My Take on Interdenominational Wars and “Pious Socialism.”

I’ve been waiting to write the post for most of my adult life. I’m definitely not a fan of when “religionism” gets to resembling pagan idolatry (usually by transgressing Gospel precepts), because that is a reliable indicator of the presence of unworthy shepherds. (Just like that.)

On the other hand, is it somehow better when “religionism” gets to resembling pre-Messianic pharisaism as in obsessive puritanism? So I’m in a dilemma here because I can’t quite bring myself to buy the convenient myth that the radical reformation was all about “getting free” from all the “popery” in the sense of a pure, honest freedom of worship according to their consciences and then just tending to their own business happily ever after or going off and missioning to some tribe of unsuspecting heathens somewhere.

I like conscience, and when people speak of conscience and minding their own business my ears perk up, and my idealism goes into full swing. So I did what I could to believe this was the whole story. But my addiction to that old nag known as history got the better of me, and the history (Google “Oliver Cromwell” and “Irish genocide”) shows only too clearly that it’s also very much about getting control of the powers that be to make puritanical bans on pretty much everything that makes life a joy by legislating according to their toddler-like, anally fixated, two-dimensional interpretation of Sacred Scripture…and then maybe on a bad day wiping out whole races of people.

Too often evangelicalism’s fundamentalist cults, besides promoting only the grossest ignorance of history, represent a sort of anal sadism in their approach to law, making Sharia look like sort of a canon of vague suggestions by comparison. It seems to stem often from a hatred of life as life, a decidedly unorthodox insistence on total corruption and predestined damnation. Needless to say, this is as sick as it is heretical, and it does not open the soul, nor the culture, to the Gospel message, which presupposes God’s gifts of freewill and joy! So I would have to say,  THE  JOYLESS  NUCLEAR  WINTER  OF  PURITAN  NEO-PHARISAISM  HAS  AILED  THE  ANGLO-SAXON  WORLD  FOR  LONG  ENOUGH.

A lot of these conspiracies by non-Incarnation, neo-Judaic* puritan spin-offs that finger the Jesuits and the Vatican are, to put it crudely, mainly powered by projective speculation. That is, what these spiritually malnourished/poisoned men are really telling you is what fills their hearts, what they would do if they had the influence they feverishly dream the religious establishments they indict wield. Theory is fun, but for the immature it is all they have, for to the neurotically hyper-religious fact is meaningless.

So back in the real world, legislation-wise, government must champion neither puritanism nor feminism, neither Anglicanism nor Catholicism (much as every group—especially the least healthy—wants its voice heard and its ego stroked, and they usually can’t quite seem to get enough). Government must be somewhat lenient not only toward religious traditions and cultural customs (and who is to say where one ends and the other begins?) but also of personal choices like smoking (any leaf), drinking (any nectar) and of making any mistake one can provided it does not of itself directly, objectively harm another (which abortion does obviously).

Also let me just point out that one of the reasons evil has made such strident inroads into Western society is precisely because Christians are too tied up, too enamored of petty infighting so they are rendered incapable of addressing the threat of pagan degeneracy. All have partaken of the buffet of vainglory, all have corrupted their common sense with visions of fascism, trying to compensate by casting their lost with the “Religious Right” (which is decidedly neither), and accordingly, in Shakespeare’s words, “all are punishèd.”

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* We will not here go into how Lutheranism and Calvinism marginalize the essence of Jesus’ teaching–i.e. God as Father–by preferring to show their contempt of the Gospel (i.e. Good News) by abusing their unhappy sheep, trembling their voices and speaking of Jehovah as a disaffected Architect and Judge who sent his Son not so much to indulge or express his steadfast loving mercy but mostly a sadistic sense of justice. Abusive pastors preaching an abusive God. To not see this today is to have your eyes sewn shut. Do I really have to point out the consequences of such anorexic theology in our filthy, rotten big government and industrial business systems today? As far as I’m concerned, all theocracy, no matter the religious pretext, is as good as heresy, for it implies an obstinate denial of the evidential truth of history that all theocracy always ends in abuse. Of course the original reformers had no problem with Mary as Mother. There’s a twist for you. There is so much Protestants aren’t told about their founders, whereas historically Orthodox Christians intimately love their history. Gee, wonder why. Hillaire Belloc, a Roman Catholic, said it best: “to go deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.”