Seeing Threats from the Wrong Direction

A while back I saw an article about something called the Benedictine option and learned it was a topic of fairly wide discussion. As I understand it, the option is the notion that  Christians are or will be at risk in an increasingly secular world and should form or retreat into tight local communities patterned at least somewhat after the monasticism of the Middle Ages to protect themselves and survive.  That strikes me as at least odd if not  paranoid and perhaps  a result of the  thread of  sadomasochistic fascination with or even yen for persecution and abuse that runs through the history and legends of Christianity in general and the Catholic church in particular. 

There is evidence people overall in  America are becoming more secular in their viewpoints. However that does not put  Christianity or Christians  in danger.  Secular people can  disagree with or disapprove of Christian doctrine and dogmas without being threatening or hostile  to Christians.  (Some American  leftists are vigorously hostile to American  Christians, but this is less an attack on the religion as such than an instance of a general hostility to things seen as typically American – whether free speech, cool cars and trucks,  hamburgers and cokes, pioneers and cowboys,  George Washington, suburban homes,  the Declaration and the Constitution, self-reliance,  SUVs, Thomas Edison, displaying the flag, can-do and go-getter attitudes, guns for self defense, ornery and defiant skepticism about officials and politicians, or something else too American for them. The crush on Islam many on the left have developed  is evidence for this.  It seems likely that if a majority of the citizens of the country they despise practiced Buddhism, they would  be attacking  Buddhists while ignoring Christians.)

In this country people with different opinions on religion have been and are able to  get along tolerantly with each other. Many secular people see benefits in religion. Some agree with Benjamin Franklin that while the idea of an individual providence is false, it serves a useful purpose in leading people without the interest or ability for serious thinking on matters of ethics to behave better than they would otherwise.  Many appreciate the teachings of the churches on things such as respecting the lives and property of others and taking care of one’s family.  Most, as far as I can tell, are content to mind their own business and  have no interest in forcing their opinions on others or harming Christians.  An increasingly secular society  is no reason for Christians to be frightened and certainly no reason for them to head for the hills.

There is a threat  facing Americans, but it is political rather than religious in nature. The hard leftists are a threat to the lives and liberty of all of us - Christians, Jews, Buddhists, atheists, or whatever. They have made that clear explicitly, and they should be taken seriously.  In response,  to return to Franklin,  we  should all hang together –whatever our ideas on religion - to avoid being hanged separately.

Immigration and the Pope

The pope’s visit to Mexico and his criticism of Trump brought more attention to his support of massive immigration from Latin America into the United States.  Various people have speculated as to why he cares – often attributing it to his generally  leftist political opinions.  While that should not be discounted,  there is another reason that I think is important.

People these days often forget that the  papacy is and for centuries has been a political as well as a religious office.  Historically popes have been active participants in geopolitics with the goal of preserving and extending the power and domain of their office and the  Catholic church.  For the last two hundred years since Waterloo, the world’s dominant political and economic power has been a mainly protestant nation with strong liberal and secularist  components and tendencies. There is no reason to believe this is anything other than undesirable to the Catholic church.

The facts make it plain that the chances of any Catholic nation supplanting the United States in that role are effectively nil.  Without that happening the next best thing from the viewpoint of the papacy  would be to make the United States more Catholic.  Since a majority of people in Latin America are Catholics, mass immigration to the United States from Latin America would serve that purpose.  That, I think, is a natural and simple at least partial explanation for the pope’s interest in such immigration. 

Survey on Religion

A survey by the Pew organization on the religious opinions of Americans has been in the news recently. It showed around seventy one percent of American adults identifying themselves as Christians (representing a decline in the last few years), about twenty three percent of adult Americans identifying themselves as not affiliated with any religious organization (representing an increase in the last few years), around two percent identifying themselves as Jews, less than one percent each identifying as Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists, and the rest a mixture of  followers of all other religions and people who did not answer the question.

This poll has led to some consternation among people who believe America should be a Christian nation and some rejoicing among people who believe it should not. Besides the religious controversy, there has been a political one over the same data. Some conservatives have worried that this trend imperils the viability of America as a free republic.  They  first should notice that only around thirty  percent of the unaffiliated listed themselves as atheists or agnostics. The rest may be presumed to be people who believe a god while not believing  the doctrines of Christian theology, that is people who traditionally have been called deists ( in the very broad sense of that term). Since  some version of deism (again in the broad sense) was the religion of Paine, Jefferson,  Franklin,  and probably Washington and Lincoln, conservatives would  have a hard task in presenting   it convincingly  as un-American or incompatible with the nation’s traditions.

There is a more important error with these concerns, however. There is no reason to believe atheists, agnostics, or followers of non-Christian religions cannot be committed to the values and liberties of the republic, and  there is no reason to believe all Christians will be committed to those values and liberties.  Evidence has shown that neither assumption is close to  true. We should follow the wisdom and guidance of the wisest founding fathers and view people’s religion as a private matter separate from their political lives and beliefs. A friend of liberty is a friend of liberty, irrespective of his opinions on religion, and an enemy of liberty is and enemy of liberty, irrespective of his.