The Religious as Enemies of the State

Today Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post has a piece written out of a poll about "Christian Nationalists," which asserts that those who believe that America ought to be guided by Christianity are also racists; D29 links to a similar piece about an FBI analyst's concern that Catholics who prefer the Latin Mass are 'white supremacists.' 

It concerns me that our national elite has come around to the view that having traditional beliefs is itself evidence of both racism and also being an enemy of the American project as they conceive it. There are a number of reasons to prefer Latin that I can think of, not one of which is remotely connected to race. 

More, the use of Latin explicitly removes the religious experience from the province of American or any other nationalism. While it was once the language of the Roman Empire, no nation now speaks it as a national tongue: one could even say that it has become in that sense a language of the Otherworld. My maternal grandfather once told me only to read a King James Bible because it was the only true word of God. Doubtless Jennifer Rubin would understand that as a racist claim, because the KJV is in English and an English that is tied to America's European (and explicitly British) heritage. Yet if you shift off of the KJV to the Sacra Vulgata, aren't you also rejecting the idea that English is the language of the word of God?

Rubin's decision that Evangelicals are racists mostly hangs on a single question from the poll, which asks if you believe that it is God's will that America sprang forth as a nation where European Christians would set an example for the world. She describes that as explicitly racist, although there was a time (not long ago) when "European" would have been seen by racists as a term covering many different races. More, though, the view the question is asking about is older than the nation itself: in 1630, John Winthrop gave a sermon about a City on a Hill that held:
Thus stands the cause between God and us. We are entered into covenant with Him for this work. We have taken out a commission. The Lord hath given us leave to draw our own articles. We have professed to enterprise these and those accounts, upon these and those ends. We have hereupon besought Him of favor and blessing. Now if the Lord shall please to hear us, and bring us in peace to the place we desire, then hath He ratified this covenant and sealed our commission, and will expect a strict performance of the articles contained in it; but if we shall neglect the observation of these articles which are the ends we have propounded, and, dissembling with our God, shall fall to embrace this present world and prosecute our carnal intentions, seeking great things for ourselves and our posterity, the Lord will surely break out in wrath against us, and be revenged of such a people, and make us know the price of the breach of such a covenant.
That sermon, once well-known to Americans from school, echoed through our national discourse as recently as Ronald Reagan's presidency. The sentiment that the American project was a City on the Hill endorsed by God was probably a non-controversial view in the generation before mine; it is the sort of thing John Wayne might have said in a movie devoted to American patriotism. I imagine it was taught explicitly in schools; it was certainly implied in school as late as my own early education. I can easily recall hearing versions of it from my elders when I was young; indeed, as an explanation from a religious elder that God had willed the South to lose the Civil War so that a unified America might be strong enough to stop Hitler and the Holocaust. (That it also happened to stop slavery did not come up, though that is at least as good a piece of natural theology.)

These were the people who fought Americas wars, who built and then served in her institutions, who made the nation whose elite now considers them enemies. They do so out of a conviction that their own understanding of these principles is the only right one; they do so without even troubling to understand what the people they are condemning understand these words to mean. 

12 comments:

E Hines said...

...those who believe that America ought to be guided by Christianity are also racists[.]

Their heads might explode if they read a letter from that racist John Madison to his State's militia:

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-3102

Or they might feel vindicated.

Eric Hines

james said...

I'm not sure that calling the FBI's strange intelligence investigations "politicized" is the best description. It seems much more religious than political.

raven said...


My take on this sort of thing is the purported reason(s) does not matter, at all.
In that ANY belief, action or possession perceived by the enemy as being primarily the province of the traditionalist American is a target.
They do not look at a belief, and decide it is unacceptable, and people who hold that belief are evil racists. They look at a group of people who oppose their goals, THEN select a belief these people hold and go on the attack.
Guns.
Meat.
Pickup trucks.
Christianity.
Statues
Gas stoves
Etc.
These are merely clubs to beat us with.
If we ran a survey tomorrow and found 78% of red corvette owners are white christian males,
the day after there will editorials calling to ban the color crimson and V-8 engines.
It is that simple.

This brings up a similarity- the ubiquitous and comprehensive surveillance systems in place?
Ostensibly to "protect" us from attackers, somehow, by intercepting real time info?
No. Same thing as above- the data is there to sift against a pre-selected target, in case the nail, AKA political opposition ,ever sticks up.

David Foster said...

"those who believe that America ought to be guided by Christianity are also racists"...how about Black people who hold this belief? I wouldn't be surprised if the % agreeing with the assertion is higher among blacks than amount whites.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

It is feelings and associations with a veneer of rationality that is merely rationalising. Some trad Catholics are crazy (and not really that Catholic). Some evangelicals are crazy (and not really that evangelical). Therefore they believe that we should be exposed to no evangelicals or trad catholics, because they might be something dangerous. They must be ignored, or if necessary, silenced. There is no reasoning involved here, just feelings. There may in a CS Lewis That Hideous Strength sense be some diabolical reasoning behind it all. But for the Jennifer Rubin's of the world it's just Other People Who Seem Icky.

Anonymous said...

I stand with the Latin mass Catholics, especially those who stand in front of abortion clinics, and pray with their unregistered assault rosaries.

Greg

Predictably, the changed legal landscape concerning abortion in the United States has caused a big increase in the already vocal debate. In fact, it is not difficult to see that the 2024 Presidential Election will be rigged – sorry, I meant fought – having this one as one of the main battlegrounds.

In my estimation, we need to avoid the all too usual sin of the conservatives on these occasions: trying to look “moderate” or “reasonable”, likely in the hope of getting some of the people who are on the fence.

Guess what: you can’t sit on this fence. You are going to fall on one side, or the other.

No compromise on any kind of abortion term. No compromise on any abortifacient/pill. No compromise on any (true or claimed) rape or violence or whatever. No compromise with anything aimed at ending a life that has started.

Besides the obvious ethical ground, there is a very practical one for this position.

The battle against abortion is not a legal, strictly speaking not even a religious, but a civilisational one. This is an absolute evil, and an evil that defines the people and generations condoning or even approving of it. Therefore, any kind of “practical” compromise weakens the very premise.

You can’t have a compromise over the Holocaust. You can’t decide that the extermination of a people is only allowed in “practical” or “reasonable”, compromised terms. You reject the Holocaust altogether, no ifs and no buts. This is the only way how you can, in fact, make the point.

In time, it is the fundamental point that will get across; and when that happens things will be much easier, because an awful lot of humans behave humanely, when they are not given excuses.

No Compromise.

https://mundabor.wordpress.com/2023/02/10/no-compromise/

Anonymous said...

Trad Catholics are Not Crazy.......

Lets shore up one more area that Trad Catholics clearly understand - Greg
*******************************
A COVID-19 vaccine that does not use aborted fetal cell lines in research or production is not expected in the foreseeable future.
*******************************
.....For now, all vaccines for the COVID-19 virus being distributed are produced and/or tested with cell lines that originated from an aborted child. This is most unfortunate. However, this is not the fault of good people who are just trying to be safe.

The Church has said that each person/family must make a prudential decision with an informed conscience and do what is best for you, your family, and your community.

The moral duty to avoid such passive material cooperation is not obligatory if there is a grave danger, such as the otherwise uncontainable spread of a seri Gregous pathological agent[3]–in this case, the pandemic spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19. (CDF Note)

We are obliged, then, to avoid using vaccines that rely on aborted fetal cell lines unless we are in grave danger. The Church says we have a “moral duty” to avoid cooperation in evil, however remote, as the default condition. It is only morally permissible to get the vaccine if you need it. Either way, we are all also supposed to work to change the culture that got us backed into this corner.

We all have an obligation to effectively oppose the use of aborted children in biomedical research. That is the mission of Children of God for Life. We will update as more vaccines become available........

https://cogforlife.org/guidance/

Dad29 said...

So happens I am an FBI-identified white supremacist and--by explicit extension by Director of FBI and our Attorney General--a terrorist.

Damn. Now I have to begin coursework in terrorism, I suppose. At my age that won't be easy.

Dad29 said...

But if that coursework is in Latin? It will be a snap!!!

Anonymous said...

Now please understand Traditional Catholics have less in common with Liberal Catholics and more in common with Evangelicals especially when we team up against the Globalist Transhumanists goal of "Enhanced Humans"

Of course a nice little atheist Jewish girl like Jennifer Rubins of the Jeff Bezos Blog will calls us enemies of the state because we tell them their positions are morally bent and not moral.

The Liberal Eugenics goal of Enhanced Humans requires In vitro fertilization (IVF)

IVF requires you to sacrifice about 20 of your own children via both “embryo reduction” and “freezing” to get about two of them born.  
Thus, IVF is literally murdering and freezing many of your children to get a few born for yourself.  Remember, God can quickly forgive the murder of your own children you just need to have sorrow for this sin, and confess this mortal sin to a priest. Jesus wants us all to go to heaven, its that simple.

IVF is abortion on steroids and is civilization destroying.

This war we must fight for the love of country, and the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. .

To expand on this point, may I request that you listen to this Video of Steve Bannon & Joe Allen from the Federalist, discussing the views of a James Metzl

Metz is a Jewish Democrat Transhumanists who served in the Obama and Biden White house. He is enthusiatic about culling the herd promoting the right genetics


"Are Americans Being Primed For "Liberal Eugenics"

https://rumble.com/v2911ce-americans-are-primed-for-liberal-eugenics.html


These people literally want to play God and choose who has a right to live or die.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Anonymous - there are people who call themselves trad Catholics (or evangelicals), such as Feenyites who are quite crazy. But they aren't that Catholic. As I noted, not so much Catholics as nostalgic for a Catholic culture of the 40s and 50s. The Saint Benedict Center here in NH would be an example. The last few popes agree with me on this. https://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/2013/08/deliver-us-concerning-victimhood.html

Grim said...

Ironically, this is almost a mirror of the post from 2006 that drew the Google issue this week. The issue that is the same is trying to engage sincerely religious people by taking the trouble to understand what they actually mean by their concepts; and here as there, the trouble is being caused by people who refuse to bother.

There are a few who will be a problem even if you take the time to understand them, but probably only a few.