"Faith Was All"

"Much of institutional Christianity has failed us. It still comforts many Americans, but it hasn't, on balance, made us better people -- kinder, more loving, more Christlike. Instead, in various ways it has helped prepare the ground for Donald Trump.

First, it has devalued truth -- factual, scientific truth. A couple of generations ago, the fastest-growing and most energetic of our denominations gave up any claim to intellectual coherence, which they conflated with the 'sin of pride.' Faith was all. People who belonged to these churches might be as intelligent as anyone else, but they had, for the sake of their souls, to believe in all sorts of things that aren't true. And believing in things out of tribal loyalty, whether or not they're true, became a habit; it made Christians vulnerable to other kinds of lies. Scientists say human activity is changing the climate. But scientists accept evolution too, so why believe them now? Why not believe the energy companies instead, or Fox News? Why not believe Trump?

Second, the long Cold War against godless Communism led many American Christians to over-value the free market, then to worship it. They may have rejected Darwin the evolutionist, but they fervently embraced Darwinian struggle, each against all -- hardly the original New Testament message.The rich deserved to be rich; the poor deserved to be poor. Any attempt by government to help the less fortunate was suspect -- it bore the taint of socialism. Hucksters peddling the 'prosperity gospel' only made things worse. Complaints about an unfair economic system -- about things that the isolated individual couldn't change by prayer and positive thinking -- were dismissed. As a result, when the New Deal consensus began to unravel, when labor unions declined, when jobs were offshored, when companies got 'lean and mean' -- when the American working class, white and nonwhite, got shafted over and over -- there was no one to fight for them. Not the Republicans -- their funders were making out like bandits. Not enough of the Democrats -- Ronald Reagan had frightened them into believing that America really was a center-right country. And far too few of the churches, which were too busy fulminating against abortion and gay rights to question the virtue of unregulated capitalism.

Third, Christians are indeed a tribe. Most refuse to accept the validity of other faiths (or of no faith at all). Infidels, heathens, must be preached to and converted -- even killed off, as our natives were, if their souls are somehow saved in the process. The same infinitely adaptable Bible that we once used to justify slavery and Manifest Destiny can be turned against Muslims today in a heartbeat. All strongly held faiths, by their nature, are intolerant -- I speak of Christianity here not because it's worse than the others but because it's the faith most Americans have, the one that still channels most of our impulses toward goodness and transcendence. It isn't about to go away, nor should it. But it's a channel that badly needs a roto-rooter to clear out the crap."

 

--by Harry, via email sent yesterday