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Here's a highly informative article describing in considerable detail The Genesis of Christian Nationalism, which seeks to dominate every aspect of American society by electing an allied US President in the upcoming election.

https://projects.propublica.org/christian-national...

The Genesis of Christian Nationalism
By Phoebe Petrovic, Wisconsin Watch
ProPublica Oct. 26, 2024

Tom

The Seven Mountains movement is notable, as it aspires to dominate what it regards as the entirety of experiential existence.

From the article: "The NAR [New Apostolic Reformation, originating in the 1980s] helped popularize the concept that Christians should conquer the seven spheres of society: family, religion, government, arts and entertainment, business, education and media."

That's evident in the inexplicably comparable support for Harris and Trump.

Admittedly, I wonder about the accuracy of polls. Likely we'll learn from the outcome of this election, whether or not it's hijacked, or claimed to be so.

Tom

That's evident in the inexplicably comparable support for Harris and Trump.
Admittedly, I wonder about the accuracy of polls. Likely we'll learn from the outcome of this election, whether or not it's hijacked, or claimed to be so.

Tom, your posts are very interesting to readers, especially on this board. But just a reminder that US local politics are not allowed on this board - even referenced as a side topic - as a special case to allow it to remain differentiated from the US Policy board.

We are not bothered with other boards having occasional local politics references as they don't have a history of then deviating to 99% US Politics, as this board does, so we need to protect it in that way.

Your first post in the thread was excellent.

- Manlobbi

While there is the US Policy board, there isn't really much to discuss about atheism, per se. "Yep, still no deity" is about it. It becomes relevant in terms of politics, both local and national. When some idiot legislature mandates posting the 10 Commandments in a classroom, that's US policy (arguably), but also relevant to atheism and religion. It's the crossover between atheism and politics, often, that makes the topic relevant.

Unless this board is just to await someone posting some incontrovertible evidence for the existence of deity, in which case this board will be mostly dead.

Christian nationalism is relevant to atheism (especially in its desire to marginalize us further), but it is a political (US policy) movement.

I know. I just don't see how it's workable. Atheism is an absence of belief in a deity. It's how it interacts with other aspects of life that matters. So Christian nationalism -which is political, mostly- interacts with atheism, and affects atheists.

I totally get wanting to separate pure politics as a separate topic. But it's not clear to me how it is workable given that a) there are interactions, and b) conversations evolve to encompass additional aspects and topics.

So it is clear that posting about the convict not supporting Ukraine isn't appropriate here (at least not as an opening post). It's not so clear to me when we are talking about religious oppression -such as Christian nationalism- that often strays** into politics, since that is generally the mechanism for such oppression. In many countries, it isn't an issue. Denmark, Sweden, etc...it just isn't an issue. Other nations, including ours, it is very much intermingled. US policy in particular is often shaped by positions/doctrines on religion. I don't think it's possible to draw a bright line between US policy and religion. It's very fuzzy, and some judgment needs to be exercised by the poster. I know I exercise that judgment, even pausing for several moments to figure out where to post a particular subject or article, because the line is fuzzy. I think the OP's second post was in the fuzzy line, but not really over it. Unless you think the entire thread should be on US Policy because it could (and almost certainly would) evolve to include politics at some point. JMHO.


**Strays? Dare I say, inevitably leads to?

A quote from the article included in my second post in this thread: "The NAR helped popularize the concept that Christians should conquer the seven spheres of society: family, religion, government, arts and entertainment, business, education and media."

According to this, the NAR advocates for one flavor of religion dominating in all of these realms, including both religion and government in general.
One thing that strikes me about this is that the NAR's 'seven mountains' of society fail to include science.


onepoorguy: US policy in particular is often shaped by positions/doctrines on religion. I don't think it's possible to draw a bright line between US policy and religion.

I presume my error was to mention the names of the two candidates in the current election, which I did without expressing a preference for either one. Okay ... my bad.

I, for one, am incensed by any group that seeks to exploit our commonly shared government in order to impose unconfirmable beliefs and often despicable biases upon all who are subject to that government, including me and my family, under threat of violence.

Manlobbi, please let me know if you regard my expression of that disdain as political.

Tom

While there is the US Policy board, there isn't really much to discuss about atheism, per se. "Yep, still no deity" is about it.

Other than US *local* policy, at this board "anything goes". Discussing even foreign policy broadly is okay here, provided it doesn't gravitated around Democratic vs Republican topics. They have a history of generating a positive feedback loop that causes all other subjects to disappear. That is the entire reason that this board was forked with the US Policy board.

On the other hand, I believe there are plenty of things to talk about regarding atheism itself from a psychological/philosophical perspective.

When F. Nietzsche famously declared "God is Dead" it was not a mockery, but rather a statement of tragedy, in his vision. Despite being atheist himself, profoundly well read and well educated, he believed that as mankind at large was to soon work out that there is no God, then it would not be a victory of culture, but a tragedy of culture with people falling into egocentrism and nihilism.

In my view, the best solution to replace religion (other than the love of knowledge, plus as they often term these days - studying humanism) with attention towards aesthetics. I use the term broadly, to include art, mythology, and the 'humanities' subjects. Seeking employment, there is some pressure to study subjects like law, marketing, or finance, instead of philosophy and the arts.

In my view, our present world lacks attention to aesthetics - and just observing incentives from our employee / rented-slave oriented culture would make that seem likely. By aesthetics, I include the study of our past aesthetics - ie, anthropology and cultural history.

To some extent Nietzsche predictions proved true, with what unfolded during the 20th Century including the movement of nihilism but more broadly our present obsession - almost with it having become a religion (it worshipped, interlaced in many speeches, etc) - with individuality, individual rights. Since the 1970s there was even - in Europe, USA and their colonies - the political abolition of community. Margaret Thatcher infamously declared "There is no such thing as society". Her idea is that we should only think about ourselves, and allow market forces to produce everything for us. In my opinion this neoliberal psychology, which is continually promoted to us (owing it to be beneficial to companies), has an effect of "atomising" people (earlier we had lunches with friends and community hall meetings - now we are alone, check our portfolio value, think how to reduce expenses or increase income) which can have negative long-term psychological consequences.

With that in mind, the videos here might be healthy for atheists to fill gaps (or add richness) in one's world view. The channel is called "Unsolicited advice" and covers philosophical topics by a wonderfully poetic atheist:
https://www.youtube.com/@unsolicitedadvice9198

In each video, he discusses a specific topic. For example, the last topic was about men being so pragmatic and self-focussed, that they may accidentally reject even what they desire (friendship), resulting in a lingering loneliness that culminates into emptiness (often with depression) over many years:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=973sEAQZKzY

- Manlobbi

It's not so clear to me when we are talking about religious oppression -such as Christian nationalism- that often strays** into politics, since that is generally the mechanism for such oppression.

Agreed. I would respectfully request that Manlobbi allow the intersection of religion and politics to be discussed here.

if the effective policy position is non-separation, there can be no other option here !


for [insert favorite imagined deity here]'s sake, huckabee just became Chief Rapture Officer !

I gotta think xian nationalism will fail, ultimately. Those professing religion, and/or xianity, in the US is significantly down over the last 30 years or so. The extremists (i.e. xian nationalists) would be a small minority, and their trying to trample of peoples' rights should quickly make them unelectable except on small pockets of nutjobs (mostly, though not exclusively, in the deep South).

I wonder if this movement is a response to the diminishing prominence of religion from most peoples' lives. When I was a teen, I think the rate of non-belief was around 6%. Today it's around 30%, last I read. I think it may be even higher if you include the folks that have a vague belief in a deity, but not specific enough to claim a given religious identity (e.g. "christian"). They see their beliefs fading in society at large, and are reacting to it by trying to impose their standards via the political process.

'Anointed by God': The Christians who see Trump as their saviour

They rationalize Trump's quarry of boulders thusly:

“Remember when Jesus told the crowd, ‘Let the one without sin cast the first stone’ and that slowly, the entire audience began to disappear? All of us have sinned.”

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20g1zvgj4do


xtianity may be in decline, but those who still do it are gonna be like wounded animals, striking out in fear with assault rifles.

I'll warn you in advance that this is a somewhat lengthy and perhaps overly detailed description of my personal evolution from naive religiosity to informed ignorance — skepticism, if you will. I apologize for using this venue to prompt the writing of this long-procrastinated biographical summary. Given that motivation however, I'm now loathe to suppress it.

FWIW ...

For me life is a progression through boundless experience.

I was born in Appleton, Wisconsin 83 years ago fifth of seven siblings parented by devout Catholics. So my earliest perspective was imbued with their orientation.

My mother was a strict disciplinarian of the “spare the rod and spoil the child” persuasion. To be fair, she’d had her entire thyroid removed when she was in her mid-twenties as treatment for a goiter; something medicine seeks to avoid today owing to the critical role thyroxin plays in maintaining emotional stability. So we younger siblings were subjected to frequent formal belt-beatings for virtually anything. Mother and dad were highly intelligent, and both staunchly encouraged our effective realization as human beings.

Among other things, mother liked to remind us that we “didn’t lick anyone’s bootstraps.” Perhaps this attitude contributed to my being targeted by a predominant gang of Catholic elementary school classmates led by a bully named Joe. So I was an outsider. For whatever reason, my academic performance in those years was dismal.

In eighth grade I was excelling in basketball and looking forward to ninth grade at St. Mary’s Menasha, which was well coached and had recently won the Wisconsin state Catholic basketball championship.

Then a priest in our Capuchin parish, Fr. Fidelis, solicited my mother’s assistance in recruiting me to a Capuchin boarding seminary for high-school boys located about 40 miles from Appleton. Mother subsequently asked me whether I was planning to attend St. Mary’s, or the Capuchin St. Lawrence Seminary located on Mount Calvary (no joke).

When I told her I’d be going to St. Mary’s, she directed me to go to my room and pray over the matter.

I went to my bedroom and twiddled my thumbs or whatever for a few minutes before returning to report that I’d decided to go to St. Mary’s.

She told me to return to my room for more prayerful reflection.

At that point my deliberation immediately concluded that I’d be better off getting out of there, free of her dictates and physical abuse.

So I emerged to inform her I’d be going to Mt. Calvary. Of course she was delighted, as was Fr. Fidelis.

Going there did indeed transform my experience. At the outset none of the freshman students knew one another as they came from widely disparate areas, so it was a freshly entangling social group. Among other things, there was no oppressive gang headed up by my arch-enemy Joe. There was a sophomore class that sought to lord it over us, but we were united in our opposition to it, and found we were able to defeat it every which way, partly because of our larger numbers.

That first year my academic performance remained poor, and I was at or near the bottom of my class. But to my surprise and delight, I was quickly accorded acceptance. Rather than being disregarded as an outsider I was recognized as a fellow human.

Of course, there was a great deal of obligatory chapel time. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I spent much of it envisioning myself playing basketball, making fade-away turn-around jump shots or hook shots, usually in super slow-motion accommodating perfection of form.

Much to my chagrin, the powers that be in the school discouraged indoor free-time activity during warmer weather, and didn’t open up the gym for basketball until after the Thanksgiving break.

When we were finally allowed into the gym I discovered that my game had been transformed. (As an aside, only many years later was this explained by the rise of psychocybernetics.) Our class turned out to have a number of very fine basketball players. Among other things we handily beat the sophomore team despite all expectations to the contrary. Some of us would likely have made the varsity had we been allowed to compete during that first year. Warranted or not, my popularity in the class and the school as a whole grew with my basketball performance.

As a sophomore I was given a starting position as varsity center, despite being just six feet tall. As a decent jumper I could usually hold my own against inevitably taller competitors. While our school wasn’t part of any basketball conference, we did play against a number of Catholic high schools in the region, including St. Mary’s Menasha. During my first year on the varsity, they beat us with a well-practiced offense. Our young and charismatic first-year coach, Fr. Vernon, made notes during the game, and we subsequently practiced many of their effective plays and strategies. We played them again during my junior year and this time we won. At one point during that game, their highly respected coach McClone threw his papers to the floor shouting “now they’re beating us with our own plays,” much to my delight. I believe St. Mary’s again won the state Catholic championship that year. My grade school nemesis, Joe, was a substitute on their bench who was never called upon to play in the highly competitive game.

In my junior year I was shocked to be overwhelmingly elected class president, as I had no such ambition or anticipation. I was relaxing as a casual observer in a back corner of the classroom with my feet up on the desk when the vote came to pass, after which I stumbled my way up to the front while probing my awareness for some sort of acceptance talk.

During the prior two years our class had grown somewhat polarized. A small group that referred to itself as “the neat suckers” was comprised of would-be machismos who indulged in antagonizing another small group they liked to put down as “the girls.” Given my own experience earlier in life, I was not a fan of such bullying.

Absent any prior preparation, I expressed my appreciation to the entire class, and then addressed this divisiveness, inviting anyone who may be subjected to such degradation in the future to come to me, as I would then do whatever I could to resolve the issue. That was the end of the neat suckers. The entire class came together as one, and to this day only occasional fragments of family experience have been similarly harmonized.

A couple of years later, upon applying for admission to Jesuit Marquette University in Milwaukee, it was revealed to me that I was academically at the top of my high school class during my senior year. Bottom to top in four years. I’d never have guessed. Might it have been just some sort of genetic flow? My guess is it more likely reflects my highly contrasting social experiences at home and across the two schools during that period.

But there was a dark side to this richly rewarding high school experience. At the boarding seminary, my “spiritual director” an official every student was required to engage, was obsessed with my sex life. Fr. Hilary Zach was his name. Sitting as my confessor behind his desk, with me as a young repentant sinner on his couch, on frequent visits he spent hours ruminating over every detail of my personal experience. Masturbation is a “mortal sin” in Catholic mythology. That means if you die before confessing it to a priest and receiving his absolution, you’re doomed to eternal hellfire. Sheesh! Who’d ever want that? Also, we students took communion every morning, and that was prohibited when one harbored an unabsolved mortal sin. So I had to seek him out whenever I’d jerked off, which, for me, was quite often at the time. What a mess!

Obviously he could have just kicked me out of the seminary at any point. Instead, he gave me a key to his office, and left cigarettes on his desk for my use. Yes, he shared smokes with me during all visits, from the time I was fourteen. I was obviously one of his favorites. I have no idea why. He never put a move on me, other than to obsess over my reports of sexual activity. Fifty years later he was included on a list of Catholic clerics in the Milwaukee diocese who had been implicated in sexual abuse up to that time. Also included on that list were other priests serving as teachers and administrators at the seminary during my stint there. Much more could be said about this, but I’ll leave it there for now.

At Marquette I majored in philosophy and minored in theology, in keeping with what were then my most fundamental interests.

Several years later, while serving as a USAF junior officer, I ceased any and all affiliation with religion of any ilk.

Since then I have, however, extensively explored ancient and modern Greek, Taoist, Hindu, Buddhist, and Sufi wisdom, as well as the sciences, including psychology, evolutionary biology, quantum and relativistic physics. Of late my focus has been on reconciling the exponentially elaborating complexity described by General Relativity with the boundlessly decohering infinity that's ubiquitously manifesting as quantum phenomena.

Comments, questions invited.

Tom

as the born-again Xian righteous Mr.T might say, there is enough jibber jabber in religion to fit your favorite narrative.

here is one from the pro-rapture (but anti-saviour) crowd :

https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/9...

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