The U.S.-Mexico border fence, erected the same year the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, poignantly symbolizes the social architecture of division that defines our world… .The border wall reminds us that there have always been two Americas: one of inclusion and one of exclusion. The former has found expression in the ideal of liberty and justice for all, and has been realized whenever Indian treaties were honored, civil rights embraced, huddled masses yearning to be free welcomed, or child labor laws passed. The latter was articulated in a Constitution that originally enfranchised only white landed males, and has been consolidated through land grabs, Jim Crow segregation, Guilded Age economic stratification, restrictive housing covenants, and laws precluding gay marriage. These two visions of America continually compete for our hearts and minds, not least in our churches. The America of inclusion is the only hope for democracy; the America of exclusion, as Lincoln’s ultimatum about a house divided warned 150 years ago, is unsustainable.
Hypocrites who adore rule-by-oligarchy violate the fundamental principles of Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek and the entire conservative wing of mainstream economics, who all maintain that economic decisions are best made when we maximize the number of participants who get to know and participate in a basically flat and fair and open market. (And the same competitive-accountability principle applies in democracy and science.)
Human history thus becomes the kaleidoscopic reflection of a thousand variations of this kind of ‘knowledge of good and evil,’ with human activity characterized by wars and interpersonal hostilities based upon each side’s claimed possession of the ‘good,’ along with a labeling of the other side as evil. Utopian schemes, dictatorships, and even democracies will distinguish their own brands of good and evil, and seek to create the good society by eliminating evil-doers who threaten to pervert the structure. All over the planet human beings will gather themselves into associations large and small, defined by their perception of ‘good’ and characterized by attempts, both crass and subtle, to exclude the evil other. All of this will be experienced as what we call ‘morality,’ which is a function of the fall into rivalrous desire.
You cannot know things if you don’t first of all grant them a foundational respect, if you don’t love them before you grab them with your mind. This is surely what Genesis warns us against from the beginning, in archetypal Eden: you’ll eat voraciously from that forbidden tree of knowledge before you know how to respect and honor what you are eating, which creates very entitled and proud people. All of life becomes a commodity for our consumption.
And my great fear is that American Orthodoxy will do what American Catholicism and American Protestantism have both done, which is successfully migrate into the native lands and thus, in typical American fashion, just through sheer advertising – barbarous, clodhopping, capitalist marketing – will start corrupting the way the Orthodox elsewhere think. In fact there is evidence it’s already happening. American Catholicism is a joke. But it’s hugely influential. In this country we have movements of Catholicism that nowhere else in the world can flourish, because they are so insanely fantastic. We have right-wing Catholicism in this country that openly calls for a world empire of the Pope, the new integralism, which would be executing blasphemers, outlawing certain faiths, taking the vote away from Jews and Muslims, religious minorities, taking the vote away from women. Where else in the world would you have a fascist Catholicism promoting itself so widely because a group of idiot Americans fell in love with Franco? But they have money, they have influence, and so what starts out as the sort of regular, cartoonish, comical, typically American, blundering reinvention of every religion that enters this land starts spreading abroad, just through the influence of money and publicity – and then one day you see people in France, conservative Catholics, reading American integralists seriously. I do fear something similar happening with Orthodoxy. The brute power of money should never be underestimated, it can corrupt anything. And the love of money, I’ve heard, is the root of many evils. That sounded very anti-American of me. Sorry. But I’m serious about this. Christianity has never succeeded in planting itself in America. Our religion is a kind of Orphic post-Christian mystery religion based on wealth, power and one’s personal relationship with a kind of gnostic Jesus.
Evangelicalism is one the most hated religious sects in America, and they only have themselves to blame. Not that they care. Evangelicals have a persecution complex like no other. Forty years ago, the late Jerry Falwell, started the Moral Majority. Its purpose was to turn America back to God by waging a war against our culture. This war has now reached a fever pitch. As more and more people self identify as atheists, agnostics, or indifferent towards organized religion, Evangelicals fear that they are losing their hold on our culture. Instead of praying, evangelizing sinners, and doing good works, Evangelicals have turned to attacking those they oppose, both physically (the January 6 Insurrection) and with words.
The folkish-minded man, in particular, has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making people stop just talking superficially of God’s will, and actually fulfil God’s will, and not let God’s word be desecrated. For God’s will gave men their form, their essence and their abilities. Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the Lord’s creation, the divine will.
People are dying unnecessarily, and it’s a crime, with a list of suspects that shouldn’t surprise anyone: Fox News talking heads attacking medical experts, Republican lawmakers stirring doubt about vaccines and social media companies allowing vaccine disinformation to overwhelm sound medical advice.
mitchwagner
