– 17 June 2022 –

Janus:

Almost unique among the European-descended countries of the world, the United States is famous, or infamous, as a land where relatively traditional Protestant Christianity is still able to put up some kind of cultural resistance to the secular, modernist, neoliberal moral imperatives of the rest of the West.

For the last 100 years, flashes of this peculiarly American form of Christianity have even held some degree of political power, pushing back against wave after wave of modernism. Known at different times under such names as the “Silent Majority,” “Fundamentalists,” or the “Moral Majority,” these Protestants are constantly derided and vilified as backwards bigots, flag-waving warmongers, and gun-toting fanatics by the cultural elites of the United States and the West. They form the backbone of the conservative “movement” in America, yet they are constantly and cynically exploited and manipulated by their own leaders and so-called representatives.

And increasingly they are drifting further and further away from their traditional Christian roots. Yet they have embarked down a different path than the way that their modernist so-called mainline Christian counterparts have drifted.

At one time America’s conservative Christians upheld a uniquely American form of Protestantism that emphasized zeal, individualism, and enterprise: ideals that used to embody the world’s wondering idea of the American people themselves.

But these particularly American conservative Christians have increasingly drifted away from those unique American roots. All too often nowadays, conservative Christians have embraced greed and narcissism, consumerism and comfort, shallowness and emotionalism, and political jingoism at the expense of the faith of their fathers. And unfortunately, these decadent traits have come to embody the world’s contemptuous idea of today’s Americans.

The Unique Development of American Protestantism

Since early in America’s history, the European-descended people who lived in the various states distinguished themselves with some combination of hardy individualistic enterprise, a stripped-down Protestantism increasingly unconcerned with Old World traditionalism, and an optimistic certainty that God and nature had collectively ordained them with a manifest destiny that gave them not only a right, but a duty, to serve as a beacon of light unto all the world’s nations, a “city upon a hill,” breaking free from the shackles of the past and enthusiastically embracing individual liberty, free enterprise, militarism, notions of social equality, and scientific progress.

There was a certain utopianism in this American attitude, and because of some very blessed circumstances that owed as much to geography and racial/social demographics as Divine benevolence, Americanism seemed to build the near paradise that everyone believed was our destiny. America just worked. From generation to generation, we rapidly grew in territory, in wealth, in liberty, and even in happiness over two hundred years, becoming a land flowing with milk and honey and whatever commodity we desired. We became the envy of the world.

The churches in America reflected and increasingly promoted the same American attitudes and assumptions. (As they should have: there was no separating the churches from the vast majority of Americans in those days.) What more did a man need in life beyond hard work, a good wife, a little bit of capital, his hard-won liberty, his rifle, his God, his Holy Bible, and a supportive church community? The average American man, woman, child, and pastor understood this to their very bones.

And so long as we remembered our Lord Jesus Christ, and so long as we remained true to the basic tenets of God’s natural and moral order, God blessed us through any temporary hardships and setbacks. God showered His holy favor upon this loose-knit American nation, just as He had blessed King David in Old Testament times.

The Beginnings of Decay

But the roots of decay were with us from the very beginning. Pride and conceit. Greed. Exploitation of the land and of other peoples, and of our people. Gradually increasing individualism and disregard for societal traditions. And especially secular liberalism as ideology, explicitly written into our founding documents and laws.

We managed to persevere through these weaknesses so long as we kept these tendencies in check, but more and more we celebrated our works, our ideas, our technology, our wealth, and our very selves; and we increasingly regarded God as a mere agent of prosperity and happiness, an accessory to our own well-being and inevitable destiny.

The Rot Sets In

As the 19th century closed, explicit scientific modernism and “progress” had entered the everyday American consciousness. More and more people either believed that God was a distant guiding force Whom we sought to support our material well-being on earth, that Christianity and God provided a means to organize and improve humanity through man’s own efforts, or even that God didn’t exist at all and that we should simply have faith in science and technology and the untapped potential of the free human spirit.

Modernists vs. Fundamentalists

The Progressive Era expanded the notions of social equality of the Enlightenment-influenced United States beyond individualism. 19th-Century progressives believed in government collectivism. An orderly cooperation of governments, elite philanthropists, and religious institutions could perfect human society—even humanity itself—through science, professional institutions, and social activism.

In the early 20th century, what we Americans call the mainline denominations had largely bought into the notion of the social gospel. They formed the majority of adherents in America until the middle of the century, and they increasingly believed (or at least put into practice the idea) that the main focus of their churches was in promoting the social equality and material well-being of people in this life. Increasingly they promoted American progressivism above the gospel entirely. Nowadays, these churches echo Christianity, and they will often quote scripture, but they have become world-focused. They don’t believe in a literal interpretation of scripture, and they increasingly conform to a secular, left-wing world that has adopted the moral structure of Christianity while abandoning most of its traditional tenets. Nowadays these denominations are essentially altruistic social clubs, and they are literally dying off through old age.

Those members of the mainline denominations that rejected the social gospel and modernism mostly broke away from their “social gospel,” modernist counterparts in the early and mid 20th century. They became known collectively as “fundamentalists.” They emphasized the more traditional understanding of God, the bible, and the roles of churches in society in the ways that had developed in America. These fundamentalists formed the backbone of the Conservative establishment in the 20th century.

The Pentecostals

In parallel with the development of American Christianity into modernists and fundamentalists, there steadily grew another type of Christian movement: Pentacostalism. In the late 19th century, many Christians began to seek a more emotional, less formal or formulaic or structured understanding of Christianity, one that emphasized the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

The famous events in Los Angeles, California in 1906 that are known as the Azusa Street Revival really launched this emotionalist movement first in the United States, and then around the world, and it became known as Pentacostalism.

Via Wikipedia:

Worship at 312 Azusa Street was frequent and spontaneous with services going almost around the clock. Among those attracted to the revival were not only members of the Holiness Movement, but also Baptists, Mennonites, Quakers, and Presbyterians.^[21] An observer at one of the services wrote these words:

No instruments of music are used. None are needed. No choir- the angels have been heard by some in the spirit. No collections are taken. No bills have been posted to advertise the meetings. No church organization is back of it. All who are in touch with God realize as soon as they enter the meetings that the Holy Ghost is the leader.^[14]

The Los Angeles Times was not so kind in its description:

Meetings are held in a tumble-down shack on Azusa Street, and the devotees of the weird doctrine practice the most fanatical rites, preach the wildest theories and work themselves into a state of mad excitement in their peculiar zeal. Colored people and a sprinkling of whites compose the congregation, and night is made hideous in the neighborhood by the howlings of the worshippers, who spend hours swaying forth and back in a nerve racking attitude of prayer and supplication. They claim to have the “gift of tongues” and be able to understand the babel.^[9]

The first edition of the Apostolic Faith publication claimed a common reaction to the revival from visitors:

Proud, well-dressed preachers came to “investigate”. Soon their high looks were replaced with wonder, then conviction comes, and very often you will find them in a short time wallowing on the dirty floor, asking God to forgive them and make them as little children.^[15]

Among first-hand accounts were reports of the blind having their sight restored, diseases cured instantly, and immigrants speaking in German, Yiddish, and Spanish all being spoken to in their native language by uneducated black members, who translated the languages into English by “supernatural ability”.^[14]

Singing was sporadic and in a cappella or occasionally there would be singing in tongues. There were periods of extended silence. Attenders were occasionally slain in the Spirit. Visitors gave their testimony, and members read aloud testimonies that were sent to the mission by mail. There was prayer for the gift of tongues. There was prayer in tongues for the sick, for missionaries, and whatever requests were given by attenders or mailed in. There was spontaneous preaching and altar calls for salvation, sanctification and baptism of the Holy Spirit. Lawrence Catley, whose family attended the revival, said that in most services preaching consisted of Seymour opening a Bible and worshippers coming forward to preach or testify as they were led by the Holy Spirit.^[25] Many people would continually shout throughout the meetings. The members of the mission never took an offering, but there was a receptacle near the door for anyone who wanted to support the revival. The core membership of the Azusa Street Mission was never many more than 50–60 individuals, with hundreds if not thousands of people visiting or staying temporarily over the years.^[9]

Pentacostalism was at first most common among the lower classes of society, but by the 1970’s many young Baby Boomers, rejecting the stiffness of their parents’ modernist or (more typically) fundamentalist churches, came to accept Jesus into their hearts and get baptized in the Holy Spirit, and the movement grew rapidly.

By the 1990’s, what remained of the fundamentalist churches in America had more or less merged or blended with the Pentacostals into the broader “evangelical” movement. Increasingly the two sides referred to themselves as “evangelicals.”

There are various reasons for this gradual and non-deliberate merger. The two wings of conservative Christianity were natural allies against a hostile society. As they politically united within the Republican Party, they both got swept up in the political polarization of America’s culture wars. Additionally, conservative Christians fell into the overall tendencies in America towards the casual, the shallow, the undisciplined, the easy. As the more traditional, fundamentalist evangelicals became more lax in their discipline, the Pentecostals began to ease up on their fervent zeal. The two sides met in the casual middle.

Conclusion

Latter-Day Americanism has branched into two major wings among the Christian churches in the United States: the “liberal” and the “conservative,” though those two words increasingly have little meaning except in a loose political sense.

“Liberal” Christianity essentially mirrors the present-day modernist, socially egalitarian world and its agendas as exemplified by the Democratic Party, and “conservative” Christianity increasingly reflects the present-day state of degenerating America as seen in the bumbling Republican Party.

Both versions of modern Christianity in America are increasingly swept away by corrosive trends in the government and the culture.

Latter-Day Americanism in the Churches, Part II: The Mindset

Latter-Day Americanism in the Churches, Part III: Cycles of Life

– 10 June 2022 –

Janus:

The corporate behemoths are taking advantage of the decline of the world’s middle classes—particularly in America—by driving up the “re-sale” market and calling it fashionable and progressive:

Via Seeking Alpha:

I grew up in a poor trailer park household when I was a kid. My father had a halfway decent union factory job, but he tended to blow half his paycheck on payday, and very often my mom was scrambling to find creative ways to feed us kids by the middle of the workweek. All of my clothes came second-hand from garage sales or hand-me-downs, and sometimes from thrift stores.

I remember as a young kid being afraid and embarrassed to go to the “thrift shop.” The one in our town was run by volunteers from the Christian Women’s Union, and they had a dumpy old quonset hut that was crammed full of ratty items, mostly racks of odd-smelling old clothes. The lighting was dingy, and the customers quiet and downtrodden in appearance. When I was a little older, I chose to stay in the car while my mother shopped, and I would hide on the backseat floor.

Then in the mid-90’s, it became “cool” for young people to buy strange clothes in these places, and places like Goodwill and even the Salvation Army seemed to become more mainstream and professional-looking, but maybe that’s just my impression.

As a young adult, almost in defiance of my shame as a youth, I bought most of my clothes from thrift stores mainly because I hated wasting money on stupid clothing when I could waste it on something better. And I still shop at thrift stores for clothes sometimes, especially dress clothes. A few years ago, I had the bright idea to fly to Florida purposely without bothering to pack extra clothes, and I simply bought some outfits at a thrift store, which saved me a little money on checked baggage. So I’ve seen a number of these stores over the years in different parts of the country.

I’ve noticed that prices at Goodwill seem to run fairly high considering that people donate all of their stock. Even despite the fact that Goodwill has to pay for retail space, trucks, labor costs, etc., I have no doubt that this non-profit is making as much of a killing as any other commercial retailer. For Goodwill Industries and similar “re-salers,” the second-hand market is increasingly lucrative and commercial. This is increasingly true even for the Salvation Army.

So now as the country grows increasingly broke, fat, and unhealthy, Dollar General stores have spread to every tiny hamlet to sell overpriced, flimsy goods to the hollowed out rural meth-zones that increasingly look like black ghettos. And ironically, the poor people increasingly can’t so much afford to buy second-hand goods at the increasingly trendy corporatized thrift stores and online outlets. So they will buy practically disposable clothes at Walmart and maybe find goods in third-hand church-run stores in the cities or increasingly at garage sales out in the rural wastes. And hand-me-downs will be passed around via Facebook marketplace and such.

Meanwhile, the Gen Z property-free urbanites will spend too much money on fashionable second-hand clothes directly from mainstream retailers. The own-nothing-and-be-happy models of future domesticated dystopia existence. Gourmet insects, synthetic coffee, chain-intersex-polyamory, tiny rented cells, and overpriced hand-me-downs from the upper classes.

– 3 June 2022 –

Janus:

A few weeks ago, monkeypox was going to be the new coronavirus. Literally a few cases here and there in each country (which is actually rather weird, all of them showing up at the same time all over with so few cases) and the media was throwing a fit, as the media tends to do. And then, all of the sudden, monkeypox was gone from all the major top headlines.

Of course, the Uvalde shooting in the United States helped to knock monkeypox off the radar, and that’s true even in the international media which disproportionately covers American news, at least in the Western-oriented countries. They had to push for more gun control, after all.

Also, if you look, monkeypox isn’t really gone. There are still plenty of buried headlines about monkeypox in various sources. But these headlines lack the hysteria that we saw earlier. They are cool and matter-of-fact. Some of them even say that monkeypox has little chance of becoming a deadly pandemic, which is likely factually true. (But coronavirus wasn’t really a deadly pandemic either.)

So maybe I’m over-analyzing here about the drop-off of monkeypox hysteria, but even so this highlights the power of the news media to shape reality.

Since Uvalde, the media in America has highlighted a shooting in Tulsa at a hospital and now a shooting in a parking lot by an estranged lover in Iowa. They are hammering away to promote gun control, with the weakest of the conservatives beginning to publicly waver. So we can get the idea that all of the sudden there are mass shootings happening every day when in fact these shootings happen pretty regularly (and often a legal gun owner takes these people out.) If we count black parts of cities all over the US, these shootings happen daily (but black-on-black shootings violate the narrative, and honestly nobody really cares about inner-city blacks; even black people don’t care.) So the media takes what is often background noise and inflates it into a circus.

I suspect that the real reason that the hidden powers decided to lay off the monkeypox hysteria was the fact that it’s affecting homosexuals in general, and very internationally mobile homosexuals in particular.

With the all-important Pride Month now upon us, it wouldn’t do for regular people to suddenly turn cold towards the warm, cuddly gays and trannies and drag queens who love our children so much. Especially when the disease makes these special people blotchy and ugly and doesn’t kill them. They get little sympathy that way.

And globetrotting homosexuals represent a good portion of the lower-tier elites, people who serve the upper elites. Unless the media resorted to total fabrication, which isn’t past them really, then people would have heard too much about gay orgies rather than gay pride parades.

Minor disease outbreaks happen all the time in these communities, and the media ignores them to protect these people. And I suspect they are now ignoring this one to protect Pride Month.

But monkeypox can come back at any time if the elites want it. The disease is still slowly spreading among homosexuals over different continents, so who knows?

Nobody would have known that we had a “pandemic” of coronavirus if the media and government hadn’t played it up. It mainly killed decrepit old people, and people would have just considered it as part of the typical flu deaths. Instead, the media showcased that stupid spiked ball and death counts at every turn, freaking everybody out.

It’s just funny how the whole media can be so well-choreographed. They are free and independent, you know!