Political implications of more Americans converting to Catholicism?
The American right was heavily associated with Evangelical idpol for the past 50 years. They became the cultural backbone of the GOP from the 80s to the late 2000s. Now it appears like a huge number of former Evangelicals are converting to Catholicism. I even know some ex-Mormons who are Catholic now.
At the same time, it seems like leftists are embracing Catholicism too. Remember when everyone was convinced Pope Francis was a secret socialist? Jacobin mag goes out of their way with appealing to Catholics as well (every other article of theirs is something along the lines of: “Move over pink-haired bipolar feminist queers, here’s why the Catholic Church are the REAL socialists!”). People like Dorothy Day are propped up even though her actual contributions to the American left were minimal and symbolic at best (the Catholic Worker also referred to the priests killed by /ourguys/ in Catalonia as “martyrs” which is disgusting). Not to mention, the Jacobin crowd seems very big on appealing to right-wing Catholic sentiments like complaining about birthrates being too low and proposing Bernie-style policies like universal healthcare to “fix” it, as if low birthrates are a problem to begin with.
But anyway, if Catholicism becomes a major cultural force in America in the next few years how do you see it affecting the political landscape?
291 posts and 41 image replies omitted.>>2464020Maybe because Russians speaking English and going on Western social medias will be liberals? Same for Iran or all of the 3rd world, there always traitors who will betray everything to be a part of the Western World.
Putin, even if he is a massive cuck, never have been so popular in Russia
>>2465481White Nationalism/American Civil Religion is a branch of Christianity, and in particular Calvinist replacement theology. Read Eric Weed's "The Religion of White Supremacy in the United States."
White Nationalists really are religious and really are a kind of Christian, their branch of Christianity is American Civil Religion. It's not so different from Hinduism as a kind of religious racial-caste system. Yes, a progressive and secular American Civil Religion is as laughable as a progressive and secular Catholics, the best we can probably do is to cautiously tolerate it.
>>2482848It seems like a lot of people are burning out of that low brow Evangelicalism that was very popular a decade ago. But there are also secular people who have become interested in Catholicism. Probably because its intellectually more sophisticated and the Catholic Church is a moderating force in social life with a wide variety of factions to align yourself with, although mostly moderate. People are drawn to the ritual and the mystique of it too.
You are probably right that a lot of people (leftists included) find leftist slogans and theories insufficient for life. So they want to embrace religion as a private matter for personal reasons.
Evangelicalism was overwhelmingly a working class and rural poor movement which included the petty bourgeois. Catholicism seems to attract more middle class, intellectual types, so there’s a risk of elitism overriding Catholic social teaching. While in America and Europe, Islam is now more or less the religion of the lumpen proletariat. So there’s a danger that Christianity could be disconnected from the lives of working people. In many ways it’s ceasing to be the force it once was. You can’t imagine someone like MLK leading a mass movement today. The black church has slowly become more and more elitist and less present among the urban poor.
>>2465481>1/5 of the world’s population is AtheistThose statistics are flawed. Demographers often see religions as clubs and people as members. If a person doesn’t claim membership, the demographer simply counts them as an atheist or secular, completely forgetting that atheism is also a club and not some empty default state. In many places, religion doesn’t work like this. There are many Chinese who venerate a city god or engage with Buddhist or Taoist ritual, but can’t give you a straight answer on what their religion is. Japanese often participate in Shinto but don’t consider it a religion. So “oh wow no religious affiliation in Japan and China, must mean they are all atheists” is fudged.
>>2485772It appeals to members of this class. I’m not saying lumpens are Islamic lol In many places, Islam has become this religion that appeals to people on the bottom of society. Like prison inmates or refugees. Its not even poor people, but people who are minorities or really screwed in some way. You see it in black ghettos in America, but also Latinos, Australian aboriginals, and obviously Palestinians.
If you look at a lot of the Euros and Americans who joined ISIS, they were all lumpens or ex cons or petty criminals, drug dealers, and hookers looking to reinvent themselves.
>>2485352Hard to say. Salafists burn out the way evangelicals do. I know sometimes guys in prison convert for better food or if they have bad charges and are hated by other inmates.
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