The Next Great Awakening
Christian churches in American are imploding because thanks to the Internet, people see through their bullshit.
This is written not from an antagonistic atheist POV -- oh, no, far from it -- but from a believer saddened and dismayed by the pure egregious imbecility / selfishness / bigotry / animosity of far too many of my co-believers.
We sat in silence as charlatans and slickee boiz perverted the gospel, only rarely offering mealy-mouthed critiques of the most egregious offenders.
The price for such cowardice proves dear.
The Internet proves the biggest threat against the religious hucksters because it allows people to compare notes.
Once upon a time if a believer had questions, they’d take it to their pastor, and if the question stumped the pastor, they’d simple smile and say, “God works in mysterious ways,” and change the topic.
Not anymore.
Now people with questions go online looking for answers, and what they found aren’t answers (well, not real answers; the slickee boiz have a line of patter that can double-talk its way outta anything) but others with questions.
And once those note got compared, the realization came through that most of what passes for religion in modern America -- and yes, I’m including supposedly respectable mainstream denominations here -- is bullshit.
Again, I say this as a believer, one who is sympathetic to most Christians’ -- even the really dumb ones’ -- desire to live a better life.
Organized religion failed badly in the years leading up to 9 / 11, enjoyed a brief uptick as folks returned to their childhood faiths, then nosedived again when it failed even more badly after that.
It’s failing in spectacular fashion during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Historically America goes through periods of religious fervors called “great awakenings”:
Astute observes will note they coincide with periods of great social stress in America.
They have not been good things, at least not uniformly good.
The first triggered what we call The French And Indian War but what the rest of the planet refers to as The Seven Years War, and that set the great empires of Europe at each others throats and no sooner did that get tamped down than the American and French Revolutions spring up so while a great deal of good came from it, the process getting there was hypocritically bloody.
The second occurred as the nation tried to figure out how to govern itself (realizing in the process that maybe there was something to letting a well regulated government run things, getting their asses kicked by the British and Canadians in the War of 1812, and culminating in the rise of a vulgar [in every sense of the word] populist nativist movement that ultimately led to the naked land grab of the Mexican War).
The third ramped up just before the Civil War and defined the terms of “great awakening” once and for all. For all the pious hypocrisy mouthed from Southern-financed pulpits, the real focus of each great awakening lay in keeping white people -- in particular wealthy white people -- in power. The longest lived of all the awakenings, it fought tooth and nail even after the defeat of the Confederacy and the abolition of slavery to maintain white supremacy, and indelibly marks white evangelism to this day. It came to an end in the 1930s when it failed the American people and failed them miserably by promoting Prohibition (thus flinging open the doors to widespread corruption and criminality) and choking in the face of the Great Depression by backing the bankers and billionaires instead of starving unemployed workers.
The fourth great awakening featured two main trunks, one a push for social justice in the form of civil rights for all, the other a rigorous rejection of same. People forget how spiritual the hippie era was, and despite the rise of Eastern religions, neo-paganism, and various oddball cults, it took the Golden Rule / “Love your neighbor” stand quite seriously and sincerely. The other side told people it was a sin for the government to force white kids to go to school with those kind and eagerly sought alliances with ultra-right wing reactionaries who wanted to shrink the size of government to the point where COVID-19 could drown it in a bathtub.
Now the charlatans proclaim the fifth great awakening is upon us, and they envision it as a return to “that old time religion” that will keep them and their billionaire buddies in power but I’m not so sure.
There may very well be a great awakening -- indeed, there’s an argument it’s already begun in the form of the New Age movement -- but I don’t think they can muster the numbers to make it a white evangelical dominated one (and if they do, God help us, because the blow back will be spectacular and bloody when it eventually fails).
I think the next great awakening will be in the form of a rejection of dogma and a return to a less narcissistic / more emphatic social norm as found in the Quakers and Shakers and hippies of old.
© Buzz Dixon
