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this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2024
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I am, and I am.
And really, a lot of Bible scholars think that the word "antichrist" from the Epistles of John isn't referring to a single person, but to a progression of people who try to destroy Christianity by either killing Christians (Caligula, Nero) or by tricking them (Arius, Constantine). There's a whole theme in Protestant literature during the Reformation where Luther and other reformers call the Pope or even the institution of the Papacy "antichrist."
So even if Trump isn't the capital-A Antichrist some people say will come with the Tribulation, he's definitely deceiving Christians by using the name of Christ in order to amass personal power; which means he's definitely an antichrist.
And on that level, I think the American church needs a new Reformation.
I think America as a whole needs to come to serious questions about our relationship with religion and our nation. At this point it is clear that christians of most denominations in our country, even Catholics, are struggling to separate their religious beliefs from nationalism. And it’s getting worse. It got easier to see as I began intentionally dechristianizing my paganism.
To put it bluntly, the difference between how many American christians treat the founding fathers and how many Catholics treat the saints is smaller than many would like to acknowledge. They don’t want to hear that these men were flawed humans whose ideas had problems and they knew it and that they knew they’d be damned by their sins against humanity. They want to treat noted deist Thomas Jefferson as though the was Thomas aquinas and fully sanctified. The American civil religion is killing Christianity
That's fantastic and absolutely correct.
You may be a pagan, but that's one of the best Christian sermons I've read in a while.
Thanks, I’m catholic raised and educated and had a childhood priest who was very much like Sazed and encouraged me to think for myself. Christianity is the religious water we swim in and air we breathe and in that it becomes nothing but a symbol of in group status. Turning the other cheek goes from a command from one’s god on how to live your life to a platitude like a penny saved is a penny earned. And by that means with the justification of sola fide and sola gratia and a handful of calls to violence, a religion that can demand radical pacifism eventually finds its way to ripping the tongues out of the living skulls of those who profess our non belief. Christianity when it holds the power of the state has never been a religion of peace because by handing it the power to do violence those who wish to do violence celebrate this justification and warp it to whatever ends justify it. The American civil religion is one manifestation of this but it wasn’t the first. And my religion is no better on that front. Eventually the religion falls to the power it holds.
And these people don’t even understand that they are apostates as much as I am. We have all rejected the teachings of Christ. But I rejected them knowingly, I didn’t buy it and found my way to a religion that spoke what my soul had ached to hear.
And I should be clear here, when I call the founding fathers deists I don’t mean it as the same as the deists of today. Deism of the time was a hedging of one’s words against religious violence. To deny the Christian god outright was not safe even when you were founding a nation. The professions of belief under duress no matter how mild cannot be taken as certain though we also cannot boldly assume they’re not true either.
Indeed, Christianity was never meant to have power. Christ laid his power down in order to found the religion itself. The progenitor of Christianity—ancient Judaism—was the religion of a nation hemmed in on all sides by enemies, always on the ropes, often carried away to captivity. It is constructed upon a trust in God, not earthly power; and so when it has earthly power, the entire foundation crumbles.
It’s been remarkable to me how spiritually valuable Mistborn is. I guess I’m not alone.
Oh absolutely. And it’s not just Mistborn, all of Sanderson’s writing is deeply infused with thoughts on religion that are seriously considered and I find spiritually valuable. Mistborn is probably the most hard hitting to my experiences as someone who left Christianity initially due to its use as a cudgel against me. And the way that era 2 shows kelsier treated is very insightful.
Elantris hits pretty hard on its takes on religion where there are two dead gods and a religious war. Stormlight feels like a scathing critique of America and its Christianity with the Alethi also worshipping a dead god, but also deeply following absurd and stupid religious rules. They worship Honor and have none. It’s also a fantasy take on the author’s religion of Mormonism where you can see some of his struggles with it but also his valuation of it.
And that’s not even getting into Sanderson’s depiction of sacred violations of gender roles which absolutely must be noted.
Yeah I can really geek out about this. The only author to come close in speaking to me religiously is Pratchett.
I feel like I’m reading something I wrote right now. 😂
Have you read the Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks? It’s not quite as good as the Cosmere works, but I thoroughly enjoyed it and it plays with some similar themes. It’s also a great hard magic system.
Yeah seriously, Pratchett speaks to the chaos magic in me; the idea that my religion is going towards indents in our collective souls. Also I’ve not found a better argument for what a religious figure should be than who Tiffany Aching learned to become. Somewhere between her and Sazed is the perfect priest imo.
I’ve never heard of it before
I get tired of the argument from conservatives that the US was founded on Christian ideals, because it wasn’t. Instead it was designed to resemble Christianity, much like how Christmas co-opted Saturnalia. The US Civic religion was meant to bring together disparate groups of people with a common belief system. At some point I think this religion actually replaced Christianity in the US. If those J6 rioters had looked up they would’ve seen the Apotheosis of Washington and realized that’s who they are actually worshipping.
I don’t even know how much they intended for it to become a replacement religion. These were enlightenment philosophers. It was their grandchildren forming a religion around it. A secular nation building monuments to its models makes a certain sense, but they become deified. And as you say we sit in the shadow of statues of our fellow humans.
And the thing is I’m not even immune to all this. I live in fear of American nationalism but by fuck sometimes I still find myself appealing to the authority of men who I believe to be genuinely monstrous. I still struggle to remove Lincoln from his pedestal.
I’ve never before heard someone say “the American church”
Ahh, sorry, that's a bit of Christian-ese. So, within Christianity, we actually think of "church" as being a word that means...basically like four related but distinct things.
It can mean "every Christian who has ever lived" (usually you see that form capitalized, as "the Church.")
It can mean "a particular expression/denomination/subset of that universal Church" (e.g. Presbyterian, Pennsylvanian, Peruvian, etc.)
It can mean "a local congregation that meets and worships as a group" (e.g. Downtown First Baptist of Nowheresville)
It can mean "the building where that congregation meets" (e.g. 123 N Main St, Nowheresville, PA)
There are some other, lesser-used definitions of that word, but in the end you kind of have to figure it all out by context. "The American Church" is a pretty common term in some circles, referring to meaning #2--a particular subset of the global church in America. The reason it's particularly common in the circles I run in is because we talk about it like a toddler that's running around smearing poop on everything and knocking glassware off of tall shelves, and laughing at anyone who tries to tell him to stop.