What I am trying to explain in this post; is how it is that so many serious Christians end-up expending so much energy on defending and asserting the most "indefensible" aspects of Christianity (past and present) - to the point that their program of life and society becomes all-but indistinguishable from that of orthodox Judaism or traditional Islam.
In other words; by a series of steps they come to advocate and double-down upon a very hard-line, top-down, hierarchical, patriarchal, law-and-practice based system of society - with little or no space for individuality, freedom, or creativity.
I am also suggesting that - given their baseline assumptions - this convergence of Christianity is extremely difficult to avoid, no matter which particular church or denomination to which that person subscribes.
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Most self-identified Christians are church-obedient; by which I mean that they regard external authority to be primary when it comes to being a Christian; and they further believe that external authority to be rooted either in the structure and practice of an institutional church, and/ or in a church-mandated selection and interpretation of scripture.
Most church-obedient Christians are are a liberal or modern persuasion, that operates in conformity to the prime directives of Left-Liberal values as expressed in the leadership of current "Western" civilization. These are not "serious" Christians, because their primary values are indistinguishable - in practice - from those of atheism and materialism.
A minority of church-obedient Christians are what I am calling traditional-orthodox ("trad-ortho") because they dissent from the mainstream values, and try to adhere to "pre-modern" (conservative, indeed "reactionary") core teachings and practices of their church or denomination.
These trad-ortho Christians are a type of serious Christian.
In effect, a trad-ortho, church-obedient Christian has done a comparison of two systems of belief/ values/ practices etc: one system being that of their favoured church, and the other system being that of the Modern West.
From this historical perspective, and given the integrated and inter-dependent nature of both rival systems; they have (not unreasonably) concluded that the reality of the situation is a case of all-or-nothing.
It is seen as an either-or choice; a choice of one or the other.
And, having decided (quite reasonably) that given this forced-choice between the two alternatives; their evaluation is that the church-system is evidently overall superior to mainstream modern atheist-materialism Leftism.
Consequently; they then feel compelled (from honesty) to affirm the entirety of their version of the trad-orthodox scheme.
This is, I think, more-or-less how it is that the trad-orthodox position comes to converge on an obedience-dominant model; and their hard-line, top-down, hierarchical, patriarchal, law-and-practice based system of society.
When coming into conflict with mainstream atheistic modernism; this way of thinking is pretty-much compelled to deny any value or virtues in the modern critique of trad-orthodox society.
So that trad-orthodox position is compelled to confront modernity on its strongest ground; especially some of the ways in which most modern people spontaneously, and often with a strong conviction, experience and feel most strongly - I mean issues relating superficially to matters of sex and lifestyle; and much more fundamentally to individuality, freedom, and creativity.
In effect; trad-orthodox often end-up expending much of their effort in first defending, then actually asserting, the faults, defects, limitations - and indeed evils - of the churches and denominations of the past.
Because of the nature of modern society and modern people; this situation seems almost unavoidable - at any rate it seems to happen to serious and church-obedient Christians of all kinds: Eastern and Western Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Nonconformist Protestants, Mormons - and all other kinds and flavours.
The more serious the church-obedient Christian, the more extremely this phenomenon is observable.
In practice, this situation seems to be unavoidable; at least so long as the real situation is regarded as one of a forced choice between two integrated and systematic options - both alternatives assuming that ultimate authority is located externally, and therefore that the highest personal virtue is obedience to that authority.
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