necessity you end up with tribal oriented areas again, whether a religion self generates from this mindset as seemed to be true for ancient tribal groups.

          Not trying to make one up as an exercise.

          The bible is in my mind part of the problem in that it is an intentional direct injection of israel and associated identity as an inescapable underpininning in white culture.

          You can never be rid of it, while it is the reference point. You end up internalizing an alien root kit as a foundation that other things get added onto against your interests. One needs to reject out of hand things not part of your own.

          Its the same mechanism movies used to place a pervasive catch 22 in the culture for the current anti-white tribe pogroms just done in medieval times.

    • Not sure I agree with you about the Good whites. I know many personally and they have gotten WAY worse especially in the last few years. So much so that I simply cannot interact with them anymore without thoughts of simply wanting to bludgeon them since it’s obvious their disease is incurable and inoperable. It would be a mercy.

      Listening to them virtue signal about things they are woefully ignorant of and know little about while being delighted by their own genetic demise fills me with rage.

      Contrast that with a redpilled Latino, family oriented, Christian, has values, works hard, and despises n-ggers.

      Who would you rather spend a day with? I know my answer because I know both types personally.

      Ideally, neither, but if I -have- to choose I’m picking the Based Beaner™ every time.

31. The modern church deserves to die for its complicity in the plandemic, and fittingly that has helped to hasten its demise

    Entirely separate from any discussion of theological truth or the lack thereof

32. It’s notable that one of the most important and significant events in Western history, Luther’s nailing his thesis on the door of Wittenburg cathedral on October 31, 1517, was generally ignored over most of the world on its 500th anniversary in 2017. In the US, a Protestant country in fact, there are no traffic jams on Sunday mornings as the population swarms to church services. Those services are also held in the mornings so as not to interfere with the preparation and observance of National Football League games.

    • In this particular case I am certain it is the other way around. Football games are in the afternoon to avoid interfering with church. Folks were going to church on Sunday morning long before football, and back when the NFL was in its formative years it mattered to the league that they did. Aside from football not being a great early morning sport in general.

      • Who would downvote you? You are undoubtedly correct, unless you believe that the WASP heritage of American is a lie, and this country was really founded by marginalized people? The Sunday afternoon sports game evolved from the lax time after services.

        • All my Roman Catholic friends and acquaintances attend Mass on Saturday afternoon, c. 5 PM. Gives them a chance to sleep in on Sunday before the big game. In our town the Episcopal church is directly across the street from the Catholic one. They have traffic jams with families trying to park and go in at the same time we have our 10:30 service, attended by about 25 “old” people. Not a kid in sight. I’ll give the Episcopalians another 15 years, then kaput.

    • Probably a good time to go back and rewatch Devon Stack’s (Blackpilled on Bitchute) video about the anti-Christian messaging in The Simpsons. Several clips revolve around church interfering with the Rwandan Rugby.

33. ” In a world where demographic reality is the defining feature, the refusal to recognize demographic reality is a suicide pill.”

    The strongest institutional force in American Christianity today is the conservative Black church. As for Christian adoration of Jews, you’re dated bias is showing. The progressive churches have become staunchly anti-Zionist while the more conservative churches no longer pay the Jews any mind.

    Synagogues are facing the same problem that mainline churches face as the Jewish American demographic gradually exits the scene except for the Orthodox who have more in common with Biblical Christians than either have with their secular co-religionists.

    • Evangelical church support for Israel and Zionism is absolute. It is a topic not be argued about in those circles and disagreement on the issue is akin to heresy. Southern Baptist have a similar viewpoint.

    • Paradoxically, Jews who leave the synagogue somehow seem to become even more Jewish. I have not observed the same dynamic with Christians.

34. “That will leave the believers to fend for themselves as ad hoc communities”

    Good riddance. From what I can tell, all of the denominations at the national and international level are 100% converged and incapable of tending the flock or defending the faith. But there are very good individual churches and anywhere Christians meet to pray and worship is a church. These ad hoc churches can maintain the genuine faith through the difficult times ahead and form the basis of the new church.

    • “Where two or more are gathered…”

      And go from there. The current winnowing of churchians is a good thing. Better to have a small circle of believers, the mustard seeds on fertile ground, than a horde of said seeds on hard, dry ground.

      Better the churchians get out of the politics business. How about this — make passing YOUR Christian faith on to the next generation. Don’t be the link in the chain dating back 2,000+ years that BREAKS. Have faith that they pass it on to the next, help that journey in the form of supporting these efforts — say not having your children ‘forced’ to dump them into ‘daycare’. Or public school.

      Then die, which to a believer is not the end. If you don’t believe that, you are recused from the Christian faith question, sandals clapped of dust, goodbye.

      Everything else is of this world. Whom runs that, exactly? Who does his minions serve? Oppose?

      Simple questions and answers. LOT of work, years of toil. Embrace them, or see my above comment about recusal.

      • Amen, brother!
        Jesus doesn’t ask us if we are offended by His followers, but by Him!

35. It’s an interesting question.

    First of all – demographics are destiny. NO group of white people has a birth rate anywhere near replacement level, except various types of Christians (and Mormons). This is not enough – and doesn’t make up for retention problems either – but it’s better than nothing. It’s easy to complain about Christianity, but at the moment, there are no other drivers of white fertility.

    Second of all – it’s the only semblance of white community that exists. Again it’s not perfect, and it’s not explicitly racially exclusive. However, it’s still more a white community than posting on Z-man, or watching Netflix. There are no other white, mainly conservative communities except perhaps the hockey community.

    All of this is good. But it’s not clear that it’s enough. This practical perspective of Christianity as a vehicle for white children and racial community, but without as much focus on God, seems to defeat the purpose. Those are nice by-products of the faith in some places, but it’s not Christianity itself.

    My own conclusion is that Christianity is in fact not fit for the challenges that we will face. There seems to be no provision for explicitly promoting race and opposing open borders. I’m sure when the Bible was written this was just common sense. Turning the other cheek and forgiving your enemies isn’t going to cut it in 2022. No saviour is coming for us. Jesus won’t be coming back in our lifetime and Trump didn’t change anything. We need to work now, not wait for the rapture. There are also fewer and fewer social benefits for being responsible, nice, celibate, honest etc.

    But what replaces it? We don’t have anything to replace it at the moment. It’s like a withered donkey, struggling to pull our lone cart through a road of mud, it’s failing us but we have no choice but to keep whipping it harder and harder, hoping it can get us home.

    Do we go back to ancient pagan gods? Seems like they were defeated and discredited long ago, in favor of the superior Christianity. I believe Islam is a trap, and would result in extinction of Europeans as they melt into Middle Eastern, South Asian and African masses.

    I’m not trying to discourage anyone from going to church, or disparage Christianity. I consider myself to be a Christian. But realistically, Christianity is either going to undergo a massive cultural change surrounding the faith, or it will disappear.

    • “Do we go back to ancient pagan gods?”

      Is there a literal single person in the Occident who genuinely believes in the Pagan gods? I don’t think it is possible to larp your way through the bad times. Only a man with genuine belief can face a lion (or a long prison sentence) because of that belief.

      I’m not saying it has to be Christianity or that it cannot even be a secular belief. But the belief must be genuine and probably fanatical, at least in the bad times where the belief has a genuine cost or risk.

    • “Do we go back to ancient pagan gods? Seems like they were defeated and discredited long ago”

      They weren’t discredited. Adherence to pagan beliefs lived on in Europe in nooks and crannies, often surreptitiously. It survives today.

      • New Age hippies and various weirdos and degenerates dressing like druids and capering about Stonehenge is not a survival of ancient Celtic practice.
        European neopaganism is for misfits and outcasts. Odin and Thor are not coming back to save Western Europe any more than Jeebus loving Protestant heretics, or the current Church in Rome led by that thing calling itself the Pope will.

        • “New Age hippies and various weirdos and degenerates dressing like druids and capering about Stonehenge is not a survival of ancient Celtic practice.”

          You’re deliberately and disingenuously misinterpreting what I’m saying. It would be like me saying that Jimmy Swaggart represents Christianity. Pagan practices and beliefs have survived for two thousand years.

    • @B125, “There seems to be no provision for explicitly promoting race and opposing open borders.”

      Go back and read the story about Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman and tell me that He didn’t see race and nationality. Heck, the idea of a chosen people is central to the whole story.

      BTW, I’m not saying that it’s talking the Zionists…

      • As a person being raised on the Catholic version of churchianity I see a problem. Christianity has the subversive idea of being preached to all and being one big human family at the root. For historical reasons Christianity was a good fit for European peoples as long as they were not too successful outside Europe, transportation made it difficult for other peoples to invade her, and some old common sense about race and culture was transmitted along with the subversive idea.

        But today we have “universal human rights” and ways to make you feel a bad christian if you don’t support globalism. I was at some point “citizen of the world” and an open-borders no-human-is-illegal supporter. That fitted perfect with Catholic churchian beliefs. So I think it is healthy to be a little bit of an agnostic, or schismatic today.

        There is no clear solution, but some solace can be found understanding how the old Christian ideal had the roots of its own demise. The whole thing was going to fall apart one way or another. We are truly in a new age, time to buy some Quartz jewelry LOL

      • There is a lot of mileage to be had from the story of Babel. The very Hand of God has directed humanity to abide in their own lands and to be of their separate and distinct nation, and smited the attempt to transgress that natural God-created order. To attempt to resurrect Babel via the NWO “One World One Race” project is literal Satanic rebellion against God’s explicit command.

        • I am not sure killing all the whites is attempting a one world race?

          • Trumpton: you dont remember the Newsweek/msm articles about how all white ppl’s grandchildren will be Beautiful Mixed Mullattos by 2050?

    • I disagree with you that Islam will inevitably lead to some mixing with Africans, middle easterners, etc. There are basically no black Muslim communities in the Middle East. Arabs are pretty aware of what Africans do. They’re tribal people, and carved out a pretty reasonable compromise. “Yes, we’re all brothers in Islam, but you stay in your land and we’ll stay in ours.”

      • So 15 million black slaves to the middle east over 8 centuries and no black areas?

        Where did they all go?

        • You’re right. There’s black blood in the Saudis, maybe even in the House of Saud itself. And of course African itself has large African Muslim populations (Nigeria, for example).

          • Arshad Ali: I believe I’ve read your average Yemeni is 15-20% sub-Saharan. The average modern Egyptian is about 10%. It varies by country, and of course by class, but there was interbreeding over the centuries.

            Works both ways, of course – the small percentage of blue-eyed and/or blonde-haired Turks are the result of Caucasian slaves (taken from Iceland to Russia to Ireland, all well documented).

            But your average European White – certainly up until 1945 – was 99.9% European. Same with American Whites. Same with Africans who remained in Africa – i.e. no Caucasian admixture whatsoever. Would that the Portuguese had never gone a-sailing.

        • The trick the arabs used is that they castrated 99% of the male african slaves that got to their lands.

          And they imported very few african women, because they prefered their female slaves to be european.

          Therefore, their huge african slave populations never reproduced and never formed communities.

          Yes, they lost the oportunity of having their slaves generate more slaves, but it was a trade off they were willing to accept.

          Yes, there was some african admixture, but it was very small compared to what it could have been if the slaves hadn’t been castrated.

          • Imagine if Europeans had followed this policy. What a different country we’d be indeed.

          • What? They imported black females as breeders by the millions.

            It was blood calling to blood.

            Semitics are originally negroids chasing white women; their ethnostrategy is to harvest desirable gene traits, as they are herdsmen.

            This business about who is chosen is a bunch of half-breeds arguing who was firstest.

            The Islamo-j*deo fight is simply over inheritance, a bitter family rivalry.

        • They were largely wiped out. The Muslims were pretty ruthless to their slaves. Males were castrated. Females were sex slaves, but they were given forced abortions or babies of these rapes were often killed. Did some survive? I’m sure they did, but if you did a 23 and me test on a random Arab, they probably have less African blood in them than black Americans have white blood in them.

          • The Greek: Not so. Any random Arab, just like any random ‘black American,’ will have a certain percentage of genetic admixture. Varies by country and class, from 3% up to 20%. Your average ghetto black is not your average half/quarter black. The amount of White genetics varies tremendously.

        • I thought they were castrated to make it easy to prevent miscegenation. Perhaps they did the calculus and figured enforcing AM laws and managing slaves with families was too hard and expensive versus just buying new slaves. It could be that they just enjoyed buying new ones. They bought a lot from Europe and Africa over the years.

        • That is a good question. I read once that most slaves that went to Arabia were male, and they were castrated and not allowed to have families.

      • “Arabs are pretty aware of what Africans do.”

        There’s mingling of Arabs and Africans in North Africa.

    • Great comment, and there lies the rub: a civilization can survive by replacing something with nothing. I’ve long cured myself of Christianity, but although I still firmly believe in God, I genuinly miss it. There’s still a gap there. For most people today, who are secular, narcissistic hedonists, we are moving rapidly into times that will show them the cost of their lack of spirituality.

      • Sorry: CANNOT survive!!!

36. Per Nietzsche: the West ostensibly started with “master morality” which values power, nobility, and independence. This was overcome by Christian morality for the slaves/herd which espoused sympathy, kindness, and humility. These two moralities might be different, but they both still had STANDARDS.

    I’ll call the new morality, parasite morality or enslaver morality. It’s ostensibly about tolerance and inclusion, but it’s really about the destruction of standards, beauty, and truth and it’s a giant con to enslave others.

    Example: a woman wants to pursue her “freedom” to be a pornographer and a Christian objects. She says the Christian should be cancelled because he is trying to enslave her by blocking her liberty and freedom of expression. The Christian responds that she is trying to enslave people with her sexuality.

    But today’s society doesn’t acknowledge, or even see THE TRUTH, of the latter statement. Apply this paradigm to everything. Everything the parsites/enslavers espouse as freedom is really a tool of slavery; such is sin.

    • A problem with Nietzsche is a failure to grasp the heirarchical versus egalitatian dichotomy. A hierarchical ruler capable of mercy is one thing, a democratic egalitatian mob’s mercy is a completely different thing. Christian morality in a hierarchy (the God-given natural order) is a good thing with good results. “Judeo-christian mercy” in modern American politics is materially different and an evil thing due to the anti-heirarchical and egalitarian structure.

37. I’m an agnostic so take what I say with a grain of salt.

    What I found interesting about Christianity is the self improvement aspect of it. Like maybe this is an incorrect way to look at it but I viewed it as a sort of AA for sinners. Kind of the “yes it’s not always going to be easy, but together we can make it through” mindset.

    • True enough. The fact that as Men we are sentenced by our sinful nature to toil is a big part for me. It is my nature and my God’s will that I work hard and provide for my family, and I find a moral inner peace in pursuing that divine commandment. Comparing that to pursuing Objectivist “productive achievement” is like comparing sex with masturbation; it is a pale shadow, and frankly kinda gay. When you embrace what you truly are (in all aspects of your nature as God made you, as a man or woman, an ethnic part of your Nation), only then can you find inner tranquility and joy. Rebelling against God is just so road-worn, ya know?

38. “Religions help explain the natural world and provide authority to the customs and traditions of a people….

    “The modern West is increasingly defined by the deliberate avoidance of observable reality …”

    I’m reluctant to rush in where angels fear to tread, but religion probably doesn’t not help to explain the natural world — for that we have physics, chemistry, biology, geology, astronomy. This was probably why the Church came down so heavily on Galileo, who insisted on observable reality and how to explain it. Religion might help with the spiritual world but that’s a sphere I don’t want to talk about. It also provides a mean of socialising and providing social cohesion — I’m thinking of churches in small American towns and villages.

    I’m not sure that Christianity ever has been that important in either Europe or North America, except for lip service. I recall that when Trump was asked, back in 2016, what was his favorite passage from the Bible, he responded by saying it was a personal matter. We all know he’s never read any chunk of it just as we know that Clinton inhaled when he smoked. But that didn’t affect the support for Trump, even among Evangelicals. Nor were they much perturbed by his personal or business life being so much at variance with any kind of Christianity. It was irrelevant.

    You mention Alabama. But on just about every index it’s one of the most backward states in the union. Some savvy data scientist might want to make a correlation between being religious and being socially, economically, and educationally backward. New England — which is 90% white — is not particularly religious. No-one will call New England backward. The US government is fine with religion. The kind of Christian faith I see in the South goes quite comfortably with knee-jerk patriotism and support for USA’s half-assed military adventures.

    The US government is also comfortable with religious fanaticism abroad — they’ve never had anything against Islamic fundamentalists, notwithstanding the rhetoric about Islamic extremism. They’ve always gunned for the secular types like Saddam, Gaddafi, and Assad.

    On a more philosophical level, I’m not sure Christianity has ever sat comfortably with European people. This was a Middle Eastern import imposed on Europeans, who hitherto had subscribed to various kind of — for lack of a better term – pagan beliefs. These beliefs were ruthlessly stamped out, and these beliefs defined the Europeans.

    • “probably doesn’t not”

      Mea culpa — I can’t edit out the “not.”

    • Did you miss all the religious wars over the catholic/protestant split in Europe post the reformation?

      Or the large amount of wars in medieval Europe where the Catholic Church fought repeated actions to suppress and destroy competing Christian sects?

      Irrespective as to the motivations of the prime movers in this a very large number of people were involved at a grass roots level.

      Now is not then. Perhaps its not really possible to understand the mind of such a society from a modern point of view,

      • “Did you miss all the religious wars over the catholic/protestant split in Europe post the reformation?

        “Or the large amount of wars in medieval Europe where the Catholic Church fought repeated actions to suppress and destroy competing Christian sects?”

        Nope, I didn’t. But religious differences were usually a camouflage for something else. Just as the crusades weren’t really about religion at all. Wars are usually too expensive to be about differences in religion opinion.

        • As I said. “Irrespective as to the motivations of the prime movers”, a very large number of people were voluntarily involved.

          The Bogomils, Cathars, Arianism, among many others were large scale grass root movements outside the exiting secular power struggles that resulted in many decades of wars between the church and these distributed heresy groups.

          The same in more organized conflicts is apparent, if you read actual testament from things even like the English civil war and the large religious underlying motivations and views of the common soldiers.

          The modern world assumes these are fake as they are now, but the direct accounts show the religious to be at the front of many views expressed in the rank and file.

          • “The Bogomils, Cathars, Arianism, among many others were large scale grass root movements outside the exiting secular power struggles that resulted in many decades of wars between the church and these distributed heresy groups.”

            Were not some of these groups fighting against the entrenched economic interests of the Catholic Church? I like the way Condon phrased it: “The Catholic Church had become a hierarchy of lawyers.”

    • Ali,

      With all due respect: when you say:

      “I’m not sure that Christianity ever has been that important in either Europe or North America, except for lip service” and
      “I’m not sure Christianity has ever sat comfortably with European people”

      ….. when you claim that “The US government is also comfortable with religious fanaticism abroad— they’ve never had anything against Islamic fundamentalists, notwithstanding the rhetoric about Islamic extremism”

      ….. when you share your broad, sweeping generalizations about the population of Alabama; and go on to suggest that
      “Some savvy data scientist might want to make a correlation between being religious and being socially, economically, and educationally backward”—

      as if that hasn’t already been done—

      you’re merely revealing the astonishing depths of your ignorance.

      Again, with all due respect, I’ll suggest that someone with your obvious level of ignorance regarding American history and the American people, would do well to go back and study these questions, for a few years, before sharing your opinions with the rest of the world.

      You clearly have no fucking idea of what you’re talking about.

      • That tone. You mad, bro?

        • Not really. More like fed up….. disgusted….. tired of reading his bullshit.

          For someone to come on here, and presume to make such sweeping historical-psychological generalizations:

          “I’m thinking of churches in small American towns and villages….. I’m not sure that Christianity ever has been that important in either Europe or North America, except for lip service…. I’m not sure Christianity has ever sat comfortably with European people….”

          …. to hear him make such overarching generalizations— which, to have even a chance of being accurate, would require not merely an exhaustive knowledge of the last 2000 years of European and American history and literature, but also an intimate understanding of the European and American psyche, in its most profound encounters with reality— was just too much.

          To make such an assertion about the religious experiences of *even one person*— that they were nothing more than superficial “lip service”— would be quite a feat of mind-reading.

          But to presume to make that statement about literally millions of people— spanning two millennia and two continents— is simply absurd. You’d have to be psychologically unbalanced to even imagine you could know such a thing.

          Even his confidently opining about the religious habits of the entire American people, is an act of ridiculous intellectual overreach. He seems to imagine that he knows us all, from the Puritans of New England to the rednecks of Alabama.

          And for all that to come from someone calling himself ‘Arshad Ali’….
          I just couldn’t help myself.

    • There’s somethig else you might see about Alabama (and Mississippi) that contributes to this “backwardness,” if you really care to look.

    • That’s mostly the “talk 60s, live 50s” phenomenon. Secular Good White Yankees are more conservative in almost every metric of how they live. Yet they promote liberal ideologies.

      A more extreme example is how African Americans are far more conservative in their views than even White Evangelicals, yet we all know the stats.

      I think it’s something like, the naturally Puritan Yankee mindset pushes for liberalism to free themselves from their own mental prisons. While the lower IQ Bad Whites, Blacks, and just about every group needs social conservatism to keep them and their impulses in line.

      • Yes, what you’re saying makes sense and is plausible.

      • This is a major insight. The white left is made of good rule followers. Part of it is that they are themselves such good rule followers they don’t grok that most of humanity are not like them and stern enforcement is required. But also, as you say, their adherence to the rules makes any kind of rule especially onerous for them.

        This probably contributes to the urban / rural split: urban-dwelling corporate workers are selected for rule-following behavior.

    • Alabama’s “backwardness” is not due to religion, but being saddled with obsolete two legged farm equipment and a Yankee occupation government.

    • And yet, it moves…

      Contrary to the meme that has percolated through history, The Roman Catholic Church did not “come down hard” on Galileo.
      The dispute was political, and personal, and The Church, in fact, showed considerable restraint in the matter.

      • RasQball: The more I read and learn, the more I realize everything I ever thought I knew was a lie. I began reading more religious/philosophical history a few years ago and realized how much I didn’t know. With all due respect to many far wiser commenters here than I, too many still accept a lot of lies taught as history when it comes to religious matters.

        Galileo and the Catholic Church is a prime example. As I’ve noted before, I am not a Catholic, but facts are facts. Totally aside from the political and personal issues entwined, dissidents must re-learn Christian history rather than what is taught as such through its modern interpreters.

        • Yep. I’m fond of pointing out to well-edumacated people a small pattern, a trope if you would, about Western leaders who struck out against a certain small insular group. Edward 1 (rapes his daughter in law because his son is too gay to beget an heir; happened to expel the jews from London), Catherine the Great (had sex with horses! Happened to expel the jews to the pale), Nero (did all the things! Happened to expel the jews from judea); gee, those rulers expelled and expropriated a certain group and now that group has a stranglehold on academic history and academic history happens to make impossible-to-know claims about the sexual disfunctions of those people! So weird and inexplicable!
          If those lurid stories are all fake and gay, how much can you trust the other “just so stories” that happen to put western Christendom in a bad light (crusader’s “real motivations,” the “real causes” of the “Dark Ages” and the Renaissances), and which are based on things that when you think about them are unknowable.

    • “This was probably why the Church came down so heavily on Galileo, who insisted on observable reality and how to explain it.”

      Public school twaddle. The church was THE source of funding and support for academia at that time, and what Galileo was saying was counter to “the consensus”. The church intervened and tried to get Galileo to run things through the academics, and he agreed to those terms, then reneged on that covenant, an embarrassment to the ecclesiastics who had worked to get science to advance as everyone thought it should — more or less peer review for content, much as it works today.

      • “The church was THE source of funding and support for academia at that time”

        Sure, as long as the academics played ball. Which at that time I think meant going along with the Ptolemaic system. Galileo was brought to court for the heresy of claiming the earth revolves around the sun.

        This brings to mind the Monkey Scopes Trial in Tennessee in 1925. Religious belief and dogma are usually at odds with the spirit of scientific inquiry.

        • Arshad Ali: You’re dead wrong about both Galileo and the trial in Tennessee. Both issues are part of the twisted history American public school children (myself included) were taught. To equate one to the other demonstrates an ignorance of Western Christian thought and history.

          • I’m repeatedly being accused of ignorance today but few of the accusers are bringing forth counter-arguments. It just seems to be invective. Look, I haven’t got a dog in this fight. Believe what you want. I’m not particularly religious myself and my personal experience has been that it’s a hornet’s nest.

        • The monkey scopes trial was a complete set up.

          The trial and the surrounding controversy was entirely fabricated.

          Scopes admitted to reporter William Kinsey Hutchinson that he had skipped the evolution section in the book. Clarence Darrow coached the students to perjure themselves and say they did study it.

          The prosecutor supposedly recognized Scopes from a speech he gave to his school years earlier to account for how he knew him.,

          Another aspect showing its fake was that Darrow called the prosecutor Bryan to the stand, as an expert witness on the Bible, and the jury wasn’t in the room for most of the cross examination?

          The defense lawyer cross examining the prosecutor as an expert witness?

          That part was stricken from the record, but was the main part in the papers and supposedly swung the trial, even though it was only in the papers and not in court.

          How does that work apart from a pre-arranged set up that both parties were in on?

          Everything you think you know is a lie.

        • Not everybody’s at the same place. Ali’s versions are what was commonly taught.

          You can only use what you have. Not everybody’s pinned to or at speed on every tiny bit of minutia.

          Take a breath.
          Now, ask yourself, “why did I have an emotional reaction?”

          I’m asking for this because this religion stuff is important.
          It’s war. Cool heads, and all that.

      • As I understand it, Galileo was confronted by the Church with a choice: recant what he knew to be true, or face the kconsequences; which included being put to death.

        Being the practical man that he was— and surely realizing that posterity would vindicate him— he wisely chose the latter. Just as I imagine I would’ve, in his same circumstance.

        What “the ecclesiastics” were practicing *had nothing to do with science*

        Their beliefs were based on a particular interpretation of their holy book, and an a priori assumption that the words of that holy book work were necessarily true. Their orientation towards life, and their assumptions regarding how best to interrogate reality, embodied the very opposite of the scientific method that would later emerge.

        • I’m surprised to find myself agreeing with you. The one qualification I’d add is there’s no real scientific method — laymen assume there is. Unless you want to call following where the facts may lead as scientific method.

          In defence of the Ptolemaic system, it was surpriingly accurate and the ideas of Copernicus and Galileo had more to do with economy of explanation — Ockham’s razor, if you will. But proposing the alternative meant that the earth was no longer the centre of creation. Since then we’ve gone on further to argue — on the basis of observation — that the sun itself is merely a speck in the Milky Way, which itself is one of innumerable galaxies. The idea that man occupies a special place in creation thus comes under assault.

          • There you go again:

            “…. there’s no real scientific method — laymen assume there is. Unless you want to call following where the facts may lead as scientific method.”

            Well, yes; that’s one way of summarizing it.

            Neil deGrasse Tyson put it this way: “The scientific method is do whatever it takes– whatever it takes– to not fool yourself into thinking something is true that is not, or into thinking that something is not true that is. That’s the scientific method.”

            He apparently never got the memo that there’s really no such thing….

            Rigorously distinguishing facts from speculation, insisting that experimental results be replicable, constantly being on the lookout for contrary facts or better explanations,
            doing everything you can to make sure that your claims aren’t over-reaching your data; acknowledging the truth of Carl Sagan’s observation that
            “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”: that the more unlikely a certain claim is, given existing evidence on the subject, the greater the standard of proof must be in order to verify it.

            All different ways of describing the same scientific process: by which facts are rigorously verified, and only rigorously verified facts are assumed to be true: the scientific method.

            So it turns out that you’re quite the polymath, Arshad Ali: an expert not merely in the fields of history and religion and socio-economic theory, but in science as well.

            It must be quite a job to be continually setting us “laymen” straight.

          • @The real Bill

            “Neil deGrasse Tyson put it this way: “The scientific method is do whatever it takes– whatever it takes– to not fool yourself into thinking something is true that is not, or into thinking that something is not true that is. That’s the scientific method.” ”

            That’s garbage coming from Tyson and few working scientists work that way. Which you would know if you had a scientific background, which I doubt. You could start by reading Feyerabend.

            That “method” was not used by Newton or Lagrange or Hamilton or Einstein or Schrodinger or Heisenberg. To repeat the words you directed at me, you haven’t got a f***ing idea what you’re going on about.

39. I find it very interesting that no one is raising the question of whether or not the Christian faith is in fact true.

    Some are clearly assuming that it is, and some are assuming that it’s not.

    > But no one seems to be grounding the question of the ultimate fate of Christianity— the question of ‘Will Christianity prevail into the 21st century and beyond?’— in the question of whether or not the Christian narrative is in fact true.

    And without addressing that question directly, it seems clear to me that the ultimate fate of Christianity *must* be dependent on the answer to that question.

    But in virtually all of these posts, Christianity is being discussed sociologically, as if it were merely a social movement, a sociological phenomenon, and nothing more.

    But it seems to me that the question of ‘Will Christianity prevail?’ must ultimately rest on the questions of ‘Is Christianity true?’ and ‘Does the God of the Bible actually exist?’

    > Because in it’s essence, Christianity can be seen as an interconnected series of reality-claims: the Christian narrative, as laid-out in the Bible, is making certain claims about the nature of existence, the nature of Reality.

    The Bible posits the existence of a certain specific God, who we might call ‘the God of the Bible’. The Biblical narrative goes on to make many specific and unique claims about the nature of ultimate Reality, the nature of humanity, and the relationship between God and humanity.

    > If the Christian narrative as laid-out in the Bible is, in fact, true; if it does in fact provide an accurate map of Reality— if the God of the Bible does indeed exist; if the Bible is in fact an instruction manual to humanity, written by the Being Who spoke the Universe into existence— then it seems like a good bet that Christianity will continue to exist.

    > Therefore I would suggest that the fate of Christianity— the question of ‘Will Christianity ultimately prevail?’— must be intimately tied-up with the question of ‘Is Christianity in fact true?’

    If Christianity IS true— if the God of the Bible does exist, and the Christian narrative as explicated in the Bible is indeed an accurate description of Reality— then the answer would seem to be: ‘Yes, Christianity will prevail; since it provides the most accurate description of the intimate workings of the Universe, and of the God Who created it’.

    Conversely, if Christianity is not true— if the God of the Bible only exists in human imagination, and the Christian narrative turns out to be a product of human imagination— then the fate of Christianity will very likely depend in the end upon sociological factors.

    • Bill, I appreciate your philosophical perspective and interest in truth. However, I suggest that the domain of religion and non-analytic philosophy is specifically those areas of inquiry for which we don’t have proof, where perhaps the idea of a proof may not even be possible in principle.

      During trying times, people crave answers to questions like, “What should I do now? How do I find the strength to carry on?”

      Any religion or philosophy that doesn’t sabotage itself by making falsifiable claims is a candidate to for answering those questions. If people find answers to those questions that are emotionally inspiring, I don’t think that they trouble themselves too much with chains of reasoning about truth-claims.

      We need some kind of religion that gives us strength during tough times and doesn’t require us to welcome our enemies. Greg Johnson gave it some thought nine years ago: https://counter-currents.com/2013/08/racial-civil-religion/

      • LITS,

        Thanks for your kind words.

        And yes: the claims of religion are definitely beyond the scope of purely rational inquiry.

        The questions of whether a Supreme Being exists, and if so, what the nature of that Being is, are not susceptible to rational or scientific analysis; which relies on verification through repeatable experiments.

        And the same would seem to be true of many purely-secular questions; such as the nature of the Universe prior to the Big Bang: there’s simply no way to know, or even to investigate them. We’re left to wonder and speculate. Which, as pattern-seeking primates, we can’t help but do.

        And it also seems to be true that in the end, the nature of religious experience is completely subjective.

        When I dialogue with my religious friends, what they end up saying in defense of their beliefs is:
        1) they had a profound religious experience, the nature of which, as they interpreted it, serves to confirm their beliefs; and
        2) to the extent that they have been able to put those beliefs into practice, their life has gotten better as a result.

        But of course, that has nothing to do with the truth of their beliefs. Their beliefs could be completely false, but still lead to good results.

        That’s how I understand the persistence of Christianity: I do think that the Christian narrative includes a lot of truth, in the sense of good practical advice about life.

        To the extent that I go around trying to treat everyone I encounter with a Christlike love— to the extent that I succeed in instantiating the ‘fruit of the spirit’— love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control— in my own life— I will likely do well: people will like me and want to be around me.

        > And that will be true, regardless of the truth of my underlying lying belief system.

        I do think that for many people, religious experiences become self confirmatory: they misinterpret the positive benefits they experience as providing proof of the veracity of their particular beliefs

        That’s why my Pentecostal friends and my Mormon sister and my Muslim friends and my Buddhist neighbor all report similar confirmatory experiences regarding their spiritual beliefs: “God showed me that my beliefs are true.”

        And I certainly don’t go around trying to disabuse people of their beliefs. Especially if their beliefs help them to be better people, and to cope with life, far be it for me to try and take them away.

        Some of the most wonderful people I know are Christians, and some of the best years of my life were spent in Christian community.

        But I finally— reluctantly, really — came to believe that Christianity is not true: that it’s simply doesn’t accord with reality as I experience it.

        I came to see all religions as humanity’s attempt to figure reality out, before they had sufficien data.

        And hey: I could be wrong.

        • The real Bill: I don’t want to make this all about me or go into too many personal details. So let me just point out that I’m still ornery and skeptical and don’t like most people most of the time. And I consider myself a Christian, by baptism and belief. I believe in God – not because it’s useful or feels good – although I have had moments of greater compassion or joy. I simply cannot deny a definitive, observable answer to my challenge of “Is God real or not real” when I was of sound mind and body and finally open in seeking an answer rather than presenting a challenge. YMMV.

          • I hear you. I spent a couple decades sincerely exploring the truth of Christianity. During that time, I had many “spiritual experiences”, which I interpreted as being confirmatory of my Christian beliefs.

            In retrospect, I’ve come to believe that those experiences were self-generated: I experienced what I was expecting to experience, what I was hoping and wanting to experience.

            Prior to that, I’d spent close to a decade hanging out with a Sufi holy man; during which time I became familiar with the Quran, and got to know many sincere believers who experienced the world through the Sufi narrative.

            My sister and her husband are Mormons, and I’ve spent a good deal of time among the LDS community.

            At various times, I’ve had friends who identified as Buddhists, and friends who identified as Hindus.

            And as part of my own Christian journey, I studied the Bible at a Pentecostal seminary.

            So my exposure to various religious traditions has been quite extensive; and here’s what I’ve observed:
            when you get down to it, they all seemed to be offering the same testimony as validation of their particular beliefs:
            they all reported having had profound spiritual experiences, which in each instance they interpreted as confirming their particular beliefs: “I prayed, and God showed me that my beliefs were true.”

            > So when you see people from various faith traditions— traditions which don’t just differ, but which contradict each other, which are mutually exclusive: such that if one is true, the others can’t be: for example, if Christians are correct that God is personal, then Hindus must be wrong when they insist that God is impersonal—

            when I saw these people from all these various faith traditions, all describing the same sort of confirmatory spiritual experiences— I came to the conclusion that *the only possible explanation for this— assuming they were all telling the truth, which I believe they were— is that religious striving is, by it’s very nature, self confirmatory*

            And when you see believers from these various contradictory faith traditions, all pointing to their subjective spiritual experiences as validating their faith, it becomes clear that you simply can’t do that: *you can’t rely on your subjective experiences as being confirmatory of what you believe.*

            Or so it seems to me….

          • you can’t rely on your subjective experiences as being confirmatory of what you believe

            Can’t say I disagree. Which is why the Western tradition sought to employ reason and gave rise to the likes of Aquinas and Duns Scotus. Then along came the “modrens” and poo-pooed scholasticism.

      • LITS,

        I composed a lengthy response to your thoughtful comments; apparently they are “awaiting moderation”.

        Hopefully they’ll show up sometime soon. And I also hope you’re enjoying this conversation as much as I am.

        • We’ll all find out one these days, yea or nay…

      • More good points. Yes, we are hard-wired for belief. It’s scary to think that we are the first civilisation in history that is “Post-belief”. It won’t end well.

    • William James had a unique perspective on belief. He wrote that the truthfulness of a belief is related to its cash value. How well does it work for you?

      I go to church even though my faith is luke warm, because it has cash value for me. I like these people, their values are mostly in alignment with my own – family values, tradition, Christmas, prayer, sharing, the music. I enjoy the conversations about weighty subjects. I enjoy their company.

      • “I go to church even though my faith is lukewarm, because it has cash value for me. I like these people, their values are mostly in alignment with my own – family values, tradition, Christmas, prayer, sharing, the music. I enjoy the conversations about weighty subjects. I enjoy their company.”

        Nothing wrong with that. That applies to many church attendees.

        • That is one of the purposes of Church attendance, the fellowship/community with other believers. The aspect of worship is—dare I say, secondary. Let me explain. Nothing stops believers from praying and worshiping by themselves, but community is only found in the company of others—and what better way to found a community than with others of like moral standards and belief.

          This may upset some here, but it should not.

          • And it seems clear that— regardless of the denomination— “worship services” provide a powerful positive emotional conditioning: stirring music, and uplifting words, the fellowship of those who believe the same as you do; regardless of whether or not the belief system they’re mutually celebrating is true, most people are going to find that experience, uplifting and empowering, and want to continue it.

    • Why should “truth” in the sense I think you mean make any difference to its longevity. I don’t see socialism dying the death you think comes to falsities…

      • Right? People have been falling for the lie “you will become as God” since the literal Fall. And yet they still believe the same lie today: “Ignore the millenia of failures of identical projects! They didnt havve the New and Inproved Truth, their Science! was faulty! This time we will be successful in re-engineering immutable human nature!”

    • The reason the truth of it hasn’t been discussed is because that was not really the topic. The topic was its persistence in Western society given current directions that society is headed.

    • What stymies us (and you, William) is the concept of “One God”- which then leads to the reductio ad absurdio of looking for a Source.

      This is the most dangerous idea in the world. It blinds and confuses us because it actually causes a short circuit.

      It is why the faithful can’t really explain anything, groping in the murky mysteries as they do.

      There is something real, something There, that they can sense, but that they cannot put into words. They are trying to use a political framework to describe that Something.

      Both right, and wrong. This is why I say atheists and believers are both right, and wrong. We must rise above the misdirection.

    • Excellent point. Sure, the majority of people might be turning away from Christianity because they prefer the life style that materialism offers them. However, I’m sure millions have rejected Christianity because they simply don’t believe it is true. That’s why I gave it up: I simply stopped believing in it, especially the whole sacrificial atonement for our sins bit, which Jesus never actually talked about. Jesus – or Yashua, he was an orthodox Jew – probably existed, but there seems to have been a vast amount of mythification added to the original barebones story laid out in the first record of his life (Mark, not Matthew). Also, your point about the sociological obessions with Christianity is apt. As a belief system, it is not concerned with the fate of nations or whether America will make it into the next century as the world’s leading superpower. It’s concerned with personal salvation.

40. My wife and I are members of an about 15-person independent Baptist church in Paris, Tenn. (Christ Fellowship Particular; all are welcome to visit). I still see the occasional cringe civic-trad “Back the Blue” or “Your Vote Can Make a Difference” that suggests our mostly-young church members may have to ripen on the vine more to fully understand what they’re up against. They’re largely good at marginalizing pop culture — it’s not the sort of church where there’s watercooler talk of “What movie did you see this weekend?” or “Hey, you should binge watch The Sex Lives of Talking Vaginas” — though our members are usually interested enough in at least one legacy media thing to be conversant in it, like sportsball or superheroes. They avoid the Israel-worshipping and view themselves and like-minded churches as the Israel of today, but are not totally immune to sharing a sentiment out of the “Holocaust, Inc.” or “Racism Bad” playbook. On the right track, but still could use a derailment or two to keep ’em more vigilant. We’re in Year 2 of our church, and the Bible passages, Charles Spurgeon quotes and wonk-ish theological discussions still largely outnumber the worldly stuff when it comes to FB posts and other discourse.

    If anything does us in, I think will be the inability to stay in one place. Paul in Acts travels widely to establish churches and preach a religion in its infancy at length in hostile salons and synagogues. That’s somewhat different than weekend trips to theological conferences and other meet-ups with distant churches and pastors who share a long-established Christian tradition. The shepherd runs the risk of not being around enough to tend to the sheep and keep them from wandering off. And we’re heavily transplants from other areas — I’m from Pa., we have a family from NC, our pastor is Ga., two of the newer member couples are from Arizona and California — so we are already prime wandering material. The allure to the young of traveling widely as a prerequisite of living life to its fullest is not just limited to mindless 20-something girls on degenerate “dating” sites. It may be a bigger threat than any pressure a corrupt institution can bring down on us,

    -Dave O’Connell

    • Another encouraging anti-worldly sign in our church: We’re very picky on holidays. Thanksgiving yes (it’s a big thing in Paul’s letters) but you’re not going to see us putting on an Easter egg hunt or Halloween costume party. No Christmas either: we’re not Catholics so we don’t celebrate “mass” and we are commanded to celebrate Christ, not birthdays (whenever his was). Being grounded in that from the outset may make it a lot easier to move us away from our other worldly normie illusions.

      • No Christmas? Even the pagan religions understood the importance of seeking light and fellowship in the deepest, darkest part of the year. If ever there was a universal “holiday” appropriate for Christian appropriation, it is Winter Solstice.

        • We’re big on fellowship (it’s in our church’s name), but we’re big on it as a regular thing, not simply to be done right before or after church, or on specific days at specific times of the year. The only appropriation we’re really interested in appropriating unbelievers into a Godly life with Christ.

          Your use of the word “darkest” is welcome, because it does remind me of the light/dark dichotomy that Jesus often speaks of (e.g. “I am the light of the world”, John 8:12). Our view is that if you accept Jesus in a Biblically sound way, there is no such thing as a “darkest” time of the year, since the “light” is always with you and coming from you in Christ. Every day should be “of Christ”, not simply Dec. 25 or whenever Jesus was born. Hope that helps.

          If nothing else, there’s no real Biblical downside to not observing a specific celebration that we are not commanded to observe in the Bible. Even if one avoids the nonsense associated mythology of beings who have powers only God could ever really have (Santa, Frosty), there’s nothing about it (worship, Bible reading, songs of religious devotion, evangelism, charity, fellowship, food, festive decoration, etc.) that can’t be done year-round.

          -Dave O’Connell

          • there’s nothing about it (worship, Bible reading, songs of religious devotion, evangelism, charity, fellowship, food, festive decoration, etc.) that can’t be done year-round

            I get the sentiment, but there is a Biblical downside. The purpose of designating and celebrating “holy days” is precisely to set them apart from the ordinary. Ample examples of this in the OT (e.g., Passover).

            Think of it this way: If everybody is above average, then nobody is. If everyday is your birthday, then your actual birthday has little significance. Same concept – if certain days are not set aside to commemorate a significant event in the Christian economy of salvation for particular reverence, then the object of that reverence tends to be blurred. The meaning of “sacred” is to set apart – to recognize the importance of something by setting it apart from the ordinary. That is exactly what holidays (“Holy Days”) do. We even have our own secular versions – Fourth of July, Memorial Day, etc.

      • I hate to be a realist, but your fifteen Christmas-denying church members are irrelevant. What’s celebrated is not Christ’s birth. Buddha and Muhammad and Moses all had birthdays. Rather, what’s celebrated is the theologically significant mystery of the Incarnation, i.e. that God became Man and dwelt among us. You either believe this or don’t; and if you do, it should have consequences that touch upon every aspect of your lived experience. It sounds like your little church is more focused on gathering exiles from the culture war who’ve fled areas where the Prince of this world, the Father of Lies, has successfully staked out a claim. How is this not the definition of a sociological response; and one akin to sticking a finger in the crack of a dam to prevent the coming flood?

        • I agree that a Biblical belief in Christ should manifest itself in every aspect of one’s life. This includes, as you say, an appreciation of the mystery of the incarnation of God becoming man. However, this makes every day “of Christ,” not just a specific day of the year. And it makes the observance of a specific day called Christmas surplus to the only requirements that truly matter, which are Biblical ones.

          As for the rest of your post, I think you’re confusing “culture” for “culture war.” We hold no candle for the degraded culture around us, but we are not hermits. We evangelize, minister and street preach. Nor are we exiles from liberal strongholds — some of us moved for work, others to be closer to family or other reasons. A few of us are locals. Though even if we were largely from Baltimore or somesuch worldly mess, it’s not like Tennessee is short on sinners or sin.

          Finally, I don’t think anyone, even unbelievers, are truly irrelevant to the world until God takes them off the chessboard. But it’s nothing any of us will know for sure until we draw our last breath. I hope that with your fiery opposition to the Prince of Lies and his works that it is a long time until you take yours.

          -Dave O’Connell

41. This was an exceptional post Zman.

    Christianity may well be a spent force.

    But it’s been the wellspring if large group morality in Western Civilization for thousands of years. Not to mention transmitting great wisdom on the day to day stuff (sorry, your problems aren’t that interesting…go talk to a priest who’s heard it all and can ideally give good advice. Life is too short to make all the mistakes just to learn from them, and google is not a suitable replacement for 2000 years of accumulated wisdom about the human condition)

    Michel Houellebecq’s book “Submission” addresses this eloquently from the European perspective. In this novel, Islam eventually dominates Europe because it has to. Nature abhors a vacuum.

42. The original lesson of Christianity is that if you call out the elites on their bullshit and hypocrisy, they will haul you into court, convict you on false charges based on the testimony of a paid informant, and torture you to death in front of your weeping mother as they are mocking and spitting on you.

    Since it was impossible to fight the overwhelming power of the government directly, and impossible to succeed within society unless you were willing to be corrupt and murderous, early Christians formed cells and subterranean groups outside the purview of the government, in which people trusted and loved each other and treated each other with kindness. This eventually became so appealing that Christianity formed a parallel society that competed with and undermined the government. Government would kill you and take your money; Christians would feed you, treat you when you were sick, and pray for you as you were dying. Christianity would entertain you with music and art. The mythology about the virgin birth and all of that may have been bullshit, but aside from that there were tangible benefits to being Christian.

    Christianity is dying in the West because the western welfare state has decided to compete with Christianity for the loyalty of the people. All welfare state governments now offer medical care, housing, EBT, and stuff like that. They use publicly funded stadiums to entertain the people with sportsball. And they don’t have to rely on contributions from the pews to do it, they can use taxpayer money, or simply print money outright. Since Christianity can no longer compete with the State, it attracts losers and weirdos and pedophiles in the ranks of its clergy, and allows itself to become practically an adjunct of the State.

    The State remains as brutal as it ever was, but chooses to exercise this brutality less often than it did in the past because it is bad optics in a democratic age. It is more effective for the State to play Pied Piper than to kill people outright in a democracy. The State has co-opted the egalitarianism of Christianity and applied it to all sorts of degeneracy, such as sodomy and transgenderism.

    There will be a resurgence of Christianity in the future on a local, organic level, but only after the welfare state can no longer provide benefits and services to bribe the people into compliance, and the State once again reveals its brutal nature.

    • “There will be a resurgence of Christianity in the future on a local, organic level, but only after the welfare state can no longer provide benefits and services to bribe the people into compliance, and the State once again reveals its brutal nature.”

      Brutality is back, and bankruptcy is on the horizon, so that day must be close.

    • “The original lesson of Christianity is that if you call out the elites on their bullshit and hypocrisy, they will haul you into court, convict you on false charges based on the testimony of a paid informant, and torture you to death in front of your weeping mother as they are mocking and spitting on you.”

      Yes, but….

      The story also includes that the devil offered Him dominion over that government. Knowing what was to be His fate, and that He could have had veto power…

      And that He could have defended Himself before Pilate by simply saying, “No, I’m not here to overthrow you or Rome.” Pilate tried to get Him to do that. And, yet…

      I’m not saying those parts of the story are factual, literally true tales. It doesn’t really matter whether or not they are. It works out exactly the same if He were nothing more than a parable Himself.

43. 1. As a Pennsylvanian (not sure if that’s Yankee enough), I don’t attend because of the judeo-christianity, the saccharine love, the phoniness— all that soft shit. Give me some fire and brimstone. My ice man blood demands it, or something. Don’t know if I’m typical of northerners, but it wouldn’t surprise me, given the founding stocks of the region.

    2. I was at a gas station recently, the attendant was a trans woman. On my way out, it occurred to me it was easier for this dude to change his body than it was to change his mind. Idealism. And that reminded me of when I graduated college, how soft and impractical I was, how little I liked myself. That was unacceptable. I embraced the flesh while this dude denied it. Probably what started me down this road.

    3. Hearing that Zelensky is moving against Christianity in the Ukraine. (And of course Putin is de-nazifying it. Ukraine as new-Zion suddenly doesn’t seem like wild speculation lol.) So it’s the spiritual war, the ancient grudge.

    • Agreed, as a fellow Pennsylvania (albeit transplanted to Kentucky), The trans thing (transgender, not transplant) came up in passing before one of our independent Baptist services in Paris, Tenn. — some news event — and somebody floated a question about the person to the pastor. And his response was simply: The man should repent. Straightforward unyielding re-statement of Biblical principle is sufficient for me, although our pastor does do fire and brimstone.

      • That is why I no longer respect most “religious” organizations. They have all to often left scripture to be trendy and modern and pretty soon have no solid foundation upon which to stand.

    • I have had friends invite me to their church services in recent years. Often they are megachurches. I am always disappointed how far they are from a fire and brimstone sermon. There is usually a rock band playing followed by a feel good sermon that pumps everyone up and makes them feel good.

      This summer a friend took me to his Mormon church service (he is a recent convert). To my surprise I really enjoyed it. While it was delivered in a soft and kind presentation topics discussed were of the fire and brimstone variety. I was an awe as the Pastor (,I think they are called bishops) actually talked about sin and the devil He talked about societal collapse and how important the traditional family was.. As a social conservative this was music to my ears.

      I also enjoyed seeimg so many cleancut wholesome looking men (which I never see anymore in the general.population) and conventionally attractive women. Yeah I know Mormons aren’t real Christians). Ok fine probably so, yet they were talking more about traditional moral values than any of the “real” Christian churches I attended put together.

      • The traditional polygamy family?

        • Well, you wanted a higher birthrate, no?
          Old traditions.

          And, how are they not “real”? All American variants are some form of millenialist.

        • A long time ago. These days Mormons are more likely to practice monogamy than the non-religious masses who have shifted to serial monogamy. The successful man on dating apps and the women who share him are practicing soft polygamy.

      • Jay Fink: I clearly understand the appeal – I have known many clean-cut, attractive, traditionally-minded Mormons. But, as you note, by the basic precepts their ‘church’ teaches they are not Nicene Christians theologically, although in many ways their lives are more traditionally Christian than not.

        And important to note that they, too, have fallen to demographic poison. They’ve ‘repented’ of their historic rayciss and eagerly proselytized and welcomed many Mestizo and south Pacific converts – to both their church and their daughters’ beds.

44. So, I was into the column at about the third graf, when a text rang up. Turned out to be a short video. It was a woman on tik tok, or something, singing a Christmas carol to her cat, replacing the words as needed, making the feline the Christ child…..

    • And why not? Society has long ago made Santa Claus the representation of *Christ*mas—and of course, Santa Claus, was long ago removed from his Christian roots.

      At least when I was very young and in the Netherlands, “Sinterklaas” still came by dressed as a Christian Bishop with mitre, staff, and vestments.

      • Do not despair. St. Nicolas dropped off oranges, gold coins and candy canes at my son’s school yesterday.

        • I bet “Zwarte Piet” wasn’t there. 😉

    • Time to head for the CATacombs. Sorry.

45. “Barring a cataclysm that derails modernity, institutional churches are doomed. That will leave the believers to fend for themselves as ad hoc communities. They will have to redefine what it means to be a Christian in order to survive the onslaught.”

    The local churches in my area seem small minded and petty, uninterested in providing one to one counseling or true defense and explanation of beliefs, probably because those are indefensible when actually questioned. I prefer the ten commandments, the golden rule, and a combination of animist and native great spirit beliefs. In pioneer and older times, it was always the women who demanded the establishment of a church and a school, to reinforce good behavior and to define “bad” people. The local whore may have been kinder and more generous than Mrs Oleson but Mrs Oleson and the pastor were the ones who defined what proper behavior was. It seems to me that church (not necessarily belief in God) is a crutch for those who need to belong to something and need group approval. Although I do like the idea of rituals, you sin, confess, do penance and are forgiven..

    Atheist-one who denies absolutely the existence of God, or gods
    Agnostic–who who says “well, maybe-prove it!”

    • “Atheist-one who denies absolutely the existence of God, or gods
      Agnostic–who who says “well, maybe-prove it!””

      I challenge your definition and offer my own, slightly different ones:

      Atheist: one who claims to have the ability to know all things, even the unknowable.
      Agnostic: one who understands “there are greater things in heaven and earth” than can possibly be understood by us little humans who have only been around for the tiniest little fraction of the universe’s existence.

      I don’t know what I don’t know.

      • For all practical purposes no one is a hard atheist. No one can claim to absolutely know what exists outside of observable reality. Also I’d wager that most people who claim to be agnostics are simply soft atheists who want to minimize conflict with Christians by allowing the possibility of God existing even if they really think it’s a negligible probability.

      • Atheist : “You aren’t answering the questions I’m asking.”

        (p.s.- the antagonistic “Atheist, Inc.” professional skeptics have the same ethnic funding as the board directors of the “Christian” immigrant relocation charities. Skinsuits.)

46. The only way for Christianity to survive is to become more militantly intolerant like the radical (=actual) Muslims.
    If the Church(es) keep making compromises with globohomo, then people won’t see a point in joining. They can get the same dose of fake morality from movies.

47. Widespread comfort and technological advancement convince people that they are their own gods. Religious faith will make a massive comeback if and when serious hardship hits enough people. There’s a reason missionaries tend to aim their work at poorer countries.

    • Exactly. Hard times breed not only hard men, but religious men too

48. Modern universalism and the spread of suburban life and the modern entertainment complex has damaged Christianity severely.
    I grew up in a rural smaller Christianity where rural values were reinforced,
    now the mega churches in the suburbs look like rock concerts today.
    The christians go to the concert then go home to turn on NFL football and look at end zones painted in propaganda phrases.
    Christians in order to survive must get smaller and much less universal.
    Universalism is built into Christianity but it used to be known that the apostle Paul had no intention of importing the Visigoth’s and Vandals into Athens or Corinth and the church there.
    The church in Athens or Corinth was for the Greeks.
    Now much of Christianity thinks it’s duty is to celebrate Vandals over running Athens and Corinth.
    It’s to be celebrated.
    Or Africans over running the entirety of Europe.
    Or the world over running the United States.

    This universalism has to be reigned in for Christianity to survive.

49. The modern Evangelical Protestant churches, while outwardly the most dynamic and the fastest- growing, will collapse hard once any real persecution begins because they have been so focused on being “seeker- friendly” and appealing to shortened modern attention spans with flashy performances during Sunday services instead of fostering any real discipleship among the congregation.

    The mainline Protestant churches have been consumed by Wokeness and are emptying faster high school student parking lot on the last day of school before summer vacation. The Catholic Church is overrun and controlled by homosexuals. There’s no future there.

    The only form of Christianity that exists today that I see lasting as it is currently practiced is Eastern Orthodoxy. The other forms don’t have the traditions to sustain the practice or they’ve already sold out to Modernity and Globohomo.

    • No, Catholics are leaving the “Modern” church in droves, the old hippie types are staying.

      The new growth, specifically, is in the likes of the Society of Pope Pious the X.

      Young people and families are flocking there because the real traditions of the Church are found there.

      We’re building new churches and getting more people to become priests and nuns.

      That is why Francis and his heretics are wanting to destroy any trace of tradition in the Church.

      They’re AFRAID.

      • Then you’ll have to have a schism at some point, because the institutional power and wealth of the Roman Catholic Church is controlled by the Lavender Mafia out of Rome. They don’t fear you. They hate you and want you gone. Trad Catholics will eventually mostly leave for other traditions or they’ll have to schism, walk away with none or almost none of the current church’s resources, and accept excommunication by the homos in Rome, especially the heretic Pope Francis or his almost certain to be more heretical successor as a price.

        • Schism cuts both ways. The question is who is schisming(?) from whom?

          Prophetically, I recall Pope Benedict XVI once stating that he foresaw a much smaller but more devout Church in the future.

        • The sspx has been going it alone without the resources of Rome or the local diocese since its founding and are doing very well.

50. The only way ahead for Christian communion is in the home, in small groups. But that presents difficulties. It is not hard to see a Killing Time ahead, like 17th century Scotland, where meeting in God’s name outside the established church brings, at the least, summary social death. Turning off the pocket telescreen will be tantamount to setting off a distress flare in terms of alerting the authorities. The mainline churches will be right behind this, angrily denouncing all non-aligned Christians from the pulpit. Hell, the church I attended already did this, before I stopped going.

    • Agreed — I think very small churches and home churches will be the last line of defense. I can also imagine it getting to the point where the authorities don’t even have to police such dissidents — the banks will just de-bank people, the way they already are doing in non-religious contexts.

      -Dave O’Connell

51. My own view echoes Dinodoxy to some extent in that churches were effectively a technology solution that was really the media of the day as a conditioning means (note this is separate than actual faith).

    The churches were the central distribution of the message that most people turned up to every day or week to be given instruction as to how and what to think. It was their programming of the time. One was built as a transmitter in each town and village no matter how small to ensure this distribution was everywhere.

    Once widespread media came on the scene there is no need for the antiquated means of distribution, it could be broadcast directly from a single central source far more cheaply, without any local variation arising and more pervasively.

    So you can’t have 2 competing authority media structures for people, its confusing, hence the glomming on to the louder pervasive media church and the “religion” of the globohomo and the drift from the physical church as its direct replacement.

    It is also why the active attack to ensure its earlier rival and those still attached to it are completely destroyed. One can see this as to why a lot have seamlessly swapped over. The central message originator has just switched the signal. The mechanism sending this new signal can now be seen as its real function, not the content.

    There are probably a small number of actual believers left as this has been altered, and the NPCs have just switched from a big building to their phone and sofa without noticing the change.

52. Z, this old Christianity could be replaced by older Christianity. Eric Rudolf with two cups of Hezbollah, bake for thirty minutes.

    Deus Vult

53. For Catholics in Ameirca, the situation has somewhat improved in recent years. There are a lot of good young priests, and a couple of good bishops. The Traditional Mass Movement is strong. And there is resistance to the heresies (it must be said) perpetrated by Pope Francis, especially in Amoris Latitia. Still, the overall situation is bleak, as it has been since Vatican II.

    • Yes we are now in a situation where the center of gravity of the Laity is to the right of the Church hierarchy. I suspect for most Catholics, this is a lifetime first.

    • Agree.

      A small, anecdotal white pill from my Catholic parish.

      Every 2 years we get a new Associate Pastor, typically just out of the seminary, as the diocese seeks to rotate Associate Pastors around to different parishes every 2 years.

      Each of the new Associate Pastors we’ve been assigned are very conservative on doctrine. So the newer, young generation of priests, at least anecdotally, seems to be adhering much more to tradition.

      • We have two new associate pastors and both are very conservative. They have no problem calling out liberal politicians and have spoken several times as if we are in a war. We had a liberal priest at our prior parish. He was an excellent priest, but came out of the ideological closet with Trump. We actually walked out of a mass where he was raving about January 6.

        One of our new pastors, when asked about Biden and Pelosi promoting abortion, said they are in a state of mortal sin, they know exactly the cynical game they are playing, and they should be denied communion until they publicly repent. If they present themselves for communion, they are compounding their sins.

    • The liberal priest bubble is just that – a bubble. It centers on (who else?) the Baby Boomers. Younger priests are far more doctrinially sound, and despite their efforts to do so, the Boomers can’t hold onto power forever.

54. It seems to me that Russia is showing how to marry a modern society with the old partnership between the Church and state. Church and state reinforce and support each other because both are interested in the flourishing of the people. There is literally nothing at all about the invention of the semiconductor that changes these potential arrangements, and it isn’t clear why so many people think something absolutely new must arise.

    I mean, look: everything we are learning is simply a recapitulation of the wisdom of the old ways. Women really can’t be emancipated, we have to have certain ways of thinking about non-Christian religions, we need an elite who are limited to a sphere of competence, we need an elite who must at least pretend to be virtuous, even the lowest person is part of a political- and mystical body, democracy is not legitimate, etc. & etc. All of this is simply a recapitulation of the old idea of Christendom, complete with kings and bishops doing king and bishop things.

    There is one place on earth that is building cathedrals and banning gay propaganda. Let’s learn from them.

55. I didn’t grow up going to church so I may complete off base here, but in some sense, the church needs to give up its universalism. That may not be possible. Again, I have no background in the church.

    However, if there’s a future for Christianity, it seems rooted in both God and people, accepting that their is one God that rules over all people, but a church that is fashioned for this particularly people. The church would celebrate both the wonders of God and the achievements and uniqueness of a people that God created.

    How you define that people is up to the various churches and peoples. The Irish Church. The Germany Church. The Church of European Americans. Etc.

    My point is that universalism, like communism and libertarianism, treats people like lumps of clay. The church says to honor your parents, yet it doesn’t matter who they are.

    Again, I could be completely off, but a church that sticks with universalism is setting itself up to get destroyed by Wokism, especially a Wokism backed by a ruthless group that does practice a religion based on ethnicity, because it doesn’t really offer an alternative.

    • It seems you view universalism and the existence of individual peoples and nations as mutually exclusive. It depends upon exactly what you are being universal about in the universalism.

56. I say good riddance to modern US Christianity. The modern ‘Churches’ are just Pharisees and Law Givers in suits and fancy costumes. My Irish ancestors were persecuted violently for their beliefs by English overlords, which never broke them – they are only losing their 1600 year tradition because life is too easy. I lived in Egypt for some time, and I have seen a community (Copts) that lives in danger of death for their belief – same in Nigeria, Pakistan – anywhere Mohammedanism holds sway. The Son of Man himself told us, “…(E)nter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” It’s not a gift for the many, but the few.

    Cortez was a Christian of the Warrior breed hardened through a lifetime of life-and-death struggle against the infidels, and thus knew exactly how to deal with evil when he confronted it. We need more of hardship and persecution to forge a new, modern Cortez. Going underground as a persecuted minority will be good for the hardened kernel around which a revitalized and masculine new Christianity can grow. Let the wheat be separated from the chaff!

    • This is a great post. Well said JQP.

      • Thank you, but especially thank Z for such a prolific commentsection today! As Henny Youngman used to say. .”I’ll be here all week!”

57. Aren’t we the ones that stoically accept that our present western and traditional America will probably continue to fall and break up until some distant time to assemble again as something we can believe in? That also goes for Christianity as it has survived, ebbed and flowed, for two thousand years.

    Decadence and rot mostly due to prosperity and the rise of the state have brought us low but we are in the nadir part of a cycle. For true believers the present and the coming years present opportunities to strengthen one’s faith and fight the good fight. What else is there to do. It hurts to see all of this but Christ and his words are with us always.

    • To be blessed with a life of struggle, to have a reason to be better each day, is the greatest gift of all. -Zman

58. There is a filled church every Sunday at the Latin Mass I attend (~100 people). However, of the 6 children of friends who were married in the last 3 years, only 1 had a Catholic Church service and the rest had aunts or cousins marry them (NY state gives them a paper to do that). And the kids parents are Americans, mostly of Italian or Irish descent and all were raised by their very Catholic parents. As the world continues to spiral into hell with all the PC/MC/diversity BS, I believe more people will go back to the Church. Go sit in a beautiful church for a few minutes and no matter what you believe, it is certainly peaceful.

59. Individuals can be good without God, societies can’t.

    • People, are not naturally good.

    • Individuals can be, sure. But only as a personal preference.

60. It has been oft speculated upon that Christianity cannot survive the fall of European civilization. This is especially acute in the former colonies of European nations. To my knowledge, only Russia has made a serious attempt to revitalize Christianity. We can expect Christianity to survive (in some form) only among the vestiges of lands dominated by an ever-shrinking population of Europeans.

    • Christianity is the fastest-expanding religion in the world, booming in Africa, Asia, and other places where, unlike white countries, people still believe in themselves and think they deserve a future.

      • Then you should go there if you think your future would be more secure among a burgeoning Christian population.

      • The Christianity in these places is nothing like the one in Europe.

      • Many critics have pointed out that African “Christians” are in many cases that in name only. There is little/none of the intellectual or theological foundations. The adherents attend the ceremonies for social reasons or to have access to western charity.

        I have heard it’s worse than American blacks who attend church to sing and dance.

        • African “Christianity” is just another form of magic for the negro.

      • The African Catholic priests I’ve met aren’t phonies.

        Aren’t the African Anglicans ready to break off from the Church of England because of the gay stuff?

        At any rate, these people aren’t the problem. The elite, cosmopolitan caucasians and their non-white acolytes and dependents are the enemy. Africans and others wouldn’t be going to European countries were if not for the cosmopolitan elites.

61. At the root, all religions are codifications of ancient wisdom, and religious practices have always been an effective mechanism of passing this wisdom down to succeeding generations. The end result is a culture that values honesty, strong moral principles, and hard work; all of which are essential to ability of the group to survive and thrive.

    These imperatives still exist (and are determinative), but modernity and prolonged affluence have eliminated the gauntlets of hardship that motivate religious piety. No one needs ancient wisdom when society offers everything you need minus the working part. But the price of that is no self-respect and a lack of robustness. And eventually those chickens come home to roost.

    The seminal question is . . . how long can the plates keep spinning without honest productive men in the majority? Methinks we’re about to find out.

    • Agree. Christianity provided a “public good”, in the sense that work ethic and moral training created social trust and a reliable work/managerial force. These heathens are going to try to replace that public good with Modern Monetary Theory haha….

62. This is surely a sober post as we close in on one of the two most Christian of holidays. Of course, Christmas has been thoroughly commercialized, but there’s always been an undercurrent of faith, hope and renewal. You just wonder how much longer it’ll last, or even be allowed to last.

    I see that the jew Zelenskyy is proposing to abolish the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, supposedly on account of their alignment with the Russian Orthodox Church – a metaphorical (or literal) feeding to the lions.

    As a non-practicing Christian myself, I’ve always been ambivalent with respect to faith, but never begrudged it to those who more genuinely believe. Now it just seems like another tradition that we always took as an article of faith that will soon likely be no more – at least publicly.

    The construction of the magnificent cathedrals throughout Europe centuries ago was probably the high point – I doubt modernity could even come close to copying one of those today – there isn’t the skill or will or belief in a higher power to accomplish much of anything anymore.

    • Zelensky is a genetic Jew. He converted to Christianity long time ago and his children are baptized.
      Ukrainian Orthodox Church split in 2 in 2019: Moscow Patriarchate affiliated (forbidden in Ukraine now) and Ukrainian Orthodox Church (supported by Ukrainian gov-t).

      • Oh the Orthodox Church that was just outlawed? Zelenskt converted? Lol, yeah…
        Amazing the ties that he has to Israel and Jewish Oligarchs but keep rolling with your narrative. Look up the Merranos sometime for a lesson Jews that “convert.”

        • But true, in name at least. Zelensky is nominally Christian. Whether a false conversion as you’ve pointed out, is another story. It is strange however to me how much the new-NAZI groups are prominent in Ukraine and yet so many Jews seem to be in high positions? Something’s wrong with this picture. The history of Ukraine in WWII is decidedly anti-Semitic.

          • Maybe you are confused because your base assumptions are incorrect?

        • FYI: Merranos had only 3 choices: convert to Christianity, escape the country or be burned alive.
          Thus, the forcefully converted secretly practiced Judaism for centuries. General Franco came from such forcefully converted family.
          My family came from the people who escaped Spain in 1492, settled in the Ottoman Empire and then came to Ukraine (which for 30 years was a part of Ottomans).
          Zelensky and other mostly 1/2 Jews in the Ukrainian Rada became Christians voluntarily.
          Yuuuge difference.

      • Is that why Zelensky was named 2022’s most influential Jew by the Jerusalem Post?

        http://www.thejc.com/news/news/volodymyr-zelensky-has-been-named-2022%27s-world%27s-most-influential-jew-18GHK55y34RX5tOfGDHGxK

63. This is the end result of a secular country founded by atheists who wanted “liberation” from religious dictates. Jefferson went on to hang out with Robespierre, something nobody talks about.

64. I appreciate the Christians who are finally being judgmental pricks again, and are using Christianity as a moral cudgel like it was meant to be. This is how religion ought to be. It was the policeman and the psychologist before police and pills.

    However in living memory “Christianity” was just another power structure. I don’t think Christianity has fallen out of favor because of the new secular religion being promoted, but rather many people remember that the clergy was just as powerful and corrupt as Washington is. Up to the W Bush years. Remember the Iraq War was sold using Christian messaging. Then Christianity itself was turned into a backward and antiquated power structure as the progressive fads gained strength in the mid-aughts. Now of course the secular clergy is in full control, and Christianity seems cool and rebellious. But it was not always so.

    In time, the younger generations will see Christianity in a much different light than the older generations do. Things may even swing back into a Christian moral framework. We’ll see. All I know is that we’ve tried both: Christian authoritarianism and secular authoritarianism. And I prefer the Christian one.

    • Indeed. We were sold the proposition that if we chased the church lady out of the public square, we would somehow be more “free”.

      Now the church lady has been replaced by Drag Queen Story Hour, and our freedom diminishes by the day.

      Bring back the church lady!

      • Church lady just dyed her hair pink, put on different clothes, and put up a rainbow flag

    • > Up to the W Bush years. Remember the Iraq War was sold using Christian messaging.

      One of the strangest things I’ve seen was some training manuals for Catholic Social Teaching distributed during the Iraq War. It was chock full of very strained logic regarding Just War theory, including stating preemptive strikes could be seen as self-defense, wars to stop oppression were justified etc. There was nothing intrinsically wrong with these statements , but the focus seemed exceptionally bloodthirsty, unbalanced, and with basically no focus on the necessity of trying to keep the peace first. It was clear some Catholic NeoCon got hold of the materials and went to town.

      It’s important to remember the institutional right betrayed the good will of religious Christians far worse than the democrats, and we’re paying the price now.

65. I am not a Christian. However, I am certain that growing up in a Christian household, going to church and a private christian school has benefited me. That isn’t to say a secular upbringing couldn’t. The Church provided much more than religion. It was the glue between Rome and Northern Europe. It provided resources and inspiration. Could the Visigoths of Asturias have done the reconquista without the help of the Church?

    There is something eery about the conversion of the Church’s clergy to the new religion. I have traveled a lot recently and every docent and every museum employee looks like one of the cultists who hate our civilization. What happens when the old guard die out and vibrants run the museums? What happens to the unbelievable churches when Moslems have the numbers? Will David Rubenstein do to the churches what he is doing to American heritage sites and in telling American history?

    The recent undertakings at Wellcome Museum may provide a clue. Looking at the entire chessboard things look bleak.

66. I remember when Pope Francis ascended to the papacy how we were told that this new, compassionate Christianity that reached out to the world would bring the wayward back to Church who were offended by the angry stodginess of old Catholicism.

    Now, almost ten years later, there has been no resurgence, only collapse, and our Holy Father now spends most of his time insulting trads or supporting radical environmental agendas.

    Young religious are now stuck in a strange paradox where they feel they must show deference to authority, even though they know said authority would prefer they were dead. Open contempt for religious hierarchy tends to be counterproductive, as it undermines a core tenet of one’s faith. This has led to a certain “bunker mode” where they are trying to create ad-hoc institutions of like-minded people who can limit the damage of modern leadership.

    The main reason Francis hates the Latin Mass is many of the people congregated there tend to have large families, have a lot of money, or both. He understands the risk of an alternative institution that has the resources to undermine his agenda to turn the Church into a global NGO, instead creating a competing power structure.

    In the short term, religion is going to collapse, probably dropping to 10-20% regular attendance by the time Gen Z reaches middle age. The pride flag churches will stop existing, and the secular majority will start to persecute the remaining Churches. The remnants will have severely insular groups like the yiddish in New York who will be extremely tribal to survive.

    The good news is our increasingly incompetent state will not have the capacity to stomp us out entirely. The bad news is our kids are in for a world of pain.

    • Chet Rollins: “our Holy Father”

      Why do you capitalize a reference to that jesuitical sodomite pederast satanist?

      Why do you even assign the possessive “our” to your assessment of him [and your relationship to him]?

      You’re claiming that monster for yourself & your family?

      I don’t mean to beat a dead horse [no pun intended], but there’s a screw loose here somewhere.

      If you’re at all of an historical bent, you oughtta take a gander at the list of complaints presented by the Lollards, :

      https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/twelve-conclusions-lollards

      Plus ca change, bro.

      • Do you think anyone who reads that post will say “Wow, this Catholicism thing sounds great.”?

        Everyone has had to deal with bad leadership, and even organizations with bad leadership can be rejuvenated with solid people on the ground trying to turns things around and finding clever ways to circumvent bad leadership decisions. An organization can’t survive, however, with a bitter and hostile base.

        • Chet Rollins: “Everyone has had to deal with bad leadership”

          Bro, we’re not talking “bad” leadership.

          We’re talking SATANIC leadership.

          And nonchalance is not a good look on you, Bro.

          • “”We’re talking SATANIC leadership.””

            Then what reason would any decent person remain in a church with “SATANIC” leadership?

            Because some dusty old books told you it was “the one true church”??

            Catholics are having a “Santa Claus isn’t real moment” with Francis and its causing mental derangement.

          • Tookay: ‘Catholics are having a “Santa Claus isn’t real moment” with Francis and its causing mental derangement.’

            I might disagree with you just a little bit there; in general, I am not yet sensing in Catholics the sort of irreconcilable cognitive dissonances which would be a necessary prerequisite to consenting to undertake the colossal job of cleaning up the catastrophic mess which is the modern church of Rome.

            Most of the Catholics I follow seem to sweep it all under the rug, and tend to get very ornery when the topic arises.

            I don’t know how far I should go in pursuing this line of thought [maybe it would be best if Z simply refused to post this comment on his blog], but it’s very difficult to look at the modern Roman church and come to any conclusion other than that it’s merely a patchwork quilt of ethnic mafia crime syndicates, with its single most cherished & profitable line of business being the molestation of altar boys & divinity students by the wealthy and the powerful.

            There’s a reason that the Mossad officer, Jeffrey Epstein, went to Southern Ireland, in order to find a couple of kids which would allow the sodomite pedophile, John Roberts [of SCROTUS fame], to appear to be a normal Joe.

            [As opposed to an abnormal Joe, whose favorite pasttime is tweaking the nipples of prepubescent girls.]

            PS: In fairness to the Catholics, I’m not currently aware of any formally organized Christian denomination that I’d be much interested in joining right now.

            Amongst the many possible futures out there awaiting us, the Home Church movement is likely to be the one you want to keep your eye on.

            Learn to draw the sign of the fish in the dirt of your front yard, or your driveway.

    • Bergoglio is not and never will be “our” Holy Father. You can’t have two popes and Benedict’s sort-of, kind-of resignation was invalid. That makes Bergoglio an antipope, meaning every action he takes is invalid. But most Catholics just accept that Bergoglio is the pope. It’s like in shooting where if you’re firing at a target 3,000 yards away and the aim of your rifle is even a micrometer off, that error compounds with distance. Same with the assumption that Bergoglio is the product of a legitimate conclave. Once you go from that premise, the error continues to widen.

      • The problem with the “Bergolio is Antipope” crowd is that they have no idea/no power to rectify the situation.

        The most likely outcome is Francis dies/retires and then another cardinal with a similar liberal outlook succeeds him….to be followed by a further liberal successor years later. The left has a lock on the hierarchy at this point.

        The antipope crowd like Ann Barnhardt seem to think that some kind of miracle is going to happen that will resolve the problem.

        Waiting on a miracle…the last refuge of the totally powerless.

        • Idea yes. Power, no. But antipopes, while not common, do occur now and then. With Bergoglio, it is a failsafe mechanism/ relief valve. Once declared antipope eventually, all his crap can be ignored.

          • c matt: “Once declared antipope eventually, all his crap can be ignored.”

            From the Christian point of view, this attitude lies somewhere between SMDH and LOL on the scratching-muh-head-ometer.

            I don’t mean to be rude, and I’m not trying to make fun of y’all, but dadgum, you’re talking about spinning on a dime when it comes to your sacred doctrine.

            Easy come, easy go.

67. On the other hand Christianity in various forms survived much more intense suppression over much greater periods of time than it is currently enduring in the West. I think the waning of active observance has at least as much to do with the general relative affluence in the West as may be attributed to the active efforts to corrupt it into just another vehicle of GAE-ZOG influence. It may be a problem that solves itself as things get worse just as White Identity is likely to increase the more Whites are persecuted specifically for that racial identity. Human nature seems to be hard wired to prioritize establishing religious foundations upon which they build their moral frameworks and derive their moral strength to endure hardship.

    • The church was (and should be) a collection of the community, kind of like on The Simpsons how everyone goes to the same church. With the destruction of communities it’s no surprise the churches are being destroyed as well.

    • But that is partly the catch. Seems the more intense the persecution, the more it thrived. More often today, the trick is not to inflict horrible punishment , although that happens at times (e.g., the bake the cake type). It is to remove societal barriers to the enjoyment of vices which are difficult to resist and seem less “vicey” by comparison. So you end up with divorce, adultery, etc., but hey, at least I’m not in a gay marriage. This eventually erodes the institutions.

68. The dominant faith that is facing an existential crisis of faith is the liberal-enlightenment one, not christianity.

    Liberal-enlightenmentism has been the dominant belief system in the west for at least the last century. And its failures are manifest everywhere. The ideology, faith, is at an evolutionary dead end. Its nearing its logical conclusion as a nihilistic death cult. It, not christianity, absolutely will not survive into the twenty second century.

    The survivors of its violent death will return to faith of some sort after its fall. It might not be christianity. But it probably will be.

    • In my very (very) small sample size on this normie is more distressed at the ultimate doom of the enlightenment than some theoretical death of Christianity. For hundreds of years Western European thought has been tied up in the worship of the individual but technology has floored that gas peddle and driven it straight off of cliff.

      • Yep.

        Taking a very long historical perspective, the era from ~1850 – 2150 will be called the age of oil. A transient period of human history when the exploitation of hydrocarbons enabled energy use by individuals and society a couple of orders of magnitude greater than existed before or after.

        That energy – power – created the illusion that people were the masters of nature and reality. Which led to all kinda of self destructive behaviors and ideas. The liberalism and the enlightenment may be a specious rationalization enabled by that power.

        Today, we imagine that they created the power, when in reality it was the other way around.

69. In Rev 2:5, Christ says the following to the Church at Ephesus:

    “Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.”
    ‭‭
    This is what is happening in the West now. The lampstand of God’s light is being revoked.

    • Very interesting.

70. I wonder how many people over the last thousand or fifteen hundred years have been true believing christians as opposed to nominally christian. Id bet the latter outnumbered the former by at least a factor of five to one during most of that time in most places.

    We sort of have the impression that “everyone” was a true believing christian prior to the modern era (whenever that began). But i just don’t think that was the case, which is kind of the dog that didn’t bark throughout european history.

    I think whats happened in the modern era is that a fanatical anti-christian minority gained power and nominal christians became free to show their indifference. The actual true believing christian minority has shrunk for sure, but no where near as much as appears at first blush – and will just keep chugging along, biding time until they get a chance to become ascendant again.

    • I don’t know about that. When you read about the Crusades and battles like the defense of Malta, a standard feature is that the Pope or a priest would offer the soldiers absolution of their sins as a condition of fighting a battle where there was likely to be high casualties. The soldiers clearly wanted this even though I doubt many of them were closely following Christian teachings in every day life. Who knows how many truly believed they were going to heaven when they died, but they wanted the seal of approval just in case. That is a different mentality from today’s atheist who looks at Christianity with scorn.

      • Absolution is a powerful concept whose appeal gets greater as one ages.

        “When I was young, I prayed for justice. When I grew old, I prayed for mercy.”

        • @ProZ
          This you’ve shared is distilled wisdom and mirrors my own experience. When I turned 60, I began to pray the Jesus Prayer in earnest.

      • Were the crusader soldiers christians when they slaughtered innocents during the crusades?

    • Christianity was just part of the ether, like anti-racism is now. Most people just accepted it as The Way. The abominations we call the Vatican, the Southern Baptist Convention, and the various silly Protestant denominations are just human inventions, have become twisted over time, and veered far from their Christian roots. Humans are apt to twist and corrupt every institution, especially as it grows in popularity.

      I say we go back to the catacombs and start over.

    • As I understand it, a big change occurred in the fourth century, when the Roman Emperor Constantine had a religious vision and became a Christian. Shortly thereafter, he commanded that all his subjects also become Christians.

      That marked the rise of “nominal Christianity”. Prior to that, by and large the only people going to church were those who truly believed. At some times and places, there was a significant cost to being a Christian; it put you at risk.

      Once Constantine made Christianity the official religion, people started going to church for all sorts of other reasons: social pressure, prestige, “because everybody does it.”

      Last I heard, Christianity was growing fastest in China, where it is being suppressed. I doubt there are many “nominal” Christians in China.

      • Can confirm. Though it’s the Evangelical type. (Eye roll.) But I suppose it’s better than Islam taking over. Or Communism.

      • As I understand it, a big change occurred in the fourth century, when the Roman Emperor Constantine had a religious vision and became a Christian. Shortly thereafter, he commanded that all his subjects also become Christians.

        Christians were a minority within the Roman Empire 150 years after Constantine’s conversion. Paganism was outlawed by Justinian in the 550s – fully 250 years after constantine.

        Beyond that, it’s not even clear what Christian beliefs were in Constantine’s age. He died before the theologians that created catholic orthodoxy lived and wrote. And their theology was developed in response to controversies within the chirch.

71. Just read over on vox days site: “President Zelensky of Ukraine announced Draft Law 8821, which will make the Ukrainian Orthodox Church illegal throughout the country. The law, if passed, will also allow the Ukrainian government the ability to confiscate all church property and outlaw both public and private practice of the religion.”

    • Defender of the faith.

      Which faith is yet to be defined.

72. Christianity has survived a lot harder oppressions over the last two thousand years so the smart bet is that it will survive whatever this epoch is too.

    As noted, it has also evolved repeatedly over that period of time so whatever it looks like in 2200 will be substantially different than what it looks like today.

    • The most devoted to the Christian faith have the highest birth rates. Even if they lost half their kids, they still have good long term prospects. People are checking out of modernity in increasing numbers, that a certain subset would stick with Christianity as an alternative is likely to happen. The key is building strong communities, what Doug Wilson has done in Moscow, Idaho is a good example of that. Especially in the near term I would expect these communities to thrive as they operate much more rationally and efficiently than the woke crazies around them.

73. seems like the way forward is to abandon churches and keep it a private observance. 90+% of christians are not really observant, they just like being part of a group.

    • It’s close to impossible to transfer a faith to one’s children without a social network. No matter how many Bible stories you tell them, if everyone in the outside world either thinks it’s unimportant for refuses to discuss religion in public, the child internalizes the thought the religion is not actually important, but just a strange family ritual.

      There needs to be a community open about their faith, and that more or less requires a Church of some sort.

      • well, the point of this post is that soon churches will be forbidden.

        • Wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened; won’t be the last.

      • > No matter how many Bible stories you tell them, if everyone in the outside world either thinks it’s unimportant for refuses to discuss religion in public, the child internalizes the thought the religion is not actually important, but just a strange family ritual.

        Yeah, this is exactly how the mighty Roman Empire managed to squash those pesky Christians before they could spread those unpopular ideas. /s

        My suggestion to you: If your “faith” requires official sanction from worldy authority to survive, than it isn’t actual faith, but really is just a strange family ritual.

        • St. Paul created explicit Christian communities, gave leadership to a trusted elder, and had believers live in them. He expelled those who didn’t pass muster.
          There was nothing private about the faith life of early Christians.

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