Rising Christian nationalism: a threat to us all

Interesting, but I think it is used sometimes more in the sense of how our moral systems are loosely arranged?

As in, Christianity is about generosity, charity, love thy neighbour, mercy, etc. This is - as I understand it - a large part of what distinguished it from Judaism, which was 'fear thy god' (see the OT) and subsequently Islam, which was 'obey thy god'. Christianity was 'love thy god'.

I do think that some of our social structures could in theory be replaced by secular ones, but these require building almost from the ground up, without the heritage and heft of history (which yes, is Xtian in the UK) behind them.

Humanists have destroyed any credibility I may have previously afforded them.

I used to believe in reason and the fundamental goodness of humans. I don't believe in the latter anymore. So with no unifying faith and political parties which can't argue constructively without demonising opponents I feel pretty pessimistic. Post modernism is neither rational nor ethical, it's just sophistry. A fundamentalist version of Islam has a renewed certainty and is beginning to shape our laws and practices in ways I can't support or tolerate
'The Age of Nothing' by Peter Watson is interesting.
'In a commanding narrative, Watson provides a historical perspective on the shift in our attitudes towards capitalism, while exploring the philosophical roots that underpin it. Of central importance in Watson's theory is Nietzsche's warning regarding mankind's responsibility for 'the death of God' - and the consequences thereof. Nietzsche's views on the frailty of human values in a world bereft of religious faith were echoed by writers including Tolstoy, Marx and Kandinsky - and his chilling message went on to resonate with thinkers throughout the 20th century. When Max Weber called the modern world 'disenchanted', and argued that society must choose to create a new value system based on knowledge or else surrender and embrace a religious faith, he was the latest in a long line of intellectuals attempting to address the problem Nietzsche had laid bare.'

To be fair, I know lots of non Christians who are good, polite, generous. A lot of the values I like most about Christianity aren't exclusively held by Christians. I disagree that you need to be raised in a Christian culture to learn how to queue for example. It is very British for sure and I like that we do.

However, some people on here are talking about how Christianity informed our moral systems, which then informed how we structure society/our culture. That's fair enough, but some of those same people want to reject the moral systems/moral teaching because they are weak/lead to us being taken advantage of. The Quakers and religious radicals who helped shape British law would not be welcome at Trumps or Farage's table. Some of the laws they pushed for wouldn't either.
So then: we don't have Christian belief and we don't have belief in the moral systems and values that come from that. And we don't have respect for some of the institutions/laws that came from that (trial by Jury, equal voting rights). All they have after that is a vague idea that value systems are a good thing for other people to have, and a very shallow pool of vague customs that are supposedly Christian in origin. Even the human rights based laws - should also be suspended when needed because they make us weak. I like queuing/saying thank you. But it's not OK if you are queuing up to set a hotel with people in it on fire.

Or maybe, everything I have said is supporting your argument. I don't know. I do think that trying to ape the most superficial aspects of Christianity - (arguing about St Augustine on Twitter, demanding women dress modestly) or banging on about "Western values" won't help. It's like a nonChristian absorbed the worst stereotypes about Christian fundamentalists and decided that's what they wanted but without God. Ironically Kemi Badenoch and Peterson were talking about the (now disregarded) "Cargo Cult Syndrome" as it related to everyone they didn't like but couldn't see the irony.

Without wanting to stretch the analogy too far, I think it's a bit like how older people who want to be trans allies might come out with a lot of jargon about sex not existing, but tacitly they know it's a polite fiction and there are circumstances where sex matters.

The trouble comes when you've gone years being unable to say that sex exists and sometimes matters, and next thing you know there's a generation of young people who actually believe this stuff and aren't just doing it out of politeness.

I sometimes think of older atheists like Richard Dawkins or Philip Pullman who I'd say are absolutely culturally Christian, and they even explicitly say that. But the culture they value depends on there being a critical mass of people who really are actively Christian, not necessarily a majority but enough to keep the traditional religion ticking over. I don't think they'd like to live in a society where nobody under 70 is Christian. Russia experimented with that and it didn't work out too well.

Egg curse ! The mind boggles.

Btw @DeanElderberry if you find a dead animal on your land and suspect a curse , you must leave it at a ' meering' , that being a place where several lands adjoin. That way the curse rebounds on the evildoer. So said my grandmother anyway. Very important life hacks eh.

Without wanting to stretch the analogy too far, I think it's a bit like how older people who want to be trans allies might come out with a lot of jargon about sex not existing, but tacitly they know it's a polite fiction and there are circumstances where sex matters.

The trouble comes when you've gone years being unable to say that sex exists and sometimes matters, and next thing you know there's a generation of young people who actually believe this stuff and aren't just doing it out of politeness.

I sometimes think of older atheists like Richard Dawkins or Philip Pullman who I'd say are absolutely culturally Christian, and they even explicitly say that. But the culture they value depends on there being a critical mass of people who really are actively Christian, not necessarily a majority but enough to keep the traditional religion ticking over. I don't think they'd like to live in a society where nobody under 70 is Christian. Russia experimented with that and it didn't work out too well.

Without wanting to stretch the analogy too far, I think it's a bit like how older people who want to be trans allies might come out with a lot of jargon about sex not existing, but tacitly they know it's a polite fiction and there are circumstances where sex matters.

The trouble comes when you've gone years being unable to say that sex exists and sometimes matters, and next thing you know there's a generation of young people who actually believe this stuff and aren't just doing it out of politeness.

I sometimes think of older atheists like Richard Dawkins or Philip Pullman who I'd say are absolutely culturally Christian, and they even explicitly say that. But the culture they value depends on there being a critical mass of people who really are actively Christian, not necessarily a majority but enough to keep the traditional religion ticking over. I don't think they'd like to live in a society where nobody under 70 is Christian. Russia experimented with that and it didn't work out too well.

I mean, I'd have imagined being 'culturally Christian' is just describing one's upbringing and outlook having been informed by environment, it's not a specific statement of intent?

You're describing a society that has lost trust in its institutions, I'd say. The anti Enlightenment. Looking at some of these institutions, one can hardly blame them. I could make a mirror list from the 'other side' of a polarised, tribal, society who feel exactly as you describe, but with the opposing set of beliefs. I guess one could call it the accepted Orthodoxy or the Omnicause.

• Pro maskers started off clapping the NHS, kneeling at BLM marches in small UK towns, then cheered 'Trans Women are Women', fundraised for teenagers to get their genitals removed, started going on about how we must Be Kind like it was a diktat, said Trump was going to invade Canada, chanted 'From the River to the Sea' when they didnt know which river or which sea they were even talking about, then cheered Hamas, etc.

Note how much of that is.imported politics.

What isn't healthy is the tribalism. I mean, it's human. But its not helpful.

Mostly we are in the middle, muddling along.

The thing about "cultural Christianity" is that when people do describe it, all the things they describe rely on certain things being done by other people. Not on the absence of other religions. So of course if you send your children to Sunday School they will grow up with that experience. If you don't, they won't. But Sunday School also relies on other people running it. And all the other things described:

• Visiting Church fetes - requires volunteers running those fetes
• Church weddings and funerals. Requires the vicar but also requires the upkeep of the church for those events

Etc etc. None of those things rely on their not being Muslims. But when some people talk about protecting "cultural Christianity" they don't mean by volunteering at church.

Eg. You have Kemi Badenoch who describes herself as a "cultural Christian" saying
A typical Liberal Democrat will be somebody who is good at fixing their church roof and – you know – people in the community like them
This is meant to be an insult!
And then later she talks about how she is a"cultural Christian" from growing up in Nigeria where people are very religious. But she is also sort of quite disparaging about those people themselves. She gives the impression she thinks she's cleverer than them.

Like I said earlier, there is a kind of superiority from these kinds of people, which is far worse than from a straight up atheist. They rely completely on people who either believe strongly in Christianity or at least are prepared to put the hours in "fixing the church roof"/organising choirs but they want to feel superior to them and they don't seem to want to acknowledge their reliance on them. Instead there is a nagging sense that as church attendance drops they might lose the things they like. But they want to blame Muslims/immigrants for that gradual change in culture. It feels quite dog in a manger. Muslims by and large are not stopping people bringing up their children as Christians or attending church or maintaining church buildings.

There's nothing wrong with being a cultural Christian. But it is a passive position (which is also fine) not everyone needs to be involved in everything. You don't need to believe in Christianity or actively participate to enjoy being part of a culturally Christian country. I think if you want to claim that that passive position is under threat though, then you can't also mock those that fix church roofs etc. And you can't blame immigrants.

It's the same for other stuff too. If noone volunteers for cricket, village cricket will die. If noone shops at the high street the high street will die. The last government smashed funding for libraries so many are only kept open by volunteers. Who are constantly disparaged for being middle class/woke. Neither of those things are true.

It's like me not bothering to change the oil I my car and then, when it breaks down, blaming my neighbour for washing his car every weekend.

persephonia

I don't think "cultural christianity" even really need churches to exist. It doesn't need people to believe in God.

To me it is about the UK as it developed over the last 1000 years (perhaps up until post-modernism and queer theory started deliberately trying to destroy it.)

It is about queuing (if you don't treat others like you would wish to be treated why would you queue?) It is about allowing free speech even when it is offensive (turning the other cheek). It's about democracy (I would argue that the overall ethos of Jesus' alleged key messages is much more compatible with everyone getting a say than a dictator ruling by force). It's about a sense of fair play. It's about being polite.

Now whether cultural christianity could survive indefinitely with no actual christianity is another matter.

And another thing "cultural christianity in the UK is a British Christianity". A stereotypical loud and bright African Church is perfectly compatibly with British cultural christianity (whereas Islamism - extremist islam - is not), but it is not representative of British culture in the way the CoE is.

This is similar to what I said in an earlier post about the kind of Christianity I got from my very observant family- their kind of Christianity was about:

my neighbour is all mankind; about doing unto others as you would have them do unto you; about inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me; about for I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink; I was a stranger, and you took me in.

...not words that I hear springing to the lips of some high-profile Christians proclaiming their Judeo-Christian ethos.

For the record, I am now an atheist, but I still value the elements of my religious upbringing that taught me to respect other people, regardless of who and what they are.

What I learnt was that those admirable facets of Christianity are not peculiar to Christianity and are at the core of many older value systems.

For instance, in Ireland, which escaped being occupied by the Romans, a sophisticated system of social and legal structures developed which, for instance, gave rights to women which it took us millennia to get back, established rules for the care and protection of vulnerable older people and mentally ill people, and used fines restorative justice to settle disputes instead of violence.

It even had a rule to say that
If a pregnant woman craves a morsel of food and her husband withholds it through stinginess or neglect he must pay a fine.

So the ideas of justice and empathy and humanity were not brought here by Judeo-Christian religion - and let's face it they haven't been shining examples of justice and empathy and humanity themselves. These were concepts already in existence in Celtic societies, which, left to their own devices, without the intervention of the Roman Empire and Christianity, could have developed into modern, just, egalitarian societies.

We'll never know, but at least let's not continue the myth that the people living on these Islands had no morality, justice or social structures until the Romans, and then Christianity, came along and 'civilised' them.

I don't think you need to live a life like Jesus. In fact, the whole point is he did some things (died for our sins) so we don't have to. But surely it's important (if you are Christian) to (at least try) to live a life according to the things he said people should do. Sure that's sort of impossible because we are all flawed. And there's different interpretations of different things he said which can contradict. But stories like the Good Samaritan, and analogies like the camel and the needle are meant to be lessons for people. And even the anecdotes about e.g. washing the feet of his friends are probably meant to be teaching by example. It's not that everyone needs to be the "son" of a humble carpenter. But there is a reason the son of god was born into a simple family not the family of a king.

So, I do think Trump, Vance et al are probably being hypocritical.

Shame on you.

But without the moral teaching - if Christianity is just a quid pro quo were you get to heaven in return for doing x y z - its authority is completely undermined.

It got monetised, basically. Marie has it upthread. Now a fixture in the retail calendar.

Whenever I see these descriptions I recall CS Lewis who was, by the by, not a fundamentalist:

” am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell….but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to..”

Whenever I see these descriptions I recall CS Lewis who was, by the by, not a fundamentalist:

” am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell….but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to..”