this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2024
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chapotraphouse
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Dude, I always wonder why the fuck it is that American Christians, especially adult converts, are so fucking weird about it. In Brazil and Latin America as a whole you're kind of born Christian by default and pretty much everybody I know in my generation has been baptized as a Catholic as a child, myself included.
Devout Latin American Catholics are some of the most unassuming people you'll ever meet. They'll go to church regularly, pray at home, maybe they'll have some kind of jewelry with a cross, and images of saints at home, but they generally don't talk about it. Evangelicals do have a certain tendency to be more annoying and vocal at times, but still, most of them are chill about it.
So why the fuck is it that Americans seem to be the only ones discussing the Council of Trent and theological theses and calling themselves tradcath or some other bullshit so often? It's like they have no other social signifiers and are desperately grasping for any sort of identity, so they latch on to the weirdest forms of Christianity and do not shut up about it.
a lot of Americans confuse their cultural consumption choices with having a personality.
Alienation in the Imperial Core. People strive for belonging and your very limited time not spent at work, commuting, sleeping or eating is very limited, and so is everyone around you. If you do find an in group, be it fishing, religion, Warhammer 40,000, a kink, drinking culture, fandom, cycling, etc, you cling on to it harder.
And because you cling on to it harder, you're also susceptible to perceived threats. The Democrats are taking x away, woke is ruining my hobby, the infallible Pope is ruining my Catholicism.
And capital sees this and sinks it's teeth into it. "Oh you like fishing? Here's a hat that displays that! Your wife won't let you spend that much time and money on fishing? Here's a more expensive hat that complains about your wife and mention how much you like fishing"
I believe this exact same dynamic plays out with Western practicioners of Buddhism versus every day Buddhism as its practiced in Asian countries
Americans really love their signifiers of negative freedom ("freedom from") and negative identity, and they turn those into religions just as much as any religion they might actually practice. So the tradcath thing is partly a silly aesthetic pose (e.g. Dasha from Red Scare), but it also usually serves an actual need, even if it's something really neurotic. As the evangelical Protestants have become so perniciously anti-intellectual and backward, the tradcath option looks more appealing to those who value education and at least a minimal amount of intellectual content to their spirituality. It also has a big performative aspect (lots of costume dress-up for the clergy, Latin Mass zealotry, etc.) that allows one to differentiate from the evangelicals (negative identity). My guess is that's why you see so many high-profile converts lately among the power elite.