A beclowned history of a powerful term & review of an important book.
If you are new to the Band, this post is an introduction to the point of this blog that needs updating. Older posts are in the archive on the right. Shorter occult posts and other topics have menu pages above.
Comments are welcome, but moderated for obvious reasons. If you don't see it right away, don't worry. We check and it will be up there.
Something a bit different than the usual themes, but not unrelated. We recently came upon a book by a reality-facing author on a timely subject. It’s called Churchianity, a powerhouse neologism that we've used in the past as well. We'd originally planned this for the Band's Substack. Until the metaphysics project relaunched, the shorter posts over there are what we can manage. However this sprawled into an look into the history of “churchianity” and how it fits the House of Lies. Combine that with the review and the length made The Band the better venue. Good to get some activity here as well.
The Substack, if interested.
Why a review. Lots of interesting things pass by without comment. The Band's Christianity is no secret but not usually a posting subject. Not by calculated choice as much as where our public-facing interests lie. It does mean readers include lots of non-Christians and non-Westerners in general. Clown World being an equal-opportunity oppressor. But churchianity is where full-blown Clown World and the institutions of Christianity met not-so-cute.
One needn’t share our beliefs to observe that the ecclesiastic inversion del Arroz traces is a big part of the House of Lies. The same pattern we can see in education, health, entertainment, media, etc. All pillars of what had been a stable and prosperous socio-culture.
And given how important Christianity was to the organic West, this is relevant to anyone concerned about Clown World and after.
Our interest in this is no secret. The socialization/oral history posts on Substack look at the metastasis of the House of Lies into full-blown Clown World from a personal perspectivd. But that’s because Gen X was there to witness what really went down. This is different.
Look back. The title word "churchianity isn’t common, but has an interesting history. Windows into a forming, pre-House of Lies beast system. Worlds that had faded from view by the time we stumbled into the back wall of our The Truman Show in the late 80s. Reborn from old books to seem quaint, tragic, and informative at the same time.
Obviously Clown World had to come from somewhere, but it’s different to actually see the evidence. It’s interesting that convergence and corruption had been problems in the churches for a long time. Worth remembering when waxing too poetic about the before times. And also how much more instinctively moral society was. Readers know moral entropy refers to the socio-cultural degeneration that happens without constant effort opposite. Perks of a Fallen world. This gets blatant though when we observe directly how [deviating from Christ’s message] changed over not really that long of a time.
The introduction to Churchianity was written by Vox Day, the first person we saw use the term. That’s relevant, because Day, del Arroz, and The Band all understand “churchianity” to mean more or less the same thing.
The replacement of “Christ” as known through the Bible with manmade churches as the central focus of Christian life.
It’s important to be clear here, because the word does have quite a long life. One worth a quick look for what it reveals about the nature of the beast system. The basic idea of [church] replacing [Christ] is consistent, but how that’s framed differs a lot.
According to DeepSeek, the oldest known use of the word “churchianity” comes from the late 18th century. It’s a portmanteau of “church” and “Christianity” historically used to criticize overemphasis on the institution of the church. The sources it gives are incorrect, but it’s a start. There's an interesting overlap with another Substack theme - chats with DeepSeek about AI and its implications. Hallucinations and errors have been a recent topic, but it's not just generative AIs. Google's search functions have cratered from their already heavily manipulated "standard".
According to the OED, "churchianity" first appears in 1770, in a piece by a J. O. published in Newcastle by T. Saint titled Animadversions upon Pamphlet entitled Earnest & Affectionate Address to Methodists.
DeepSeek didn't catch this one, and a date-restricted Google Books keyword search missed it too. A Google Books copy did turn up with a direct title search based on the OED reference, and the page number proved correct. The position here is quite Puritanical in a literal sense.
This is clerical doctrine and the very essence of churchianity!
J.O. is arguing is against entertainments or pleasurable diversions from a Christ-focused life of any kind. The “churchian” position is defined as the one that allows for a break from constant devotional focus.
It's common for the various enemies of organized Christianity - from charismatics to occultists - to call it "churchian". This differs from del Arroz' and my own use. Christian congregations are important. But they can't contradict the word of Jesus in the Bible.
The basic split between a Christ-centric, spiritual Christianity and a church-centric worldly churchianity was visible in the 18th century. Anf J. O. isn't just an obscure one-off. The second quote listed in the OED is from Samuel Parr (1747-1825), a much more historically notable figure.
Curiously, DeepSeek did provide Parr's quote as the earliest appearance of “churchianity” and dated it to 1789. Further research showed Parr claimed to have stated it in 1789, but the OED is correct that it first was published in volume one of Johnstone’s 1828 biography. This makes it difficult to confirm the accuracy without immense research into period sources. But it does suggest a life for the term at the time that the publication record might not reflect. The amount of old material that's been scanned is a godsend for independent researchers. But the ease of access is a bit deceiving. It's not hard to think of pages from the 18th-century onscreen like modern websites. Usable information coming up in searches. The reality is we have orders of magnitude better access to their written culture than they did. Making it simple to view their use of information as akin to ours.
William Artaud, Dr. Samuel Parr, before 1804, oil on canvas, Warwickshire Museum
The "Whig Johnson" appears very much a product of English society like the more famous Samuel. There's nothing in his written work that commands attention unless personally interested in the period. But in his time was hyper-connected and politically influential.
It's not for his ornamental value. Though to be fair, I can't comment on Artaud's virtues as a portraitist. Which is the point. Pre-modern art and writing is at our fingertips in a historically unprecedented way. This painting took 30 seconds to find. Searchable full text of his written work about a minute.
The eighteenth century wasn't saturated in words and images like our culture. The NPCs may be moving in a pre-literate direction, but that's more ironic than anything. The idea that [all the information is there], that "fact checking" is a matter of clicks, would be shocking to a Parr or a J.O. Books were expensive and libraries small. It's one of the things that helped form a the canons that shape the high end of a culture. Way more literate people read the same things. And way less stuff got "into print". What I'm doing - writing for <1000 readers on a regular basis - was extremely difficult. Then consider how many people are writing for small groups on the internet...
The point is that searching for word frequency in premodernity is different from the present. Now we can track global internet usage and track popularity. Back then, a lot of popular stuff didn't make it into print. There's no way to know how resonant Parr's usage would have been with his audience. The J.O. pamphlet from the 1770s and Parr's sermon in the 1780s are only two "sources" in modern terms. But they suggest the word may have been less obscure than it appears now.
The memoir. Presumably this makes the unimaginatively named Johnstone the Whig Boswell? It's interesting how much "important" English stuff didn't survive the collapse of imperial power.
On the other hand, there's something to reading someone largely forgotten outside the specialist scene. This quick history of "churchianity" would have been impossible 20 years ago.
The actual quote is another rhetorical one-liner. In this case a rejoinder to a whiner...
You are the best vindicator of Churchianity I ever knew.
It's worth a closer look. The context makes it clear that this is much closer to modern denominationism. This is where different branches of Christianity clash, purity spiral, and give money to churchian wolves in sheeps' clothing, while the world sinks ever deeper into satanry. Parr opting for the truth-value of the message over NPC ad hominum.
Samuel Parr, Works: With Memoirs of His Life and Writings, and a Selection from His Correspondence, 1828, p. 341.
"One of them in the vestry, immediately after the sermon, ventured even to expostulate with the preacher; and to represent to him that the sermon recommended might be admirable and good Christian doctrine, but that the author was an enemy to the Church, and therefore ought never to be named within its sacred precincts. Parr heard him out, and then calmly replied, “Sir you are the best vindicator of Churchianity I ever knew.”
It wasn't recorded if everybody clapped. The unfortunate Johnstone wishes he'd been there to though.
To the surprise of no one, Parr's churchianity had more legs than J.O.'s absolutism. If the Princeton Review is any indication, the topic was current in the middle of the 19th century. Parr is credited with calling the whole ecclesiastic system Churchianity in distinction from Christianity in an anonymous review of Henry Edward Manning’s The Unity of the Church.
Consider the full passage...
The theory of the church connected with the Ritual system of doctrine, that system which makes ministers priests, and the sacraments the only appointed channels of communicating to men the benefits of redemption, is implied in the nature of the doctrines themselves. It makes the church so prominent that Christ and the truth are eclipsed. This made Dr. Parr call the whole system churchianity…
“Theories of Church” in The Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, 1846, p. 150.
Parr’s comment has become a doctrine opposing ritualized devotion with a personal religion of the heart. What the essay calls his essay a unity of faith and love, not association.
Charles Hodge, Essays and Reviews: Selected from the Princeton Review, R. Carter, 1857, p. 213.
"Theories of the Church" was reprinted a decade later in an anthology of the Princeton Review's greatest hits. Only the typeface is different.
The idea of church obstructing Christ is the same as del Arroz' churchianity. But while Churchianity argues for Biblical fidelity in all denominations, this article is taking up the exhausted Protestant sola scriptura vs. Catholic dogmatic traditionalism canard.
Augustus Saint-Gaudens, The Puritan, modeled 1883–86
The statue depicts Deacon Samuel Chapin, a 17th-century Springfield, Massachusetts religious leader for Thanksgiving, 1887.
To be clear, the Band does not choose sides. We clearly articulated our understanding of "denominations" via the Ontological Hierarchy and proper ordering of representation and reality. The fact that this unity of faith preserved less of the Bible than a literally idolatrous fake pope should be sufficient to expose the toxic poverty of this polemical drivel. But NPCs gonna NPC dance for satanic laser pointers. Who can say no to lurid red?
An early German appearance of "churchianity" makes for a good contrast with this afterlife of Parr. There's the same underlying concern that institutions were getting in the way of Jesus and his message. Only the context is pre-modern Germany. There, the churchian opponent was the weird notion of the "state church". An inverted power grab that twisted metaphysical truth through political geography. This didn't exist in America - in fact the state church was almost as alien to Christ-centric fundamentalism as Catholicism.
Das Ausland: Wochenschrift für Länder- u. Völkerkunde. Germany: Cotta, 1830, p. 421
It's in that ridiculous old German typeface, except for "churchianity" which is in an efficient and legible font.
This suggests that it's being imported from English and is new to German.
The whole state church business limits the applicability of a source like this. There are two things to take from it. The idea that "churchianity" originates in the English sphere. And the word next to it - "Kirchenthum" - translates via AI to Churchism. Perhaps this was the German term for this inversive process.
These early usages set patterns that shift and flow with the times. Thanks to Google Books, we can see what the discourse looked like. That emphasis on direct experience of Jesus over mumming rote forms turns up in a number of places. One gets the impression of a churchian straw man to be knocked over in the service of whatever the rhetorician was fired up over.
The world is to be saved, if saved at all, by the religion of Experience, and not that of Imitation. The religion of imitation is that of forms; the religion of experience is that of realities. The religion of imitation is Churchianity; the religion of experience is Christianity. The religion of imitation, except when it oppresses, is that of profound quiet and weakness; the religion of experience is that of conflict and power.
George Barrell Cheever, The Religion of Experience and that of Imitation. An Address Delivered ... in Amherst College, August 1843. United States: J. F. Trow, 1843.
It's impossible not to see this in relation to the Great Awakenings that shaped pre-modern America.
Hand-coloured woodcut of a Methodist camp meeting in Eastham, MA, c. 1850
According to History.com, The Great Awakening notably altered the religious climate in the American colonies. Ordinary people were encouraged to make a personal connection with God, instead of relying on a minister. Brittanica dates the second from roughly 1795 to 1835, and describes it as based around group meetings winning souls. Evangelical Protestant churches like the Methodists and Baptists grew quickly. And a lot of this fervor got jacked for extra-Biblical proto-SJWism. So when Cheever is banging on about "experience", he is referring to that personal connection with Christ devout Christians feel. But he's setting up an Awakening-flavored false dichotomy between stale churchianity and personal faith. When the historical reality since Christianity was established enough to have a public presence was both.
Take a look at this piece by a Rev. J. H. Jones, in The American Missionary of 1859. The seeds of del Arroz' modern churchianity are visible through the historical differences.
Before turning to the colored text, the introduction of churchianity at the bottom of the left column.
Churchianity is doing much harm to Christianity at the West. The teachings of Christianity are, “Submit yourselves therefore unto God,” “Draw nigh to God and He will draw nigh to you,” “Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He shall lift you up… But Churchianity does not require submission to God nor holiness of heart and life.
The scripture mostly comes from James 4:7-10 which councils turning away from the world for humility. It's worth noting this is an address to the exact American missionary culture that drove the Awakenings.
The colored texts set up the opposition between real faith and churchianity in this context. Note that it was inconceivable that [not Christian] would be entertained as an American alternative. It identifies the danger of putting attendance and popularity over life in Christ. And shows how easily that is bled into socio-political issues. Christians should support and promote more moral societies. But pretending [Christianity] = [a specific attitude towards policy X] is an ontological category error. One with two terrible outcomes.
1. Biblical truth is timeless, but necessarily represented through temporal means.
El Greco, Pentecost, around 1600, oil on canvas by El Greco, Prado, Madrid
The Bible itself has a material history. Interpretation from personal moral reasoning to high-level exegesis applies these truth to changing circumstances. Consider. There wouldn't have been a Pentecost if translating the Word for new contexts wasn't intended from the jump.
Historical manifestations look different, but represent the same underlying reality. Pretending a particular, contingent position is Christian Truth look as feeble and hollow as any human fancy once times change.
2. Misrepresenting scripture undermines Christian credibility in general.
It shouldn't, but pretending reality is other than it is is pointless. Make an argument for a position from Scripture. But claiming [authenticity of Christian faith] is predicated on [having a beer] misrepresents a social virtue for a theological one. One is subjective and dependant on time and place. The other isn't. Readers will hear the echo in all the SJW inversions modern churchians replace the Christ with. It's a form-content thing. The particular social control vector in the Christian skin suit varies with the times. The ironically churchian inversion doesn't. Note the characteristic projection.
Mid-century English sources frame churchianity in terms of the European national churches.
John Cumming, Salvation, a sermon preached ... before Her Majesty the Queen, etc. United Kingdom: n.p., 1850, p. 11
Apparently this sermon preached to Victoria created some kind of controversy.
Cumming's attack was on the spiritual efficacy of the Churches of England and Scotland. But it's easy to spot the anti-Catholic position in the framing. That Puritanical Protestant vs. Catholic lite High Church of England ran through English DNA. Up until it sold out for the beast. Still, this is a pretty good starting definition.
Such religion is Churchianity; it is not Christianity. Christianity means the religion where Christ is all; Churchianity, the religion where the Church is all.
The Christian Reformer; or, Unitarian magazine and review, ed. Robert Aspland, 1850, p. 740.
A review of the sermon appeared the same year that summarized the content without further comment. It's the connction to anti-nomianism and sola fideism that popped out. Essentially Catholic counter arguments from a nominally Protestant organ.
The emerging pattern is "churchianity" as accusation any critic of institutions can hurl. The real issue becomes the legitimacy of the charge.
Cumming was at it again a decade later in this co-authored piece.
Cumming, John., Blakeney, Richard Paul. Modern Infidelity and Rationalism Exposed and Refuted, in Answer to the Essays and Reviews, 1861
In the Church there are things that people some times glory in. One person glories in the Church. Sermons have been preached in which was nothing from beginning to end but the Church, the Church, the Church. Churchianity is not what we want, but Christianity. Churchianity is a religion where the Church is everything; Christianity is a religion where Christ crucified is the beginning, the middle and the end. If any one wish to destroy the Church, let him glory in it (p. 10).
One thing that distinguishes del Arroz' churchianity from this model is his avoidance of the denominational trap. He does acknowledge the very real sacramental depth and tradition that differentiates Catholicism and Orthodoxy from Protestantism. But instead of false dichotomies between [church] and [Christ] he thinks hierarchically. This brings the book into alignment with the Ontological Hierarchy.
The classic alignment graphic with the Ontological Hierarchy and the fundamental pillars of Western civilization. The Band contends that the seamless fit with the fullness of reality accounts for the historic performance of the West. The consequences of abandoning it for Flatland follows.
The limiting factor with the Ontological Hierarchy is the hierarchy part. Substack has been exploring the nature and prevalence of FTS-2. NPCs and the inability to process information. This makes reductive binaries inevitable. With all the error and misconception that goes with them. The degree to which a [material] church expresses [ultimate] Christ involves related but separate things.
It looks sort of like this in theory. Examples may vary.
Where then does the false binary come from? Arguments built on falsehoods are obviously fake but the reasons vary. This is something readers are familiar with. Ignorant or shill? It was no different in the 19th century. Polemicists either can't see the distinction and believe the binary themselves. Or know NPCs can't and are presenting them with manipulative options. Consider three options. Emphases ours.
1. This contemporary mentions what Dr. Cumming, in his sermon before the Queen, has not infelicitously called Churchianity; to faith in the ritual, and faith in the priest. The extended quote could be interpreted as open to reforming his Romish or Anglican churches. Although the tone is more individualistic.
No my brethren. English churchianity can make no head against Romish churchianity. They are but two species of one and the same thing, and the weaker cannot resist the stronger. The proper opposing power here, is not the church, but the BIBLE. One immediate effect of a reference to the Bible is to get us out of the sphere of priestly authority, by bringing us into contact with the “word of God,” the supreme and exclusive authority, to which all priests must bow, and by which all priests must be tried … There is no longer a question of churchianity, but of Christianity.
Christopher Newman Hall, The substance of a sermon ... on occasion of the ... explosion of the ‘Red Rover’ steam-boat, 1850, p. 27.
It can be hard for a modern reader to judge claims of this nature. The track record of the modern Anglican "church" vis a vis the Bible speaks for itself.
I mean...
It's difficult to keep a straight face, if not predisposed to see this sort of buffoonery as coded "fierce and brave".
The criticisms of a state church reach their apotheosis here. A body, blessed with the resources of state. replacing Christ for a captive national flock. With moral entropy carrying it to it's self-parodic end. The is the inversive, utterly anti-Biblical SJW heresy del Arroz is pointing at. Just the US version.
One doesn't get from Thomas a Beckett to here overnight.
2. Step back a century and a half and "churchianity" appears in an attack on the un-Biblical nature of what became this "church". Moral entropy is very real. When a material body intended to represent the will of God actively contradicts it - even in small ways - the link is broken. The body stops being a representation. And if it continues to call itself a church, its followers become churchians. Of course, the issue of Baptismal Regeneration seems amusing next to blessing sin. Not sure how to transgress harder structurally. At this point it's a difference in degree distinction between how egregious the sin.
William Anderson, The Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. (Bicentenary Essay.), 1862, p. 21
If this is accurate, the national "churches" really were becoming something quite different.
Of course, the idea of Anglicanism as equivalent to the Catholic Church is preposterous. One is a direct linear institurional descendant of Peter and Paul's first-century mission to Rome. The other came from a fat blasphemer who needed to ditch a wife that was too important to murder.
3. "Churchianity" also appeals to various forms of Christian "unifiers". The problem here is that while they point to the Bible for authority, they never address the potential ambiguities in that text. Some can exercise moral reasoning. What about those that cant? The preponderance of NPCs?
It's essentially "the priesthood of all believers" but without the learned awareness that that rhetoric doesn't actually work. Doubling down on the endless divisions of the Reformation despite the all that happened in between. The sincerity of the effort is in question.
A Series of papers upon the broken unity of the Church, the mode of its restoration, and other subjects connected with the present times. By a member of the now divided, but ought to be united, Church of God at Birmingham, 1859.
Some of the rhetoric is solid. Substituting "Justification by Churchianity for Justification by Christ" (p. 41) is pretty good. And "churchism" is a solid euphemism for churchianity (p 103). The problem is what it points to. The fruits. Because towards the end of the century, this idea of churchianity as the negative alternative to self-directed spirituality goes full retard occult.
Because once each 'tard or grifter is self-empowered, the direct path is opened to all the "hidden meaning" luciferianism from the occult posts. The most famous would be Blavatsky's Theosophy, but the spray of symbols is common.
H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, first edition, first printing,
London & New York: The Theosophical Publishing Company; William Q. Judge, 1888.
The forerunner of this is certain Gamma Hudson Tuttle's Arcana of Spiritualism: A Manual of Spiritual Science and Philosophy, of 1871. Especially p. 379, with a spiritualist attack on "Christianity" as laziness vs. the independence of doing what thou wilt.
Churchian "dogmatism" is easily applied to Christians by practitioners of this so-called "new philosophy" as in Tuttle p. 310. The one solid insight that does come through is how vulnerable fake inverted churches are to grifters. When there's nothing to stand on, there's no defense. Tuttle's attacks on nonsense churches are the most credible part of his drivel.
The other revelation from this was seeing how early and often embryonic SJWism attacked the Biblical church. We already hinted at this in the Great Awakening temperance own goal. But that one blew up big time at the end of the century. Caught up in the third Awakening and the onset of the modern House of Lies.
Currier & Ives, Woman's holy war. Grand charge on the enemy's works, 1874, lithograph
Nothing about this is coherent, and looking at it longer doesn't help.
Not sufficiently interested to look deeper, but the "Temperance Movement" has all the hallmarks of an astroturfed movement. The connection with the sufferage movement is a tell. Cucking is a deep rooted tradition in these parts.
Band readers know to look for inversion when judging fruits. And SJW churchianity is inversive to the core. Consider the essential purpose of any actual church. To connect the worshipper with God. Most of the accusations of churchianity have revolved around this essential identity. That's the core of the whole "replacing Christ with church" thing. The sincere evangelicals were worried that misguided institutional churches were obstacles to salvation. The sincere English toffs railing against their national churches fit too. The issue is quality of Christianity. Agree with the writers or not, what the church should be focused on. The only thing, really.
SJWism introduces a new set of goals that gradually pull an institution from its original mission. The commonly used "wokism" is the current manifestation. Vox Day wrote the essential books on the phenomenon a few years back and they still hold up. Del Arroz draws on Day when he discusses SJW convergence in modern churchianity.
Vox Day, Corporate Cancer, Castalia House, 2019
Convergence is when an organizational mission is redirected from it's essential purpose to social justice causes. It should be instantly obvious how much of a problem that is for any group.
The Christian wants a church that focuses on bringing them more closely to God. The SJW is like the do what thou wilt occultist. Not improve the fidelity of the Christianity, pretend "Christianity" is whatever cause they really believe in. Not lead the faithful deeper into faith, leverage the faith to lead the faithful away.
The unitarian seekers from earlier in the century pointed to the later occult. How about the early glimmerings of SJW?
We already mentioned the Temperance Movement. It and churchianity made strange bedfellows in what appears to be a somewhat influential piece by a Carlos Martyn. Carlos is a piece of work. His rhetorical legerdemain is oily enough to be irritating. And as a side note, that need to argue everything through rhetorically overwrought, logically deficient prose gets irritating too. A pre-screen forerunner to today's rhetoric driven NPCs
The Arena, 2, 2, 1890, p. 149
Carlos actually gets off to a good start. The counterfeit coin is a good metaphor. Note how inward true Christian life and European national churches before spring-boarding to the US. Despite knowing there's no national church here. Doesn't matter, he hand waves. It's a naturalized resident. Or a state of mind. Look, it's churchian ok? And that's bad. Like the Euro state churches. Although it isn't a state church.
Carlos wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. He had a handle on basic churchianity though.
It's worth looking a little closer at Carlos, not for the specifics but the form.
One of the differences between the Band and the related Substack is the focus. Similar issues but the Substack is shorter and more practically aimed. The Band is longer and more theoretical. There is practicality, but more of a personal effort to derive it. There's a natural link. Integrating the Substack topics is possible because of the work done by the Band. This wasn't the intent at the start. But the original idea of dismantling postmodernism led to questions about the alternatives. What can we know and how can we know it? And that led into a much deeper understanding about our place in reality crystallized in the Ontological Hierarchy and the House of Lies. Having a place to stand - even one extending into the unknowable - is one thing the beast system has worked to displace. Because it's a necessary precondition for a frame of reference. And that's a necessary precondition for any logical reasoning.
Postmodernism is a very broad term. What many think of as the postmodern denial of meaning is an artifact of post-structuralist linguistic or semiotic theory. Acting as if the limitations of the representational systems mean we create reality.
Languages are self-referential systems in constant flux, imperfectly applied to a directly inexpressable external reality. Meaning any linguistic expression collapses into an infinite chain of earlier linguistic expressions. All the things seen, heard, read, experienced, etc. that went into how you express your current state of mind. That's where the endless deferral and no outside the text of Derrida's Deconstruction come from. Not wrong per se, but limited to the alchemy of language qua language.
The point is that within the poststructuralist hall of mirrors, there's no starting point. Even coming into consciousness is coming into this massive churn of pre-existing language. And if we grant that needing language to process reality means we create reality, it is destabilizing. But that's the slight of hand. Taken as an axiom, [we need language to process reality] = [we create reality] is absurd enough to seem psychotic. Any symbolic system that can be manipulated into that conclusion demonstrates its unfitness for representational purpose. But [we need language to process reality] = [our perception of reality is mediated by language] doesn't let grifters pose as magi to midwits.
What "higher learning" did was abandon the reality-us relationship to indulge in symbolic games. But because that's too prima facie retarded to fund, the pretense was needed that the games were reality. Or mapped onto it well enough well enough to be interchangable. Correlation becoming causation. Which as readers know is reality-representation inversion, but who cares? There's entire meta-fields like humanities, science, social sciences, etc. to colonize with profitable nonsense. And for a few generations, the House of Lies has run as if these are True. Hence truth is relative and all that follows.
Recognizing that everything is mediated by signs should have led to inquiry into the actual implications. Stuff like the Band manages to up without decades of institutional support. But the House of Lies has its own sorathic meta-direction, where anything anti-order amd anti-Creation is promoted. So language became the non-quantitative counterpart to relativity. Nowhere to stand in the spinning abyss. Until we remember that putting a car in motion doesn't obviate it's existence within reality. Even if the point isn't fixed. That hierarchical thinking ...
The rationale behind decentered thinking has multiple parts. It benefits the House of Lies though. Frame of reference allows for logical comparisons. How lies are exposed. If everything is relative, arbitrary, and subjective, the fruits can't be judged. Complex systems really do require some centralized order though. Beast system centralized control is easier to upload into the NPC base code if there is no alternative world view in the way. And it severs our metaphysical fullness, limiting us to flat, meaningless materialist existence. Obviously the church, with its recognition of metaphysical numinousness and polished representations was a threat. Always has been.
The value of the Ontological Hierarchy has been to clean up this chaotic swirl. Returning to hierarchical thinking and conditions of what's possible. Readers who have assimilated it know how it scythes through category errors.
Although Flatland is ontologically simpler structurally, it's way more confusing in practice. All the out of place lies jumbled together with coherence actively resisted. Recognizing what goes where sorts that out, even if imperfectly represented in words and graphics.
The role of [church] in this configuration is to represent ultimate truths in material human terms.
The sole measure of its fitness is how well it does that.
.jpg)
Caspar David Friedrich, Vision of the Christian Church, 1820, oil on canvas, Museum Georg Schäfer
That purpose does have material human consequences. General moral living that the church should actively support. But material morality is downstream from Scripture. The Bible is the best expression of ultimate reality a Christian has. The closest we come to perception of God's will. Note that again and again, Jesus emphasizes turning away from the affairs of this world. His focus is entirely on the Kingdom. Just read the beatitudes.
There are moral virtues that are not explicitly Biblical. These are abstracted expressions of human socio-cultural values and may or may not be Christian compatible. Christians do fine with social virtues that aren't contradictory to their beliefs. But they aren't commanded to them in the same way. And when civic and Biblical values directly contradict, the priority order determines "Christian" sincerity. Two specifics to watch for...
1. Claiming things are Christian moral imperatives that aren't Biblical. There's some room here. Things can be morally reasoned that aren't explicitly stated in scripture and claim support. A lot of church ritual is like that. But the argument has to be sound. Any fallacies or rhetorical leaps shatter the whole fiction.
2. Claiming things in the Bible mean something different. Cherry pickers are the worst here. The Bible is a huge interlocked text working on multiple levels at once. Meanwhile any sentence, even in a kid's book, needs context to be comprehensible. Imagine any other context where a decontextualized five word phrase from a massive tome is accepted as "evidence" of... anything of substance really. Any passage supporting moral reasoning should have the same meaning in both contexts.
Back to Carlos. A closer look at p. 151 shows his inversive deception. Start with the opening paragraph. The first thing to note is the materialization category error.
Jesus' mission was "radical" because it transposed impossible material paths to reconciliation with God to the spiritual. The Law it supplanted was the religious law of the Old Covenant, not the civic law of render unto Caesar. And it didn't "overthrow" it. Jesus said to keep the commandments, for example. It transfigured it. But there's no way to express that in ontologically gelded Flatland materialist terms. It takes hierarchical thinking. And Carlos needs to get rid of the metaphysical references that are the reason Christianity exists so he can jack it for a material agenda.
Let's just say a conflict with "law and order" in 19th-century America suggests something a tad different from redeeming Fallen humanity. But deceivers love words that have different meanings they can confuse strategically.
Alex Levin, God gives Moses the Ten Commandments Written on Stone Tablets, 2019, oil on canvas; Hans W. Schmidt, Cicero's Speech Attacking Catilina in the Roman Senate, late 19th - early 20th century, oil on canvas
Any self-declared Christian that can't distinguish between [God's Will translated into words and inscribed on tablets] and [stuff the emperor or senate or whoever made up] has to be ignored. Dangerously stupid or deliberately dishonest being terrible criteria for councilors.
Yet Carlos vanishes all the blather about the "divine element" when he misrepresents Jesus and the Apostles as socialist radicals. Note the specifics.
Note the subtlty. Carlos doesn't come out and declare "hello fellow Christians! I Carlos, a smooth liar, intend to reorient your faith from the Kingdom of Heaven to SJWism. Don't worry about salvation. Who are you going to believe? Me or the lying Bible?"
The only way to see through this is to pay attention and follow along like we're doing. The self-contradictions and other illogics will deconstruct themselves. Raising an interesting aside for the future. The way to detect subtler liars is by examining the bigger picture they're constructing. With Carlos, you have to be following along to see the disappearance of the spirit from the mission. We wonder if there's an "NPC reading process" where lines are scanned and may resonate emotionally, but no understanding of an argument or idea forms. So nothing of substance is learned or retained. It's how they repeat quotes without knowing anything about what they mean.
.jpg)
Gustav Klutsis, Oppressed Peoples of the Whole World, 1924, collage for a book glorifying Lenin
Turning the world upside down to turn it right side up is unbiblical, folksily twee, and pure Marxist revolution as end in itself. It's exactly what Jesus didn't say to do. There's no material utopianism in the Gospels at all. No healing the world or anything like that. The whole message of the Incarnation and Resurrections is that the Fall was "healed" to the extent possible. For us.
But Revelation tells us where material reality is headed. Dust, sandals. Render unto Caesar. Seek the Kingdom. Binary thinkers are lost at the difference between worldly impact and worldly. Christ's mission had worldly impact. It wasn't worldly.
"Genuine Christianity" shouldn't be "at war" with anything except the propensity to sin. Motes, beams and so forth. We function morally within the world, but are oriented towards the next. In fact, whether or not a region is evangelized has no bearing on the dangers of a worldly orientation. Spreading the Good News is a Christian duty. And a Fallen world presents constant snares. Having the knowledge to navigate them doesn't make them go away.
So Carlos has managed to do two things. Set up a powerful contrast between sincere Christianity and institutionally-focused churchianity. Then defined [sincere Christianity] as 19th-century socialist radicalism in robes and loincloths. The "argumentation" that follows is so weak that it's proof of NPC concept. Like this puff of genius, where the red underlining shows the arguments and the purple the conclusions.
So, churchianity is bad because it doesn't pursue perpetual revolution. Therefore modern Christianity is churchian because it doesn't advance perpetual revolution. And a retard lied about the nature of Christianity, therefore socialist revolutionaries a priori direct churches.
That's structurally it. This is moron tier. Younger readers, remember this next time your ability to reason is criticized.
Getting to the point of it all.
Just take the anti-slavery cause as a random example. Now the entire harangue has switched over to that. Suddenly, Christian sincerity and formalized churches has become negroes, brothels and whatever else. The whole institution of chattel slavery is obviously morally revolting. The Band can't construct a defence of it without playing devil's advocate and arguing insincerely. But there are a couple of problems. First, it objectively is not the preeminent concern of the church. Nor is it the worse transgression imaginable, Wesleyan apocrypha aside.
Though to be fair, it's possible Wes couldn't imagine a "church" advocating against Biblical positions.
All kidding aside, here's the category error.
Leveraging Christian belief for external social causes != deepening Christian belief
There's nothing wrong with the St. Y's order of helpful Xs. Galvanizing Christian charity to productive ends. Historic Catholicism was very good at channeling Christian virtues in specific pro-social directions. That's different from changing Christianity from [conciliator of the material and divine] to an activists collective. They could coexist. But they're different. And pretending they're not had downstream consequences that had nothing to do with the worthiness of the cause. Because worldly causes never last. But structural changes do. Getting to the second problem.
This was published in 1890.
Know what else was published in 1890?
Paul Mottelay, The Soldier in Our Civil War: A Pictorial History of the Conflict, 1861–1865, J.H. Brown, New York, 1884; Paul Mottelay and T. Campbell-Copeland, The Soldier in Our Civil War: A Pictorial History of the Conflict, 1861-1865. Illustrating the Valor of the Soldier as Displayed on the Battle-Field, Stanley Bradely Publishing Company, Richmond and New York, 1890
A lavish second version of Mottelay's illustrated history and tribute to the soldiers of the War of Northern Aggression. A good example of the efforts taken to reimagine the conflict as an "American" thing. But that's not the point here. It is an impressive book. One that Easton republished not that long ago. The sort of publication that takes some time after the fact to prepare and produce.
The point is that slavery was history in 1890. The ramifications of the WoNA were still percolating, but those issues don't come up. Chattel slavery as a legal institution was long gone. And Wes had been dead almost 200 years. It doesn't take long for Carlos to get to where he really wants to go.
Carlos is getting more attention than he deserves, because the pattern is so prescient. We can read him with the knowledge of where his idolatrous world worship led to. But you didn't need foreknowledge to see he's a fraud. You just needed to understand what a [church] is.
The point of the slavery melodrama was to set up a false moral equivalence with a present concern.
Set up the opposition between individual clergy who opposed slavery and the corrupt churchian establishment that supported it. The formula - [Christianity is social activism] / [churchianity is monied status quo over social justice]. Note the absence of any spiritual or theological content. Or the Bible for that matter. What is "Christian" about structure? The emotional force is totally dependent on contemporary politics.
Which is how we suddenly jump to Temperance. See? It's just as bad as slavery! They obviously aren't in the same moral universe, so an astute reader would put Carlos down at this point as an inveterate liar. Rhetoric notwithstanding. We don't have that privelige, so we can see him build an argument out of politicking and lobbying.
It gets worse.
The relationship to the church is framed to mirror slavery. And for whatever reason, Carlos loves the irrelevant Doctor non sequitur. What does addict coping mechanisms have to do with the essential purpose of a church? The category "abolitionist group" exists for a reason. Ditto "the sphere of women".
The mask drops when Enlightenment Progress! is elevated over Scripture as a guide for the church.
Women doing what thou wilt > the apostle Paul.
SJW will to social power > Jesus!?!
Inability to see the difference between the story of Onesimus and the teachings of Paul or example of Christ means NPC or deceiver. More words will help neither.
But ultimately, even the severity of the transgression is secondary to the real issue. Calling for an inverted, non-Biblical identity.
Because in the end, it's not about the moral abomination of chattel slavery. It was the fundamental identity of the church. Churchianity becomes Biblical fidelity. Not doing what thou wilt contra Scripture regardless of current fads. The timeless part of divine revelation. In contrast, "real" Christianity is a cafeteria version that serves auto-idolatry. There's literally no standard anymore. No ontological foundation. Just the whims of lying rhetoricians and shrill harpies. Opposing slavery was a good call. But that has nothing to do with what followed. Del Arroz gives a good overview of the modern SJW aspects of churchianity. Look at the pattern, not the particular dogmas. It's the direct, linear descendant.
Pointing out another problem with binary thinking. It's not human. Mentally healthy people aren't monomaniacs. We have lists of things we see as more or less important. It's why the word priorities exists. One would expect a church to have a negative position on slavery. As it should on murder, rape, and other crimes. But the first priority needs to be spiritual ministry. And House of Lies Progress! should be the last. Killing false binaries isn't hard. Neither Christianity nor churchianity is LARPing as an temperance group.
Here's a real binary...
Caspar David Friedrich, Winter Landscape with Church, 1811, oil on canvas, Museum of Art y, Dortmund
Church as representation of God's will to man?
That's has to conform to the unchanging standard of the Bible. Regardless of popularity.
When you consider kneeling is a Christian sign of worship, and Christian attitudes to false gods, it is good when satanic idolaters self-reveal.
Church as arbiter of social justice?
It's whatever social justice is defined as at the time. Regardless of yesterday
The correlation with FTS-1 and 2 isn't coincidental. Reality is real, so truth is consistent.
Corlos was reprinted in a Mormon publication Google Books calls Vision: A Magazine for Youth, but appears to call itself Autumn Leaves.
The new definition of churchianity to a new audience.
The functionally two species theory gets supercharged when we consider Carlos then read this next moron. The image of temperance as proto-SJW inversion clarifies. Somehow this is dated the year before the Arena article that Carlos supposedly first appeared in. We have no interest in sleuthing out the mystery when a) it's the difference of a year in a historical overview and b) we're really getting sick of Carlos and Temperance the SJW musical.
The Bible Temperance Educator: Organ of the Bible Temperance Association. Londonderry printed., 1889, p. 158.
The density of old publications is usually pointed out as an indictment of modern literacy and attention spans. There's an economic factor as well. Information was more expensive to disseminate. Up front printing and material costs plus distribution logistics. The upside was that things that did get into print had more impact than drowning in today's dead internet sea. Consider that Corlos is a doltish liar but we're burning column inches on him almost a century and a half later...
The CLI informationless communication pattern is immediately visible. We've just seen "brilliant" is the last adjective an FTS-1 reader would append to Corlos. What we are seeing is NPCs being told what to think about something they can't opine for themselves.
Immediately afterwards we jump to a cringe screed listing SJW shibboleths and a "churchian" response. We still have the notion of the institutional church going astray. But not from anything metaphysically Christian. The same progression from slavery to contemporary inversion. And the same false binary between social class structures. Easy to see the beast appeal of the temperance-proto-feminism axis. A large body of new, emotionalized NPCs to drive permanent revolution. Always look for tells when tracking inverters. Things that make it easy for the less perspicacious to see. Mentioning "Capital" at the end is a tell. The specifically Marxian language sticks out in a supposedly Christian piece.
♫ All we are saying is ... give Labor a chance ... ♫
The pattern is exactly how the House of Lies inverts terms today. Churchianity was an older piece of effective rhetoric for attacking worldly churches. Atheistic narrative engineers can transform that into attacking the wrong kind of worldly church. The implication by ommission that all churches are worldly. The false binary replaces the true.
Like a piece in a union publication using Corlos to push materialization. He fluffs even harder with the praise to cue the NPCs. Corlos is ...
calculated to produce a sensation in religious circles. Mr. Martyn writes without gloves. He strikes terrific blows. He is iconoclastic. No sham escapes his eye nor is spared by his pen ... He ministers at the altar. He feeds the sacred fires. His lips have been touched with live coals and his thoughts breathe and his words burn.
J. B. Shrew, "The Church and its Mission", Locomotive Firemen’s Magazine, 1890, 778
Perhaps Corlos and the Shrew needed a room. More seriously, the Shrew delivers his own base code payload at the end.
No greater demand upon the church was ever made than to come forward and help workingmen secure rights denied them by employers; but it sits silent or croaks Poe's raven nevermore.
It may have been a worthy cause. But the claim is unchristian to the core. For an alternative, this connection between churchianity and militarism is closer to the original. And prescient.
...this is an age of progress, and churchianity has displaced Christianity, just as chemistry has displaced alchemy and astronomy displaced astrology, the only difference being that chemistry and astronomy are by unanimous consent classed as improvements upon what they displaced, while the unanimity of opinion in favor of churchianity isn’t quite so unanimous.
Railroad Trainmen’s Journal, 1895, p. 81
There isn't time to go into every case of churchianity as lacking SJW cred. Just note that the metastasis del Arroz describes has a pedigree. Like Superintendent Eversz. assimilating Germans through education in “Churchianity versus Christianity” in The Home Missionary, 1893, p. 492. Or the epically named Lasalle Corbell Pickett leading the charge against imperialism in the Washington Post and reprinted in “Churchianity and Christianity”, Christian Science Sentinel, 1898.
Or The Arena again in 1909.
In the elder day the apostles of the new economic philosophy, like the Great Nazarene and immediate disciples, fond conventional religion bulwarking the existing order and opposing all broader, juster, nobler and more humane social concepts. Often the church was the right arm of the throne, the ally of despotism and entrenched injustice. It is not strange, therefore, that men who were persecuted and exiled, as was Marx, should confuse religion with churchianity.B. O. Flower, “Socialism as a Philosophy of Practical Idealism”, The Arena, 1909
Really, what can we add that isn't obvious? Note that of all the individuals in history to pick as a model of Christian virtue, B. O. is trying to railroad NPCs into accepting the diametric opposite. That down is up pattern is not surprising to readers.
The whole religious Socialism thing is bizarre. There are familiar echoes of helping young men with "Christian" ideals...
...young progressive Socialism … the finest conscience-guided men and women who are themselves under the imperative sway of moral idealism and who have long shrunk from Socialism because they have been led to believe that it is a philosophy devoid of ideals or verity …
Later in the same issue, a subtler inverter hammers churchianity pretty well before converging to SJW activism.
Very few people have anything against Christianity as taught by Christ; but churchianity, that version which favors all the interests which are against them, does not appeal to the respect or favor of the working classes. If the churches wish to draw the masses to them. they must show themselves to be their friends and benefactors. They must cut loose from Mammon, business and politics, adhere closer to Christ’s teachings, and take up the cause of the down trodden and the oppressed.W. Hynes, “Why Working People do not go to Church”, The Arena, 1909
What very few people actually realize is how hard proto-SJWism was trying to jack the church. Although a leadership that reflects the people is a fine point. Again, it's not the drive to live better, engage in charity, or be good citizens. It's what is the fundamental purpose of a church?
That's enough backstory for now. It is enjoyable to do a longform historical dive. Hopefully the metaphysics project will be next. What was interesting was seeing the patterns we've come to recognize in an older context. The redefinitions and inversions that bear toxic fruit in Churchianity.
Jon del Arroz is someone we’ve crossed paths with on social media but can't claim to know in any personal way. What I do know is that he’s an established independent science fiction and comic author who is well aware of the House of Lies.
We know him best for founding Fandomn Pulse. The reality-facing leader in sci-fi, fantasy, comic, and similar journalism.
FTS-1 in other words. So there was a natural interest when the news came out he was writing on this topic. A commercially successful writer is exactly the sort of person who knows how to communicate to a wide audience. And this is an extremely important subject. The Band was drawn to "churchianity" for our own speculative purposes. Click the quote for the link if interested.
But del Arroz develops the idea into wide-ranging practical investigation. Enough depth for substance, but staying light enough for an ordinary reader. Something we're not able to do.
The book itself was well worth it. The paperback was pleasant to read with a clean typeface that’s easy on the eyes. Del Arroz has been successful self-publishing outside the beast mainstream and it shows here. Judging from the book itself, it’s an Amazon publication, which may explain the speedy arrival. It seems well made. Having been read then thumbed through it for this review, it’s held up well. The spine hasn’t cracked or curved at all.
The one small complaint is the lack of a table of contents. Although it was only really noticed when going back to the book to review the topic for this post.
It flows well enough that it’s easy to start reading and go through to the end.
The content is quite wide ranging. He starts by laying out the basic issues - what churchianity is, where it came from, and how it took hold. Setting up the historical context outlines the exact nature of the current problem. Commentary often has to deal in broad abstractions when looking at society-wide problems. Necessary simplification, but harder to make out the specifics. From a practical perspective, understanding what had to happen to get here is essential for finding another way.
The Social Justice strain of corruption is traced out first, via Marxism, the Frankfurt School, and the modern Left. Although Churchianity isn’t documented like a scholarly book, del Arroz is clearly well read and understands the issues. It’s a good summary of the main issues for anyone new to them. And reading Churchianity before diving into the historic texts for this post made the inversive pattern much easier to see. Looking back from the fruits.
Anyone following Churchianity's advice in their own Christian group really needs to be clear about the metaphysical priorities.
The Prosperity Gospel strain of corruption follows after a set of practical guidelines for spotting converged or corrupted churches. The tax exemption Trojan Horse works here as well.
If SJWism is a perverted “left wing” of churchianity, Prosperity Gospel and its celeb pastors is the perverted right. Clown-world globalism or crypto-greed is good. Historically, one has it's roots on the proto-SJW wankers like Corlos. The other in the money-counting foundations they attack. Neither being “Christian” definitionally.
What they share is a fundamental inversion of what Christianity is. The Band worked through the metaphysical logic if interested. It starts with the incompatibility of materialism and reality. Reality has levels - higher, deeper, fuller - physical metaphors are necessarily imperfect. Materialism crushes everything into one level of reality then acts mystified when it can’t account for its preconditions.
Put as generally as possible, Christianity is a body of material texts, practices, activities, etc. that represent aspects of reality we can’t apprehend directly in ways that we can. Judge churches by their biblical fidelity and not their own claims. By their fruits.
Del Arroz effectively shows neither SJWism nor acquisitionism have any relation to the Gospel message. Beyond contradicting it, that is. And without wading into sectarian dispute, I’ll go out on a limb and assume any faithful Christian from any denomination should object to contradicting the Bible.
It’s simple priority order. God made man in His image. We follow. Making God in our image is the literal opposite. And instead of leading us out of the entanglements of this Fallen and irreparable world, the ensnare us deeper in it.
The denominational question is an important one and del Arroz handles it well. Can’t recall the number of intra-factional squabbling between men who confess Jesus while the beast is ascendant. It’s sticky here in the US where there was no “national church” and the American religion has been shady from the jump. Del Arroz doesn’t openly take sides, but is clear that the sacramental depth and history of ancient Catholicism and Orthodoxy are solid tentpole for moral societies. This doesn’t seem contestable.
While del Arroz doesn’t take up the deplorable state of the modern Vatican, it is true that the corpus of tradition is an ever-present roadmap to restoration. And for all its corruption, kept the harpies out of the pulpit. An independent church has to depend on the moral direction of pastor and congregation. And if that goes sideways, there’s no package available to bring it back.
Sandro Botticelli, Mystic Nativity, 1500, oil on canvas, National Gallery, London
As for the magic words argument, articles of faith like Transsubstantiation are just that. Articles of faith. But any Christian who prays must believe in its power, or they wouldn’t bother. And if faithful individual prayer creates a meaningful link across levels of reality to God, why wouldn’t faithful collective prayer?
The recommendation for Protestants is to incorporate sacramental depth into religious life. So much Protestantism lacks the depth and sophistication of the great works of Christendom. Catholic and Orthodox writings have helped me understand and develop my own mystical experiences. Good golly, if the whole premise of the faith is to free the worshipper from sclerotic institutions, use it. We sit atop 2000 years of Christian reflection and reasoning. Intellectual giants like Thomas Aquinas and Maximos the Confessor. Artists like Bach and Raphael. Countless fountains of wisdom and council. Then consider the garbage modern churchians turn to.
I suspect del Arroz is perceptive enough to recognize denominational infighting at this cultural moment is beyond counter-productive. It’s clear in his consideration of house churches as a counter. There’s nothing stopping faithful remnant gathering in his name from aligning with our profound history.
John Singleton Copley, The Tribute Money, 1782, oil on canvas, Royal Academy of Arts, London
That’s really what this inversion comes down to. [Living God’s will as knowable to us] vs. [replacing God’s will with things other people think are cool]. Christians can make good citizens because we render unto Caesar. But that’s only because we also render unto God. The old saw “in the world but not of it” sums that up. Productive, law abiding contributors to society guided morally by a different authority.
Obviously we’ll pass moral laws when in positions to do so. But consider why the endangered Christian communities in the Middle East are there in the first place. Non-controlled opposition Islam historically and legally acknowledges Christianity within certain social restraints. And when able to worship freely, maintain their communities, and not be forced to do immoral things, Christians render under Caesar. Or the sultan, as the case may be.
Note the emphasis on living our faith. The Band described figuring out how to navigate this Fallen world as moral reasoning. Given the preponderance of NPCs, it’s what makes sound churches so essential. For the majority, morally reasoning from first principles isn’t possible. They need someone who can to craft instructions that fit in the RAM. And over time, can trickle into the base code. But given an inverted message or pastrix in the pulpit, will upload that just as easily. The only thing it has to do is not be too jarring and emotionally repulse.
In one of its countless biblical contradictions, churchianity replaces God with caesar. In the Bible passage, “God’s” is the sphere of religion, morality, spirit, etc. and “caesar’s” is the socio-political. Presumably outside specifically religious foundations. Social justice and prosperity take priorities and ideologies from the latter and force them onto the former.
It’s the opposite of theocracy, where religion explicitly takes over the political. This is the socio-political taking over the spiritual. “In the world but not of it” becomes simply “of the world”.
It’s clear that del Arroz sees this problem from his discussion of purity and sexuality.
Many have noted how shocked a visitor from the past would be by some aspect of our society. I don’t think anything, even hypersonics or AI, would shock a pre-modern Christian as much as modern morality. Especially when it comes to sex.
Not even referring to calls to celibacy. The simple Biblical position that sexual relations should be within a marital framework. Not only is this not historically radical, it was the Christian norm from the jump.
It’s the world/spirit inversion. As society changes, Christians in the world adapt. But if one theme is abundantly clear in the Bible, it’s that God’s will comes before ours. Sex is something the Bible specifically addresses. It’s not random social policy like allowing junk food on WIC. Being told how to approach it moves it into the moral sphere. It’s not a caesar issue. Because it explicitly contradicts the tenets of our faith.
The logic is simple.
either...
the Bible is divinely inspired Truth, in which case we have no authority to tamper with it...
or...
it isn’t, in which case what it says is irrelevant. Christian or not.
No one is forcing, but you have to pick one.
Of course no vector was more effective as undermining traditional society than sex. It’s an animal level drive filtered through the best manipulative presentations possible. Since it’s so visual, no society in history has been able to saturate itself like modernity could. Images fill our cultural experience to the point where it can be called a post-literate era. And sexualized content is everywhere. Del Arroz rightly calls out pastors for not preaching a harder line here across the boards. Fear of alienating non-believers being more important than ministering to souls. But individual Christians are also charged with looking up and actually practicing their own morality.
Annibale Carracci, Domine, quo vadis? 1601–02, oil on panel, National Gallery, London
Outreach is important to any proselytizing religion, but not at the cost of its core beliefs. Converts are drawn to answers to problems they can detect in the House of Lies but can’t put a finger on. More House is never a good answer.
The image of the uncovered light (Matthew 5:16) underlines the value of a positive example. While the image of the narrow gate (Matthew 7:13-14) should tell us that chasing numbers is a fool’s errand. How much worse to flush the example along the way?
One thing del Arroz does that’s near to the Band's heart is offer practical suggestions. The discussion of churchianity is sufficient as a warning or a guide for a house church. And there are specific chapters devoted to red flags to watch for and steps to take for the future.
The notion of [opposite but connected] shouldn’t be hard to grasp. Picture a mirror…
Hans Holbein the Younger, An Allegory of the Old and New Testaments, early 1530s, oil on panel, Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh
One thing I would add to the list of warning signs is an overemphasis on the Old Testament. It is true that Jesus said to keep the Commandments. But Jesus also fulfilled the prophecies. Transfiguring law into grace. A big part of modern churchianity is the vapidity. Getting back to that depth of tradition mentioned earlier. We can see efforts to understand how the testaments relate going back to the very beginnings of Christianity. Oversimplifying, but the Old Testament prefigures and the New fulfills is reasonably accurate.
This is not an attack on the Old Testament. Avoid the binary thinking trap. It’s a relational assessment. Relative priority. The Old Testament is full of wisdom. Genesis represents Creation and so on. I mean, I don’t need to defend the Old Testament. It’s Scripture. Just note if it seems to pop up more than the New. Especially the Epistles.
Mihály Munkácsy, Ecce Homo!, 1896, oil on canvas, Déri Museum, Debrecen
Overall, Churchianity is an excellent book for a pretty wide audience. Enough depth to explain context and answer questions while moving briskly along. The arguments are well sourced in scripture and not really refutable without imagining Christianity into what it isn’t. And putting one’s own will ahead of God’s - doing what thou wilt - is a tale old as time. Take the metaphysical implications seriously like del Arroz or I do, and avoiding that is an existential priority.
I heartily endorse this book for anyone either worrying about their church or just looking for a clear understanding of this issue for any reason. It’s also sharable if there’s someone in your life with the same questions or concerns.
Remember what's at stake. If they want to change your faith, they don’t share it.
No comments:
Post a Comment