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this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2025
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I've been saying it for a while, but a lot of the US so called Christian groups actually aren't. I'm not really sure what they should be called. Pseudo Christian maybe?
Sure, their fundamentalist, militant beliefs are not rooted in any intelligent reading of their scripture, but, in my opinion, just like humans can not evolve out of our ancestry (humans are apes, are monkeys, are primates, are mammals, are chordates) movements cannot escape the roots of their religion. And they constitute a vast, but for it's size relatively homogeneous, culturally distinct sect of Christianity. So let's not create a "true scotsman" here, just because they don't abide by your (or my) interpretation of their faith doesn't mean they aren't Christians, similar differences in belief exist in many religious sects in many different religions. And at least they violently "claim" to be Christians and will defend that position with vigor. Something apparent in all the big american sects that, from the outside, seeem to have little to nothing to do with the teachings in the New Testament. Like Mormonism.
Just like Christianity, Judaism and Islam are still abrahamic religions, those new american sects will always remain christian in their roots.
For this sect, Christian trappings have fused with the American Civil Religion, the Red Scare and the "Lost Cause"-myth. In this worldview, the defeat in a holy war (American Civil War) facilitated the struggle between evil, socialist, secular, globalist, minority-loving, weak liberalism and the good, pious, capitalist, nationalist, exceptionalist, (mostly white) red-blooded conservatism.
This might actually constitute a new kind of religion, but it is heavily blanketed in pseudo-christian trappings and lots of old-testament fire and brimstone. And this mind-virus relies on the widespread christian beliefs in the US to spread into new hosts. A lack of (objective, comparative) religious education with, at the same time, a deeply religious habitat is the fertile ground that allows this to spread. What you or me would interpret as a "correct" (or "less wrong") christian faith, if followed culturally or blindly and without haven given it enough thought, actually aides in the spread of this militant, nationalistic, chauvinist movement that has infected the US and is (imho) at the root of Reaganism, the Tea-Party and the entire Maga-Movement. It has been mutating and getting more malignant for a while now and I honestly have no idea how this could ever be excised from the US.
I think you're absolutely right. I imagine in 20 or so years all this will be seen as heretical by the more organized Christian denominations. Really I see two ways for it to go: mormonism or positive Christianity. And that really depends on how well things go for them
Your take on it is interesting and probably quite close to the truth of it. Those sects are now part of the US identity for many and are there to stay despite their continuing mutations.
Many of them could pretty accurately be called Mammonites.
I'd argue that the American Civil religion is dedicated to the dual gods of Columbia and Mammon. Those are the only two things they consider truly sacred
American with christian characteristics?