This is a remarkably insightful article. I did have one thought I wanted to share concerning the final question posed, 'where now is authority?'. With each successive 'emergence' as it were, the source of the authority in Christianity moved ever more gradually away from God and towards man. With the first emergence, that of Christ, the question was answered obviously 'with Christ' as He was the clear authority and His teachings carried the full weight of what was believed.
With the second emergence in the 6th century and the Arian heresy, the answer to the question was 'with the Pope', since Christ's divinity was now suspect, the ultimate authority had to rest in the human hands of the leader of the Christian Church.
In the 11th century, the answer was 'with the local bishop' as that solidified the split between the eastern and western churches and now the authority rested with the local bishop, leading to the doctrinal differences that became permanent between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.
In the 16th century, the answer was 'scripture alone' which made every individual pastor or priest his own magesterium and arbiter of what was to be believed. Which lead naturally to the conclusion and answer to this currently cycle, which is apparently 'with the individual', thus completing the serpents temptation in the garden that 'You will be like unto God' and we are now seen as the arbitors of what is good and what is evil, even if that moves as a sort of weird collective hive mind.
This is very perceptive Eric, I didn't recognize this until you pointed it out: authority has been devolved with each cycle in a linear way, all the way until we get to today's individual as sovereign.
Looking strictly at the history of the Roman Catholic Church, its first thousand years was a history of accumulating (secular) power, and its succeeding thousand years has been a history of deteriorating power, of fallback positions gradually abandoned.
The medieval Papacy claimed all temporal and spiritual authority, but it gradually had to cede claims to temporal authority, even before the Reformation, because it needed Spanish support in the Italian Wars, and the Spanish kings would no more than pay lip service to the Papal claims of earthly authority, and the Papacy had no other way to back up its pretensions. The fear of an Avignon-type scenario no doubt loomed large in the mind of the Popes of the time.
The fallback position was "throne and altar" Catholicism, in which the Church supported the claims of kings to temporal power, as long as they allowed the Church free rein in its own affairs, over matters of conscience, and over education. This was eroded by the time of the French Revolution, and finally imploded in the aftermath of the First World War.
Since crowned and anointed semi-absolutist Catholic kings ruling on the basis of divine right were no longer a real world option, the alternative preferred form of government was The Man On A Horse, a strongman who seized power and was able to reach some form of accord with the Catholic Church, somewhat like the old throne and altar system, but with less religious ritual and justification and more naked exercise of power. Franco, Salazar and Mussolini come prominently to mind, as does the Brazilian variant on the Estado Novo.
Of course, World War II made it clear that The Man On A Horse didn't have much of a future, unless and to the extent supported by the United States. The choices in Europe going forward were now between American-style liberalism and Soviet-style communism, and the Church embraced liberalism, not so much out of conviction, but because certainly from the point of view of the Church, the alternative was worse.
Hi Feral, this is very astute. I'm going to think on this a while. This points to a position I recently came in contact with regarding the differences between the growth of the church in the west (roman catholic) and the east (orthodox). The roman west became very concerned with secular power and position, since it found itself in a position of authority over the broken remains of the western empire. Whereas in the east, the continuous rule of the Emperors in Constantinople for 1000 years allowed the religious east to keep its gaze on spiritual, rather than temporal matters. I don't think that's to imply eastern religions haven't been used by secular powers, but the institutional churches in their various regions were always secondary to the temporal powers and never directly in charge, as what you had with the Holy Roman Empire in the West, with the Pope seen as ruler of all.
I should add that before 1945, the Roman Catholic Church had been quite ideologically opposed to liberalism.
The struggles between liberals and the Church in France, Spain, Italy, Mexico and the Papal encyclical condemning "Americanism" all come specifically to mind.
Of course, come 1945, the choice between Americanism and the tender mercies of Soviet style communism made the Catholic Church get a whole new attitude.
Liberalism of the 19th century is what we’d call neoliberalism today - pejoratively.
Much of the objection to the Church was its condemnation of usury , well we got that out of the way.
Would you like an example of the Liberalism objected too a century or so on?
Mexico. No God, no morals, no replacement.
Mexico got rid of that pesky church and replaced it with...
Money. And raw, untrammeled power.
Gaze upon our grandchildren here in the USA, or the post communist countries to include China. No morals, no laws, no rules.
China can’t build chips or aircraft engines because they can’t keep a team together with the core skills long enough. We have just enough social capital left from our Christian heritage to do so...but we’re running on vapors.
When all this drama is over, the exhausted survivors will like the Chinese, the Mexicans and the Eastern Europeans be empty and not capable of thinking beyond themselves- or their families.
Another feline thought: to what extent was Russian-style tsarist absolutism the result of the Orthodox relationship between church and state, where the Church has no real claim of secular authority or interest in politics?
I'd say given this came later, since the Russians didn't convert until the 900s, this was probably an aspect of Eastern Christianity that was inherited from Constantinople. The Emperor was already the ruling force in the East, so it would naturally follow that the Tsar would be viewed the same in Russia.
Dear Sir, you are overestimating the Catholic Church’s reach and grasp. It never claimed all secular power outside of the Papal States, indeed most of its secular conflicts with the Holy Roman Empire were over who could name Bishops- Pope or Emperor. The powers of the Church outside faith were quite limited- and one must also consider the mission to civilize Barbarians. In no way did it spend 1000 years gathering secular power, although it did accrue over time.
Catholic teaching favors the idea that, as the vicar of Christ on earth, the Pope has complete temporal and spiritual power over the whole of the world. That being said, few have ever attempted to claim temporal power in anything more than a tangential manner. However, the reach of the Popes during the Middle Ages was quite far. The tug of war between the Pope and King John of England is a good example of this. The same as with the Popes call for Crusade or the events leading up to the Battle of Lepanto.
"Catholic teaching favors the idea that, as the vicar of Christ on earth, the Pope has complete temporal and spiritual power over the whole of the world."
I see. I come from a very Catholic upbringing and family, I am unfamiliar with this teaching, may I have a reference?
I'm a cradle Catholic as well, and it's not something that is easy to understand given today's world. But a lot of it had to do with the structure of feudal society and structure.
The pope, as the uncontested head of the church in Europe, was given all spiritual authority. This was seen to extend to the world, in the event the whole world became Catholic. Spiritual authority was seen as above temporal authority. It thereby reserved the right of the pope to depose kings. And this happened, many times.
So, this is the muddle. The pope doesn't directly wield temporal power, that was always reserved for kings. What he does have is the power to tell the guy wielding the power to do as he says, or else he gets the boot. Good popes used this power wisely, bad popes, not so much.
Here are a couple links. The sensus fidelium link is a catholic site and discusses the limited actual temporal power the popes had in regards to Rome itself, which became know as the papal states. I included the first, even though it's wikipedia, since the first couple of paragraphs sums up this idea pretty succinctly. The rest of the article elaborates the point pretty well.
So I should have said, Catholic teaching is clear on the supreme spiritual authority of the Roman Pontiff over the whole of the earth as the vicar of Christ, and this spiritual authority extends over all the temporal rulers, granting that their total obedience and subjegation, as well as that of their whole kingdom, should be to the Roman Pontiff on all matters of faith and morals. (Which in the realm of politics, includes almost everything). But that's a mouthful :) I hope this was helpful, took me a long time to understand this position of the Catholic Church.
This did happen. Popes did release subjects from the vows of obedience to kings or emperors. > But it usually happened in contests over who could name the bishops - Pope or King - or who was to rule Italy.
The most anti-papal force in history bar none were the Holy Roman Emperors, who invaded and marched into Rome on several occasions to settle this very point.
The chief opponent over time of Italian unification was in no way the Pope but Austria, at times France involves itself.
In the end of course the Kingdom of Italy unifies Italy and conquers the Papal States, the objections from the Papacy being secular ruler objections mainly oriented around the Papacy not being a tool of the Secular Ruler [as happened with France and the Avignon popes]. The other objection being to Catholicism being thrown down or even banned from voting/politics as happened in Italy, as happened to an extent with Bismarck's Kulturkampf, as happened i the 20th century in Mexico and started to happen in Spain in the 2d Republic.
But at no time did the pope or papacy claim secular rule over all the world or Christendom, the secular claims are limited to the Papal States. The actual claim is to be the Vicar of Christ on earth with responsibility for all souls, or all Christian souls - not temporal supremacy. As to the Papal states it is important to consider the context of how this came about: The CHAOS of the Dark Ages in Italy. The Lombards never had stable rule, nor the Goths before them, and the parts ruled by the Byzantine Emperor are ruled from afar..... Context was Italy was in constant terrible wars. The ruler of Rome stepping up to establish order is not the worst thing.
Feral, you mention "The Man On A Horse." Is this a term you have encountered elsewhere or coined yourself? The reason I ask is because there is a very important historical novel entitled "The Man on a Donkey," about the Pilgrimage of Grace," a popular commons/Catholic uprising against Henry VIII. The author is H.F.M. Prescott. "The Man On A Horse" reference is the key I was looking for that helps unlock the title of the novel.
In the novel, "The "Man on a Donkey" is Christ, as seen by the half-wit serving woman Malle in her visions.
* * * *
As good as a historical novel can be—fresh, imaginative, sensitively written."
—The New York Post
"The Man on a Donkey is an enthralling, panoramic historical novel that brings to life one of the most tumultuous times in British history—the reign of King Henry VIII.
"In Part 1, readers are introduced to the world of the Tudors through the lives of five individuals. When King Henry VIII takes his mistress as his new wife, seizes Church property, and declares himself the only supreme head of the Church of England, the lives and fortunes of these five people are shaken—setting the stage for the momentous events in Part 2 of The Man on a Donkey.
Eric, thanks for that, absolutely fantastic. I am an atheist but find antique language like “the serpents temptation” easily as insightful as our current jargon. Let me take a crack at “the serpents temptation” in colloquial language: Everyone gets to define the Devine, their own version. That is terrifying and illogical. We turn to religion because we don’t know what to think and then this new hyper-subjective religion foists it back on us with “it’s up to you”, define meaning, authority as you feel like. Chaos. We are lost. Nature abhors a vacuum and I fear what is going to rush into fill this vacuum. Professor Deneen calls the successor ideology, “political Gnosticism of imperial liberalism.”
The burden on the individual of being "like unto God" as authority--governed, if at all, by socially-mediated whims and impulses--surely cannot long be borne.
As you describe, authority has moved away from an entirely spiritual being to part man/part god, to man qua man, first as leaders in a rigid hierarchy with centuries of decentralization until the present atomization of subjective authority, a kind of chaos in search of order.
The next transfer of or vesting in authority may very well be to another entirely spiritual entity, which suggests the eschatology of end times perhaps preceded by a mediating anti-christ, part corporeal/part machine--an embodiment of the transhumanist utopia beloved of the technosphere and the biosecurity/safety state now taking shape before our very eyes.
Will man turn himself into an idol, a devil, or a god; will the transhuman be a fragile farce of divinity, a dark yet competent mockery of it, or a transfiguration to divinity evolving to omniscience and omnipotence?
"We are now seen as . . ."? By whom? By ourselves? Count me out. The authority cannot be both "the individual" and "the collective hive mind." The authority is, as always, God. Each person should try to understand what this means in the light of his or her own experience, and it can be helpful to discuss it with others and to learn from elders and ancestors through writings and traditions.
Hi Jack, I don't agree with the current idea of authority. I would say in fact, the very nature of it, both individual and communal, has created the an environment under which it will ultimately fail when the tug of war between the individual and the collective pull society apart. Rather a return to Christ and the authority of God is the only answer.
I immediately thought of three of the smartest and most thoughtful people I know who need to read this. One is a priest, another a retired physician, and another an atheist-libertarian-transhumanist lawyer. I look forward to talking this over with them and others.
Holy shit, where did you dig up this book? I'm laughing because I remember when it came out, and it feels so specific to a particular time (late 2000's/early 2010's) and the fairly small emerging/emergent church circles, of which I was a part. Your analysis is very insightful, however you discovered it.
The Emergent Church was basically comprised of disaffected Evangelicals deconstructing their beliefs and mainline Protestants looking to postmodernism to re-invigorate their dying institutions. We met at conferences, online, and in local "cohorts" that met (usually) in pubs. There was definitely a lot of drinking involved. There were quite a few "celebrities" who had written popular books or were particularly charismatic speakers, and Phyllis Tickle was the genial, twinkly-eyed grande dame of the scene. I didn't know her personally, but she always came across as deeply kind and good-humored.
The Emergent Church as a brand and rallying banner fell apart partly due to interpersonal conflicts among some key organizers, although nascent identity politics definitely played a role. But the basic project of Protestant deconstruction was now seeded, and it continued at gatherings like The Wild Goose Festival and online spaces like The Liturgists Podcast, which was highly successful and influential for a few years before it blew itself up over social-justice issues.
One of the questions I and others asked in those Emergent Church years was once we deconstruct...what are we going to construct? Because it seemed pretty clear that endless deconstruction eventually led to a kind of nihilism. And it's true, a lot of us ended up in the social justice/activist space, whether we engaged it through a progressive Christian lens or a purely secular one.
It's been the last few years where things have really taken a turn toward a very fundamentalist kind of morality that some of us have started to step back and say.. whoa. Not that I haven't seen what was happening and had my critiques of it (though if I'm truthful, I've also been swept up in it from time to time), but it's gotten to the point where it's become completely untenable for me to engage in these communities at all. Even a long-time leftist organizer I know says they would never recommend people get involved in activism at the current moment. It's been fascinating for me to watch the parallels between the rigid fundamentalism I was raised in and what the left has become.
This article is a remarkable synthesis of sociology, history, psychology, theology, and opinion. I often come away from reading editorials feeling unsatisfied by the lack of scope since many authors focus only on one aspect of an issue just to get a piece written and posted, no matter how incomplete. Thank you for giving us substance.
Very well written article that lays a framework to understand much of the crazy going on around us today. I do think the secular suburban white woman focus was illustrative..... From my current thoughts on Christianity, seems this all goes back to man's desire to be as a God.... The original sin. It makes sense that man is both deceived and is attempting in this current schism to create his own authority to create his own heaven.... as a God. This will not end well, as the true God and authority is what he is, and any deviation from that, which this new emergent religion 100 percent is, will not succeed but fail..
I look forward to your further delving into this thesis.... Quite interesting
A good article...much to consider. 500 year cycles/80/20 whatever are not explanatory, but heuristics that in part disclose God's Providence, the constancy of human nature, the linear understanding of time introduced by Jewish/Christian revelation. Cyclical movements are the in betweens of those dynamics. As far as the present goes: your insight into the modern Liberal Woman/man is right, and here Jody Bottom's work on the collapse of mainline protestantism is important to further understand it. But so is St. John Henry Newman's prediction of the consequences of the Reformation as well as Brad Gregory's Unintended Reformation. (Here Tickle is totally wrong, and doesn't see the millenarian Joachim de Fiore and Manichean and Skeptical undergirdings of the Reformation at play). In the present, McWhorter and others don't see the fundamental religious impulse behind the NewWoke Faith - it is Manichean, and Zoroastrian, and in that way shares with - Islam which draws heavily from these traditions, does not have grace, only obedience/submission and hope for salvation through practice. Yes The NewWoke Faith has Calvinistic/Christian heretical elements, but those, like in Islam, are the surface, the language of the social milieu rather than the core tenets. All Christian heresies draw from some gnostic "natural/unnatural" human religious impulse - that have Good vs. Evil, Light/Dark, Creator/Destroyer themes. The NewWoke Faith is the last stage of the Modern Liberal Order - it is the religion - terrifying and vicious - of the Last Wo/Men. It is what results when safety and complacency can't sustain - it is the fission reaction of the angst present existentialist/nihilistic thought. Nietzsche called it in Thus Spake... His Ubermensche is not the antidote, it is the Christian Victim/Saint whom he reviles in Beyond Good and Evil that provides the way out...
It is such a pleasure to read such an article and such comments! Writing from teh intellectual and spiritual desert called Germany, I congratulate the US on on their vibrant culture.
I appreciate this article. There are many threads to pull on. One specific thread, outside the explicit religious scope of this article, is what type of economic system will emerge beside the New Faith. Whether the all consuming approach of woke capitalism can continue unimpeded is an open question; primarily because they (woke capitalists) may run out of fuel -- arguably there are only so many MLB All Star games to consume.
Will the Jeffersonians agragarians, distributivists, crunchy-cons, farmers market crowd and others cobble together an alliance will some traditional democrats and main street republicans to stem the tide?
The carving out of so much of america causes me to question how many "hypothetical middle-class suburban white lad[ies]" there are compared to the hypothetical JD Vances out there. Is it clear they will be subsumed by the New Faith or will they be left on the margins? If they are left on the margins will they coalesce into the (cultural) barbarians which ultimately stop woke capitalism?
A similar set of questions (e.g. creating a new margin filled with new barbarians) could be asked about education, but that is a longer post.
If one makes a Religion of Politics one will have great success at getting Power for all Politics is the Struggle for Power. But that struggle is ceaseless - which means you'll get Power but never stable rule.
Politics makes a poor religion as Faith must be ruled out, one can trust no one. Nor can it ever offer Redemption, nor Order. It does offer Power.
Madame Tickle has done a worthy job of historically identifying the "New Religion" that has swept away the dieing vestiges of the "Old Religion" (or "The Faith of Our Fathers") that it is plain to see has come to pass in the USA, and much of the western world today. This sweeping away has not, and will not occur in the underground church, in China and in Muslim nations of the Middle East where the persecution is so great, that God's people must either embrace the cross of Christ or perish, anyway. This is the only answer for religion's failings: the cross of Jesus Christ, which sweeps away the "tyrannical authority of the flesh" and makes a place in the heart of man, for the authority of God. When Charles Finney arose that fateful morning and said, "This day I shall give my heart to God; OR, I SHALL DIE! he must have meant what he said, because the two powerful baptisms of the Holy Spirit that "Overtook him and came upon him...." were so powerful that he was sure that if God did not lessen the power, HE WOULD SURELY DIE! Only the cross of Christ can do away with the tyranny of the flesh which "....Wars against the Spirit," and usher into the heart of man the true authority of God: "Peter do you love me more than these? Peter stop your hypocritical, playacting love for me, for the leaven of the pharisees must be removed from my church, in order for the Holy Spirit to come in when the Day of Pentecost has fully come" (read Romans 12:9-21 - Paul's revelation from God on Peter's seaside talk, early one morning, with the risen Lord.) Finney's flesh was "so overcome" by the powerful infilling of the "The Holy Spirit" (see Ephesians 3:19), that when revival broke out, he did not see his new bride (of three days) for seven months, until family and friends finally brought her, and her belongings to him. Beloved Believer, THIS IS NOT CARNAL! The apostle Paul gave us the secret to "...Keeping my body under....," in 1 Corinthians Chapter 7 where we are told that marriage and giving in marriage are not sinful if the flesh is "kept under," through prayer and fasting. When Finney began to sense the lessening of the power of what he called "the Spirit of Prayer," he would fast and pray until he could once again travail in the Spirit for the new birth of souls (with what David Wilkerson called "The anguished heart of God."
Got the eternal Catholics vs Protestant vs atheists vs anti-theists debate going here unintentionally. Well... we’re going to see their choices in a clearer light here folks- we are entering a dark room called the fall of the American Republic (it just happened January 20th) and there’s no clear successor. Uh, no that bunch of college kids in DC ain’t gonna hold what they took.
Nor will woke.
There is no Right Wing or White Wing either, despite what you have been told.
There’s a bunch of college kids (DC is a college town) and fat middle aged women who are wondering what the Hell they just did, being very nervous around the soldiers they summoned. Too late now.
Y’all are soon to appreciate the importance of order shortly.
The decisions of the past will come into focus. Order will be a most valuable and scarce good indeed.
I agree that we are heading towards new religious movements and revolutions but I think that these are increasingly characterised as eschatological and millenarian - therefore you could talk about a 1000 year cycle > a leading towards holy war; that our new era is becoming defined by spiritual warfare (Simon Chrinchly and John Grey also think this is the case)
The ‘priesthood for all believers’ concept is similar to the ‘heresy of the free spirit’ - which was often radically egalitarian and communist, then here is the idea of a lunar, chthonic brotherhood/sisterhood. They differ in how egalitarian or unegalitarian they might be, but essentially operate on a similar axis.
But I think there is a bigger picture yet still as ideologies that encomposss such things as the New Age Movement and Christian neo-eschatological millenarianism, and also jihiadism and Zionism, all which may be understood as trending towards religious or spiritual warfare also coincide with the apocalyptic prophecies of futurists and AI researchers who hypothesis Godlike AI; leading to a totally transformed Earth and towards revolutionions in genetics which lead us into a highly compressed or punctuated speciation event.
The point I am making is that this is perhaps bigger, even than a 10,000 year cycle, that the “religion” of woke/social justice is actually a reactionary and humanist side effect (though it could be understood as a transitory and shifting period in human consciousness/ a schism).
We passing through the great filter and towards a technological singularity which I think could be part of a cycle which operates on larger cosmic cyclical timescale.
This was an excellent read. I've only just discovered your substack in the last few days and already find I've read all your postings and I eagerly await more. My questions are many, but will take me some time to formulate as to simply spout them unformed would be a disservice to the time and thought that clearly went into your writing.
This is a remarkably insightful article. I did have one thought I wanted to share concerning the final question posed, 'where now is authority?'. With each successive 'emergence' as it were, the source of the authority in Christianity moved ever more gradually away from God and towards man. With the first emergence, that of Christ, the question was answered obviously 'with Christ' as He was the clear authority and His teachings carried the full weight of what was believed.
With the second emergence in the 6th century and the Arian heresy, the answer to the question was 'with the Pope', since Christ's divinity was now suspect, the ultimate authority had to rest in the human hands of the leader of the Christian Church.
In the 11th century, the answer was 'with the local bishop' as that solidified the split between the eastern and western churches and now the authority rested with the local bishop, leading to the doctrinal differences that became permanent between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.
In the 16th century, the answer was 'scripture alone' which made every individual pastor or priest his own magesterium and arbiter of what was to be believed. Which lead naturally to the conclusion and answer to this currently cycle, which is apparently 'with the individual', thus completing the serpents temptation in the garden that 'You will be like unto God' and we are now seen as the arbitors of what is good and what is evil, even if that moves as a sort of weird collective hive mind.
This is very perceptive Eric, I didn't recognize this until you pointed it out: authority has been devolved with each cycle in a linear way, all the way until we get to today's individual as sovereign.
Looking strictly at the history of the Roman Catholic Church, its first thousand years was a history of accumulating (secular) power, and its succeeding thousand years has been a history of deteriorating power, of fallback positions gradually abandoned.
The medieval Papacy claimed all temporal and spiritual authority, but it gradually had to cede claims to temporal authority, even before the Reformation, because it needed Spanish support in the Italian Wars, and the Spanish kings would no more than pay lip service to the Papal claims of earthly authority, and the Papacy had no other way to back up its pretensions. The fear of an Avignon-type scenario no doubt loomed large in the mind of the Popes of the time.
The fallback position was "throne and altar" Catholicism, in which the Church supported the claims of kings to temporal power, as long as they allowed the Church free rein in its own affairs, over matters of conscience, and over education. This was eroded by the time of the French Revolution, and finally imploded in the aftermath of the First World War.
Since crowned and anointed semi-absolutist Catholic kings ruling on the basis of divine right were no longer a real world option, the alternative preferred form of government was The Man On A Horse, a strongman who seized power and was able to reach some form of accord with the Catholic Church, somewhat like the old throne and altar system, but with less religious ritual and justification and more naked exercise of power. Franco, Salazar and Mussolini come prominently to mind, as does the Brazilian variant on the Estado Novo.
Of course, World War II made it clear that The Man On A Horse didn't have much of a future, unless and to the extent supported by the United States. The choices in Europe going forward were now between American-style liberalism and Soviet-style communism, and the Church embraced liberalism, not so much out of conviction, but because certainly from the point of view of the Church, the alternative was worse.
Hi Feral, this is very astute. I'm going to think on this a while. This points to a position I recently came in contact with regarding the differences between the growth of the church in the west (roman catholic) and the east (orthodox). The roman west became very concerned with secular power and position, since it found itself in a position of authority over the broken remains of the western empire. Whereas in the east, the continuous rule of the Emperors in Constantinople for 1000 years allowed the religious east to keep its gaze on spiritual, rather than temporal matters. I don't think that's to imply eastern religions haven't been used by secular powers, but the institutional churches in their various regions were always secondary to the temporal powers and never directly in charge, as what you had with the Holy Roman Empire in the West, with the Pope seen as ruler of all.
I should add that before 1945, the Roman Catholic Church had been quite ideologically opposed to liberalism.
The struggles between liberals and the Church in France, Spain, Italy, Mexico and the Papal encyclical condemning "Americanism" all come specifically to mind.
Of course, come 1945, the choice between Americanism and the tender mercies of Soviet style communism made the Catholic Church get a whole new attitude.
Did it?
Is it possible Liberalism got a new attitude?
Liberalism of the 19th century is what we’d call neoliberalism today - pejoratively.
Much of the objection to the Church was its condemnation of usury , well we got that out of the way.
Would you like an example of the Liberalism objected too a century or so on?
Mexico. No God, no morals, no replacement.
Mexico got rid of that pesky church and replaced it with...
Money. And raw, untrammeled power.
Gaze upon our grandchildren here in the USA, or the post communist countries to include China. No morals, no laws, no rules.
China can’t build chips or aircraft engines because they can’t keep a team together with the core skills long enough. We have just enough social capital left from our Christian heritage to do so...but we’re running on vapors.
When all this drama is over, the exhausted survivors will like the Chinese, the Mexicans and the Eastern Europeans be empty and not capable of thinking beyond themselves- or their families.
The true children of Luther - empty.
I think you misapprehend my comment. The Catholic Church was the one that got a whole new attitude.
Another feline thought: to what extent was Russian-style tsarist absolutism the result of the Orthodox relationship between church and state, where the Church has no real claim of secular authority or interest in politics?
I'd say given this came later, since the Russians didn't convert until the 900s, this was probably an aspect of Eastern Christianity that was inherited from Constantinople. The Emperor was already the ruling force in the East, so it would naturally follow that the Tsar would be viewed the same in Russia.
Maybe. Russia also didn't become absolutist in the sense we know and love until the 1500s or so.
Did you know the word "Tsar" is derived from the word "Caesar"
Dear Sir, you are overestimating the Catholic Church’s reach and grasp. It never claimed all secular power outside of the Papal States, indeed most of its secular conflicts with the Holy Roman Empire were over who could name Bishops- Pope or Emperor. The powers of the Church outside faith were quite limited- and one must also consider the mission to civilize Barbarians. In no way did it spend 1000 years gathering secular power, although it did accrue over time.
Catholic teaching favors the idea that, as the vicar of Christ on earth, the Pope has complete temporal and spiritual power over the whole of the world. That being said, few have ever attempted to claim temporal power in anything more than a tangential manner. However, the reach of the Popes during the Middle Ages was quite far. The tug of war between the Pope and King John of England is a good example of this. The same as with the Popes call for Crusade or the events leading up to the Battle of Lepanto.
"Catholic teaching favors the idea that, as the vicar of Christ on earth, the Pope has complete temporal and spiritual power over the whole of the world."
I see. I come from a very Catholic upbringing and family, I am unfamiliar with this teaching, may I have a reference?
I'm a cradle Catholic as well, and it's not something that is easy to understand given today's world. But a lot of it had to do with the structure of feudal society and structure.
The pope, as the uncontested head of the church in Europe, was given all spiritual authority. This was seen to extend to the world, in the event the whole world became Catholic. Spiritual authority was seen as above temporal authority. It thereby reserved the right of the pope to depose kings. And this happened, many times.
So, this is the muddle. The pope doesn't directly wield temporal power, that was always reserved for kings. What he does have is the power to tell the guy wielding the power to do as he says, or else he gets the boot. Good popes used this power wisely, bad popes, not so much.
Here are a couple links. The sensus fidelium link is a catholic site and discusses the limited actual temporal power the popes had in regards to Rome itself, which became know as the papal states. I included the first, even though it's wikipedia, since the first couple of paragraphs sums up this idea pretty succinctly. The rest of the article elaborates the point pretty well.
So I should have said, Catholic teaching is clear on the supreme spiritual authority of the Roman Pontiff over the whole of the earth as the vicar of Christ, and this spiritual authority extends over all the temporal rulers, granting that their total obedience and subjegation, as well as that of their whole kingdom, should be to the Roman Pontiff on all matters of faith and morals. (Which in the realm of politics, includes almost everything). But that's a mouthful :) I hope this was helpful, took me a long time to understand this position of the Catholic Church.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_deposing_power
https://sensusfidelium.us/apologetics/the-faith-of-our-fathers-by-james-cardinal-gibbons/chapter-xii-temporal-power-of-the-popes/
https://www.timemaps.com/encyclopedia/medieval-europe-church-history/#:~:text=The%20Catholic%20Church%20of%20Western%20Europe&text=Bishops%20and%20abbots%20acted%20as,in%20a%20deeply%20religious%20age.
I also was thinking of the medieval Catholic doctrine that the Pope could depose secular rulers and release subjects from any duty of obedience.
Of course, claiming a power and actually being able to enforce it are two different things.
This did happen. Popes did release subjects from the vows of obedience to kings or emperors. > But it usually happened in contests over who could name the bishops - Pope or King - or who was to rule Italy.
The most anti-papal force in history bar none were the Holy Roman Emperors, who invaded and marched into Rome on several occasions to settle this very point.
The chief opponent over time of Italian unification was in no way the Pope but Austria, at times France involves itself.
In the end of course the Kingdom of Italy unifies Italy and conquers the Papal States, the objections from the Papacy being secular ruler objections mainly oriented around the Papacy not being a tool of the Secular Ruler [as happened with France and the Avignon popes]. The other objection being to Catholicism being thrown down or even banned from voting/politics as happened in Italy, as happened to an extent with Bismarck's Kulturkampf, as happened i the 20th century in Mexico and started to happen in Spain in the 2d Republic.
But at no time did the pope or papacy claim secular rule over all the world or Christendom, the secular claims are limited to the Papal States. The actual claim is to be the Vicar of Christ on earth with responsibility for all souls, or all Christian souls - not temporal supremacy. As to the Papal states it is important to consider the context of how this came about: The CHAOS of the Dark Ages in Italy. The Lombards never had stable rule, nor the Goths before them, and the parts ruled by the Byzantine Emperor are ruled from afar..... Context was Italy was in constant terrible wars. The ruler of Rome stepping up to establish order is not the worst thing.
The Donation of Constantine comes immediately to mind.
The context of war and chaos does as well
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.
Very solid, thanks.
Feral, you mention "The Man On A Horse." Is this a term you have encountered elsewhere or coined yourself? The reason I ask is because there is a very important historical novel entitled "The Man on a Donkey," about the Pilgrimage of Grace," a popular commons/Catholic uprising against Henry VIII. The author is H.F.M. Prescott. "The Man On A Horse" reference is the key I was looking for that helps unlock the title of the novel.
In the novel, "The "Man on a Donkey" is Christ, as seen by the half-wit serving woman Malle in her visions.
* * * *
As good as a historical novel can be—fresh, imaginative, sensitively written."
—The New York Post
"The Man on a Donkey is an enthralling, panoramic historical novel that brings to life one of the most tumultuous times in British history—the reign of King Henry VIII.
"In Part 1, readers are introduced to the world of the Tudors through the lives of five individuals. When King Henry VIII takes his mistress as his new wife, seizes Church property, and declares himself the only supreme head of the Church of England, the lives and fortunes of these five people are shaken—setting the stage for the momentous events in Part 2 of The Man on a Donkey.
Honestly, I don't think the term "Man On A Horse" is original to me, but I don't know where I got it from.
Eric, thanks for that, absolutely fantastic. I am an atheist but find antique language like “the serpents temptation” easily as insightful as our current jargon. Let me take a crack at “the serpents temptation” in colloquial language: Everyone gets to define the Devine, their own version. That is terrifying and illogical. We turn to religion because we don’t know what to think and then this new hyper-subjective religion foists it back on us with “it’s up to you”, define meaning, authority as you feel like. Chaos. We are lost. Nature abhors a vacuum and I fear what is going to rush into fill this vacuum. Professor Deneen calls the successor ideology, “political Gnosticism of imperial liberalism.”
The burden on the individual of being "like unto God" as authority--governed, if at all, by socially-mediated whims and impulses--surely cannot long be borne.
As you describe, authority has moved away from an entirely spiritual being to part man/part god, to man qua man, first as leaders in a rigid hierarchy with centuries of decentralization until the present atomization of subjective authority, a kind of chaos in search of order.
The next transfer of or vesting in authority may very well be to another entirely spiritual entity, which suggests the eschatology of end times perhaps preceded by a mediating anti-christ, part corporeal/part machine--an embodiment of the transhumanist utopia beloved of the technosphere and the biosecurity/safety state now taking shape before our very eyes.
Will man turn himself into an idol, a devil, or a god; will the transhuman be a fragile farce of divinity, a dark yet competent mockery of it, or a transfiguration to divinity evolving to omniscience and omnipotence?
"We are now seen as . . ."? By whom? By ourselves? Count me out. The authority cannot be both "the individual" and "the collective hive mind." The authority is, as always, God. Each person should try to understand what this means in the light of his or her own experience, and it can be helpful to discuss it with others and to learn from elders and ancestors through writings and traditions.
Hi Jack, I don't agree with the current idea of authority. I would say in fact, the very nature of it, both individual and communal, has created the an environment under which it will ultimately fail when the tug of war between the individual and the collective pull society apart. Rather a return to Christ and the authority of God is the only answer.
Thanks for the clarification, Eric.
Really interesting insight, bravo.
I immediately thought of three of the smartest and most thoughtful people I know who need to read this. One is a priest, another a retired physician, and another an atheist-libertarian-transhumanist lawyer. I look forward to talking this over with them and others.
How was the discussion with the 3 individuals you mentioned?!
Holy shit, where did you dig up this book? I'm laughing because I remember when it came out, and it feels so specific to a particular time (late 2000's/early 2010's) and the fairly small emerging/emergent church circles, of which I was a part. Your analysis is very insightful, however you discovered it.
The Emergent Church was basically comprised of disaffected Evangelicals deconstructing their beliefs and mainline Protestants looking to postmodernism to re-invigorate their dying institutions. We met at conferences, online, and in local "cohorts" that met (usually) in pubs. There was definitely a lot of drinking involved. There were quite a few "celebrities" who had written popular books or were particularly charismatic speakers, and Phyllis Tickle was the genial, twinkly-eyed grande dame of the scene. I didn't know her personally, but she always came across as deeply kind and good-humored.
The Emergent Church as a brand and rallying banner fell apart partly due to interpersonal conflicts among some key organizers, although nascent identity politics definitely played a role. But the basic project of Protestant deconstruction was now seeded, and it continued at gatherings like The Wild Goose Festival and online spaces like The Liturgists Podcast, which was highly successful and influential for a few years before it blew itself up over social-justice issues.
One of the questions I and others asked in those Emergent Church years was once we deconstruct...what are we going to construct? Because it seemed pretty clear that endless deconstruction eventually led to a kind of nihilism. And it's true, a lot of us ended up in the social justice/activist space, whether we engaged it through a progressive Christian lens or a purely secular one.
It's been the last few years where things have really taken a turn toward a very fundamentalist kind of morality that some of us have started to step back and say.. whoa. Not that I haven't seen what was happening and had my critiques of it (though if I'm truthful, I've also been swept up in it from time to time), but it's gotten to the point where it's become completely untenable for me to engage in these communities at all. Even a long-time leftist organizer I know says they would never recommend people get involved in activism at the current moment. It's been fascinating for me to watch the parallels between the rigid fundamentalism I was raised in and what the left has become.
What a intellectually fruitful and provocative essay that has left me with much to ponder. I do look forward to your essays.
Thanks! That was excellent
This article is a remarkable synthesis of sociology, history, psychology, theology, and opinion. I often come away from reading editorials feeling unsatisfied by the lack of scope since many authors focus only on one aspect of an issue just to get a piece written and posted, no matter how incomplete. Thank you for giving us substance.
Very well written article that lays a framework to understand much of the crazy going on around us today. I do think the secular suburban white woman focus was illustrative..... From my current thoughts on Christianity, seems this all goes back to man's desire to be as a God.... The original sin. It makes sense that man is both deceived and is attempting in this current schism to create his own authority to create his own heaven.... as a God. This will not end well, as the true God and authority is what he is, and any deviation from that, which this new emergent religion 100 percent is, will not succeed but fail..
I look forward to your further delving into this thesis.... Quite interesting
A good article...much to consider. 500 year cycles/80/20 whatever are not explanatory, but heuristics that in part disclose God's Providence, the constancy of human nature, the linear understanding of time introduced by Jewish/Christian revelation. Cyclical movements are the in betweens of those dynamics. As far as the present goes: your insight into the modern Liberal Woman/man is right, and here Jody Bottom's work on the collapse of mainline protestantism is important to further understand it. But so is St. John Henry Newman's prediction of the consequences of the Reformation as well as Brad Gregory's Unintended Reformation. (Here Tickle is totally wrong, and doesn't see the millenarian Joachim de Fiore and Manichean and Skeptical undergirdings of the Reformation at play). In the present, McWhorter and others don't see the fundamental religious impulse behind the NewWoke Faith - it is Manichean, and Zoroastrian, and in that way shares with - Islam which draws heavily from these traditions, does not have grace, only obedience/submission and hope for salvation through practice. Yes The NewWoke Faith has Calvinistic/Christian heretical elements, but those, like in Islam, are the surface, the language of the social milieu rather than the core tenets. All Christian heresies draw from some gnostic "natural/unnatural" human religious impulse - that have Good vs. Evil, Light/Dark, Creator/Destroyer themes. The NewWoke Faith is the last stage of the Modern Liberal Order - it is the religion - terrifying and vicious - of the Last Wo/Men. It is what results when safety and complacency can't sustain - it is the fission reaction of the angst present existentialist/nihilistic thought. Nietzsche called it in Thus Spake... His Ubermensche is not the antidote, it is the Christian Victim/Saint whom he reviles in Beyond Good and Evil that provides the way out...
It is such a pleasure to read such an article and such comments! Writing from teh intellectual and spiritual desert called Germany, I congratulate the US on on their vibrant culture.
Jens Schirner
I appreciate this article. There are many threads to pull on. One specific thread, outside the explicit religious scope of this article, is what type of economic system will emerge beside the New Faith. Whether the all consuming approach of woke capitalism can continue unimpeded is an open question; primarily because they (woke capitalists) may run out of fuel -- arguably there are only so many MLB All Star games to consume.
Will the Jeffersonians agragarians, distributivists, crunchy-cons, farmers market crowd and others cobble together an alliance will some traditional democrats and main street republicans to stem the tide?
The carving out of so much of america causes me to question how many "hypothetical middle-class suburban white lad[ies]" there are compared to the hypothetical JD Vances out there. Is it clear they will be subsumed by the New Faith or will they be left on the margins? If they are left on the margins will they coalesce into the (cultural) barbarians which ultimately stop woke capitalism?
A similar set of questions (e.g. creating a new margin filled with new barbarians) could be asked about education, but that is a longer post.
I am really enjoying your substack. Thanks again.
Really interesting questions to think about!
Politics makes a poor religion.
Power a poor god.
Government a poor Church.
If one makes a Religion of Politics one will have great success at getting Power for all Politics is the Struggle for Power. But that struggle is ceaseless - which means you'll get Power but never stable rule.
Politics makes a poor religion as Faith must be ruled out, one can trust no one. Nor can it ever offer Redemption, nor Order. It does offer Power.
Woke is simply the religion of politics, politics as religion.
Dearly Beloved Believers (Abraham believed God....)
Madame Tickle has done a worthy job of historically identifying the "New Religion" that has swept away the dieing vestiges of the "Old Religion" (or "The Faith of Our Fathers") that it is plain to see has come to pass in the USA, and much of the western world today. This sweeping away has not, and will not occur in the underground church, in China and in Muslim nations of the Middle East where the persecution is so great, that God's people must either embrace the cross of Christ or perish, anyway. This is the only answer for religion's failings: the cross of Jesus Christ, which sweeps away the "tyrannical authority of the flesh" and makes a place in the heart of man, for the authority of God. When Charles Finney arose that fateful morning and said, "This day I shall give my heart to God; OR, I SHALL DIE! he must have meant what he said, because the two powerful baptisms of the Holy Spirit that "Overtook him and came upon him...." were so powerful that he was sure that if God did not lessen the power, HE WOULD SURELY DIE! Only the cross of Christ can do away with the tyranny of the flesh which "....Wars against the Spirit," and usher into the heart of man the true authority of God: "Peter do you love me more than these? Peter stop your hypocritical, playacting love for me, for the leaven of the pharisees must be removed from my church, in order for the Holy Spirit to come in when the Day of Pentecost has fully come" (read Romans 12:9-21 - Paul's revelation from God on Peter's seaside talk, early one morning, with the risen Lord.) Finney's flesh was "so overcome" by the powerful infilling of the "The Holy Spirit" (see Ephesians 3:19), that when revival broke out, he did not see his new bride (of three days) for seven months, until family and friends finally brought her, and her belongings to him. Beloved Believer, THIS IS NOT CARNAL! The apostle Paul gave us the secret to "...Keeping my body under....," in 1 Corinthians Chapter 7 where we are told that marriage and giving in marriage are not sinful if the flesh is "kept under," through prayer and fasting. When Finney began to sense the lessening of the power of what he called "the Spirit of Prayer," he would fast and pray until he could once again travail in the Spirit for the new birth of souls (with what David Wilkerson called "The anguished heart of God."
Wokeness has nothing to do with Christianity, nor with the words of Christ in the Gospels.
Got the eternal Catholics vs Protestant vs atheists vs anti-theists debate going here unintentionally. Well... we’re going to see their choices in a clearer light here folks- we are entering a dark room called the fall of the American Republic (it just happened January 20th) and there’s no clear successor. Uh, no that bunch of college kids in DC ain’t gonna hold what they took.
Nor will woke.
There is no Right Wing or White Wing either, despite what you have been told.
There’s a bunch of college kids (DC is a college town) and fat middle aged women who are wondering what the Hell they just did, being very nervous around the soldiers they summoned. Too late now.
Y’all are soon to appreciate the importance of order shortly.
The decisions of the past will come into focus. Order will be a most valuable and scarce good indeed.
I agree that we are heading towards new religious movements and revolutions but I think that these are increasingly characterised as eschatological and millenarian - therefore you could talk about a 1000 year cycle > a leading towards holy war; that our new era is becoming defined by spiritual warfare (Simon Chrinchly and John Grey also think this is the case)
The ‘priesthood for all believers’ concept is similar to the ‘heresy of the free spirit’ - which was often radically egalitarian and communist, then here is the idea of a lunar, chthonic brotherhood/sisterhood. They differ in how egalitarian or unegalitarian they might be, but essentially operate on a similar axis.
But I think there is a bigger picture yet still as ideologies that encomposss such things as the New Age Movement and Christian neo-eschatological millenarianism, and also jihiadism and Zionism, all which may be understood as trending towards religious or spiritual warfare also coincide with the apocalyptic prophecies of futurists and AI researchers who hypothesis Godlike AI; leading to a totally transformed Earth and towards revolutionions in genetics which lead us into a highly compressed or punctuated speciation event.
The point I am making is that this is perhaps bigger, even than a 10,000 year cycle, that the “religion” of woke/social justice is actually a reactionary and humanist side effect (though it could be understood as a transitory and shifting period in human consciousness/ a schism).
We passing through the great filter and towards a technological singularity which I think could be part of a cycle which operates on larger cosmic cyclical timescale.
This was an excellent read. I've only just discovered your substack in the last few days and already find I've read all your postings and I eagerly await more. My questions are many, but will take me some time to formulate as to simply spout them unformed would be a disservice to the time and thought that clearly went into your writing.
Thank you.