Intra-Christian, inter-denominational, hostility - and the cure in Core, Romantic, Christianity

I find it very annoying when Christians fight among themselves - perhaps especially in this era - these End Times - when the Christian churches are shriveling and spiritually-eviscerated, and have joined-with the powers of evil dominate all the 'Western' nations, and nearly-all the major social and political institutions of the world. 

My evaluation is that real Christians are now rare, and are scattered across many denominations and churches - despite that individually all of the denominations and churches are net-corrupted by their convergence with significant policies of atheist-materialist-Leftism (as evidence by the Litmus Tests). 

In such a situation it is maddening to find to many Christians 'having a go at' each other - Western and Eastern Catholics sniping and snarking; Catholics denigrating Protestants from the rich well of historical grievances, and vice versa; both of these denigrating Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses; and all the church-obedient Christians excluding Christians who are unaffiliated. 

It is maddening but inevitable; for so long as each denomination, church, sect claims exclusivity as to salvation or theosis with respect to whatever it regards as vitally important. 

Such exclusivity seems almost impossible to avoid when each group has a complex and multiple set of self-definitions that are regarded as essential to being-a-Christian; or of being the kind of Christian that is at all worth being. 

Yet it is clear that the 'liberal' alternative - pursued for more than two centuries, of loosening and relaxing the criteria for 'being a Christian'; by permitting more and more latitude, by taking the old laws, rules and exclusions less-and-less seriously -  has been a colossal disaster. 

Liberal Christianity leads - not to a new and more comprehensive Christianity - but to a subordination of Christianity to politics: specifically to leftist politics. 

And leftist politics leads to destruction of churches, assimilation to evil, and the enlistment of self-identified Christians to the strategies and policies of Satan. 

What is needed is twofold. 

First; a Core Christianity, few and simple definitions by means of which a real Christian can discern the realness of others who claim to be Christian - whatever their denomination or church may be. 

And secondly a shift away from the primacy of churches and to the full responsibility of individuals as the basis of Christianity - i.e. Romantic Christianity. 

These factors can be distinguished, but are inseparable. It is the simple definitions of Core Christianity that enable Romantic Christianity to be tough, incisive and positive in content. And it is the personal responsibility of Romantic Christianity that enable Core Christianity to escape from the elaborate (and institutionally self-serving) claims of particular churches. 

Romantic Christianity without the clarity of Core Christianity would drift away from Christianity; Core Christianity without the individual responsibility of Romantic Christianity would never get off the ground; because each church would simply implement its own already-established, exclusive and excluding, definitions of Christianity. 

Put-together; Core and Romantic Christianity offer a way-out of the current impasse, and a way by which real Christians may be allied in their faith, across a wide range of churches and outside churches; while excluding those who are not Christian. 

Core-Christianity: a new implicit alliance of individual serious Christians?

It seems to me that Christian churches and denominations are getting less and less important - and individual serious self-identified Christians regard each other as allies and colleagues (at a pretty deep level) even across what were regarded as major distinctions - such as the divide between Catholic and Protestant; and the divide between Catholics and Protestants and other self-identified Christians such as  Mormons and unaffiliated Christians. 

Even across what were regarded as such major distinctions of belief and practice, that one group formerly regarded the other as not-really Christian at all - people may find themselves more trusting of basic good motivation, than among the large majority of their 'co-religionists'.  

One reason is that the former antipathy among Christians was primarily at the group level. It was a by-product of the needs of the group. Such distinctions as by doctrine, authority-structure, tradition, ritual... seem to be necessary and beneficial for groups to emerge, grow and survive. 

But now that all the major churches have become bureaucracies, and all these bureaucracies have become horizontally-linked by many ties to to the other bureaucracies (national and local government, tax, employment, law, police, media, medical, education etc)...

And now that all these bureaucracies have been brought under a single totalitarian world government with a single (but constantly evolving) materialistic and leftist ideology...

All the churches are themselves becoming converged onto the same global ideology, whose primary concern is with such issues as 'health' (officially defined), equality and human rights, antiracism, feminism, the sexual revolution, 'the environment'... 

So at the institutional level, the differences between 'Christian' churches are dissolving away as they become not-Christian, and are merely distinguished by their different modes of pursuing the same ideology. 

So the ecumenical movement of pretend-Christians are downplaying distinctions between denominations and churches - and the leaderships see themselves all all engaged in the same core activity; for example uniting in pursuit of the birdemic/ peck agenda, carbon environmentalism, antiracism and/or the 'great reset' strategy.  

Thus, among the mass majority of institutionally-affiliated secondary-Christians; past distinctions are being discarded along with Christian belief. remaining differences are merely bureaucratic distinctions, and church rivalry is just management 'empire building' and 'office politics' happening within a single mega-bureaucracy.  

While at the individual level, serious Christians have necessarily detached themselves from obedience to Church authorities that are now obviously corrupted and worldly; that no longer puts Christianity first - but merely use Christian-type language and concepts to justify the secular left agenda, as it continually develops - the "Christianity" passively following the secular fashions and imperatives. 

Therefore, serious Christians find their faith stripped down to a tough core of sustaining and motivating assumptions, which may itself be unstated and implicit. 

Yet this individual core-Christianity must be strong enough to resist The World, and enduring enough to resist the continual psychological and physical pressure to compromise, conform and be corrupted. 

Most core-Christians show this by their behaviour ('revealed preferences') rather than by their statements of belief - indeed core-Christians may be hard-line, traditionalist, orthodox and exclusive in their professions... 

While at the same time spending their time hanging-out-with and discoursing-with serious Christians of extremely different assumptions, practices and doctrines! Learning, teaching, analyzing, and discussing possible ways forward. 

It seems to me that most serious Christians are now core-Christians; but most of them are not at present prepared to acknowledge the fact!  

At present, there does not seem to be a need to be explicit; and the situation is still so new that individuals have not yet sorted out which specifically, among their many 'beliefs', are core, essential, 'saving' beliefs - and which can (and eventually should) be regarded as secondary and optional among Christians. 

Sooner of later there will need to emerge some kind of very simple, explicit statement which can be endorsed by all Core-Christians - and about-which they can explicitly unite.

Perhaps something to do with being followers of Jesus Christ, who is divine; and about the Christian hope for Heavenly, resurrected life eternal. Although any such short statement would need to be understood in a broader context of assumptions concerning the nature of God, creation and its purposes.

In the meanwhile, I think serious Christians are following their hearts, rather than their rational minds or inculcated gut-feelings; and are feeling drawn to regard other serious Christians as allies - and most of their supposed co-religionists as on the side of the enemy. 

And I think this implicit Core Christianity is both right, and hopeful. We should stick with it, and see where it takes us. 

  

Christianity and paganism

Over the past couple of hundred years, supposed-'parallels' between Christianity and paganism (or other religions) have often been pointed-out -- usually in an anti-Christian context such as trying to prove Christianity is not true; or not different from other religions (merely a derivative copy), or that Christianity is different but an inferior corruption of earlier patterns.

I mean such aspects (beloved of comparative religionists) as the birth to a virgin of the divine hero, the sacrifice of the divine hero (perhaps by something-like crucifixion), death and rebirth of a god... that kind of thing. In other words; similarities between Gospel accounts of the Jesus story on the one hand; and folklore, myth and other-religions on the other hand - parallels that are sometimes reasonably - but sometimes much less! - plausible. 

Nowadays it strikes me that these alleged parallels and similarities to paganism etc. are always to those aspects of Christianity that I regard as either not being core Christian; or indeed tending to be anti-Christian and contradictory accretions to Christianity. 

In other words, I feel that these may well be pagan survivals into Christianity. More exactly (I strongly suspect) the simple truth of Christianity was paganized from very early by those who 'inserted' the Christian message into a variety pre-existing pagan beliefs (just as an analogous process "Judaized" Christianty). These pagan framings ranged from the abstract and intellectually-complex 'omni-God' of the philosophers, to the 'primitive' and pagan idea of God as a tyrant-king who demands sacrifices as propitiation. (Sacrifice and propitiation were also a part of the Ancient Hebrew idea of God, as depicted in the Old Testament.)  

Very unfortunately; mainstream Christianity was never cleansed of these alien and contradictory accretions - quite the opposite! They were often made into mandatory dogmas! 

But the simple truth of Christianity - that those who follow Jesus may be resurrected to eternal life in Heaven - is absolutely unique to Christianity. 

'Rebirth' is not resurrection! To attain eternal life via mortal-death is not the same as never-dying. To be resurrected into embodied form, and with our-selves preserved, is not the same as becoming eternal spirits, nor the same as living in an inert, unthinking and self-less bliss. 

And the timeline of Christianity, with a start and end-point - beginning with Jesus, and achieving its objective with our post-mortal resurrection - is different from the timelessness and unchanging/ undifferentiated nature of abstract paganism; and from the cyclically repeating worlds of other religions. 

And whether Jesus was born to a virgin, or died painfully by crucifixion, are not of the essence...

Maybe the lesson that modern Christians ought to have drawn from the attacks by comparative religionists and "anything but Christianity" neo-pagans, eclectics, and perennialists; should-have-been to set our house in order...

Christians can candidly acknowledged that mainstream Christianity, as well as various unorthodox and 'heretical' versions, have over the centuries included many pagan and Jewish elements, and these elements have, at times, dominated. 

But Christians here-and-now can and should clarify, and expound, and make focal the simple essence of Christianity; and push to the edges (ignore, or make personal and voluntary) inessentials and the contradictory elements...

Because the supposedly-pagan aspects of Christianity are exactly the ones that - whatever the original reasons behind their association with Christianity, and whatever the reasons for their continued presence - don't fundamentally matter to the reality of Christianity: i.e. to what Jesus Christ offers us, personally, now.  

Note added: I regard paganism as the spontaneous spirituality (not necessarily a religion) of ancient people and children. We (probably) all go through a phase of spontaneous paganism in our early life, whether or not that is overwritten by some other religion. But modern Man moves beyond spontaneous paganism; and while he may advocate neo-paganism and identify as a pagan - it cannot be a strong motivator, as evidence by the mainstream, or globalist-totalitarian, or merely self-gratifying, socio-political views of neo-pagans. This happens because the neo-pagan negative rejection of God's creation, is far more powerful than any positive spirituality - so de facto alliance with the dominant, worldwide, value-inverted Satanic leadership is highly likely. 

The asymmetry of monism and pluralism - and the paradoxical nature of the Holy Trinity

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It ought not to matter whether a Christian is a philosophical pluralist or (as the vast majority of intellectual Christians in post-Apostolic times have been) a monist.

(A monist regards ultimate reality as a unity, a pluralist as more-than-one.)

Christianity is not constrained by philosophy - whether Christian doctrine fits, or does not fit, into specific philosophical categories should be a matter of supreme indifference.

But in practice it does matter, and historically it has mattered a great deal - indeed philosophical disputes within Christianity have led to vicious, tragic, stupid, futile and irreversible schisms - such as the Monophysite controversy in the fifth century of the Eastern Roman Empire.

Philosophical disputes have been the bane of Christianity.

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But the fact is that my opening statement is itself a pluralist statement, and a monist cannot (qua monism) regard pluralism as a matter of secondary importance.

To a monist, pluralism is an error; and any other monism than his own monism is also an error - and he cannot have a sense of proportion or perspective about the consequences of such a perceived-error: if you regard reality as specific unity and other people say it is a different unity, or else not a unity at all, then the consequences of such disagreement seem to be almost infinite in their scope.

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So although the pluralist may see himself as a healer and conciliator of philosophical disputes, he will probably find himself under concerted attack from all monists of every stripe who - even if they agree on nothing else - agree on the falsity of pluralism!

And that, indeed, is precisely how I conceptualize my own situation as a Christian pluralist!

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From my perspective, I regard Christian monists as occupying a variety of real Christian positions; but from the perspective of the various monists, they regard me as not being a Christian at all.

I think such anti-pluralist monists are wrong, objectively wrong, in rejecting pluralism as a Christian possibility - because they are in fact (despite whatever they may suppose they are doing) asserting that the philosophical principle of unity should structure Christianity.

Christianity should rule philosophy, rather than vice versa - and (given human limitations and the incompleteness of all rational systems) this will very likely mean that to get the Christianity right entails messing-up the philosophy: so be it.

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But this is an analytic point which many Christian monists apparently cannot accept, nor even comprehend - since they are rooted in their monism.

To the primary monist, pluralism is necessarily incomplete or incompetent; or most worryingly dishonest - on the basis that pluralists 'must be' some kind of covert monist who is concealing his monism for strategic reasons.

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Also, to the Christian who is a primary monist the paradoxical doctrine of the Holy Trinity being both three and one is the core of Christianity - something upon which all else depends.

Because for Christianity to be acceptable to the monist, entails the absolute unity of God -  while to be a Christian entails the divinity of Christ.

(And the Holy Ghost as well - but historically the difficulty has been Christ - because Old Testament Hebrew monists had no problem about conceptualizing the Holy Ghost as an aspect of one God.)

Hence the paradoxical/ incoherent definition of the Holy Trinity as absolutely one AND absolutely more-than-one is a principle that must be asserted as a definitional dogma requiring public assent: an incomprehensible 'truth' to which all monists who are Christians must submit. 

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Perhaps the definition or comprehension of the Holy Trinity marks a cleavage point among monists:

between on the one hand monists who are Christians (monism comes first) - and who insist on the paradoxical definition of the Trinity, and place it at the centre or forefront of Christianity - and who will in practice make paradoxical Trinitarianism definitional of Christianity...

and Christians who are monists, who put Christianity first and are able to tolerate imperfect monism - who are prepared to accept that there is an intractable problem with applying monism to the Trinity; and who will therefore tend to down-play and work-around the paradoxical definition of the Trinity - will tend to regard it as a mystery rather than a higher-logic; and will not exclude from definitions of Christianity those persons or denominations who cannot or will not make public assent to paradoxical Trinitarianism.

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So, in theory, by putting Christianity first and accepting imperfect philosophy, Christians who are monists can regard philosophical pluralists as being also Christians; while monists who are Christians will exclude philosophical pluralists from their definition of Christianity.

In other words, the cleavage shows-up in the way that Christianity is recognized, defined and demarcated: monists who are Christians will define Christianity in terms of philosophical concepts - and that is one way of identifying them.

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Christianity as a 'natural religion'?

Christianity is nearly-always described as a religion of revelation - in other words it needs to be 'revealed' to us, we need to be told about it; told by - for example - written scripture, handing on by tradition, teachings of church authorities etc. 

The contrast is a natural religion that could be reached by each person for himself, by intuition, reasoning, observation etc. based on suggestions from the material that can be found in pretty-much any human culture. 

(The paganism of animistic hunter-gatherers is regarded as an example of natural religion; since it seems to have arisen spontaneously - albeit with local variations - all over the world.) 

When I became a Christian, it was partly by accepting the need for revelation (and by evaluating the strength of validity in various contending revelations) that I got-out from trying to reach Christianity by my own unaided efforts. 

The is no real doubt that mainstream Christianity, in whatever of its denominations or churches, is way too complex to be arrived at except by revelation; but the big question is whether the necessary and sufficient essence is, in principle, attainable without external help... 

And, if not accessible during this mortal life, then potentially core Christianity might be accessible after this mortal life (i.e. after death) but before making the choice to accept or reject resurrection. 

Over the years I have come around to the idea that Christianity is, or can be, a natural religion; and does not require revelation - indeed, what has traditionally been regarded as revelation may more often be an obstacle than assistance nowadays -- especially since the churches are so corrupted by worldliness (corrupted to the point of value-inversion), and their teachings so vast and (to common sense) incoherent or contradictory. 

I think it is largely uncontroversial that theism - specifically the belief in a personal creator God - can be a natural belief. The this world was made, and with some design and purpose, and by a being who is like a person - is a plausible line of reasoning, that often occurs to children. 

And the further idea that this God is relates to each of us like a loving parent, is also one that can occur to anyone who thinks about the subject - by analogy with the human family. 

In short, all the necessary background to Christianity can be arrived-at without being taught - and (because it is true) potentially confirmed by intuitive conviction. 

As for Christianity; I think the core idea is also simple enough, and close enough to the desires of the human heart, that it could be arrived at by almost anyone. 

The fear of death and desire for everlasting life is spontaneous; and that this continued life would be embodied is also natural; and that this life-after-life would be in a better world without death or decay are all plausible day dreams - even for a child. 

So the necessary materials for a Christian yearning are there. As for the mechanism by which this might be achieved - which is by following Jesus Christ, as a sheep follows the Good Shepherd - this is not something that is likely to be a natural or spontaneous conclusion. 

Therefore, natural religion breaks-down at the point where we need to know how to attain resurrected life eternal. 

But, since this following of Jesus through-death to life-everlasting happens after our death, it seems reasonable to assume that it is something made clear to us after death. 

No matter what a person's experience during mortal life, he could be shown the possibility of resurrection after his death and how to attain it. 

Therefore; whether he was born before Jesus's time or lived in a part of the world where Christianity was unknown, or had been taught or reasoned-out some false idea of Christianity - every soul could be given the knowledge of what he need to do to follow Jesus.

Thus, Christianity can be a natural religion. And this fact may turn out to be vital to salvation, as the corruption of the churches continues to spread and advance.  

Liberalism versus Ultra-correctness in Christianity

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In one sense Christian salvation is very straightforward - and was made deliberately so by the atonement of Jesus Christ. That's what it means that Gospel means Good News - it really is good news.

But there is no formula for Christian life - extremes are corrupt, and the middle ground is slippery.

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So-called Liberal Christianity is by now very obviously not Christian, but rather an anti-Christian strategy, a highly successful fifth column within Christianity, eroding from within.

That shouldn't need emphasising, but it does - because nearly everybody (including all mainstream political parties) are now Left/ Liberal - and so is the modern state and its administration, and so are all large and powerful institutions.

So all successful and powerful people are Leftist/ Liberal to the extent that they participate in mainstream modern life - and therefore all powerful and prosperous Christians experience constant pressure on their Christianity to conform to Left/ Liberalism - and since Left/ Liberalism is foundationally secular, to yield to this pressure is to destroy Christianity at its root.

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But ultra-correctness is also a serious problem in Christianity.

The term comes from Fr Seraphim Rose, and he used it to refer to people whose focus on observable externals of Christianity became so total that a superficially detailed and exact observance of rules and rituals masked an anti-Christian, and indeed evil, pride: coldness and hatred in the heart.

Ultra-correctness would include many examples from all churches - especially the point-by-point 'legalism' which is a temptation to all - as if Christianity was primarily about enforcing obedience to regulations.

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So Liberalism and ultra-correctness are both anti-Christian; and also the reaction against Liberalism and ultra-correctness - strenuous and one-sided efforts to avoid the one or the other - can propel people to the opposite. So a reaction against the Liberalism of modern life may lead to ultra-correctness; and the reaction to ultra-correctness may lead to Liberalism - and both of these may lead (wittingly or unwittingly) out of Christianity...

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Why should these be a particular hazard in modern life - to the extent that it can seem impossible to hold the middle ground?

Part of it is, I think, a decline in intellectual life related to the rise of the Mass Media. People's attention spans are so brief that unreal extremism is almost inevitable - reality is divided into two alternative, neither of which is true or viable - but people are forced to choose between them in a snap decision (and if they do not choose, they will be allocated to one or the other).

So, for example, you are forced either to embrace the lethal lunacies of political correctness or be regarded as a racist and a hater. Or, in an ultra-correct church, to adopt an attitude of slavish and unquestioning mechanical obedience to all rules and doctrines, or be vilified and shunned as heretical, evil, and anti-Christian.

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Partly, this false dichotomy is a consequence of genuine flaws or weaknesses in mainstream classical theology which have been found-out, attacked and exploited by mainstream secular Leftism. For example, there is an apparent paradox or contradiction in the understanding of free will and choice, there is the problem of explaining the existence of evil and extreme suffering when God is supposed to be omnipotent, and there is the problem of supporting marriage and family and opposing the sexual revolution in a religion conceived in terms of individual souls and where marriage, family and sexuality are regarded merely as temporary this-worldly expedients. 

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Also, I think this false dichotomy of ultra-correctness versus Liberalism is a consequence of the significant decline in average intelligence among theologians, philosophers, theoreticians and the like. The problem is that people do not, and perhaps cannot, understand the religion they have inherited from previous generations.

On the one hand, Christianity has been made, and has evolved to be, over-complicated. The faith is supposed to be fully comprehensible to children and the simple minded - but was elaborated to become the province of an elite.

Now the elite don't understand it either!

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Liberalism and ultra-correctness are two responses to this incomprehension.

Liberalism has the attitude that: 'If I don't understand it, then it must be nonsense; so it should be replaced; and replaced with something better in-line-with what everybody knows is ethical and real'.

So, a dumb intellectual, whose attention span is eroded by the Mass Media, and who swims in a world of progressive sexuality - cannot understand why traditional marriage is necessary to Christianity, therefore feels able to redefine it at will - and in line with the notions current in today's media.

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Ultra-correctness also does not understand the real reasons for inherited theology, doctrine, rules and regulations  - but responds by a literal obedience to 'the letter of the law'.

So, a person may not understand the New Testament as a whole, but can understand it one sentence at a time, especially in a modern ('more scholarly') translation.

The ultra-correct may not understand the reason or purpose or motivation behind the list of dos and don'ts - but he can take each do, and each don't - and monitor the situation for compliance. Christianity is reduced to a rulebook on the whatsoever-is-not-forbidden-is-compulsory model - goodness is pride-fully equated to adherence to all of the rules all of the time; while sin = disobedience to the rules (mostly, doing prohibited things, but also to a lesser extent not doing mandatory things).

An ultra-correct Christian education is about ensuring compliance to rules - all or nothing, white or black: and beyond that is the void.

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My point is that Christianity cannot long survive (except as a mere pride-enforced shell of rules and rituals - which may come to mask evil intentions, hate-driven motivations and a rotten heart) if Christianity is not understood.

Or, Christianity - in its essence, its core, that which is necessary - cannot be more complex than the people who practice it.

(Except in the case of young children and the permanently dependent, who are intended to be subsumed under (loving) parental or other familial guidance.)

As the people who practice Christianity become simpler, so must the faith - or rather, Christianity IS simple - or rather: real Christianity is simple and if what we have is not simple then it is (so that extent) not real (or at least not necessary).

If something in Christianity is too complex to understand, or too complex to explain (given a willing learner); then that means that either it is not necessary (not essential), or that we have somehow got it wrong.

But in discarding that which is incomprehensible, we must not dissolve into mainstream secular Leftism; and we must not confuse genuine incomprehension with inattention, laziness, self-justification or any other fake reason for rejecting that about Christianity which is inconvenient.

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There is no formula for this! There is no 'safe' way to be a Christian: no rulebook, nor discarding the rulebook! No assured path to reform, no standard method of ensuring that hazards will be avoided.

There is always need for discernment - the ability to judge according to goodness: the evaluation of the heart.

If there is no discernment, then there will be apostasy - loss of faith, one way or another; but if there is discernment, then all else follows.

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Note added: Since I don't suppose many people reading this blog will be prone to Christian Liberalism, the main purpose of this post is warning against Ultra-correctness; and to emphasize that it is not a 'safe' path - either for an individual person, or for a church. There is no safe path. As soon as Christianity is reduced to any formula or algorithm or decision path; any set of clear, simple rules and regulations which can easily be 'implemented' by anybody - even if they are not themselves Christian - then Christianity evaporates - and is usually replaced with something extremely nasty. For example, when Secular Right Wingers and Reactionaries - who are not themselves Christian (but to all appearances seem to be motivated by pride, hate, resentment, hedonism and the urge to dominate and exploit) - try to influence Christians by approving or recommending policies, they almost-always urge Ultra-correctness (e.g. literal interpretation of specific Biblical verses; or a slavish attitude to Canon Law, or institutional hierarchy, or philosophical statements); partly because Ultra-correctness is all that the secular mind can understand about religion, but also because u-c can easily be incorporated-into their covertly-evil agendas.

What happened when the pagan Roman-Britons converted to Christianity?

A favourite theme of the late, great Geoffrey Ashe was that the transition between paganism and Christianity went smoothly and peacefully in Britain. 

Unlike on the European continent; the British pagans (whether Druidic or Roman in their religion) did not seem to persecute the new Christian religion; and later-on the Christians did not persecute the pagans when they got the upper hand. 

What seems to have happened is that the Christians took-over the sacred pagan sites, and 'repurposed' or rebuilt them as churches; while the pagan Gods were replaced with Jesus, Mary, and the Saints on the basis of analogous religious functions.

(Most famously; the pagan British goddess Brigid, was replaced by the Irish Saint Brigid.) 

As well as its socio-political significance; this is theologically interesting; because it suggests that there is no fundamental conflict between paganism and Christianity; that - somehow or another - people could move from pagan to Christian without major spiritual or societal upheaval. 

I think this gives us a clue to the essence of Christianity; or, more exactly, what distinguishes it from paganism. 

What the smooth-transition tells us on the one side, is that (despite what so many people have said, and what is still asserted) there was not much to distinguish paganism and Christianity in terms of morality and lifestyle. 

The everyday and societal practice of paganism and Christianity don't seem to have been very different. 

What is very different between paganism and Christianity, is what happens after death! 

It seems to me that the Big Message of Christian missionaries; the "unique selling point' that Christians had to offer over and above anything the pagans said; was the prospect of resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

Whereas the pagan religions could point at either some kind of afterlife life as depersonalized spirits - in an underworld or maybe as ghosts lurking in this world; or else some kind of reincarnation into the same kind of life all-over-again but as a different person...

Christians came along with their account of Jesus Christ who died and rose again and ascended to Heaven; and who offered the same possibility to those who would follow him. 

And this prospect apparently appealed greatly as a possibility superior to anything in paganism. 

I think it would have been obvious to ancient Britons, as it was later to the Anglo-Saxons and Norsemen; that what Christians offered was superior if it was true. 

But how could people know it was true - above and beyond trusting the historical stories of the missionaries?

One form of validation was miracles: when the missionaries were Saints who could perform miracles, then this validated their claims, because it proved they had a link to the divine.

But a second, and probably more widespread, form of experiential proof was by participation in the Mass, the Eucharist, Holy Communion.  

Following-up an insight from Philip K Dick; I think we can imagine that Men, at that earlier stage in the development of consciousness, would spontaneously, passively, overwhelmingly experience participation in the Mass as a literal re-living of Jesus's death and resurrection. 

In the Mass; Jesus died and came to life, and was actually-present here-and-now to those participating. 

This (or something spiritually analogous) would surely have been a compelling validation of the actuality of what Jesus offered. 

In sum; I think the conversion from Paganism to Christianity as it was actually experienced by people in the early centuries AD (people, it should be noted, whose consciousness was significantly different from you and me) was essentially very simple, which was why it could be very quick - and why mass-conversions, and even mandatory conversion, made sense at the time. 

It was an expression of the desire for resurrection after death, as preferable-to/ better-than anything paganism could offer. 

And the method of achieving this desired goal, was to be admitted to the community who ritually re-enacted Jesus's death and resurrection, such that he became actually present to the believer.

 

Note added: This post comes after a whole bunch of earlier posts in which - as a result of reading the Fourth Gospel as the primary and most authoritative source about Jesus's teaching - I became increasingly convinced that the core message of Christianity (i.e. the offer of resurrected eternal life in Heaven) had become de-emphasized and somewhat buried throughout the history of the Christian churches. In my opinion; the advent of Mormonism from 1830 was, to a significant extent, made possible by Joseph Smith's "re-discovery" of resurrection as the core promise of Christianity. Mormonism also brought a completely new and fundamentally different set of fundamental metaphysical theological assumptions concerning reality as pluralistic, developmental etc. But I believe that the main appeal of the new type of Christianity in its early decades was its clarity-about, and focus-upon, post-mortal life - treated very 'realistically' and as something that could (with certain conditions) confidently be anticipated - and with potential for continuation of loving mortal relationships.  

Contraception and the Roman Catholic hierarchy

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It is understandable that opposition to contraception has become, in the popular mind, the main defining feature of Roman Catholicism, or at least its senior hierarchy.

And it is notable that the RC Church hierarchy has utterly failed to convince its flock to follow this teaching - since the most RC dominated countries of Europe are among those with the lowest fertility (Ireland, Spain, Italy).

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To have failed does not, of course, mean that the RC hierarchy were wrong. Indeed, they may have had little choice in the matter since sex-without-conception was the main (ahem) thrust of the culture war when Leftism clashed with institutional religion from the mid-1960s onwards.

But the deep problem of the RC emphasis on no-contraception is that it strikes so many people as senseless - specifically, I mean in breach of common sense.

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This is probably because the RC opposition to contraception is not common sense, nor is it core Christian teaching; rather it is a distal, logico-philosophical consequence of some core Christian teachings.

In particular, the opposition is expressed in Thomistic terms of the intrinsic function of sex, as inferred from the complementarity of sexes, that they fit together - plus some scriptural back-up, and therefore the permissible occasions and types of sex.

All this is way too fine-spun and drawn-out for people to comprehend - especially modern people with their short attention span and impatience.

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The obvious core basis of RC opposition to contraception is pro-natalism - that marriage should aim to be fertile, that having children is good, that larger families are better (so long as they are self-supporting, at any rate).

Yet, the attempt to yoke contraception to pro-natalism fails - there is no necessary nor observable reason why contraception cannot be linked with pro-natalism - as among the Mormons.

(Mormons are not exactly pro-, but in practice not-against-contraception, and nearly all Mormons use contraception. Yet Mormons, unlike Roman Catholics, have been successful in their pro-natalism, with significantly above-replacement family sizes (greater than 2.1 children per family) and much larger families than RCs especially among the wealthiest and most educated.)

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And, indeed, there is something terrifying in the modern world about pro-natalism without contraception - fertility can get terrifyingly out of control.

For tribal hunter-gatherers, living on a hunter gatherer diet, the maximium number of babies a woman can have is probably around  six - because menarche is late and pregnancies are spaced-out by lactation acting as a natural contraceptive (and if this fails the newborn baby will nearly always die, be abandoned or killed - since there is not enough milk for two and the older child is usually privileged).

(Of these six, an average of two survive to reproduce, in the steady population state.)

On a more modern, agriculture based diet, with high levels of fat and protein, menarche is earlier and lactation is no longer a natural contraceptive and women can have a lot more pregnancies going to term - ten births is not unusual, and even more is not uncommon.

Such fertility rates either leads to massive death rates among children (e.g. about eight deaths per family), or else requires rapid economic growth or massive support from outside the family.

This was the norm for pre-industrial revolution societies: the average peasant had near-zero surviving children - regardless of fertility.

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Of course, there is an alternative - celibate marriage. That is possible among the most devout of certain populations with high intelligence and conscientiousness; but is not possible for most of the people in the world most of the time. Celibacy must be enforced on them, or it won't happen. And the sanctions must be extreme, encompassing the death of surplus children - otherwise the celibate devout will merely be amplifying the numbers of incontinent apostates, generation upon generation...

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So, this is the reality of the Roman Catholic combination of pro-natalism and anti-contraception under modern conditions.

I am not saying that this is an unacceptable reality, because it was the state of affairs for some thousands of years; but I have never seen it honestly set out.

*

Now, of course, people don't exactly and explicitly realize that this is the reality of Roman Catholic teaching on contraception - but they do sense intuitively, by common sense, that combining pro-natalism with anti-contraception under modern conditions leads to unacceptable outcomes: either ten kids leading to impoverishment plus/ minus life on welfare - or else a life of reluctant monkish celibacy.

*

So, which is more important? Pro-natalism or anti-contraception?

We can see that modern Roman Catholics have voted with their feet, or rather loins, to abandon both.

My first point is pragmatic (merely) and is that pro-natalism is vastly more important than anti-contraception; and given the perceived conflict between the two, pro-natalism should have been what the RC hierarchy pushed hard, while saying little or nothing about contraception.

*

My second point is theological/ religious - which is that the Church should take care to be definite about core teaching, and indefinite about derived teachings - since the derived teachings are vulnerable both to logical errors and - more importantly - to the errors of logic.

In my opinion, it is an intrinsic flaw of Western Christendom (including the Roman Catholic Church, and also the Protestant denominations) that they feel compelled to give a philosophical opinion, indeed lay down the law, on all conceivable matters - to create a coherent, internally-non-contradictory and fully-comprehensive intellectual structure.

Yet Christianity is a religion of mystery and incomprehension - right at its core. Philosophy and Law are an optional extra - and should not be allowed to usurp the core mystery. When the specific and the explicit usurp the mystery we have the tail wagging the dog.

Christianity cannot win battles of law and logic on worldly matters like the precise details of sexual practice - rather the 'answers' to these must emerge (for each person) from the primary recognition of the core mystery.

The core mystery, in this instance, being to do with the mystical unity of Mankind (at the level of souls, a web of salvation) and the special (sacramental) importance of marriage and birth - this was one of the distinctive teachings that set Christianity apart from paganism.

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In a wider sense, the modern Christian Church needs desperately to recover its mystical focus, even at the cost of setting aside its focus on specific moral conflicts.

People break the Christian Laws because they cannot understand, cannot feel, the reason for these precise Laws - and without this feeling the Laws seem merely arbitrary.

And sometimes the Laws are - if not arbitrary - then not tightly consequential. Some Christian Laws are the result of a chain of logical reasoning, and only as secure as the process of logic - which is to say not necessarily secure. Natural Law and Revelation trump logic.

*

I do not, of course, mean that Christianity should go-along with modernity and accept its 'reforms' and constraints - but these should be reacted to simply by getting on with things, and refusing to budge on core issues - without argument and 'rational' discourse, preferably; just a stubborn holding to tradition and ancient wisdom in the face of insatiable desire for change and progress fueled by shallow nihilism.

In other words, we ought to live by the built-in assumption that under modern conditions any proposed change is almost certain to be wrong and harmful and must therefore be resisted for at least a few generations - after which it may cautiously be tried-out. 

In sum, my discomfort and indeed irritation with the Roman Catholic focus on contraception and other issues of precise sexual conduct is part of a conviction that the Christian Church must at this point in history eschew worldliness as much as possible, to develop and emphasize instead the Heavenly, mystical and prayerful, salvific core.

*


Christ followed the spirit of The Law, even as he broke the letter of specific laws.

Justice is not the outcome of applying specific explicit laws; but the use of specific and explicit laws to attain Justice.

The same applies to specific ethical rules, such as those pertaining to sex within marriage.

*

Legalistic hyper-correctness is not a solution to laxity; it is indeed merely to substitute one form of sin for another.

The only solution to laxity is sanctity.


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Christianity is Not, never truly was, about morality - except secondarily

Over the past eight years; my reading-of and brooding-on the Fourth Gospel (called "John") has had many and profound effects on my understanding of the differences between what Jesus said and did, and the Christian churches that came after. 

In particular, that the core of Jesus's work was to provide Men with the possibility of resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

This means that the primary concern of Jesus was to save mankind from entropy and death - therefore Jesus's primary concern was not to save us from evil. 

To repeat: For Jesus salvation means from death, not from evil. 

However, most of religion before, during and since the time of Jesus is about morality - about the behaviour (and attitudes) of people. 

Such religion is therefore therapeutic - it is "about" minimizing suffering and/or maximizing human happiness in this world and mortal life. 

That is what all those Laws and rules are about, the propitiations offered to divinity, the abasements and obedience - they are trying to make this world a better place, and ourselves to have a better place in it. 

And this is why all religions have considerable overlap in the approved behaviours. 

But this was Not what Jesus was about. 

Jesus came essentially to save us from death, not from moral sin.

Jesus was primarily against death, not evil - but his cure for death was also a cure for evil. 

For Jesus the problem of death (of entropy) was more profound than that of evil; because in this mortal life and world, death is absolutely universal and completely unavoidable; destructive change may be slowed, but is always at work...

Jesus was necessary and unique because he offered a solution to death; not because of his moral teaching, not because of his moral laws and principles, not because people could make a church from the moral laws and principles. 

This was and is very difficult to grasp; because most people (including most early Christians, including those who formed the Christian churches, apparently) - want morality.

Or else they want immortality Now in this world, and without dying first. 

People do not, therefore, usually want what Jesus actually offered... Or, at least, they think they don't want it; or they do not want it as strongly and urgently as they want other things - such as relief from suffering, or happiness now-or-soon.

But relief from suffering and positive happiness in this mortal life are not the core of Jesus's message - because these are promised for post-mortal resurrected life, not for this life. 

The error of making "Christianity" primarily moral distorted it from very early and has led to its current near-destruction. 

Those who made Christianity continuous with Judaism (including the authors of the Matthew and Luke Gospels, and Paul); tried to conflate the primacy of resurrection with their continued primacy of morality...

Leading eventually to the bizarre concoction of Original Sin - in order to pseudo-explain why Jesus was both unique and necessary. 

In other words, they made Jesus primarily "about" morality; and resurrection was made conditional upon the approved morality...

And morality was made to be why Jesus came, and curing morality was made to be what Jesus fundamentally did...

This-world morality was made of core importance to the Christian churches; and morality was made to come first - such that resurrection was relegated to a secondary status as reward for good-morality.  

But morality is about this-world, here-and-now and before death...

Whereas the advent of resurrection was of cosmic and eternal significance - it is a change in the nature of reality. 

Everybody everywhere has their ideas of proper morals; and this is continually contested. And morality does not require resurrection. 

So morality is both regarded as primary by almost-everybody; yet morality is detachable from the reality of Christianity...

And morality has, in fact, already-been detached-from Christianity! - even (or rather, especially) in those lands historically (or nominally still) Christian. 

As of here-and-now; Christianity is just one of many competing this-worldly moral systems; and gets evaluated in terms of its material "success" in producing good behaviour.  

But if we are talking about Jesus Christ, rather than social institutions and traditions; then this is wrong, a mistake, an ancient error. 

Jesus brought the possibility of resurrected eternal life in Heaven - and that fact should come first and foremost, and be kept at the core, of our Christian discussion and teaching. 

In case it isn't clear - I became a Christian for the wrong reasons... mostly

I've said this several times in several places over the past 10-plus years on this blog; but maybe it deserves stating on it own... When I converted to Christianity, when I became a Christian, it was for the wrong reasons... mostly. 

My reasons for believing in first God, and then Jesus Christ, were - mostly, but not entirely- social and civilizational. This was because I had been brought to the point of conversion by the societal decline of England and The West generally. 

I realized that my civilization had become at first weak, then self-loathing; because we had deleted God personally and from public discourse; and in doing so deleted all possibility of purpose and meaning in life. 

Having believed in God (i.e. becoming a theist) I then became a Christian; believing that Christianity was the true-est of all the religions I knew. But I was unsure of the right denomination to join. 

What I was looking for, then, was 'civilizational-level' changes such as purpose, meaning and the basis for social cohesion in support of the transcendental values: truth, beauty and virtue. 

I then embarked on exploring, trying, a variety of denominations; even while I could see them collapsing in real time, almost in front of my eyes... Or more likely I gradually saw that the Western churches shared the weakness and indeed self-hatred of the civilization in general. 

I sought holiness; but found only legalism and a hard kind of strictness. 

From here-and-now, looking back on my recent life; it seems obvious that I was - substantially, albeit not fully - regarding Christianity and its churches as a means to a materialistic end: the awakening and regeneration of The West in general, England in particular. 

I never regarded this as an optimistic desire, indeed it never seemed probable that it would actually happen; but I saw a Christian revival as the only legitimate hope. 

But then I began to realize that my hope for a revival of traditional, old-time religion and strong churches was not just futile (in the sense that the opposite was happening), but that it would not be the answer even if it did happen. 

In other words that my hope - even if fulfilled - was not legitimate. 

I began to realize that Christianity had departed the churches - and they had become mere shells of institutions; in the same way as schools, hospitals, the police, law courts and military were just shells - which is that they retained forms and rules but without the motivating spirit. 

Insofar as there was still a motivating Christian spirit in the churches, it came from low down the hierarchy, it was dwindling; and it was ignored or persecuted (i.e. a situation exactly analogous to what I had observed in science and medicine a decade earlier).  

That is where I currently am. I now believe that I became a Christian for many wrong reasons to do with what I hoped that - in principle - Christianity, or else one or more of the Christian churches, could do for Western Civilization. 

I first realized that this could not happen, because the churches had institutionally lost their core spiritual motivations; and then I realized that even if the churches had remained uncorrupt, none of the earlier institutional forms of Christianity were capable (even theoretically) of addressing the major spiritual necessities of the West here-and-now. 

Liberalism had failed, but traditionalism could not work - even if it appeared to revive (which it didn't).

 

Another way of describing the trajectory, it that it took me quite a while to get clear about what Christianity really is (and always was). After all, across the centuries, Christianity has been and has included many, many things - even if we confine attention to a single denomination. 

At the most basic level, there has been (and is) tremendous ambiguity, unclarity, confusion and contradiction about what Jesus actually did. What, in other words, salvation actually means. 

This, of itself, was something that took a great deal of sorting out; and indeed it could not be sorted-out until I had re-examined several assumptions that I had absorbed without sufficient clarity or evaluation.

I do not think I really understood this - at least not enough to be clear enough to be able to defend it and advocate it as an individual - until my long and focused reading of the Fourth Gospel. 

This eventually (a decade after I became a Christian) made me see that the simple and true essence of Christianity had been obscured by the High Volume of secondary, and erroneous, doctrine and theology that (apparently) began accumulating from very soon after Jesus's resurrection. 

 It now seems to me that the reason why the Christian churches are-not, cannot, and should-not be the basis for a Christian revival; is that none of them have a clear and simple grasp of the core and essence of Christianity. 

This did not much matter in the past, in that the whole package did contain the truth (along with a lot of other stuff) - and because people accepted the whole package, and because society as a whole was not actively evil.  

Now we have a world in which everybody picks and chooses in their religions (even/ especially when they deny this!); when the world as a whole is actively evil; and therefore where Christians absolutely need to be clear about what it is that we believe and why.  

Nobody is going to tell us what we need to know; so we must each work it out for himself, and take responsibility for what he concludes. 

We each need to discover for ourselves what it really is to be a Christian, and to choose that Christianity: choose for the right reason/s. 

Anything else is not going to last, as the world darkens. 

But the right choice will last, and will strengthen - whatever happens to the world. 

Christianity and masculinity

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It is a fact and a problem that so many types of modern Christianity are unmasculine: it is a problem for men, and for women.

I won't go into detail - but a lot of what goes on in and around church, and how it goes on, does strike masculine men as effete, and therefore either uninteresting or actively-repulsive.

This is not, of course, a core attribute of Christianity - if Christianity really were intrinsically unmasculine then it could not have survived and thrived for so many centuries; and if Christianity were fundamentally unmasculine then it would be very popular among Leftists, instead of loathed.

(It is, of course, the residual masculine aspects of mainstream Christianity which Leftists most vehemently attack.)

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The most fully masculine form of Christianity seems to me to be the Orthodox - and this presumably derives from the style and lifestyle of the majority of priests: stereotypically being large, bearded, deep-voiced patriarchs who dress massively and imposingly.

This makes for a big contrast between the Western and Eastern Christianity which I find very obvious between otherwise-similar countries such as Spain and Greece.

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In the West, evangelical Protestants (and Mormons) are among the most masculine of Christian churches, and more masculine than most other modern social institutions - but mostly lack the advantages of a distinctive (and impressive) 'uniform' and a standard liturgy with formal ritual, language and music.

*

But effete Christian churches are much more significant than style or lifestyle.

The fact that Christianity does not appeal much to masculine men is a criticism and severe weakness of the Christian churches, and a measure of how far they have been corrupted by modernity.

It is also, and primarily, a criticism of masculine men. They need the church, whether it is masculine or not! And there is no doubt whatsoever, that if even a few joined a church and participated actively, then soon it would be more masculine.

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Of course, men have also been attracted-out from churches by Leftism, especially with its inducements of sexual and lifestyle license ('sex and drugs and rock and roll'); an ideology which equates masculinity with impulsive self-indulgence.

But such hedonists are easily overcome by religious, disciplined and self-denying men, united by a higher goal.

If a Christian church or denomination can assemble and organise such men - and any such success would be very obvious - it may yet be a formidable and constructive social force.

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Note added: A comment from Thrasymachus (below) recommended this useful book:

http://www.podles.org/church-impotent.htm


which gives data to suggest the problem is restricted to Western (not Eastern Orthodox) Christianity and dates from about 1200 - which I interpret as suggesting that 1. the unmasculinity of Christianity is ultimately a consequence of the Great Schism (which I take as the start of modernity), and 2. that a probable cause was the movement leading to enforcement of priestly celibacy in the Roman Catholic church, but that having begun the trend was reinforced by other factors - which spanned the Reformation.

I found particularly interesting the idea that the masculinity of Christianity is apparently related to the understanding life as Unseen or Spiritual warfare - and to the martyrs and ascetic monks as quasi-military heroes.

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Is following Christ truly a case of "Myth made fact" - Is Christianity, indeed, "a myth" at all?

CS Lewis's conversion, as is pretty well known, had much to do with an idea he got (mostly) from JRR Tolkien that in Christianity Myth became Fact. In other words; that various of the myths of the ancient world came true in the incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

This is one reason why Lewis regarded Christianity as the completion of paganism (as well as of Judaism) - because in essence it took much of paganism and transformed it by the addition of specifically Christian values - in particular "Faith, Hope, and Charity".

I was greatly influenced by this idea in my own conversion to Christianity; but have now come to regard the "Christian myth" as a misleading distortion of what Jesus actually did and taught. 

My interpretation nowadays is that Christianity is in its essence about the possibility of following Jesus to resurrected eternal life in Heaven - and that this was something new under the sun: an unique possibility; that was (at its core) neither foreshadowed nor foreseen among the ancient religions: neither among Jews nor among Pagans.  

I agree with Lewis that Christianity can be and actually was (especially in the earliest years of Jesus's ministry and the early period after his ascension) an add-on, easily adopted by Jews and Roman or Greek pagans alike...

But I think the reason for this was not because Christianity was aligned with Jewish expectations of the Messiah, nor that it was a completion of Greco-Roman Paganism - but simply because Christianity was a new idea about what happened after death. 

At least initially, therefore, a new Christian convert could (and apparently did) continue to practise his previous this-worldly religion; but with the additional expectation of resurrected eternal life after death...

Instead of (for instance) dying in expectation of the underworld ghost-life of Sheol or Hades, or returning by some version of reincarnation. 

Of course, Christianity as it became, developed and accreted very large and complex mythic elements - for example about Jesus's miraculous conception and early life, and expectation of his second coming. 

So Christianity-as-is has mythical aspects with all sorts of derivations and similarities to other mythic religions. 

But I believe that this was not the case originally, as Jesus lived and taught. 

And presumably this was a major reason why people found it so very difficult to understand what Jesus was actually telling then - i.e. they could not (or would not) discard their existing myths, such as The Messiah. 

And either rejected Jesus for failing to embody the prior myth, or adapted the prior myth to fit Jesus - or else adapted what Jesus did to fit the prior myth (as with the Second Coming, notion) 

I don't know if others agree; but in the IV Gospel I see Jesus trying to tell people something very simple and clear - which they repeatedly fail to comprehend; and this, in part, because they are caught-up in already-existing religious assumptions including myths. 

After Jesus's ascension, things could have (should have, perhaps) gone in the direction of the Christian after-death expectation being added-onto various existing religions - and then modifying their content in a kind of retrospective way (as the expectation of resurrected Heavenly life worked upon the pre-existing religion).

However, this did not happen; and instead Christianity became so elaborated by mythic elements that its clear and simple essence was swamped; but also the confident expectation of being able to choose resurrection was inverted - into the necessity to submit to the judgment of God/Christ-as-King to be-fearfully-hoping to be chosen as worthy of inclusion in Heaven. 

Only in recent generations has it become conceptually and consciously possible to understand that Christianity does not need to be regarded as a true myth; but instead Jesus's work can be recognized as a cosmic transformation, a new post-mortal possibility: a Second Creation -- accessible to those who commit to following Jesus, into and beyond the transformation of resurrection.

Monarchial Leftism (a terse definition of Neoreaction) - i.e. Neoreactionaries are anti-Christian (hence on the Left) but pro-Monarchial (hence opposed to mainstream Leftism)

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It seems that it is a core belief on the secular Right, including Neoreaction, that modern Leftism, political correctness, was caused by Christianity; and that Christianity is intrinsically pro-Left.

This is just plain wrong; and I and others have refuted this on many occasions and argued the (almost) opposite view with a piling-on of evidence - that Leftism was anti-Christian in its very foundations, and continuing (very obviously - in materially supporting and concealing the almost complete obliteration of Christianity in the Middle East over the past decade); however, this is one of those many situations when argument does not make any difference.

So, accepting that Neoreaction cannot share the following analysis; what is  Neoreaction from the perspective of the (real) Christian Right? 

*

(The (real) Christian Right being the shared political perspective of all 'real' Christians - as contrasted with the fake pseudo-anti-Christianity of 'liberal Christianity' - which is the religion of the majority who self-identify as Christians. This distinction between real and fake Christians is about motivation rather than doctrine; and in this respect liberal Christians are analogous to the vast majority of dishonest, career-orientated fake-pseudo-scientists who self-identify as scientists but are in reality merely docile bureaucrats. Real science is about the honest intention to understand the natural world; not about hype and funding, power, prizes and peer review. http://corruption-of-science.blogspot.co.uk . By analogy, real Christianity is about aspiring to structure society by Christianity, aiming at that goal using whatever means - and there are large disagreements here, rather than the opposite liberal (pseudo-) Christian goal of structuring Christianity by society.)

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Neoreaction is (it now seems) founded upon anti-Christianity - but not in the sense of 'being nasty to Christians'. Neoreactionaries aren't usually nasty to Christians, quite the opposite - they try to enrol Christians on their side. But anti-Christian in genuinely blaming (their definition of) Christianity for causing what Neoreactionaries themselves regard as the greatest evils in the modern world. 

From the Religious Right perspective, therefore, Neoreaction shares the anti-Christian foundational belief of the Left.  

Ergo Neoreaction is of the Left.

*

But clearly Neoreaction is not of the politically correct mainstream Left - to whom Neoreaction is very hostile. 

So if anti-Christianity was historically the primary belief of Leftism, then it is probably at the secondary level of belief that Neoreactionaries differ from the politically correct New Left. 

Historically, anti-Christianity was the primary doctrine of Leftism, and the secondary doctrine was being against the King: was anti-Monarchial (i.e. Leftism was 'Republican' in a broad sense that includes English, French and American Revolutions).

And this is exactly where Neoreaction diverges from the modern mainstream PC New Left: Neoreaction is pro-Monarchial forms of government - when Monarchy is conceptualized in terms of a unified, formal and mandatory hierarchical structure of social organization with a single Man at the top.

Of course, being anti-Christian means that the Man at the Top cannot be divinely sanctioned - so Neoreactionaries think in terms of a society run by a Dictator, or a Chief Executive rather than a real King.

But this pro-Monarchial foundation is the explanation for some of the most striking aspects of Neoreaction where they most sharply diverge from modern Leftism - such as being explicitly pro-slavery (because absolute opposition to slavery, with no regard for cost or consequences, was a very early dogma of the Left).

*

So here is a terse definition of Neoreaction seen from the Christian Right perspective: 

Neoreaction is Monarchial Leftism

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(Alternatively, Neoreaction is in favour of non-Christian Monarchy - i.e. a dictatorship, or a society structured like an ideal-type of an effective modern institution or corporation.)
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Christianity: complexity versus simplicity

Traditional and orthodox church-based Christianity is extremely complex; and so are many of the 'occult' forms of Christianity involving graded initiations, rituals, symbolic systems, and training of the mind. Indeed, in a generic sense; traditional churches and occult Christianity can be seen as variations on the same theme: aiming-at the same endlessly-complex way-of-living as a Christian.

There are many advantages in making Christianity endlessly complex! 

For instance, such Christianity is inexhaustible, there is always something else to do - indeed always many possible things to do; so that the complex-Christian can always find something to do to suit every mood and circumstance. 

So what the complex Christian 'needs to do' is always far greater than what he has-done or could-do. There is scripture to study, and liturgy and other rituals in which to participate. There are many forms of prayer to be learned and practiced - some of these very difficult, some very tough. There are ascetic practices, and celebrations. There is a vast world of scholarship - learning Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Aramaic; individually and comparatively with historical context... There is history, archaeology - and these stretch over many places and times going back thousands of years. And there is a massive world of socio-politics in relation to the church - from the international and geopolitical to local congregational matters and everything in between. There are intellectual and abstract matters of theology and philosophy; and there are matters of personality and relationships...

The above only sketches out the limitless complexity of "Christian living" as it is conceived by many of its major representative institutions; and traditionally through most of history. 

What all these share in common is an emphasis on the external location of Christian life. The complexity creates an external world which the Christian inhabits. Much of the power lies externally, and therefore 'happens-to' the individual Christian. 

In a sense, the Christian invests himself (potentially without limit, because there is always more-to-do) into this external and complex world, in order to be able to draw-upon it: in order to be positively affected by-it. 

Furthermore; Christians can share in this external world - it forms a tangible and material link between Christians; and via this physical instantiation of Christianity, individual Christians and group-Christianity both relate to all the activities of society and culture generally. 

There is no aspect of culture that cannot, in this way, be linked with Christianity: politics, the military, law, the arts, science, education... In principle, there are (or can be) Christian aspects and relations of all these. 

When Christianity is thus complex and external, everything in the world is a part of it; and can be seen to be a part of it by all participants. 

 

But this conceptualizing of Christianity as external and complex carries several disadvantages - both innately and in current/ modern practice. 

The current/ modern practice is that - because this kind of Christianity is external and complex; it has been infiltrated, subverted, and then destroyed or inverted in multiple ways and from multiple directions simultaneously - such that the major churches have all been enlisted in the mainstream, secular, leftists and totalitarian agenda. 

This was evident during early 2020, when church leadership willingly (avidly) suspended the core activities of their churches - without time limitations. 

But even if the churches had not been corrupted and conscripted; there are still innate problems with the idea of Christian living as ultra-complex and externally located. 

There is a price to pay for the many advantages listed above; and that price is the habitual subordination of our self to external influences and causes, to external powers. 

Whenever there is an intermediate between our-selves and God, or the divine in any manifestation, then that intermediate has power over us: whether than intermediate be symbol, ritual, hierarchy, scholarship, intellectual discipline, learned abilities, or whatever. 

Although complex-external Christianity does not exclude direct, personal and experiential aspects; these are subordinated-to (embedded-in) the complex forms. Thus the experiential aspects are intermittent (because there is So Much else that must be done); and therefore the Christian often lives from memory, rather than in the here and now.

And vast complexity ties each Christian to the mundane. 

...The experienced consciousness is held in the mundane stance, for all of the time that a Christian is participating in that huge range and intricacies of the "Christian world". 

In a nutshell; the problem with complex-external Christianity is that it is mostly (indeed, nearly-all) discourse about-God, about-Jesus, and about-... everything else that it includes. It is largely secondhand. It leaves the central 'problem' of Life untouched. 

What Christians most need (and often crave) is not mundane discourse about God but experience-of God; and we desire that this be continuous not intermittent; here-and-now and not mere memories that we once-upon-a-time had such experience.  

What we need and want is somewhat like a young child's relationship with his living and loving parents. 

The child ideally (and sometime in practice) experiences that parental love as a continuous factor in his life; ever-present; confident and trusting; a background, a safety-net, an enfolding medium through-which the child moves. 

So, this represents a simple and inner-derived, experiential Christian path through life, to contrast with the complex and external. 

Such a simple path is rooted in knowing the nature and motivations of God - who is creator of this world and strands towards us as a loving parent. 

The inner Christian path is based in having a loving relationship with this God; primarily individual, but also as member of a family of Christians.

And the relevant Christian spiritual activity is directed towards recovering this primal simplicity; discovering, clarifying, and choosing, this loving and personal relationship: recovering it when we go astray.  

Complex external Christianity aims to steer us through life by means of multitudinous sources of guidance - some exact, other generic and with rules of extrapolation/ interpolation. 

Simple and inner Christianity works instead from a strong sense of God's nature, motivations, purposes, and love - and that which is divine with each-of-us -- and it is prayerful meditation directed towards such personal "sources" which provides needful guidance... When that is not already obvious. 

My Mere Christian evangelism - what kind of success?

When I recently wrote a post musing on the possibility of quitting blogging, I received an extremely encouraging response from readers - some in comments, some in e-mails, asking me please to continue. To which I agreed - very happily and gratefully!

Some communications gave accounts of how the blog had been helpful in the reader's Christian life, and these were valuable to me because the underlying purpose of this blog, the thing which keeps me going with it, is Christian evangelism and apologetics - indeed I aim to promote Mere Christianity.

Mere Christianity is the title of a book by CS Lewis which contains collected radio talks from the 1939-45 war which Lewis tried to make acceptable and applicable to Anglicans, Roman Catholics and nonconformists such as Methodists. By and large, he succeeded spectacularly - and Lewis has also been very popular with Eastern Orthodox and Mormons.

Although I do engage in a lot more specific and specialized theology than Lewis, my intention has also been to 'speak' with the whole range of serious self-identified Christians - indeed a wider range than Lewis included; because I do not regard adherence to the creeds as a valid definition of a Christian (not least because they contain abstract, paradoxical and incomprehensible elements).

I would include among the Mere Christian family many of the newer denominations such as Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons (I regard myself as a theoretical Mormon - although I currently worship at a conservative Protestant Anglican church), the Salvation Army - and indeed unaffiliated Christians who are Christian only 'in their own heads' and perhaps in heretical ways - e.g. some Anthroposophists, some Gnostics and other people interested in 'spirituality'.

Advocacy of Mere Christianity is not arbitrary nor trivial for any serious Christian, because to make sense of being a Mere Christian, rather than working from inside a specific denomination, requires a faith that being 'any kind of Christian' is potentially a worthwhile thing to be; indeed the belief that it is more important to be 'A Christian' than to be any particular type of Christian.

In other words, Mere Christianity - by its relative neglect of actual membership of specific church denominations - embodies the conviction that it is possible to be a Christian who is not a churchgoer nor a church-member; and that this unaffiliated state is indeed much better than not being a Christian at all. This probably implies certain doctrinal things - regarding the nature of salvation; and the relationship between God and each Man.

Anyway, from the comments and letters I received, I was very pleased to see that my own Mere Christian convictions are reflected by a considerable variety of 'destinations' among that small group of people who tell me they were significantly helped in their faith by this blog - including Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Mormon. Indeed, the range of destinations delighted me! I feel that this is exactly what modern evangelism needs to do (in addition to traditional types of denomination-based evangelism, not replacing it) - to help people become generic Mere Christians first, and then join a specific church as a second and secondary decision.

An interesting feature about the great popularity and influence of Lewis among serious Christians of many types is that it suggests that that there is a strong core of basic Christianity behind doctrinal differences - and it suggests, indeed, that the deep conviction of someone such as Pope John Paul II (a big Lewis fan) was that this is almost independent of specific doctrine and theology.

The 'revealed preference' of the range of Lewis admirers is that Christianity precedes and is distinct from the metaphysics, theology and specific doctrines and practices of Christianity. The way I think of this is that the followers of Christ, as depicted in the Gospels and Acts, were Christians - and became Christian on the basis of a very small amount of knowledge and experience; and children and simple minded people can be (among the best) Christians.

So that real, core Christianity in its essence is on the one hand very simple - simple enough for a child to believe; yet also encompasses a wide range of subjective 'explanations' for beliefs - explanations as varied as the imaginations of a child.

This I am sure is true; although many people who agree and behave as if it is true - and acknowledge it implicitly - are loath to acknowledge it explicitly - and indeed may deny it explicitly.

I am not sure whether this is a problem or not - but I suspect it is. Many strong Christians are - according to their attitudes and behaviours - Mere Christians; but the explicit statements they make are often exclusivist, and they claim to regard those outwith their church as perilously deficient... perhaps not Christians, perhaps even excluded-from salvation.

I say 'claim to' because I think this exclusivism is often insincere - sometimes it is dishonest. For various reasons, some good and others bad, many denominations and churches cannot admit publicly and formally how Mere Christian they really are (the CJCLDS is a noble exception!). Not surprisingly, serious Christian churches fear liberalization and the apostasy and rapid decline which follows - and this leads them into exclusivist claims which are typically shrill and unconvincing - one suspects even (or especially) to those who are most vehement in them.

But actual liberal Christians usually dislike CS Lewis, sometimes indeed they hate him! So the 'Mereness' of Christianity certainly should not be regarded as evidence of its feebleness or liberalness.

My general conviction is that the real Christian church is a mystical phenomenon spread across many denominations and among unaffiliated individuals - but that the actual bricks and mortar and crowds of people and organizations of 'institutional' churches are essential to the survival and growth of Christianity through history and into the future.

Not all churches, to be sure! - I think that most liberal Christian churches do far more harm than good (even though they do do some good), and lead more away from faith and into apostasy than they help to be better Christians. But I suspect that many serious Christians nowadays are in the position of trying to find a specific accessible denomination, or even a specific church congregation, among the mass of hindering and secularizing churches - to find one local and strong group of Christians which help them personally to be better Christians.

That, at any rate, is the Mere Christian attitude.

I see no grounds for hope in the Perennial Philosophy because it has been thoroughly tried - and has failed

I used to be, pretty much, an adherent of the Perennial Philosophy; and even since I became a Christian I am not hostile to it. But I see no hope in it.

The reason is simply that it has been around for generations, but never gets any further; also I see no evidence that it has any significant tendency to strengthen and improve its adherents - whom seem to just as susceptible to the pathologies of modernity as is anyone else (and indeed among the leadership of Perennial Philosophy, the standards of behaviour - when judged by traditional values - are, on average, perhaps lower that the population average).

I have returned to this matter through my current project of reading Jeremy Naydler, and seeing that he teaches at the Temenos Academy, which is perhaps the most prestigious of Perennial Philosophy organizations - since it is actively supported by many establishment figures including HRH The Prince of Wales (presumably our future King).

What is the Perennial Philosophy? Here is a video self-explaining:

My own pragmatic definition is that the movement was (historically) set-up by, and continues to attract, disaffected ex-Christians and intellectuals who have positive views about most religions, spirituality, and selected aspects of some actual churches; but not about what they term 'fundamentalist' Christian churches. The PP is thus, pretty much, the intellectual wing of the New Age movement.

The basic idea of the PP is that all world religions (properly understood) share a core body of beliefs, and this core is true and the most important aspect of them, and these core truths can-be and ought-to-be the basis of the highest and best kind of religion/ spirituality.

I personally agree that all real religions share core truths - but I do not agree that what is shared is necessarily the most important thing - and especially not for these times. I certainly do not agree that the shared core it is the best kind of religion/ spirituality - and in practical terms I think it has been empirically proven by experience that these shared core things are not a sufficient basis for a strong and good lived religion/ spirituality.

In sum, the Perennial Philosophy seems too weak, too feeble, too diffuse and easily dispersible to be the core of a human life. And indeed, adherents do not behave as if the PP is the core of their lives; rather, they fit it into other priorities.


So, Perennialists tend to be positive (in a semi-detached way) about Eastern religions generally (especially Buddhism, but also some aspects of Hinduism such as the Bhagavad Gita - although not the caste system! - and especially keen on Taoism; also Sufism, sometimes Kabbalism, and the mystical traditions of Christianity; such as Eastern Orthodoxy, the meditative tradition of monasticism in the Roman Catholic Church, Gnosticism, Neo-Platonism.. and many types of ancient paganism, animism, totemism and... have I missed anything?

Among Christian churches PP-ers do not seem to like Protestants generally and Lutherans, Calvinists, Methodists, Baptists or modern conservative evangelicals or Pentecostalists in particular... in sum they show no interest in the currently growing parts of mainstream Christianity. And they are either bored-by, or hostile-to, newer and thriving churches such as Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists.


As so often, there is a cleavage line around the sexual revolution. Perennial Philosophy advocates are almost all advocates of, and adherents to, one or more aspect of the sexual revolution, and the expansion of sexual relationships beyond religious concepts of marriage. This is very obvious among both leaders and followers - and the PP environment is often sexualized; with multiple marriages, cohabitations, affairs and the rest of it - in line with mainstream modern secular life.

Furthermore, in their political views they are Leftist - often the ultra-idealistic Leftism of Anarchism, Deep-Green ecology, Voluntary Simplicity etc. They may or may not support mainstream Left parties (often they do - but some ultra-Leftists do not); but they never support 'Right wing' parties - even by the insipid mainstream standards of mainstream politics whereby what would have been hardline Leftism two generations ago is now supposed to be far Right!

In general, the PP adherents never, in their analyses, regard the problems of the modern world as a consequence of Leftism - despite the close temporal correlation; but almost always as a consequence of something described as Right Wing - whether capitalism, libertarianism, industrialization, patriarchy, racism, colonialism etc.

In terms of their lifestyle, Perennial Philosophy advocates have adopted most of the post-sixties markers of New Left modernity - 'alternative'/ bohemian styles of grooming and clothing, ponytails and ear-rings for men, body piercings and tattoos with increasing popularity, green consumerism, a focus on Africa and a pro-ethnic stance, alternative- and psycho-therapies, Fair Trade products and vegetarianism, an interest in 'renewable' resources, 'organic' horticulture and farming, Anthropogenic Global Warming and so on, and so forth.


My point is that the Perennial Philosophy has been around for an awfully long time now - at least three generations of significant visibility (since, say, the Beat Generation of the 1950s), yet there is no evidence that it makes any significant difference to the lives of its adherents - they do not stand-out against the currents of our time in any way which would lead to significant problems for them.

On all the litmus test issues of our time - the kind of things that could get you sacked or made a public pariah - i.e. the issues of Political Correctness - the Perennial Philosophers are all comfortably on the side of the secular mainstream.

This must be either a terribly lucky coincidence! - or else demonstrates that the PP has no real backbone, no capacity to en-courage and strengthen its leaders or followers in face of adversity; but is merely a weathervane for mainstream secular Leftism.


On the one hand I still read and enjoy, and am not much worried about the Perennial Philosophy; on the other hand I don't expect anything substantive from it. Despite its hostility, it is no real threat to real Christianity. No doubt, as a half-way house it is sometimes a distraction from potentially better things; yet it may also be a stepping stone to better things (as it was for me).

So while I am not hostile, and I often find much to interest me in the work of Perennial Philosophy advocates - for instance, there are often good diagnoses of the deep problems of modernity even when the prescription and treatment-plan is usually worthless or just more of the same-old - I cannot be optimistic or enthusiastic about the future of the movement.

I see not the slightest evidence that the PP can be a real religion; and on the contrary I do see a recurrent pattern of hopes leading nowhere.

In sum; the Perennial Philosophy is at best an intellectual activity - part of the History of Ideas, more typically a feel-good Lefty lifestyle; but it is not a thing capable of deeply-motivating, nor of powerfully-inspiring, its adherents.

Mostly Harmless.