Religion

Patrick Deneen discovers ultracalvinism

Uh oh:

… post-Protestant “religious” secularity is the established religion of, and increasingly indistinguishable from, liberalism as a political, cultural, and social form of human organization. It was once believed by many that liberalism was a neutral political order within which a variety of beliefs could flourish—among them, Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, etc. But what is clear both as an intellectual and theological matter as well as an observable fact from many current cultural battlefields is that what Smith describes more broadly as a “sacred project” is increasingly intolerant of competitor religions, and stridently seeks their effectual elimination by “liberal” means. It does so not in the name of some amorphous and tolerant “secularism,” but in the name of the new, and increasingly established, State religion of America. What we call “secularism” isn’t simply unbelief—it is a system of belief with distinctive “theology” without God and this-worldly eschatological hope, and it demands obeisance or the judgment of blasphemy and condemnation.

Where have we heard this before?

The “ultracalvinist hypothesis” is the proposition that the present-day belief system commonly called “progressive,” “multiculturalist,” “universalist,” “liberal,” “politically correct,” etc, is actually best considered as a sect of Christianity.

Specifically, ultracalvinism (which I have also described here and here) is the primary surviving descendant of the American mainline Protestant tradition, which has been the dominant belief system of the United States since its founding. It should be no surprise that it continues in this role, or that since the US’s victory in the last planetary war it has spread worldwide.

Ultracalvinism is an ecumenical syncretism of the mainline, not traceable to any one sectarian label. But its historical roots are easy to track with the tag Unitarian. The meaning of this word has mutated considerably in the last 200 years, but at any point since the 1830s it is found attached to the most prestigious people and ideas in the US, and since 1945 in the world.

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Violence as a matter of scale

It’s interesting what happens when you see two nations, diverse and distinct as they can be, interact. A minor hostile interaction can tend to escalate very quickly if you let it. When all you have is emotions and pure instinct to go by, a slight can become a fistfight very quickly. That goes with people. Communities. Nations.

Conflict takes a lot to inspire these days, but it’s far easier to incite it as the number of people you need to provoke grows ever smaller. It’s made all the more so when you see the other as not just some other person, but as something else. If you think that Other person isn’t respecting you and your space in that moment, what do you do? Are you calm enough to let it slide? Do you run away, as some would argue here? Or do you fight?

It’s admittedly strange to compare violent conflicts of recent, especially because the reasons and methods are so diverse, and because sounds so simplistic. But applying the economics of scale, you become more appreciative of what is happening from a holistic perspective, even you don’t have a complete understanding of things. In two such conflicts, the lack of clarity makes a comparison apt. When you have two distinct groupings, clarity is beyond important when a mistake is made in interaction. Sometimes, that requires patience.

Three teenagers kidnapped and killed. Or maybe they were killed already, and the butchers had made a large mess in the clear-up. Or maybe they were kidnapped and accidentally killed. The killers are (not) state-mandated terrorists. Or they’re (not) militants associated with the government. Or they’re (not) just a bunch of morons with AK-47s and some unabashed sense of righteousness. Or the leadership admitted their (non) role in the situation.

A teenager is shot and killed. Maybe he was (not) a suspect in a robbery. Maybe he was (not) reaching for a cop’s a gun. Maybe he was (not) picking a fight. Maybe he just said (did not say) “fuck off, pig” with his hands up. The cop’s a rookie. The cop’s a veteran. The cop is (not) hiding something. The cop is (not) hiding. There are (no) death threats.

All this information is as much a jumble as the items found in a trash can. Yet we seek to answer this slight as fast we can. Why? Why bother asking? We demand justice, revenge, blood. Screw the first two words, we’ve always wanted blood. It’s one of the few things we yearn for more than sex.

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Conceptual Anarchy in Hinduism

“9.334. But to serve Brahmanas (who are) learned in the Vedas, householders, and famous (for virtue) is the highest duty of a Sudra, which leads to beatitude.” –Manu Smriti

“All your talk is of caste and creed

Is it even as natural as the spider and its web?

The four blessed Vedas, were they created by Brahma?

Is caste and creed worthwhile, ye elders of Paichalur?” -Uttiranallur Nagai

Mandana-Misra-and-AdiShankaras-debate

Hinduism is in a constant state of transformation through internal discourse and dissent. Image source.

(This post mostly consists of quotes from Manu Smriti and Medieval Hindu Bhakti poems, so if you want to skip my spiel just hit the “read more” link at the bottom.)

People in the west tend to have an odd outlook on the ethics or “doctrines” of Hinduism. In most religions, doctrine works something like this: There is a core text, or set of texts, which contain precepts. Early in the religion’s history some sages write commentaries on these. The rest of the reasoning and doctrine formation of the religion continues by referring to these sources for legitimacy. Innovations occur, but normally only if it can somehow be “textually justified.”

Certainly there is a part of the Hindu religion, which operates very similarly to this—the religion of the Brahmins. But Hinduism cannot be thought of as just that. It is the religion of all Indians, except perhaps those who explicitly decry the label, like the Buddhists, Jainsm and Sikhs (and even those divisions are sometimes blurry. Even some sects of Islam are pretty heavily syncretized.)

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The Westernization of Hinduism and its alienating consequences

“We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern,  –a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.” -Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay

“Sexual pleasure is not pleasure. Sex-pleasure is the most devitalizing and de-moralizing of pleasures. Sexual pleasure is not pleasure at all. It is mental delusion. It is false, utterly worthless, and extremely harmful.”  -Swami Sivananda Saraswati

Kali. Image Source.

An old painting of Kali in Kalighat painting style. This is a blend of traditional Bengali folk styles, and European painting. An in-between version of this scene, not as sexualized as ancient depictions, but not as tame as modern ones either.  Image Source.

Westernized or Anglicized Hinduism describes the religious system which is adhered to by most Hindus living in the United States and Britain, as well as by those in the modern Hindu urban elite, middle class, and urban working class. Essentially, any Hindu population which has experienced the impact of a modern education system for a few generations now subscribes to a Westernized variant of the belief system.

Initially I was planning on titling this piece “The Anglicization of Hinduism,” as that is what the bulk of this article pertains to, but that would entail a slight misnomer. This is because aside from morphing under British pressure, the most ancient substratum belief of the Hindu philosophical tree– namely Tantra– has been under a far longer lasting, but less severe morphing due to the influence of Vedic Brahminical tradition which arose in the Western part of the Indian subcontinent. Then, in the British period orthodox Vedic Brahmins eagerly collaborated with the colonial regime. Using it as their vehicle, both the Brahminical and Victorian worldviews, began to permeate the Hindu cultural landscape in unison.

Thus, Hinduism has been “westernized” in two senses: Recent, and rapid influence from Britain, and ancient, gradual influence from Western India. Anglicization and Sanskritization.

Basic Characteristics of Westernized Hinduism in Hindu terms: Modern, Westernized Hinduism is essentially a modified form of Advaita Vedanta, though ISKON (a dualist sect), the Brahmo Samaj, Arya Samaj, Gandhian Hinduism, and indeed nearly every major Hindu religious movement since 1800 can be characterized as Westernized Hinduism, Anglicized Hinduism, or Neo-Hinduism. It is normally highly monistic, and places an emphasis on Bhakti and/or Karma Yoga. Tantra, especially left-hand path Tantra is conspicuously absent. Most Neo-Hindus see Hinduism both as a specific religion, and also as a meta-religious framework, which encompasses all religions. The most popular text in this branch of Hinduism is the Bhagavad Gita.  More on all of this later.

Formation of Westernized Hinduism: That covers the Hindu lineage, but there is of course a Western lineage as well. it is also the product of a violent and rapid change in the Indian social order– namely the advent of British colonialism, and eventually modern capitalism. The British Raj accorded a privileged role to Christian values and Western concepts. Starting in about 1858, when the British East India Company was forced to transfer power to the British monarchy, the British began to more actively inject their civilizational model into the subcontinent. The imposition of British political institutions and laws on Indian society, the state the support of British missionaries, the state encouragement of convent education and other forms of British education, and the selection of conservative, orthodox Brahmins for use in writing and interpreting what became “Anglo-Hindu law,” and the uniform application of that law to all of Hindu society, are all examples of this sudden change in traditional Hindu society.

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Transmissions from the Hollow Earth: Expect an emergent Hip Hop traditionalism

in which a young eager ivy leaguer burnt out on history turns out timely and finally solves the mystery of timecube.com (Hi Mom!)

Race as Spiritual Technology:

Marxism has been fermenting for long enough in the more well-concealed crooks of windows of the cathedral, generally out of eyeshot for all but the tallest, and of absolutely no merit during the putrefactio stage: like so many hermetically-sealed vessels of cheap solipisitic, Kool-Aid-imitative substance, those who attempted to taste the prison hooch before enough time had elapsed, digging up the orchard promptly found themselves catching brewer’s sickness.  Other than those lost their minds, faith, or life if they weren’t lucky enough to come back akathesiac, catatonic-neurotic husks of the men they were to their families, busted road signs to their home towns down so many stretches of politically contested highway, these remnants of the vanguard, finalists in the ceremonial rites of the intoxication olympics, strive to deliver, uninterrupted pieces of time from the outer rim, indivisible in and of themselves and integral only as virtual energy, must like the conservation of the angular velocity of an orbiting electron briefly excited is suddenly apparently replaced (if we’re being crudely mechanical)  In reality, there were three things, the beginning, middle, and end of an indivisible moment: excitation, acceleration, sudden-indelible-intensive-return-transformation.

Hip-hop is, ultimately an undertaking on the order of magnitude of permitting and preventing, affirming and denying holocausts

If the invisible hand (the real one, the grabby junky one that’s not so good with money) can be made to loosen its grip on the central form on the potters wheel.  But know that, as long as the matter is sufficiently fluid, lassitude of grip can only serve to keep (You/The Author/The Artist) utterly from deciding, where this matter will not go.

Only after relapse is prevented, discipline elapses sufficiently; now the moment of inertia of the incipient res can be roughly fixed in the sense of the artist.  Fluid must be fully integrated into the medium for catastrophe to subside.  Operations can not be performed in a state of catastrophe.  Substance can finally learn how to begin to express its new trust to the author, in his essential motivation as the author to catch her as gravity begins to exert an entirely different effect, as the short term collapses into the present and the concrete future stretches into teleovirtual conformity with the attractor eidos.

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mosul-church-bells-silenced

Neoconservative Christians and the crisis in Iraq

Artur Rosman asks hawkish Catholics to take stock of the devastation in Iraq:

There were actually major centers of Christianity in both North Africa and the Middle East–regions presently exclusively associated with Islam. These regions were eventually decimated by the rise of Islam and its clashes with the West and Byzantium. What we are seeing today is not the beginning of the end for this region’s Christianity. It’s more like the end of the end. …

What’s become apparent is how much the presumption for force ultimately failed to take a very complex situation into consideration.

As I remember it, sometime in 2003 or 2004 both Paul Griffiths and Stanley Hauerwas (author of War and the American Difference: Reflections on Violence and National Identity) ultimately gave up their associations with First Things, because their presumption against war, in line with John Paul II, was marginalized by the journal.

The Christians of the Middle East are now paying the price.

But they’re not the only ones paying the price, because Neo-Conservatism also has a monopoly upon the anti-abortion position, which continues to lose its luster as it is associated exclusively with that political group.

He’s broached a difficult subject for some people, and while I can’t speak to First Things (though I am a reader and enjoyer of it), as another concerned critic of the empire, given recent events, I feel compelled to add similar thoughts.

Recently, I had written a longer piece on the sordid behavior of the Episcopal Church, now the clerical wing of the Democratic Party, with the head of the National Episcopal Health Ministries promising to help implement Obamacare and getting a fellowship at the Center for American Progress, controversial gay bishop Gene Robinson getting a Daily Beast column and the requisite CAP fellowship as well, and our nation’s chief law enforcement officer, an Episcopalian, takes up pet progressive legal crusades while property across the country is confiscated by judicial fiat and turned over to ailing, left-wing rump congregations.

For mostly personal reasons, I decided to pull it — my family attends one of the breakaway Anglican parishes whose appeal was denied by the Supreme Court in March. Rather more sensitively, the piece also raised the fact that a number of the key participants in the Anglican realignment, (which I support entirely for reasons above) were involved in the neoconservative project or publicly supported the second Iraq invasion. Mort Kondracke, Ken Starr, and Fred Barnes, for example, who were in a Bible study with the rector of the Falls Church and the former chaplain of the Redskins. The latter, Jerry Leachman (whom Brit Hume has named a mentor), is married to Holly Leachman, named by Hillary Clinton in one of her books as a sort of liaison to the Fellowship, the civil religion pseudo-ministry that puts on the National Prayer Breakfast.

One could go on. The American Anglican Council, which filed the complaint against the presiding bishop just after the Supreme Court’s decision, has close ties to the neoconservative Institute on Religion and Democracy, which grew out of the Scoop Jackson wing of the Democratic Party, in part to be a counterweight to the thoroughly leftist World Council of Churches. One of its founders was a Schachtmanite. The AAC’s president sits on the IRD’s board, along with Barnes, a longtime member of the Falls Church who left in 2009 for one of its plants, and wrote a Wall Street Journal column about it. The IRD’s former president Diane Knippers was a parishioner at Truro, another breakaway Virginia church, until her death from cancer in 2005. In the mid-2000s, the IRD was telling Christians to shut up about the war in Iraq.

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