Faith, Politics, and the Satanic Panic Part 2

My first post in this series was meandering and probably confusing. Part of the reasons for that is I don’t have an editor so whatever I publish is what gets published, but also I was rehashing some things I hadn’t thought about in a while. To simplify the most important points were:

1. American Politics has always had a religious dimension to it, primarily Evangelical in nature

2. That religious dimension is in part geographic

3. Northern Evangelicals saw their religious devotion as primarily other centered in that the gospel was supposed to transform everything around them not just themselves

4. Southern Evangelicals saw their religious devotion as primarily self or inward centered in that the gospel was supposed to transform themselves and not necessarily the world around them

5. This is part of the explanation for why black slavery lasted so much longer in the South and why Southerners have historically been resistant to “wokeness” and why northerners always define “wokeness” and then tend to be subsumed by it

6. Here wokeness is short hand for imposed moral standards based upon cultural trends, not the current woke standards concerning critical race theory and lgbtq ideology, but rather the general Yankee tendency to be on the cutting edge of cultural morality. It’s easy to be on the cutting edge when you’re defining the cutting edge

That summation I think makes it clear why the Southern Tradition is more doctrinally or traditionally Christian than the North. Another way to say it is that the Puritans turned New England into atheist homophiles and actual Christians kept the South actually Christian, and this distinction was in part why slavery was able to last longer. Not that Christianity is a religion of slavery but that Christianity isn’t as interested in the transformation of society as the transformation of the individual within the Church.

Another way to say this is that real Christianity is not Post-Millenial. A postmillenial church would seek to impose Christianity upon the nations for their good. Whereas Pre-millenial Christianity (Jurgen Moltman argued rightly in my opinion that amillenialism was functionally or ecclesiastically the same as premillenialism) seeks to save souls instead of society. The Puritan wants to Purify everything (postmillenial) whereas The Anglican wants to be a Christian Disciple within the nearly 2,000 year old tradition of Christianity that is identifiably English, and via that tradition seek Christ in the Sacraments of the Church. The Puritan is going to bend society to Christ, The Anglican is going to invite individuals into the Church.

These are caricatures of course. There were many wonderful puritans and many horrible Anglicans. Sadly Episcopalianism has become the most “Puritanical” form of American Christianity today due to its absolute adherence and imposition of contemporary wokeness upon America. And Southern Baptists have taken the genuine Christian elements of Puritanism and incorporated them somewhat successfully into a mostly doctrinally correct Christianity. Though the SoBaps recent debacles with the Nicene Creed is not a good sign, especially since they really can’t affirm the Creed without serious caveats. It’s one thing to not be sure if you affirm the Nicene Creed, it’s another thing to know you can’t affirm the central Creed of real Christianity…I’m not really sure where the SoBaps are on that currently since I’m not one anymore, but I do know that the SoBap confession of faith is incompatible with the Nicene Creed in a few very important ways so they can’t actually affirm it, even if they wanted to.

In any case it seems to me that the Christian method of societal transformation is incredibly slow and peaceful because it isn’t actually about the transformation of society. God will renew all things in his time, even the rocks and rats will be saved in some sense. But the dispensation of the Church, its job is to make disciples and baptize them into the trinitarian life of God. Our job is not social justice. A slave can become a Christian Disciple fully and completely while remaining a slave, he doesn’t need to have his phsyical chains broken to follow Jesus completely. Now can a slave master be a fully and complete Christian Disciple and not see the injustice of slavery? That is a much more complicated question, and this is why Christianity did away with slavery in a way that no other ideology ever has. Paul doesn’t impose it upon the early church but he does set up a theology that will eat away at the immoral structures that uphold slavery. The gathering that Jesus started is a place where slaves and slave masters are fully welcome as they are, but they will not relate to each other in exactly the same way as they did in the world. In Jesus they are one. And this is what ultimately destroyed overt Slavery.

Will the Church accomplish justice if it disciples people? Yes. Has it? More than any other human institution the church has accomplished actual moral progress. Not Whiggish progress based around changing goal posts, but actual progress towards God’s kingdom coming on earth. But it’s always done this most successfully by not making that its goal. Slavery became unthinkable in the west because of Christianity and then the moral crusades took place.

I may be wrong about all this, but this is the story as it I see it and I’m sticking to this until someone can show me otherwise. Yes the Prophets speak of Justice, but I also think that Israel and the Church are distinct dispensations that are part of a continuum within God’s kingdom. Part of the reason Israel failed to be the light of the world was that a nation can’t accomplish what the Holy Spirit can with the church amongst the nations. The story of redemption isn’t arbitrary it’s based in reality and the deep magic of creation order, and sadly the disorder of the fall.

But back to our cliff hanger from last time about NAR. The New Apostolic Reformation represents a new challenge to the traditional christian worldview especially as regards societal transformation. For those that don’t know what NAR is, it is many things, but its single greatest identifier is the claim that Apostles are essential to the continuation of the Church. This is new in the sense that the Church has never thought that the actual office of Apostle continued after the Apostles. The Bishops were set up as their successors and traditional Christianity has always seen that the succession of the Apostles’ ministry continued through the Episcopacy (the Bishops). Traditional Christianity recognizes a three tiered ministry structure within the church that replicates to some degree and imitates the Aaronic Priesthood. Israel had the High Priests, Priests, and Levites. The Church has Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. NAR claims that over Bishops (though I don’t think NAR peeps consistently recognize the threefold ministry) there are Apostles. They are not restorationists, in the sense that they think the church fell away from Apostles and now has them again, but rather they think there’s a trail of Apostles going all the way back to the Apostles. They just weren’t called Apostles. But for instance Augustine, Athanasius, Francis, or Luther could’ve been apostles. They are to some degree identifiable within Church history. But for NAR they are definetely there whether we see them or not.

NAR gets into much more bizarre things than this. Certain NAR apostles are actually pushing what can only be understood as magic. Just look at the Physics of Heaven by Franklin and Davis. And the Passion “translation” is an essential part of NAR. It’s not a translation, it is a paraphrase that adds significant theological content, almost always involving the Holy Spirit and Charismatic ideas. The author of the Passion translation also thought at one point that God was going to give him the 22nd chapter to the book of John. He’d just been hanging onto it in Heaven this whole time but he was going to give it to Brian Simmons because it was time I guess. BTW John didn’t have chapters and verses (in the modern sense) until like 700 years ago, so the idea that there’s just a chapter of John sitting in Heaven is inherently stupid. That’s also not how the Christian idea of inspiration works. We’re not Muslims, we don’t think God holds these texts in Heaven then drops them like a bomb.

The Passion translation needs to be seen as inherently spiritually dangerous for these reasons, and so does NAR. I attend a Charismatic Anglican church. I have no problem with Charismatic theology or ideas, those mostly Originate in Scripture and have expressions throughout church history in various ways to some degree. NAR isn’t dangerous because they’re Charismatic. They’re dangerous because their inherent signifiers aren’t identifiably Christian.

Every NARish person I’ve ever met was wonderful. But I can say the same about Mormons and Muslims. I’ve never met a NAR person I didn’t like, and I’ve also never met a Mormon or Muslim I didn’t like. NAR is full of very nice people, many of whom don’t have any idea what NAR even is. They just go to a Mega Church that is connected to NAR. So don’t go looking for NAR peeps and assuming they aren’t Christian. Church history is full of weird movements that died away, NAR will almost certainly disappear in the near future. But its doing a lot of damage right now. But most people attending NAR churches are normal Christians they just probably aren’t the most theologically literate. But that’s true of many Christians. What I’m saying is NAR peeps need love not hate, just like everybody else. I will say this most NAR people I’ve met are genuine prayer warriors and I ask them to intercede for me. Jesus found powerful faith among the Gentiles, just because NAR people are off on some weird things doesn’t mean they aren’t Disciples of the Way.

But NAR is applicable to this series of posts because of the political implications of NAR, not just the wacky theology. They believe in the Seven Mountain mandate. The seven mountains are spheres of influence within society. Religion, the family, Media arts, etc. They think Christians are called to infiltrate these things and make them about Christ and thereby essentially disciple the world.

Which American geographical position does NAR occupy then? Cleary the Yankee one. They sound like Puritans more than Anglicans. They think it is their job to literally disciple The Nations. That make disciples of every ethnoi or people group, but actually bring The Nations themselves to Christ. Sounds like the Battle Hymn of the Republic to me.

And the central moral issue within the American scene is of course abortion, just like it was slavery. And of course I agree that the way abortion is practiced in this country has been incredibly barbaric and immoral. Just like I agree that black slavery was immoral and often barbaric. But I don’t think the way America ended our slavery was successful or just. It only compounded the problems and made life worse for a lot of black and white Americans. Making an entire political movement around imposing our view of abortion upon people has not been successful. It has only lead to entrenched ideology and extremism on both sides.

And if you’ve tracked with any of that so far, next time we’ll get back to more Satanic Panic stuff and of course Trump. The Orangeman worms his way into everything these days. It’s tiring but necessary to deal with him and his relationship to NAR and moral panics.