“It’s the end of America.”
“If the “liberals” win this one, it’s all over.”
“The Democrats want to do (insert bad things here), this is the last chance to stop them.”
The above sentences are both phrases unto themselves and templates for American political rhetoric used by the “right” and many Christian circles when the national elections come around every four years, and sometimes for local elections too. The Democrats and liberals make use of similar arguments, except instead of the “end of America,” it is the end of the environment/women’s rights/freedom of speech, and then use the same templates except switch the words “liberals” and “Democrats” for “conservatives” and “Republicans.”
Fundamentally speaking, the “Democrats” have gained in power each year, but that is not because they are “Democrats.” Rather, it is because they are open socialists as opposed to the muted but ever-present socialism of the Republican Party, and socialism has greatly increased in popularity over the years, especially among Millennials and the Zoomers.
A recent opinion article from Lifesitenews and originally published by a Congressman at the Lepanto Institute said that Christians of all denominations need to take a more active role in politics, and if they do not, then ‘America is over’ because as he says, the “Progressives” will overtake Christians and persecute them:
We need Evangelicals, Christians, conservatives, Catholics and pro-life “foot soldiers” coordinating and organizing similar door to door efforts at the local level. Unless citizens who share our beliefs match the number of Leftist foot soldiers with our own, we will lose elections and lose the chance to adopt sound social policies. The price of our not contesting the actions of “Progressives” in our local precincts, the political battlefield on which this war over values is fought, is that we lose more elections and make it easier for Progressives to negatively impact the lives of our children and grandchildren.
The article is a long read, and most of it is pointless because it fails to account for the basic premise of the state of affairs today, which is not a lack of engagement by Christians, but the choices of the people in spite of their profession of Christianity.
Christians of all denominations have a long history of political involvement in the US. Irish Catholics and later, Italian Catholics were notorious for their “political machines” which they operated in major urban areas, and historical mainline denominations for Protestants held tremendous influence in political affairs that later gave way to the power Southern Baptist and later, Evangelical Protestant armies. While it is comical at times, the “Chick-Fil-A” Christian lobby has significant influence in many regions of the country.
But the fundamental issues of Christianity in American politics can all be distilled to a choice of the moral will of God versus the current will of government regardless of her position on morality. What American Christians have done of all denominations is to compromise their beliefs by submitting them to a higher authority, which is that of the US Constitution. This is in different form but the same essence as the heresy of Martin Luther and the other Protestant revolutionaries which concentrated their congregations into national contexts and then placed said congregations as vassals to the state, thus equivocating “good citizenship” and patriotism with being a good Christian when there is no relationship between the two.
American Christian influence in politics has always been problematic because in spite of monumental efforts, there has been no serious ability to resolve the conflict between religion and government. It also will not be resolved because there is no way to reconcile the talmudism of Masonic philosophy on which the Constitution was founded with such believes as “liberty” and “egalitarianism” with the philosophy of the Kingship of Christ because the two are intrinsically and irreconcilably opposed. Unlike in the eastern world, where while having apostolicity, the schismatic Eastern, Oriental, and Assyrian Orthodox Churches consistently submitted themselves to national identity and made themselves vassals of government policy and objectives, the Church in the Western world and later, throughout the globe always strove to work with but never was able to make complete submission to any human system of government because she exists outside of government as well as the governed, partaking of both but never wholly submitting to either. This was not the case with Protestantism, for all that her subsequent movement did was to add the confusion of heresy to the problems of nationalism and tribalism and lacking apostolicity, became full vassals of state power immensely faster than with many of the Eastern churches.
American Protestantism today survives primarily with the Evangelical movement, since Mainline Protestanism is dying off with the remainers of the Boomers. While professing religion it is veritably inseparable from American nationalism and the Empire that America has around the world. There are many Catholics who also equivocate religion with patriotism, from the laymen to bishops and cardinals. However, the Church does not teach this, and if one opposes it- and one absolutely must do so and there are many who do -one does not commit sin.
This is the fundamental issue that nobody wants to discuss, which is that the beloved Constitution and Bill of Rights, in spite of the good things they speak of, are anti-Christian documents by the philosophy which they originated from, and so it was only inevitable there would be a struggle with them. Given the American tendency towards extermination of ideas and peoples that are determined to be “bad” by society but done in a socially acceptable way- something which came from the UK going back all the way to the Anglo-Saxon extermination of the Picts and native British during the time of St. Bede -it was only time before Christians who did not accept the vox populis on socially sensitive issues would be ostracized and eventually forced into social oblivion through systematic economic disenfranchisement.
The article warns of Churches having their tax exempt status taken away from them, yet where were the Christians defending those Christians aggressively fighting the sodomites, which is the bloc most likely through which said justifications were to come? They were not defending their Christian bretheren, but were standing lock-step with the sodomites, defending their “best friends” and saying that it was wrong to tell them that masturbating into another man’s anus is as sinful as it is disgusting.
It was almost fifteen years ago that I remember having a series of conversations with a Catholic priest who did a local radio show and who frequently warned that in the future- he gave two and possibly three decades -that it is likely the Church would lose her tax-exempt status, and when this happened it would inevitably strike out at all Churches in America, causing massive closures and persecutions. The Catholic Church would be forced to close many of her ministries, sell many of her properties, and concentrate priests into select locations.
It has been closing in on two decades, and this priest was right on schedule. Some say that they “didn’t see it,” but the signs were everywhere and continue to be so.
As far as the abortion issue, is this even a joke that it was brought up? Shoebat.com has consistently stated that the politics of abortion are connected to the military-industrial complex, which uses dead baby body parts for research into advanced genetics and robotics technologies. Does anybody believe that major politicians, let along people who do work in the government or for major corporations on lucrative government contracts, all who clearly has shown little care for the will of the common man or his opinions, are going to allow abortion to be stopped? They will not permit this as it would interfere with profits and military research- the same research with the same parts that China, England, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, and Turkey are doing for the same ends. Human life is cheap for them, and so developing tools to kill more lives by taking the lives of a child that ‘nobody wanted’ is a simple justification for their eugenics and bizarre science “programs,” if they can even be called with such words.
Then there is my favorite part of the story:
We need more “foot soldiers” just like those Gideon led in the Book of Judges. Gideon winnowed down his forces to just 300 men who were single-minded, dedicated, cunning and tactful enough to beat the Army of Midian which Bible commentators say numbered 120,000. Begging God for His guidance, strength, courage and perseverance, I believe Christians can “Walk to Win” with a political as well as a “natural law” message.
Christians have been “foot soldiers” for decades, and most of them are tired and their children have either left religion or do not want to do more “fighting” for a cause that is never realized. This does not mean that one should just give up, but to realize there the real fighting needs to be done, which is with the people closest to us.
American society is dying as one knows it. Arguably, life for most Americans as it was for the 20th century died in 2007 with the economic crisis, something that the country has never recovered from, that it is expected many people will still never recover from, and which the world has also not recovered from. The world of the past is giving way to a new world and a new America, which can be see through the social issues that people are talking about such as the rise of nationalism, identity politics, tribalism, and many of the conflicts that preceded the First World War and Second World War in Europe.
It has been twelve years since the “recession” began, and at this point it is no longer a recession, but a long-term depression which is getting worse and based on our estimations at Shoebat.com, will have another and more serious recession within the next five years.
Some people believe that voting for Trump again may help ‘stop the liberals’ and help the country, but doing this is to worship a false god just as the Democrats did when the submitted themselves to Obama in 2008. The country has fundamentally changed and that change is reflected in the people. The fruits of the Boomers and Gen X are coming to realization, and there is little that can be done to change what has been established right now.
Christians need to accept the fact that they lost not because of a lack of involvement, but because whey they had power they refused to use it for truth and instead consistently chose to either ignore problems or to make concessions with the heretical philosophy of Americanism. It is not due to one person, but to whole communities because this process happened over many years. Given the weakened and declining position of Christianity in the US, the damage is too far gone to stop at this point.
The wise Christian will note that now is not the time for political rhetoric or games, or to look to “change Washington,” for Washington has already changed and you were not aware. The revolution will not be televised because it has already passed, and it is now for one to accept the state of affairs and to prepare for it.
There will be much work to be done in the future, but not with the traditional Christian outreach like it is now. People will have to treat each other like brothers in faith instead of say it in Church before attempting to run each other over with cars in the parking lot, and the choice will be between submission to Christ or submission before the national flag- it will not be submission to both.
A lot of people are going to become poor, and much poorer than what they already are. The Christian community will need to turn to help each other, and life will become more stressed. It will be a turn to the Christianity of the ancient world, where the Church was persecuted and hated, as Pope Benedict XVI warned:
From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge — a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so it will lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, it will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society, it will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members. Undoubtedly it will discover new forms of ministry and will ordain to the priesthood approved Christians who pursue some profession. In many smaller congregations or in self-contained social groups, pastoral care will normally be provided in this fashion. Along-side this, the full-time ministry of the priesthood will be indispensable as formerly. But in all of the changes at which one might guess, the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world. In faith and prayer she will again recognize the sacraments as the worship of God and not as a subject for liturgical scholarship.
“The Church will be a more spiritual Church, not presuming upon a political mandate, flirting as little with the Left as with the Right. It will be hard going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek. The process will be all the more arduous, for sectarian narrow-mindedness as well as pompous self-will will have to be shed. One may predict that all of this will take time. The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution — when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain — to the renewal of the nineteenth century. But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.
“And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. (source)
For those asking what one could do at the moment, the answer is clear:
-Ignore politics, as it is a distraction from fundamentals.
-Focus on paying off debts and saving money for the future.
-Develop as a Christian by following the Faith to her natural, logical conclusions.
There is no time to waste, and certainly not on political exercises in meaninglessness.