What do you know? Pope Francis and Rod Dreher, a conservative Christian columnist, have similar messages for the Godly: There’s no salvation in backing The Donald.
Dreher first:
And …
Dreher is certainly correct that support for Trump too often comes with a downright religious fervor. This should surprise nobody. The modern Trump Movement, like the first-century Jesus Movement, is driven in significant part by the animus of those left behind by societal change.
Seriously: If you want to understand what’s going on in the world, you need to read Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Antichrist and Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer.
When Dreher complains that American believers have failed to arrest the “slide toward secularism,” however, he betrays a grievous ignorance of American history and hostility to American ideals. America was founded as a secular state; this country has no religion — and Dreher and every other thinking American ought to be glad for that. It’s true that means he can’t appropriate his neighbor’s wealth for the glory of whatever Invisible Friend is in fashion, but neither will the next generation’s wealth be appropriated to serve the religious beliefs of the … OTHERS!!, who are Satanic.
The decline of clerical influence in American life is not a breach with American ideals, but movement toward their fulfillment. The word ‘secularism’ is not a dirty word; it is the heritage of The Enlightenment, and it must be defended — now more than ever.
A Vatican publication that is basically an outlet for Pope Francis and his cronies has been similarly critical of American Catholics and their odd alliance with evangelicals.
And …
Damn. I have to admit that my head nearly spun in a complete circle when I read that first passage, that conservative Catholics and the Evangelical Right are not far removed from jihadists. After all, that’s something that Michael Hamar and I — and doubtless others, though I don’t know who they are — have been saying for years. The Evangelical Right is a clear and present danger; they are deeply antagonistic toward American ideals, and do want to implement a theocratic state. They take their cue from Rousas Rushdoony and Francis Schaeffer, not Thomas Jefferson.
Most of the turmoil in the world arises out of the failure of the Abrahamic faiths; they have lost their explanatory power. Just as monotheism ate paganism, science is now eating monotheism — and the monotheists don’t like being left behind. Seriously: We are well into an epochal change in human thought. Fasten your seatbelts.
