Amerika

The latest polls are out and conservatives find themselves shocked that religiosity is dropping in America. Although the place remains culturally sorta Protestant, people are moving away from religion as the organizing force behind their beliefs and lifestyles.

Naturally, the Christians will blame Satan or otherwise dodge the question. Christianity has lost relevance to modern people, especially White people. The poll shows mass defections from the importance of religion:

The 17-point drop in the percentage of U.S. adults who say religion is an important part of their daily life — from 66% in 2015 to 49% today — ranks among the largest Gallup has recorded in any country over any 10-year period since 2007.

Most countries fall into one of four patterns: high religiosity with Christian identity; high religiosity with another religious identity (often Muslim majority, although there are several countries in the Middle East where Gallup does not ask religious identity questions); low religiosity with Christian identity; or low religiosity with no religious identity.

The U.S. no longer fits neatly into any of these categories, having a medium-high Christian identity but middling religiosity. In terms of religious identity, the percentage of Americans now identifying as Christian is similar to those of Western and Northern European countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, Finland and Denmark, nations with strong Protestant traditions.

Nietzsche famously said that Christianity was doomed because of its metaphysical dualism. It posits a perfect Heaven and impure Earth, therefore counsels its members to act toward Heaven, implying that they should ignore reality. Most of them do. This makes Christianity negative as a survival trait.

But even more, it is time to call out the centuries of Christian support for diversity through their morality of pity (like a broken version of the Jewish tikkun olam) which favors the underdog against anyone who is succeeding. Like Communism, this is a mythology that celebrates failure and self-destruction.

The Christian churches, especially Catholics, are famous for bringing in foreigners and subsidizing them so that they live among us. To the Christians, this is merely their morality of the individual against the world, and if symbolically it feels good, they do it.

We can see this through the history of the Socialist Party leader Norman Thomas:

When Norman Thomas died in 1968, the New York Times called him “the nation’s conscience for social justice and social reform” (Whitman, “Norman Thomas”). On the occasion of Thomas’ 80th birthday, Martin Luther King wrote: “I can think of no man who has done more than you to inspire the vision of a society free of injustice and exploitation” (King, “The Bravest”). King praised Thomas for speaking out on behalf of oppressed peoples of all kinds, including black sharecroppers, interned Japanese Americans during World War II, and imprisoned conscientious objectors.

At the outbreak of World War I, Thomas joined the nascent Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) and the American Union Against Militarism. By 1918, he was secretary of FOR, editor of FOR’s journal The World Tomorrow, and served on the executive board of the American Union. During his tenure with the American Union he co-founded its civil liberties bureau, which later became the American Civil Liberties Union.

Thomas’ anti-war activism led to his involvement with the Socialist Party of America. Thomas resigned from his church and FOR positions and became associate editor of The Nation magazine. In 1922 he co-directed the League for Industrial Democracy, the education wing of the Socialist Party. Four years later he was spokesman for the party and campaigned for office 15 times between 1924 and 1948, including 6 bids for the presidency.

Like most Christians, he opposed all wars and “racism,” therefore supported diversity and pacifism, both of which ended up weakening the nation and making “racism” and wars more frequent. When your ideology prioritizes symbol over reality, you are not the good guys.

Tags: christianity, communism, diversity, norman thomas