I grew up Mormon therefore isolated from most of Christianity; but the more I learn about history and different sects of it, the more I feel like Calvinism was a mistake
Its the human animal reacting to capitalism. It allows the fortunate to justify their alienation. Its the path of becoming a "homizoid" a being who wishes to merge with the logic of capitalism You can see it in the Rationalists of California. In the Tech bro ideology
I want to read a piece on how & why a large section of American Catholics have embraced a Calvinist/prosperity gospel theology that is actually very un-Catholic
It’s bizarre to me. I grew up Catholic with childhood friends, whose households were also Catholic. Went to church together, went to Sunday school together. We mostly ended up well-read agnostics as adults, but even when we were believers, nobody at my church was super “trad.”
A lot of people in my parish kind of rolled their eyes & tuned out when the pastor would give a sermon on “partial birth abortion” because a lot of us had no problem with birth control, condoms, or abortion. I thought American Catholics were more laid-back.This Opus Dei shit came out of left field.
Sounds exactly like my mom! My mother was very serious about her faith, but was outspoken when it came to criticizing elements of the church & its representatives she found hypocritical or lacking. And she definitely didn’t blindly follow all the dogma, things that to her made no sense were ignored.
This is fascinating to me being a zoomer raised in catholic school that US catholics were ever that chill. I guess the determining factor was private school after all
It probably depends on particular parishes, & region may play a part as well. I was in the mid Atlantic near DC, where the predominant politics is left of center.
There were definitely some people at my church who took abortion seriously, participated in the March for Life etc, but most of us didn’t really go in for the hard-core shit.
I think the chillness is definitely parish-dependent (people always pick and choose how much of the theology to embrace), but that is not what I am talking about – I'm talking about saying eff the poor & sick, they deserve it, which gels much more easily with Calvinism
Pretty much any strictly conservative Christian group seems to end up buying into the whole mindset of “if someone is poor, they must’ve done something to displeased God & therefore deserve this punishment.“
Just another wonderful gift of American-style “prosperity gospel” BS.
I think we are talking about two different things. I more mean thinking "screw the poor and sick, they did this to themselves or deserve it in some way". For all the RC Church's faults that is a very un-Catholic way to think – but it seems to have been adopted by a lot of American Catholics
To be honest, I’ve wondered if it has anything to do with right wing extremists chilling out on their anti-Catholicism, openly anyway. They haven’t but I can’t convince my locals of that. And they were way more pleasant when the KKK was still in their hair. They don’t believe Southern Baptists
still hate them. I can assure everyone I’ve hard report a lot of community & Baptist church leaders to the Feds in the last handful of years. Trad Cats need to wake up. Stop trying to befriend the American taliban. Thank you & goodnight.
I too remember when the Protestants and the Catholics disliked & distrusted one another. Unfortunately, I think the existential crisis these modern-day Pharisees are facing w/ increasing agnosticism has forced them to put aside their differences in order to support one another in their cultural war.
Catholics thinking they’re supporting Protestants in a culture war. Protestants are loving this but they’re pretty openly planning war on the Catholics after they make it to the top of the religious caste they’re trying to build. Granted, they’ve got time. They want to go after Muslims then Jews 1st
OK some levels here. Cotton Mather, *serious* Calvinist and witch guy, was a *huge* promoter of smallpox inoculation, cribbed from Onesimus, a man he enslaved. Jonathan Edwards, of all people, got inoculated. The clergy of Boston was in favor. The *doctors* were opposed. No apologies for RFK though.
Jefferson and John Adams both despised Presbyterians because of their Calvinism. They thought Calvinism was incompatible with both the concept of free will democracy.
If God bestowed one with grace, but not others, then why shouldn't the former believe they are superior and chosen to rule?
While apt, the 'worm in the brain' thing comes from his divorce where he was grasping for any way possible to pay as little spousal/child support as possible to claim his "earning power had been diminished by his cognitive struggles.”
Made up to fuck over an ex he then drove to suicide.
I’m not so sure. He has a long history of irresponsibly handling and eating unusual dead things. I saw a very advanced case when I used to work at a hospital.
People love to throw the term around in political arguments these days. I had to read finial confessions of heretics from Catholic archives as part of a “religion in the Middle Ages of Europe” class and became way too familiar with heresies lmao
I'm sure it had an impact. Hanging out with modern calvinists they definitely have some weird ideas about disease and faith, thought at least most of them cave and go seek out "witchcraft" medicine, aka, evidence-based medicine.
Hobson ran a livery stable and his rule was you could take any horse you wanted as long as it was the horse nearest the door. So Hobson’s Choice really means you take what you’re given or nothing at all.
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Just another wonderful gift of American-style “prosperity gospel” BS.
https://youtu.be/1RJ-IT1f7U8?t=2420
That was over 200 years ago
👇
https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/holy-willies-prayer/
If God bestowed one with grace, but not others, then why shouldn't the former believe they are superior and chosen to rule?
Made up to fuck over an ex he then drove to suicide.
https://hekint.org/2019/05/28/john-calvin-his-rule-in-geneva-and-his-many-illnesses/#:~:text=He%20suffered%20from%20heartburn%20and,have%20considered%20subacute%20bacterial%20endocarditis.
These fuckers really do ruin everything they touch.
https://youtu.be/1RJ-IT1f7U8?t=2420