Rod Dreher is like a small kid pushing a little Jesus toy barrow daily… We’ve been following his religious racket for a while. No, I’m not obsessed, but I use Rod as the sampling for many a religious guy who hates atheists, and anything that has the decent smell of secularism, because we play doctors and nurses without god.

On October 17, 2019, at 11:56 PM, Dreher posted another windy wafty even sillier-than-before article — this one called "Our Coming War Of Religion” — in which he waffles:

….

I don’t say that to be discouraging, but only to be realistic. We can only fight the Mythological with the Mythological. The pseudo-faith of Social Justice may be shallow, but it has the force of institutional power, and it is well on its way to capturing elites — which, as the sociologist James Davison Hunter has argued in his book To Change The World, is how cultural transformation happens:

The work of world-making and world-changing are, by and large, the work of elites: gatekeepers who provide creative direction and management within spheres of social life. Even where impetus for change draws from popular agitation, it does not gain traction until it is embraced and propagated by elites.

By all means let us attempt a Christian march through the institutions! But first, many believing Christians are going to have to march through their own institutions, especially the Catholic Church. This is going to have to be the work of generations, though — and the assault on Christian belief, both intentional and passive, by the forces of liquid modernity is unremitting.

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Woof! Liquid modernity? A Christian march through the institutions? Their own Catholic institutions? Fight the Mythological with the Mythological? "Our Coming War Of Religion"? Are you serious? Dreaming of living back in the Dark Ages? What does this mean? 

I don’t know what this means… I know, by their own nature, the Christian beliefs, like all religious beliefs, are deluded — and in our newly acquired relative scientific wisdom, they are self-defeating with old useless imaginary angels and demons, despite the temporal threats of punishment and spiritual hell forever after for "sinning"…. Dreher apparently quakes in his boots about the prospect of ending up as a worm farm in oblivion-land. Good for him, but leave us alone. Leave the secular institutions alone...

Rod is excited and adds an update:

UPDATE: A reality check from Jonah R.:


“The center is disappearing.”

After some more wafty fluff-guff, Dreher concludes:

That said, it’s not the “ordinary people,” left or right, who are driving the trends in both parties. I remember back in 2005 or thereabouts, seeing the first big Pew study of American politics, and being shocked that the 10 percent on either extreme were driving the platforms of both parties. At least that year, the vast majority of Americans were in the big middle. In fact, the exact center, according to Pew, was “socially somewhat conservative, economically somewhat liberal”. But these people had no influence at the policy making level of the two parties! The donors and the committed ideologues drove that. It was quite an education. We know from history, as well as from social science, that a small number of active, committed people can control the politics of a democracy where most people are passive.
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So? Dreher is not a passive person like most ordinary sheep-people… He’s one of the active controllers, with a religious bent who does not like secularism and its god-free institutions, especially “human rights”. He hates “human rights... Where does this place him? In the centre-right? Right of centre? In the yellow Donaldsian swamp as a reluctant supporter of Trump?

Is Rod Dreher an erudite fool in the melting centre, awaiting for an epiphany with less “social justice" and more “charitable enterprises” based on a tiny section of humanity who were disguised as god’s warriors — the chosen people — who waited 4000 years till they had to pick between Barabbas and someone else, and the someone else got crucified, while Barabbas, the murderous-thief got his freedom? This narrative is idiotic, even if it happened such, because people were idiotically awaiting for a “savior”… A saviour from what? for being idiots? No wonder the Roman local chief, "washed his hands of the whole thing” and the “chosen people" are still waiting for their "real” saviour because they think the one they crucified was the wrong one.

Please! Get a life!


"The pseudo-faith of Social Justice may be shallow, but it has the force of institutional power, and it is well on its way to capturing elites…” says Rod…

What is this crap? Having such opinions about social justice would make him part of the elite on the deluded rabid right, would it not? Where’s the price tag for Rod's little toy truck?

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James Davison Hunter is a prominent figure in the sociology of religion and the sociology of culture, with much of his work dedicated to the study of evangelicalism and cultural change.

Okay. we’re moving shit by the yellow toy-crane load…:

"Culture change" is a term used in public policy making that emphasizes the influence of cultural capital on individual and community behavior. It has been sometimes called repositioning of culture, which means the reconstruction of the cultural concept of a society. It places stress on the social and cultural capital determinants of decision making and the manner in which these interact with other factors like the availability of information or the financial incentives facing individuals to drive behavior.
...

In general, cultural stereotypes present great resistance to change and to their own redefinition. Culture, often appears fixed to the observer at any one point in time because cultural mutations occur incrementally. Cultural change is a long-term process. Policymakers need to make a great effort to improve some basics aspects of a society’s cultural traits.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_change

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Whoohoo! This theory of “long-term process" culture change mostly applies to the English hegemony, which is the last large Western bastion of resistance to real secularisation, despite the Magna Carta and due to the lousy American Constitution. In England, one of the government controlling “houses” is that of the Lords and the head of state is also the hereditary head of the religious belief… Are you kidding me?...

But the new technologies such as the smartphones might speed things up a bit downwards, shifting the mindsets away from arcane and outdated religious values — for kids to play mindless "Game of Prunes" with fast moving thumbs, as they giggle like girly-men.  

France took about 100 years to reach the full separation of church and state, after the revolution of 1789. Most states in Europe are run with a secular system, though Denmark still has hereditary royalty as a spackfiller for Aussie magazines. 

Russia changed virtually overnight (12 years between the “first” 1905 revolution and the second one) until the demise of the new system that became too much like a church institution with a Spanish inquisition under Stalin, also designed to squash your thumbs, despite being god-less. 

The Chinese had a bloody culture shift as well, but it was not a culture shift as much as necessarily recapturing national freedom and pride, using the West’s demand for cheap goods and Chinese know-how, under a new system “of the people for the people” whether you like it or not — a freedom that had been mucked up by the West and the Japanese “invasions” beforehand. 

So culture shifts can happen suddenly, though in the USA, the "masses of the middle" are still in the grip of dare I say strange nonsensical religious beliefs. Having Trump as the “evangelical" president might have confused a lot of people, but the Trumpian bad choice was as if unavoidable. The shift towards secularisation is slowly coming to the USA, of course, and the religious dudes like Dreher are fighting tooth and nail to control the game with wooden arguments, nonetheless. On the statistic of probability, left or right politics in the USA, will be far less religious within 30 years. We might see the first atheist US President sooner than the loonies think...

In Australia, we had a self-declared atheist Prime Minister, a red-head unmarried lass living in "sin" with her hairdresser boyfriend, who had to make concession to the religious mobs in her own political party — but had the great presence of mind to launch a Royal Commission into Sexual Abuses in Institutions, especially Churches. Cardinal Pell is in prison due to this important, but painful for many, Commission. 

But now we stupid Aussies have inherited — by default of paucity of intelligence in a right-wing political party that deceptively call itself Liberal when it’s a full blown CONservative outfit — a religious Pentecostal idiot running the roost, in charge of slowly destroying many years of secular gains, including social health, decent support for the underprivileged — as well as dismantling public broadcasting bit by bit — a package of nasty feats that would send Dreher in raptures. 

But these are transient shifts, to and fro movements, towards full-on secularity for which we need to defend social justice and public institutions. We need to do this to "change the world” properly, rather than hang on to bad interpretations of the fantasisticalmulchlick bible, as a moral rotten crutch…  

For the USA, a full secular system is somewhat a hard proposition as the Constitution of “god and guns”, is badly interpreted in regard to “militias” and freedom of religion. The present younger generation might prove to be the educated secularists of the future, full of sciences as they should be, if religious farts like Rod Dreher don’t interfere (but they will)... More crap from Rod:


SJWs are conquering institutions everywhere, none as thoroughly, or as consequentially, as the university. They have succeeded in causing institutions to treat their beliefs as knowledge, writes James Lindsay in that Areo essay. More:

Social Justice is an application of postmodern philosophy, we must remember. That means that Social Justice is a moral tribe whose central fascination is power and how it can shape society. And its agenda has never been secret: it is openly to remake society according to its aims and “theories.” This means that Social Justice is a collection of moral tribes, whose primary agenda is its own institutionalization, and they’ve made the universities not only into their cathedrals but also, in something of an ironic throwback, into their seminaries. By seeking to conquer educational institutions first, Social Justice has effected a social and cultural coup that religious hardliners have only been able to dream about for most of the past century.

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Not content with his little toy train set, Rod Dreher is soon appalled at the pagan/Christian mix of Pope Francis, under the poison of “liberalism”, as one of the commentators says. 
(https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/catholicism-antichristic-church/) 


Yes Christianity is cracking at the seams, the Catholics are trying to salvage a dialogue with non-believers, like they did during the Renaissance to steal their thunder and adopt their sciences, like they had done earlier with the Santa Claus celebrations. 

Meanwhile the singing/right-arm-raising entertaining Pentecostals are adopting capitalistic mantras in order to catch the rich kids with lasered delusions of Lady Gaga's eternity on their iPhones — and the Benedicts (Dreher's) are isolating themselves in trenches and bunkers, awaiting for the liberal modernity to pass.

The “liberal modernity" isn’t going away. It might take softer tones and reduce anger, but It can only grow into a better social humanistic system in which god is a big fat zero. 

Religion and secularity still ebb and flow, though with various intensities brought by the personnel’s ability to sell the idiotic “original sin” or the concept of reasonable “social justice” to the poor and the oppressed — the tribes Dreher so carelessly derides like the deplorables of Hillary... In the end the ludicrous religious idea will vanish as it should, replaced by a flexibility of secular choices. It’s unavoidable. It’s part of human evolution into the 22nd century.

It’s painful, going to be painful, but rewarding...

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GL
Local bugman