Will Christianity survive in North America?
This question haunts the shadows of particular American political discourse, wondered but not spoken. To the extent it is discussed in Church circles, some notion of coming persecution is offered along with trite (and incorrect) statements about how the Church prospers in persecution. But let’s assume, for the sake of the discussion, that the remnant wants to do something about this, or at least wants to understand it (the latter I am definitely not convinced is the case).
The Christianity that is left can be divided twice, first between the people who are serious about Christianity vs those who merely wear it as a skinsuit, and secondly between the only players left who are serious about Christianity - the Catholics, and the Fundamentalists.
The common objection with this framing would be regarding all the denominational differences I’m papering over, which, admittedly, I am. But frankly speaking, they just don’t matter in day-to-day life and have ceased to matter for quite some time. You may very well be Russian Orthodox or Southern Baptist, but the reality of the situation is your views of Black lives matter and the role of transsexuals and the Bible in the public square put you in significantly starker relief than your eucharistic theology. There are only fundamentalists and Catholics.
Understanding this at the outset enables us to truly understand the situation on the ground. The Vatican stands as the last bastion of mainline Christianity, still offering enough to be distinct from the morass of the left, and opposite them, though often acting in political unity, stands the Fundamentalists, committed to what they understand as Biblical Christianity.
Whatever we call our movement, we find Catholics vastly overrepresented, though this is not particularly surprising. Catholicism in this country has historically been an urban phenomenon, and Catholics have been far more conscious of political power and its necessity than their fundamentalist counterparts.
Catholics’ pursuit of Political Power has netted them some gains and a better position, at least nominally, but has resulted in their Americanization and Liberalization. The unity of these two factions produced the landmark Dobbs case, ending Roe and enabling fundamentalist strongholds to finally outlaw abortion. The trouble is the Catholic President and the Catholic ex-Speaker of the House both opposed this. Catholicism has been indelibly marked by modernity in a way that is probably not possible to undo. I think Theodore Adorno’s quote1 of the west can be fairly applied to the Vatican and offers some hope, but it remains hard to see Catholicism as the future of American Christianity.
This leaves us with the Fundamentalists. And here I’m reminded of the words of Curtis Yarvin, “Dear hobbits: you can only lose the culture war. Even when elves use political power to impose elf culture on you, you cannot use political power to impose hobbit culture on elves.”2
This is the trouble that the Fundamentalists largely have - their evangelical resilience and fervor does them great credit, but they are wholly and totally unprepared to lead any sort of a vanguard. Most evangelical political leaders are just the Kevin McCarthys of the world as alternatives to the Catholic’s Nancy Pelosi. Their leaders seem nearly allergic to the one thing that is their primary duty - arguing on behalf of their people.
There is hope the Fundamentalists can be reformed, from all different sorts of flavors of Christianity incubating under the Bill of Right’s promise. But as a practical reality, I think this is largely futile. What Paul Skallas has called 1KYAE is far more effective at this sort of Reformation3, and no one, not even the Catholics, have the resources to compete against it.
No, the only solution is to return to the root of what makes a culture, that is, cultivation. Our word culture comes from the Latin word cultura which means to grow or to cultivate. Conservatism has often failed to understand this properly, in vain attempts to playact as a 13th-century monk or 16th-century knight, instead of recognizing that the task of culture creation is to cultivate our people. More pressingly, the hobbits, to borrow Yarvin’s analogy, seem allergic to the arts and artists they require to be anything other than a strange and exotic attraction in a guided cage for 1KYAE.
The Fundamentalist faction is comprised mostly of good, pro-social, virtuous people, but they are a people without a vision, and Holy Scripture tells us “Where there is no vision, the people perish”4. Whatever hope remains for the Fundamentalists lies in their artists, their creators, their elves creating a new vision, not one in opposition to Le Wokisme but wholly independent, something else entirely.
As Dr. Land succinctly points out (to the joy of my Catholic readers, undoubtedly), Schism is THE Anglo-Protestant tool to fight degeneration. More on this later.
I am not entirely sure this sort of thing is possible, nor do I know precisely how it would look, but I am led inexorably to the conclusion that Fundamental Christianity’s survival relies on figuring out a way to incubate and support our own elves.
It is a near herculean task. But it is the only hope for the last living light of Christianity here in North America.
Adorno, Theodor W. "What can oppose the decline of the west is not a resurrected culture but the utopia that is silently contained in the image of its decline." Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life. Translated by E. F. N. Jephcott, Verso, 2005, p. 17.
Yarvin, Curtis. "You can only lose the culture war." Substack, 9 Feb. 2021,
https://thestateoftheology.com/
Proverbs 29:18a (KJV)