A phenomenon that nobody has quite yet come to grips with is that organized religion is becoming a distinctly lib thing. (Which makes sense — the American right is engaged in a war against the very ideas of society and institutions.) - ThreadSky

uhactually.bsky.social • 3 days ago

A phenomenon that nobody has quite yet come to grips with is that organized religion is becoming a distinctly lib thing. (Which makes sense — the American right is engaged in a war against the very ideas of society and institutions.)

Reposted from Josiah Sutton

Man, we're in a weird place when the American right is taking victory laps over the death of a pope.

Comments

eldrmllnl485.bsky.social•3 days ago

Also, forgoing any aspect of religion that actually requires you to help people. Any, people.

uhactually.bsky.social•3 days ago

It can be hard to see this because so much of the GOP freakazoid crowd is nominally Catholic, but the truth is that that set has more and more separated itself from the institutional church and is likely to continue to do so.

bobbyhilll.bsky.social•3 days ago

Not only separated from, but directly oppositional to. It’s not as if they’ve just self segregated to TLM churches and that’s it. The main antagonist of much of their purported theology is—like in their politics— the institution itself which must only be burnt down, not renewed or reformed.

smellybutler.bsky.social•3 days ago

From a social standpoint american conservative catholicism isn't meaningfully different than american conservative protestantism anymore, which is weird given the history of catholics in the US

beanstalksagain.bsky.social•2 days ago

It’s very strange and fascinating, particularly given that there are still some lingering hostilities between the VERY conservative Catholics, Protestants, and Mormons in particular.

projectazar.com•3 days ago

I could legitimately imagine a Catholic schism in the US, as a lot of the rad trad folks are increasingly at odds with the Church.

In Kansas, we have a Catholic cult that has only recently been tentatively reintegrated (SSPX) by Pope Francis.

If the next Pope is a reformer, could be explosive.

uhactually.bsky.social•3 days ago

Personally I am doubtful that anyone will formally schism; more likely we’ll get a schism in all but name wherein the pope is openly ignored and mocked without anyone claiming to have entirely left. Probably also we will see an alternative “antiwoke”bishops council.

projectazar.com•3 days ago

The cult is super right wing, rad trad up and down, and does things that could be called heretical if someone wanted to get spicy.

I wouldn't be shocked for more of those rad trad cults to start popping up if the next Pope is in the same vein or more progressive than Francis.

grungehamster.bsky.social•3 days ago

And about half of them are CONVERTS.

docstock.bsky.social•3 days ago

Right. The Vances and Douthats and Doughertys are, for all intents and purposes, schismatic crypto-Protestants who have, since Francis’s ascension, claimed to be literally more Catholic than the pope and thus doing at least soft heresy on a daily basis.

brewergnome.bsky.social•3 days ago

It will be interesting to see if the Church realizes that and chooses their new Pope appropriately.

hapchem.bsky.social•3 days ago

The GOP'd be just fine with organized religion as long as it obeys them - as long as their chosen one is the god it obeys and as long as the religion stamps the GOP's order as the only legitimate one. They like order if it's theirs, and gives them the chance to reduce uncertainty (rogue conscience).

bencates.bsky.social•3 days ago

I think you've got to stretch quite a bit to find a definition of organized religion that excludes non-denominational evangelical megachurches.

uhactually.bsky.social•3 days ago

I disagree. That’s exactly an independent thing and exactly where all conservative religion is heading.

uhactually.bsky.social•3 days ago

I grant you it’s more “organized” than just some guy sitting at his home praying with his family. But it’s not even close to the structure of basically any of the mainline Protestant denominations or Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy.

bencates.bsky.social•2 days ago

No, organized by identifying market leaders and aping their style. It's a fundamentally different kind of structure but it still serves to propagate and homogenize a (shitty) belief system.

waveturtlejake.bsky.social•2 days ago

Mega churches are doing okay-ish but that needs to be contextualized. They tend to grow by cannibalizing smaller, often rural congregations that are typically conservative leaning. All in all, the number of conservatives regularly attending any kind of church in America seems to be

waveturtlejake.bsky.social•2 days ago

falling pretty steadily; megachurches just tend to be the last stop people make before exiting organized religion entirely.

bencates.bsky.social•3 days ago

There's a religious movement having quite a lot of success putting conservative butts in pews. It has a coherent theology which naturally reinforces a MAGA worldview. There's a synergy between the entrepreneurial nature of individual congregations and the larger anti-institutional political bias.

bencates.bsky.social•3 days ago

It's not a *good* theology, or for that matter a particularly Christian one by most traditional measures, but still.

ryancasey.dev•2 days ago

Yeah I think it makes more sense to say *institutional* religion, or perhaps hierarchical or "high church" in other terms. Non-denominational, Baptist, etc are huge, but they're not organized the same way as other religious organizations

hillaryathome.bsky.social•2 days ago

The American right has nearly always found Catholicism suspect. The slurs against Italian and Irish immigrants as being “Papists” etc. It was a big deal at the time that JFK was elected president despite being a Catholic and it should be noted, he was a democratic candidate

dianethepunk.bsky.social•2 days ago

This has been a deeply strange decade to be both a leftist and an atheist

frere-jaccuse.bsky.social•2 days ago

And it's been a while coming: I've long been struck by how my gop relatives always make a point of scoffing their priests for not knowing what he's talking about, regardless of statement/action/politics. A conservative has room for just one authority, and that's himself

corinnejess.bsky.social•2 days ago

You know, you could say liberalism is like a religion,

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply