There is no hiding the fact that the United States is on a campaign to convert Latin America away from Catholicism to Evangelical Protestantism in what may be called "Religious Colonialism", as opposed to military or economic colonialism. It is already established, for example, that Brazil has now, or will soon, become a Protestant majority country that is losing its Catholic character. This trend can be witnessed all across Latin America and Africa, and to a lesser extent in Europe and Asia.
The repercussions of such a shift are enormous. For example, if the Latin American migrants to the US have been converted prior to their arrival, then they'll swell the ranks of the extremist Evangelical Protestants once they enter the country. This will also mitigate the fear that WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) have of losing their own demographic dominance, as it is projected that by 2050 they will no longer be the majority but merely the largest minority group.
In Brazil, a sizable voting block behind Fascist extremist Jair Bolsonaro was the Evangelicals, as we saw them on television raising hands to the sky and swiveling their hips in their way of "worshiping", and denouncing the moderate Lula Da Silva as the "devil". In the US, the bulk of southern Evangelicals stands behind Donald Trump's populist platform. He tells them that he is going to restore America's "glory", a word he borrows from the Evangelical dictionary. He, in fact, moved his embassy to Jerusalem and recognized the city as Israel's capital in line with the Evangelicals' aspiration to see the Hebrew State welcome the return of Christ and bring about Armageddon, at which time, unfortunately for the radical extremist Jewish Israelis who are allied with them, the Evangelicals' current love for Jews would come to an end if the latter do not 'finally' admit Christ as the Messiah.
These days politics has become enmeshed with religion. As the liberal political order that developed after World War II is eroding around the world, people resort to religion and religious conservatism to find a sense of certainty. It is the history of humanity: Religion is a universal implement of all human cultures, and "culture" in its broadest meaning is itself an escapist but futile way to assuage our disgruntlement in the face of our mortality. Our brain needs answers to all it sees in its environment, and the most profound angry question humans have always pondered is the one directed at our mortality. Our brain doesn't understand why we must die, so it invents fantasy stories to alleviate this anger, and these stories are what we call "religion" and by extension "culture". When science provides the facts for a reasonable answer, humans abandon the magical explanations of religion. In the Middle Ages, people attributed the Plague to God's dissatisfaction with human conduct. Today, we no longer attribute epidemics to God's wrath; we know it is the bacterium Yersinia pestis causing the plague or the SARS-CoV-2 virus for the Covid pandemic.
That is why Pharaohs erected their entire civilization around the notion of continuing life in the afterlife. The only function of mummification and pyramid building was to ensure the immortality of the concerned. Christianity offers "eternal life" and "resurrection", and Islam promises paradise and postmortem life, in exchange for faith. Humans cannot fathom why they have to die. Of all other living beings on earth, we live beyond our biological means. Sex is no longer strictly for reproduction (as it is in biological terms), it is now a cultural phenomenon: the search for pleasure. When an animal is irremediably sick, we "put it down humanely", but we deny an irremediably sick human the same "humane" treatment because we can't accept that a human dies. Religion makes us sacred beings, when the reality is that we are no more sacred than any other animal or plant. We are born by biology, and even though we reject our death, we always end up dying because our biology fails, even when the drive to death is cultural or religious. A soldier who dies in the battlefield was motivated by his love of country (cultural), but he dies only because his body fails from an injury (biological). In sum, "human culture" is a pile of horse manure and magical illusions destined to blind us to our mortality. Everyone wants to be remembered long after they're dead: Mad generals, artists, kings and queens "by the grace of God"; we all try to leave behind us something to be remembered by. The reality is that some day on this earth there will be another dominant species that wouldn't even know that the human species once existed. Our destiny is oblivion. Life has no purpose. Better accept it, live with it and enjoy it while it lasts. It brings a sense of liberation and weightlessness.
In the Christian religion, the Catholic Church always lags behind scientific developments: It first rejects them, then slowly comes around to accepting them. Is the Earth at the center of the world (geocentrism) and is it flat? The Church killed people for believing otherwise. Is evolution by natural selection the mechanism by which humans came to be? It took the Catholic Church 100 years to state in its typical convoluted language that "evolution by natural selection is not incompatible with the teachings of the Church".
The Evangelical Protestants, who ought to be more liberal than the Catholics since they originated in a more rational view of the Christian religion with the reform of the 1500s, have become the most backwardly conservative. They endorse autocratic dictators and have allied themselves with the most fanatic groups of the apartheid state of Israel. They are constantly debating matters that really belong in the domain of the fantastic, not unlike the recent generation of Hollywood movies with superheroes and science fiction, all based on the garbage fiction of the bible: End of times, Armageddon, the Apocalypse, Antichrist, etc. Every decade or so, a southern US preacher declares that God has whispered in his ear a specific date for the end of the world, but then nothing of the sort happens.
Looking at the trajectory that religion has taken from the earliest human civilizations to our time, there clearly is a vector of a numerical reduction in the numbers of gods. It begins in earlier cultures with thousands of gods everywhere (rocks, soil, plants, stars, etc.), a number which then shrunk to a few hundreds of gods during the Bronze Age and the Greco-Roman period, to one god in monotheistic Egypt and Hebrew Palestine... and I let you project where it is going nowadays. But as struggling religions fight this trend, they go through upheavals, dissent, and lots of ups and downs, and extreme reactionary postures. The most caricatural manifestation of such a convulsion is the Southern Evangelicals of the Southern United States in the area known as the "Bible Belt".
To help you understand (if at all possible) the rubbish with which religious conservatives are trying to buck the trend of advancing reason, science and technology, here are some Christian theological terms and their definitions which I received by e-mail from a linguistic source (whose name I cannot recall).
eschatology [ĕs'kə-tŏl'ə-jē] 1844, from Gk. eskhatos "last, furthest, remote." - As a theological term it means the study of "last things," i.e. death, judgment, heaven, and hell.
parousia [pär'ū-sē'ə, pə-rū'zē-ə] -A Greek term that means "arrival" or "coming." It is usually used to mean the Second Coming of Christ.
Millennium [mə-lĕn'ē-əm] from L. mille "thousand" + annus "year," hence a period of 1,000 years. - In Christian theology it denotes a period of 1,000 years during which Christ rules on Earth, a golden age, a time of universal peace.
Amillennialism - The "a" is a negative. This is the teaching that there is no literal 1,000 year reign of Christ as referenced in Revelation 20. Instead, it teaches that we are in the Millennium now. At the end of this millennium Christ will return. The final judgment will take place and the heavens and the earth will then be destroyed and remade.
Antichrist - a figure who opposes God. The word is used to describe a spirit of rebellion against God. Taken literally it refers to a specific future person who actively opposes Christ. He is able to perform miracles. Some believe he will be an incarnation of Satan. Christ will defeat him in a final battle.
Armageddon [är'mə-gĕd'n] - the battle in which Christ destroys Satan, hence any complete disaster resulting in the end of the world.
Tribulation - a seven-year interval when a world religious-political leader called the Antichrist takes power.
Rapture - from Medieval Latin raptura, "seizure, rape, kidnapping" from Latin raptus "a carrying off." An eschatological event in which "true Christians" are caught up in the air to meet the returning Christ.
NOTE: There is disagreement as to whether the "Rapture" will take place before, after, or during the "Tribulation."
Historical Premillennialism - a belief held by a large percentage of Christians during the first three centuries of Christianity. It is the belief that the Antichrist appears on earth and sets off the seven-year Tribulation. At the end of the seven years Christ comes, the saved are "raptured," and his Church rules the Earth for a Millennium. During this thousand years of peace the faithful live in Jerusalem, occupying spiritual bodies. After this period, all people are judged. The faithful will spend eternity on a new earth, not in heaven.
NOTE: After Christianity became the official religion of Rome in the fourth century CE, this belief was declared a heresy and suppressed. The belief reappeared in the 19th century and, with several variations, has again become widespread.
Post-millennialism [pōst'mə-lĕn'ē-ə-lĭz'əm] - the belief that Jesus established the Kingdom of God in the first century and that we are already in the Millennium (not an exact 1,000 years, but "a very long time"). The Second Coming will occur after (post) this current Millennium.
Pre-millennialism [prē'mĭ-lĕn'ē-ə-lĭz'əm] (1844) - the belief that the Millennium lies in the future. Christ will come, bind Satan and his helpers, and rule over a peaceful earth for 1,000 years. At the end of that time Christ will release Satan and his angels who will raise an army which Jesus will destroy in the Battle of Armageddon. The Last Judgment will occur and a new heaven and new earth created.
No comments:
Post a Comment