In a sort of continuation of my last post, I’d like to highlight the controversy in the Episcopalian Church. The Epsicopalians, under radical feminist bishop Katherine Jefferts-Schori, have decided to bless gay marriages. Now, lest I come off as anti-gay, I should explain that I have no problem with people who were born gay forming partnerships with other, like-minded folks. I don’t think it would be all that common, but I don’t really have a problem with it. In fact, I don’t think the state should be involved in determining much at all about marriage, and if it weren’t for the screwy family-law regime we now live under, the state would not even be much of an actor in marriage at all.
However, this simply isn’t Christian. Above all, I prefer that people are honest about what they are doing, and the Episcopalian Church is indulging in a grievous falsehood by suggesting that Christian marriage is anything but the union of one man and one woman. So how can the Episcopalians continue to call themselves “Christian?” Frankly, I don’t think they can. They should make like the Unitarians or Bahai and declare themselves separate from the mainstream religions. To do otherwise is to perpetuate a lie, and exposes the Episcopalian Church for the sham that it is.
However, there is a hint about what is really at stake here. The Episcopalian Church has inherited a very substantial amount of property, and naturally “spiritual leaders” like Jefferts-Schori would like to keep their hands on this property. Therefore, the spiritual struggle has turned into a sordid battle over temples.
One wonders whether this can result in anything but a pyrrhic victory, because the death of the Episcopalian Church in America is obviously at hand. Despite being a Catholic by baptism, my mother’s family was Episcopalian, and I can’t say I’ll be entirely pleased to see the tradition die out. There were some redeeming things about the British expression of the Christian faith, and I had a taste of them as a child. It will be one of those poignant, bitter moments when I realize that no more children will ever sing the hymns I remember from my brief exposure to the Episcopalian church as a child in the latter years of its existence.
16 responses so far ↓
1 MASCULINIST // Jul 17, 2009 at 11:57 pm
The White Western world has clearly outgrown the Semitic religion of Judeo-Christianity, which was often forcibly imposed upon us against our wishes…time to ditch Judeo-Christianity and move on to higher & better things, folks.
2 Carolingian // Jul 18, 2009 at 12:46 am
“Outgrown” is the wrong word. Growth is not exactly what one thinks the White Western world has undergone recently.
Calling European Christianity a forcibly imposed Semitic religion is just stupid on so many levels. It’s akin to calling the mathematics that has been developed and practiced in the West for hundreds of years Arabic or Hindu mathematics simply because it adopted Arabic or Hindu numerals in the past.
I grew up Catholic, and the most pious,white traditionalist Catholic families would have the most kids, sometimes up to 10 and over.
The White Nationalist types I’ve come across have usually been scientific reductionist and materialist types, and atheists. Unsurprisingly, I often found them to be greatly interested in health and medical issues, and devoted to making sure their own individual lives lasted as long as possible. Even the more “spiritual” types among these anti-Christians didn’t seem to take all their “Valhalla” business too seriously, and thus seemed intent on staving off the infinite and eternal void for as long as possible. They didn’t seem terribly focused on forming large families. This of course contrasted rather drastically with the white traditionalist Catholic families, who appeared to be singly devoted to producing and raising as many white children as possible.
As far as I can tell, traditional Christianity is and has been the greatest natalist program ever devised for whites, whereas White Nationalism has been nothing but mental and spiritual masturbation.
3 whiskey // Jul 18, 2009 at 11:55 am
The pagan religions were dumped in the aftermath of the fall of the Western Roman Empire, because they were not as good as Christianity. Odin, Thor, and those Celtic gods always wanted human sacrifice. They were big on the sacrifice of adorable little sisters and cousins, while Christ was happy with a cup of wine and bread. Christ thought the adorable little sister or cousin should be properly married off to the chieftan across the river, for dynastic purposes, not ritually sacrificed.
Thus, you have the death of paganism and the adoption of Christianity. Even as the pagans conquered Rome.
Religion’s main purpose is to provide a moral and behavioral framework for people so that naked self-interest does not destroy social cohesion and social effectiveness. Nothing on offer seems “better” than traditional Christianity so far, not Islam (polygamy, Big Man-ism), nor phony Pagan revivalism, nor post-Christian Gaia worship. Certainly not the feminized post-Christian stuff on tap in today’s churches, nor the multiculti Zen, traditional Buddhism, Hinduism, and other stuff folks adopt. Because all lack a sense of social community that creates within worshippers a sense of “rules” that however imperfectly binds behavior and action.
4 Lukobe // Jul 18, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Amen, as it were, Carolingian. As for the Episcopalians, a number of them are joining with more conservative African bishops. You may yet see the denomination “saved.”
5 Justin // Jul 18, 2009 at 9:22 pm
The Episcopal movement has splintered, but the conservative traditionalists are proudly carrying that most beautiful liturgy and theology forward, divorced from the heretical madness that is ECUSA.
See for example http://anglicancontinuum.blogspot.com/
6 Welmer // Jul 18, 2009 at 11:19 pm
Justin, if there were one of these churches in Seattle, I would seriously consider attending. Unfortunately, the Episcopalians in Seattle are amongst the most radical, and they have some of the best church property in town, so they would fight it to death.
Ironically, the Episcopalian services I remember from my early childhood around 1980 were more beautiful and reverent than the watered down, cheesy Catholic services that were standard in Seattle at that time.
7 novaseeker // Jul 19, 2009 at 8:43 am
The Episcopalians probably do the western liturgy the best, right now, due to the way that the catholics have vandalized the mass since Vatican II.
However, ECUSA is way, way out there — it’s very hard to call it “church” any longer. It looks like a church, and has a liturgy like a church, but the words have no real meaning. It’s become a social movement in clerical drag, as far as I can tell. And yes it’s somewhat sad, because Anglicanism has had some quite good writers and religious thinkers — C.S. Lewis comes to mind. Hard to believe today that he was an Anglican, really.
As for our society being done with Christianity — I agree with Whiskey. As is the case with the traditional family, no-one has offered anything better in terms of bringing people together in a rough consensus about moral rules. The approach that people are taking today — choose whatever tradition makes sense to you — may serve individual “needs” in terms of the emotional aspects of spirituality, but will never serve the core function that religion plays in any society: the repeated celebration and reinforcement of moral rules that are broadly shared by the society.
The trouble is not that Christianity has outlived its usefulness, but rather that society no longer has a moral consensus, and because of that moral chaos is now reigning. The current climate of moral relativism will never abide by any dominant religious system, because by their nature religious systems are generally not morally relativist. But that lack of moral cohesion that comes from moral relativism will eventually terminally undermine any society’s ability to function.
Currently the US is involved in a huge struggle over this issue. In that sense, the US is different from Europe: Europe is still today much more homogeneous, inside each country, than the US is. There is a common cultural history, and shared values, even if those shared values have moved beyond the ones espoused by organized religion.
In the US, we do not have that. We used to have a broad consensus based roughly on what mainstream protestantism provided. But that has now been trashed as mainstream protestantism has simply embraced the radical left, radical protestantism has taken the baton of the “religious right”, and the educated elites have largely decamped to smug anti-religious enclaves on the coasts. The result is that there is no real consensus right now about moral rules — hence the famed culture wars. And right now the relativists have the upper hand.
8 Lukobe // Jul 19, 2009 at 4:53 pm
There is such a thing as morality that does not depend on organized, practiced, religion, you know.
9 novaseeker // Jul 20, 2009 at 12:09 pm
In the abstract, yes, but without religion or something similar to it (such as very strong and deep-seated cultural norms about morality) you can’t achieve or enforce a moral consensus.
Given the history of the West, I can’t see how we will come to some kind of moral consensus without religion. I realize that’s the desire of secularists, but to be honest that experiment has led us to where we are now: a lot of people spouting off about their personal visions of morality or ethics, but there being no consensus about those matters, which leads to there being no common, shared morality — a situation which undermines the whole idea of morality to begin with (i.e., shared rules rather than personal ones).
10 Lukobe // Jul 20, 2009 at 12:27 pm
What I mean is, I was raised without organized and practiced religion, and you can ask Welmer — I have no major moral failings. Now, granted, my father was raised in an observant Jewish household, but he ceased to practice after he left home. My mother considered herself a Confucian, but never belonged to a religion per se.
If you count Confucianism as a religion, then perhaps I’ll grant your point. But a structured moral code does not necessarily equal a religion. And, again, as I noted, I wasn’t raised in any religious tradition, and I turned out OK.
So, yes, “strong and deep-seated cultural norms about morality,” OK — religion, not necessarily so.
You’re also painting secularists with a broad brush. I don’t want to eliminate religion, but there are lots of things about it I don’t like. I would also like those without religion to stop being the least-desired type of candidate for high office in the U.S., but that’s another story.
11 novaseeker // Jul 20, 2009 at 12:34 pm
I don’t doubt that this worked for you, but again you, lukobe, but that kind of individualized approach, or an atomized one, can’t work for society as a whole very well.
12 novaseeker // Jul 20, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Garbled text: I meant to say “I don’t doubt that this worked for you, lukobe, but again you had some fairly traditional cultural (and to some extent religion-based) moral programming. That kind of individualized approach, however, doesn’t work for society as a whole very well, because everyone ends up with different ideas about what is “moral”.
13 Lukobe // Jul 20, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Religion-based, but without any practice at all. And I wonder how different my ideas about what is “moral” really are from the mainstream..?
14 novaseeker // Jul 21, 2009 at 8:53 am
Is there a mainstream view of morality? As fas as I can tell, on a wide range of moral issues ranging from sexuality to abortion, euthanasia to the death penalty, stem cell research and so on, there is much disagreement and no moral consensus — precisely because everyone basically makes up their own moral rules.
15 Lukobe // Jul 21, 2009 at 1:03 pm
I think there’s a general moral consensus that we should stay out of other people’s bedrooms and preserve life as far as possible, all things being equal and without trampling on people’s liberty. That is to say, I think the American public’s morality is broadly libertarian. Sometimes political or religious considerations mess that up.
16 Justin // Jul 21, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Welmer, looks there are a few traditional Anglican congregations in Seattle. Check it out:
http://www.angelfire.com/sc3/kaysplace/s_washington.html
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