American Christianity

Posted on September 6, 2009 by Swarna Jha

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24 Responses

  1. Swarna Jha, on November 22nd, 2009 at 4:28 am Said:

    Christian Nation? Let’s See…

  2. Swarna Jha, on November 20th, 2009 at 9:26 am Said:

    Thursday, November 19, 2009
    Thanksgiving Then and Now

    EXCERPT

    Americans may finally be embracing what Washington called “the enlarged and liberal policy” of respect for religious differences. According to a Pew Forum poll conducted last year that interviewed 2,905 adults, only 29% of respondents surveyed agreed with the statement, “My religion is the one, true faith leading to eternal life.” Solid majorities of Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants and Evangelicals all agreed that other paths–even non-Christian religions–may lead to salvation.

    Thanks largely to the separation of church and state, which our Founders so wisely instituted, the United States today has become the most spiritually diverse nation on earth. Harvard’s Pluralism Project counts 1660 mosques currently operating in our country, 724 Hindu temples, 2228 Buddhist centers, and 252 Sikh temples. For over two hundred years, devotees of most of these traditions have been able to co-exist amicably with their Christian and Jewish neighbors. Friendship, rather than strife, has been the norm.

    http://americancreation.blogspot.com/2009/11/thanksgiving-then-and-now.html

  3. Swarna Jha, on November 20th, 2009 at 9:07 am Said:

    The law loves American Christianity

    At first glance, I thought this story was good news: Oklahoma is going to build a Christian prison! About time, I thought, I can think of a few Christians who deserve a few years for faith-abuse. But no…it’s a prison to be administered by Christians to give Christian criminals special privileges. Not quite as appropriate, but more in line with what we’ve gotten used to from our dominant faith tradition.

    http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/11/the_law_loves_american_christi.php

  4. Swarna Jha, on November 20th, 2009 at 9:02 am Said:

    Slouching towards the “American Jesus” – part II

    excerpt

    The narrative popular amongst those who reflect on the phenomenon of Christianity in Latin America is that while Catholicism was imposed by Spanish colonialists as the mandatory religion of the people, “Jesus” was never preached to the natives there. Thus, Latin American Catholics, especially the rural, “ignorant” type, were not really Christians, but “Christo-pagans”. Even many Catholics in this country, aghast at the prevalence of “superstitions” among the “brown peoples”, cannot but secretly breath a sigh of relief when such people finally leave Catholicism altogether to enter into the broad movement of Protestant evangelicalism. “At least they are moving past their superstitions and closer to the Jesus of the Gospels” is the thinking behind such a paternalistic attitude.

    Ms. Rosin in the article cited above peels away the layers of false American piety to reveal what is often really at the heart of such American-inspired religious movements, both here and abroad. The Protestantism embraced by many new immigrants has little to do with the confessional polemics of Martin Luther, Jean Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, or Karl Barth. The pretensions that such small, independent churches finally preach to the people the “Jesus” that the “Papists” have been trying to conceal from them is propaganda only an ignorant sector of the American intelligentsia would buy. What is really often at stake in these churches is the need for mutual support, assimilation, and the “prosperity gospel”.

    http://arturovasquez.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/slouching-towards-the-american-jesus-part-ii/

  6. Swarna Jha, on November 14th, 2009 at 6:59 am Said:

    Tony Miano

    The Man in the White Van and American Christianity

    http://thelawmanchronicles.blogspot.com/2009/11/man-in-white-van-and-american.html

  7. Swarna Jha, on November 12th, 2009 at 9:25 am Said:

    TV Celebrity Reuben Armstrong Puts Pastors, Ministers and Parishioners Under Fire in New Book

    “Too many churches have forgotten about saving souls. That’s because the pastors and ministers are only thinking about how many women and men they can sleep with inside and outside of the church, and how much money they can steal from God’s people,” said Armstrong. He also pointed out that pastors and ministers are misleading their congregations by teaching more about prosperity (material things) than about having a personal relationship with God.

    Dallas, TX (PRWEB) November 10, 2009 — Talk Show Host Reuben Armstrong and Essence Magazine # 1 best selling author of “Snakes in the Pulpit” has put the Megachurches and the Megapastor Under Fire once again , with his new book “Crooks and Homos in the Pulpit.”

    It has also been confirmed that controversial talk show host Reuben Armstrong has also come under fire once again for exposing what he perceives as the lies and deception of ministers, Pastors, church leaders and parishioners.

    Armstrong’s new book “Crooks and Homos in the Pulpit,” which is now available at book stores nationwide and on the web at http://www.reubenarmstrongshow.com, focuses on Megapastors such as Bishop T.D. Jake , Eddie Long, Joel Osteen and Bishop Eddie Long. Critics are calling Armstrong’s book controversial and an a wake up call to the Body of Christ.

    Armstrong who held a private conference with some prominent ministers and church leader to discuss the book and his concerns about the rampant spread of homosexuality and thievery that has taken over the lives of many pastors and ministers. According to Armstrong, “Crooks and homosexuals are spreading their lies and deception throughout the churches and the community like peanut butter on bread.”

    “Too many churches have forgotten about saving souls. That’s because the pastors and ministers are only thinking about how many women and men they can sleep with inside and outside of the church, and how much money they can steal from God’s people,” said Armstrong. He also pointed out that pastors and ministers are misleading their congregations by teaching more about prosperity (material things) than about having a personal relationship with God.

    Synopsis of the book: “Crooks and Homos in the Pulpit”

    Do church leaders such as Bishop T.D. Jakes, Bishop Eddie Long, Dr. Creflo Dollar, Joel Osteen, or eported homosexual Pastor Ted Haggard truly understand God’s Word? If so, why have they become corporate CEOs, allowing money, greed, and materialism to take over their souls? These leaders are whoring God’s people from the pulpit, while teaching legions of pimps, crooks, liars, and homosexuals, who pose as pastors, to follow in their footsteps.

    In “Crooks and Homos in the Pulpit,” author Reuben Armstrong exposes the false doctrine of prosperity and “feel good” message that Mega pastors and Megachurches are using. You will discover what the Bible says about false leaders such as these men and the judgment they face. Armstrong points out that too many churches have become corporate meet and meat markets. Through extensive research, he outlines what really goes on inside the “house of worship.” He exposes the shocking lifestyles of prosperity preachers, the sexual favors given in pastoral studies and Sunday School rooms, and the church “hoochie mommas” and “puff daddies” these leaders attract as their groupies.

    About the Author : Reuben Armstrong

    Reuben Armstrong (www.reubenarmstrongshow.com) is the founder, executive producer, and host of the Reuben Armstrong Radio and TV shows, and Essence Magazine Bestselling author of Snakes in the Pulpit.

    Through the power of media, Armstrong has created an unparalleled connection with people from around the world. As executive producer and host of “The Reuben Armstrong Show,” he produces the most anticipated talk show on Christian television. Armstrong entertains, enlightens, and uplifts millions of people from around the world with his in-your-face style, and his willingness to “tell it like it is.”

    http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/tv-celebrity-reuben-armstrong-puts,1038412.shtml

  8. Swarna Jha, on November 11th, 2009 at 9:28 am Said:

    CHRISTIAN MUSIC? NOT SO MUCH

    http://www.newswithviews.com/West/marsha185.htm

  9. AriseMyLove, on September 9th, 2009 at 5:48 pm Said:

    Bryan wrote:

    “…The original 12 apostles were ambassadors in chains, prisoners of Christ. Our glitzy “super-apostles” have more in common with the miracle working magicians of Pharaohs court than Moses…”

    And this is why the “super apostles and “super prophets’ of the NAR are marked by the sign of the FROG. It is why the Anti Christ spirit and spirit of The False Prophet are like frogs.

    The frog miracle was the only one duplicated by Pharaoh’s magicians in the show down with Moses.

    • Swarna Jha, on September 9th, 2009 at 7:29 pm Said:

      Hi AriseMyLove,

      Bryan wrote:

      “…The original 12 apostles were ambassadors in chains, prisoners of Christ. Our glitzy “super-apostles” have more in common with the miracle working magicians of Pharaohs court than Moses…”

      So true.

      The frog miracle was the only one duplicated by Pharaoh’s magicians in the show down with Moses.

      Yes.
      Ex 8:12,13.

      Strange, the pharoah did not call the magicians to remove the frogs………………..he called for Moses and Aaron.

      So the ‘magician apostles’, can ‘prophecy’, and cover themselves with gold dust and pigeon feathers, and continue to fool the gullible, but the true Power of God works through those whom He Has Chosen.

      Thanks.
      love and blessings
      swarna

      • Swarna Jha, on September 10th, 2009 at 11:24 am Said:

        Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation

        By Mitch Horowitz

        As thought movements often do, New Thought began with the experience of one individual. A stolid New England clockmaker named Phineas Quimby noticed that his tuberculosis seemed to ease whenever he took a refreshing carriage ride in the Maine countryside. Quimby discovered that as his spirits lifted, so did his illness. Eventually, he was completely cured. Quimby began to study the practice of Mesmerism – in which a subject could be placed into a suggestive trance – and grew fascinated with the health effects of the mind. By 1859, he had devised a philosophy of “mental healing” and began using it to treat the ill. While Quimby focused primarily on the mind’s power over disease, he increasingly came to view the subconscious as an extension of the Divine, through which a person could, with the proper training and understanding, construct outer circumstance. His ideas quickly found influence: Quimby treated a patient named Mary Baker Eddy, who went on to establish one of the nation’s most significant new religions, Christian Science.

        But it was not within any single religion that Quimby’s ideas took flight. Indeed, the taciturn Mrs. Eddy (as followers called her) soon denounced her old mentor as little more than a carnival Mesmerist. Nonetheless, his “mental healing” philosophy seemed to ride the winds all across America, winning far-flung adherents and evangelizers who in turn brought their own novel twists to it. It was these inheritors who morphed into the loosely bound psycho-spiritual school known by the late nineteenth century as New Thought. In later decades, this belief system attained mass popularity in the form of Norman Vincent Peale’s “power of positive thinking.” As such, it reached into nearly every church, living room, and bookstore in America.

        Ironically, few Americans today have heard the term or of the movement called New Thought. Its ideas have been so widely adopted that the movement itself – which persists in metaphysical churches throughout America, sometimes under the names of Unity or Religious Science – has become almost unseen. Americans like ideas, but not necessarily movements, which they discard like outer wrapping once an idea has been embraced. Moreover, secularized elements of the New Thought philosophy had already appeared by the last decade of the nineteenth century and successfully vied for influence with the more religiously inspired variants. By the mid-twentieth century, non-religious figures like Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends and Influence People) and Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich) rode the wings of New Thought to worldwide fame. Today, every life coach, motivational speaker, and self-help program uses the concept of an attitudinal approach to success, of mind over circumstance, and so on. It is easy to forget that this now-familiar concept was very much a mystical philosophy at its birth.

        Read here:

        http://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/HorowitzM1.php?p=4

        • Swarna Jha, on September 10th, 2009 at 4:34 pm Said:

          The Jesus Brand

          Think about the profound implications here: Jesus is our brand. He’s what we use to sell stuff. Go into any Christian bookstore in America, look around for 10 minutes and tell me it’s not true. Talk about taking the Lord’s name in vain! Even the construction worker who swears “Jesus Christ” when he stubs his toe has more respect for God. Have we forgotten we are to give God reverence and awe because He’s a consuming fire? Do we realize the incredible beauty and glory of the Being we’ve reduced to an avatar?

          Read here:

          http://adornhim.com/christian-culture/the-jesus-brand/

  10. Grace, on September 8th, 2009 at 3:44 am Said:

    Dear Swarna, I just wanted to say I am sorry…I repent for the gospel that America has trafficked. We have been and are merchants of a false gospel and another jesus (http://www.alittleleaven.com ). I stand guilty myself. I was once apart of this great whore system. The Lord opened my eyes….I am so grateful to see. I have paid a price with family and friends. There is a famine today…a famine of the hearing of the word of God. (Amos 8:11) The American churches today are dry and desolate and busy busy busy. It is a time to be a Mary and sit at His feet (Lk 10:42) Just as there was a garden in Eden there is an inward garden and we are to till and keep it. He is coming for fruit. I am afraid most will be stubble. Mal. 4:1 I am glad that you are sounding the alarm. Bless you!
    Grace

    • Swarna Jha, on September 9th, 2009 at 4:57 am Said:

      Dear Grace,

      May God Richly Bless you.

      I stand guilty myself. I was once apart of this great whore system. The Lord opened my eyes….I am so grateful to see

      So was I. Praise God for His Mercy and Grace. No matter where we are in the world, leaders or congregations, we need to repent of ‘the other gospel’.

      You mention fruit. Reminded me of a vision I saw, but have not shared yet, Vision: The Banana Republic.

      Thank you Grace.
      Love and blessings

      swarna

      http://tentsofissachar.wordpress.com/2008/04/27/global-prophetic-alert-an-apology-to-the-nations-by-bryan-hupperts-an-american-christian/

      GLOBAL PROPHETIC ALERT-An Apology To The Nations- By Bryan Hupperts-An American Christian

      An Apology To The NationsBryan Hupperts
      Dec 11 2007 08:01AM
      http://www.sheeptrax.com/

      America is a land that is walking in her own spiritual light, and our darkness is gross. The spiritual heresies and corruption that festers in our land are erupting like boils spreading disease all across the world. While there is a faithful remnant, much of our Christianity is sick and we are willing carriers of this self inflicted plague. Our festering wounds seem incurable.

      As a heartsick American believer, I am writing to apologize to the nations for the false gospel of greed we have poisoned you with. Please, weigh what you hear from American Christian media in the light of the Bible. In that light, we are found weighed, and wanting.

      Our pricy prophets deliver pleasing words and playful images from their own imaginations. A global prophetic alert recently went out with images of dancers doing the Cancan because, so said the prophet, “God says you Can-Can!” This is prophecy? All things prophetic have been turned into a profitable cash business. They promise money, money, money; prosperity abounding!, but ignore the required self-denial of the Cross. God says, in Jeremiah 23:29, “Is not my word like fire?” declares the LORD, “and like a hammer which shatters a rock?” Does a word that tickles the ear also shatter rock? Can these soothing words really be the words of God?

      We are exporting wholesale spiritual manifestations like the primitive Mormons used to experience: visions of pillars of light, orbs of light, strange spiritual manifestations and experiences not rooted or found the Bible, and many beguiled saints are drifting away from the sure word of Scripture as did the apostate Joseph Smith. Now we have Holy Ghost feathers and glittering gold and jewels appearing from the ether.

      Revelation 17: 1-2, “Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits on many waters. With her the kings of the earth committed adultery and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries.”
      Notice how this spiritual whore is dressed, verse 3, “There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns. The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls.”

      The Great Whore of Revelation 17 is clad in colors other than white and is glittering with what? Gold, precious stones and pearls. Wow. Amazing that these are the exact same manifestations happening in charismatic circles round the globe.

      Worse, those who profiteer from this spiritual prostitution and pollution are daring to call the wheat, tares, and the tares, wheat! Is good now evil? Is up now down? What have we done?

      Our apostate apostles, merchandisers of the anointing, stand in gold-threaded Armani suits instead of the prayer wrought armor of God enticing you with promises of blessing if you’ll send in your money. Aren’t we simply to “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness” and then these things, and they are only mere things, will be added to us? Since when are the marks of an apostle wealth, fame, and power? Are not the marks of a true apostle on his back from the blows and stripes of suffering for the cause of Christ?

      The original 12 apostles were ambassadors in chains, prisoners of Christ. Our glitzy “super-apostles” have more in common with the miracle working magicians of Pharaohs court than Moses. All but one of the original apostles was martyred for his testimony of Jesus! When heads start rolling in America, will these self professing men of God stand or will they run for their private jets to escape the persecution? There will be no room on their jets for those who made them rich. By their fruit, you will know them.
      We have a charismatic witch, who, like her spiritual mother at Endor, on a recent Christian TV talk show expounded about a visitation from the spirit of her dead father while neutered men of God, hungry for camera face time, fawned over her “beautiful” experience. Isaiah 8:19, “When men tell you to consult mediums and spiritists, who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living?” Necromancy, contacting the dead, is an ABOMINATION to God. This is voodoo, not the faith once delivered unto the saints. Forgive us for not rebuking the witch and for supporting her with our money. She has a familiar spirit and is lying to you; deceiving and being deceived!

      Our popular prophets have promoted satan’s greatest lie, his cherished heart’s desire, godhood. “Ye are gods,” quote the prophets of Babylon not quoting the whole counsel of God in Psalms 82:6 “I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High”. Verse 7 continues, “But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes”. It was a stinging rebuke to the presumption and arrogance of man, not an invitation to godhood!

      Did we learn nothing from the fall in Eden? Isaiah 43: 10, “Before Me there was no God formed, And there will be none after Me.” God says there will be no gods after him. Dogs have puppies, Cats have kittens, but God does not have little gods! Forgive us this heresy!

      We’ve taught you the poison of religion. Remember the second greatest commandment, “Love one another?” Our self-loving inner Pharisee has taught us to ignore this command. To bypass God’s call to love, we simply label those whom we disagree with as “religious.” If they are just “religious” then we are somehow excused from loving them. If you don’t like someone personally in the American church, just label them “religious” and move on. Is this not having a form of godliness but no power? And we have taught this clanging hypocrisy to the nations!

      Instead of showing you agape love lived out in community, we have gutted the very fruit of discipleship. John 13:35, “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” Ahh, but love is costly and inconvenient and cannot be lived during a 20 minute sermonette so we now we say, “You just need to have faith.” Yes, faith works through love. True faith will work towards love’s end.

      Does not God say that if you see your brother or sister in need and you say, as in James 2: 16, “‘Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,’ and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that?” While we demand you have “faith” God demands that we lay down our lives and love in the most practical of ways. What use is “the God kind of faith” if you eat well while your sister is starving? Don’t tell her to “have faith”, give her some of your food. We have taught you to sin!
      Brothers and sisters of the global church, the American church is fast becoming apostate. I live here and see it day after day. There is a praying remnant here who fear God, who have renounced charismatic witchcraft and prophetic profiteering, the sad hallmarks of the American church. Many of us have rediscovered the fear of God, the Bible, prayer, and holy living. There are many here who have not soiled their garment or bowed the knee to Baal but all you get to see is the ‘Greed for God’ hucksterism being exported to the nations in the name of discipleship.

      Forgive us. Pray for us. Do not seek to be like us. The American prophetic movement and prosperity gospel is a two headed wolf that will beguile you from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ! Look in horror at the carnality, unsound doctrines, and wreckage of the American church. This wolf maims and devours all in its path.

      In my spirit, I saw the foreshadowing of a tombstone slowly rising across our land inscribed with Isaiah 50: 10-11.

      10 Who among you fears the LORD
      and obeys the word of his servant?

      Let him who walks in the dark,
      who has no light,
      trust in the name of the LORD
      and rely on his God.
      11 But now, all you who light fires
      and provide yourselves with flaming torches,
      go, walk in the light of your fires
      and of the torches you have set ablaze.
      This is what you shall receive from my hand:
      You will lie down in torment.

      Come out from us and touch not the unclean thing. Don’t let our liars and merchandisers exploit you. Their prosperity promises don’t work here and they won’t work for you, either. Seek the Lord, and live.

      “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!” Galatians 1:8

      With profound apology,

      Bryan Hupperts

      An American Christian

      http://www.sheeptrax.com/

  11. Grace, on September 7th, 2009 at 12:57 am Said:

    Amen! This is what I have been trying to say!
    God is not into numbers…only 8 were saved in the flood. He is looking for those who keep His commandments… …love him with their whole heart and one another. (Doing this will stop the unrighteousness deeds of the flesh) I am hearing a lot about judgment but I have heard or seen repentance.The bible says… If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. We have a church on every corner nearly and christian bookstores everywhere, but sin abounds. Flesh is ruling. The true gospel must be preached again. We don’t need jokes, stories and programs… let the gospel of Jesus Christ be preached again. Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.

    • Swarna Jha, on September 7th, 2009 at 3:43 am Said:

      Grace, so right! God is not into numbers. Carnality has led christians to ‘help’ God. I remember an american preacher coming to Bombay and bragging that America is a christian country and is rich because the congregations give give give to their ministries.

      Of coure there are christians here who are sold out to the american gospel. It’s so ‘appealing’. Some of the preachers even sound like the TBN evangelists.

      Some churches here were even praying for Bush to win his second term elections!

      It was weird. It seemed like Bush was going to be the ‘president’
      of all christians world-wide.

      The ‘american gospel’ is addictive.

      Thanks Grace.
      Love and blessings
      swarna

  12. Swarna Jha, on September 12th, 2009 at 4:15 am Said:

    RE: Pagan Christianity and the Fad Driven Church

  13. Swarna Jha, on September 12th, 2009 at 4:48 am Said:

    Pagan Revival in Christian America

    by Dr. Peter Jones

    Edited transcript from a lecture given at
    198 Young Hall, University of California, Davis
    sponsored by Grace Valley Christian Center
    Thursday evening, May 7, 1998

    The subtitle of my book, Spirit Wars, is Pagan Revival in Christian America, which is what I have entitled this first lecture. This lecture and that of May 8 will be a pair. First I would like to set the scene by making a number of descriptive comments about where I see America in this particular day as it moves, I believe, towards a form of spirituality that I call neo-paganism. Then I would like to be a little more systematic and try to show the coherence of a neo-pagan world view. This lecture has four points: the first point is that Christianity is in trouble in America; the second point describes a new religious option for America; the third point will be a retrospective on the sixties revolution; and the fourth point, which really leads into the next lecture, is simply a quick evocation of the new paganism.

    American Christianity in Trouble

    It seems to me that Christianity is in dire straights in what we always used to call, particularly in Europe, “Christian America.” To say this one generation ago would have raised, I think, reactions of total disbelief. America was the great Christian nation of the modern age. It was the place of the sending out of the great missionary force in the modern period, as well as being the culture that seemed to preserve a very vibrant form of Christianity when Europe was collapsing under the force of atheistic humanism. Indeed, that impression still remains.

    These lectures that I am giving are actually the result of culture shock. I first came to America in 1964. Who else came to America in 1964? The Beatles. Now, some of you would be interested to know that I almost was a Beatle. For obvious reasons, I didn’t make it. But I did have the wonderful chance of being John Lennon’s friend in high school for six years; we even used to play music together. But my parents wouldn’t let me go to the dances where the band played, so I couldn’t be part of the group. I came here in 1964 when the Beatles arrived, but nobody knew that I was arriving in America.

    As a young European coming to America in 1964, I was struck as to how spiritual, how “Christian,” America was. I remember as a young man in Liverpool, England, going to church on a double-decker bus. It was about a twenty-minute trip, so to alleviate the boredom I would often try to count the number of pubs I could see from the top of the double-decker bus. As I recall, my count was about eighty pubs as this bus went down those streets. On the corners of virtually every road it seemed that there was a public house.

    When I came to America, I didn’t see any pubs. Instead of pubs, it was churches. Churches seemed to be absolutely everywhere. It seems to me that the impression that I had then as to how “Christian” America was, in many ways could remain now. There are vast networks of Christian colleges and schools. At the school where I teach there are two large bookcases totally filled with catalogues of Christian colleges and seminaries; I think it’s fourteen shelves filled with tiny little catalogues. And of course that would only really include the Protestant Christian schools and wouldn’t include the Roman Catholic and orthodox institutions. When I say that in Europe, people are shocked, but I see you are not shocked at all. It is an indication, is it not?

    One can get an impression of great strength and force and power of Christianity in America. Vast networks of Christian colleges and schools, all kinds of Christian home-schooling groups, publishing houses, radio and television stations, and an unprecedented number of churches all conspire to give the impression that Christianity in America is in very good shape. The polls, too, could not be more encouraging. Ninety-seven percent of Americans believe in God. Ninety percent believe that God loves them. Mega-churches are bulging at the seams, and our president goes to church with a big fat Bible in his hand. The economy is booming, the “cold war” is over, and America in a sense is the unique, undisputed world power. America, then, being the leader, is in the business of exporting civil rights, democracy and social justice to every corner of the planet. As the third millennium approaches, Y2K, are we not then entering a golden age of American civilization which will indeed civilize the planet? Surely Christianity will be in the vanguard!

    Well, there is another scenario, one I have indeed attempted to describe in my book. In one generation an anti-Christian pagan spirituality has invaded the culture. Glaring into every home on a daily basis is the networks’ message that Christianity, once the backbone of the nation, is now only its bigoted marginal fringe.

    One rather interesting anecdote (worth what anecdotes are worth) which would perhaps indicate where Christianity really is in the culture is the example of Dartmouth College. Dartmouth College was founded in 1750 by Eleazer Wheelock, a leader of the First Great Awakening, who said that the purpose of the college was the spreading of the knowledge of the only true God and Savior, and making this knowledge as extensive and common as possible. The first charter of Dartmouth College was granted by our great sovereign, George III. The charter gave to Dartmouth College the following purpose: the civilizing and Christianizing of children of pagans. As late as 1945 the then president, Ernest Hopkins, declared, “Dartmouth is a Christian college founded for the Christianization of its students.”

    Since that time things have changed. In 1997 the current president, James Freedman, described these Christian origins as “obnoxious ghosts from the past, to be exorcised from the institution’s consciousness.” Ominously then, Dartmouth, once the most prolific provider of Christian missionaries in America, seems now to be producing missionaries of a different sort, bent on removing even the memory of Christianity in Christian America. One could perhaps represent Dartmouth’s present purpose as having been turned totally on its head from the original one— namely, the paganizing of the children of Christians.

    That, admittedly, is an anecdote. But in the last few years a number of other anecdotes are worthy of our interest. In this land – settled, in many regards, by those believing in the orthodox affirmations of Christianity – the head health officer declared in 1993 that “America must end its love affair with the fetus.” In 1993 six thousand Christians, Moslems, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and all kinds of pagans met in Chicago for the Parliament of the World’s Religions, the centenary celebration of the unity of the world’s religions, at which I was present as an observer. I observed these six thousand delegates holding hands and dancing around the enormous conference hall to the beat of an American Indian shaman’s drum.

    That same year in Minneapolis the RE-Imagining Conference was held, bringing together two thousand mainline Christian women. It featured a standing ovation for lesbians, a eucharist of milk and honey offered to the goddess Sophia, and a much applauded presentation denying the atonement of Christ. The whole conference burst into laughter and applause when it was pointed out that during those three days the names of God the Father and Christ the Son had never been mentioned. At the most recent RE-Imagining Conference all the worshipers bit into the sacramental apple at the celebration of the “Ladies Supper.”

    One more anecdote which would suggest that things are not quite Christian in Christian America is the famous Burning Man Festival. I don’t know whether you are aware of this particular festival. It was begun in 1995 with five thousand people in the Nevada desert. In 1996 there were ten thousand. Last year there were seventeen thousand people, computer experts and all kinds of folks, gathered together to celebrate the worship of Satan. The weekend crescendoed on Saturday night in a drama where the seventeen thousand people engaged in a seven-stage descent into the abyss of darkness. The center stage was transformed into “the vestibule of hell,” and the guest of honor, “Papa Satan,” appeared, bowing in derision before a placard which read: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.” And then, before the crowd, “Papa Satan” had sex with a woman, Zoe, which led to scenes of general public copulation. Finally the crowd called upon “Papa Satan” to take them to hell, and the burning man effigy, a forty-foot high effigy of a human being, was ignited.

    A New Religious Option

    These are anecdotes, it is true, yet it seems to me they indicate that something has happened in Christian America within the last thirty years. I am not talking about nostalgia or sentimentalism for some period that’s gone by that we should try and resurrect; I am talking about a major change of world view that is coming over many Americans. They evoke a new religious option: “When the moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars, then peace will guide the planets and love will steer the stars. This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.” When I was a student in the sixties, I thought that was a great song. I sang it. I enjoyed it. I had no clue what it meant. I’m not sure I even know what it means now. But it still was a great song with a wonderful melody. It was a smash hit from the musical Hair. It seems to me that there we have a sort of eschatology of a new religious vision, a new spirituality, that looks to the stars for inspiration.

    There is afoot in America today the search for a whole new spirituality. One book that I would suggest you read, if you are interested in this, is the book by Tony Schwartz, a journalist from Newsweek who ghost-wrote the biography of Donald Trump. Having made an awful lot of money doing that, he gave himself a two-year sabbatical, and after doing two-years of research he wrote a book which has this title: What Really Matters? Searching for Wisdom in America, New York, Bantam Books, 1995. He went around America interviewing the representatives of this new spirituality. In it he talks about the flowering of a more comprehensive approach to wisdom, uniting the best of the East and the West, and this, he says, represents a historic first. “Never before have we had access to so many technologies of transformation, so much knowledge about the full spectrum of human possibility. It is not just that there is wisdom to be found in America,” – and get this, all you patriotic Americans – “but that these comprehensive approaches are emerging primarily in America.” At the end of his book he makes an interesting declaration. Really the message is this: that there is a wisdom in America that will save the planet, and that American know-how, tied to the ancient wisdom of the East, will save us. He speaks about “an emerging American wisdom tradition”, a new spirituality, a first, never before seen.

    Richard Gregg, a Roman Catholic theologian, professor at Sacred Heart University, recently wrote a book called When God Becomes Goddess – The Transformation of American Religion. His thesis is this: “The traditional Western notion of deity may be destined not for obliteration, but rather for transformation. Perhaps God will simply not disappear, but will in some fashion become goddess.” So we are in the presence, many now believe, of a new American wisdom tradition, a new spirituality uniting the techniques of the West and the wisdom of the East.

    One particular way of explaining where this new spirituality has arisen – it isn’t a full explanation – is the influence of the sixties on American culture. It seems to me that we are living in the full flowering of the sixties revolution. What I am about to say I don’t intend to be at all a political statement. I’m pretty much convinced that the Democrats and the Republicans are equally bad in the sense that none of them seems to understand what’s happening. But it is true that in 1992 the people of the United States voted into the most powerful position on the earth a president who, as a left-leaning student, had smoked pot, dodged the draft, and espoused the sexual morals of the hippie revolution.

    In the nineties, the anti-establishment, flower-power children of the sixties actually entered the halls of power. Those who were committed to the bringing down of the state finally found themselves with all the levers of power in the state in their hands. Hippies with short hair and three piece suits, having taken baths, have moved to Washington and are now living in very nice digs. A sociologist from UCLA says in her book, Do You Believe in Miracles? The Second Coming of The Sixties, that the sixties actually came of age in the nineties. It’s only in that sense that I mention the president – only in his capacity as social head of the nation and therefore a metaphor for our times. I was a student in the sixties, and quite frankly I thought that the sixties revolution was a total failure. There were radicals on the campuses where I was at Harvard and Princeton, but they seemed to be not very influential. As I look back, however, I would have to say that the sixties revolution was an amazing success.

    New Age mystics like Marilyn Ferguson and UCLA physicist Capra consider the sixties to be extremely important for a changing world view. Says Ferguson, “The values that had powered the movement of the sixties could not be institutionalized without a shift in cultural assumptions. As consciousness changes, the world changes.” What does she mean by that? The thinking of the sixties could not be institutionalized – that is to say, made law, made to count, made to have power behind it – until the consciousness of the nation was changed. As consciousness changes, the world changes. It seems to me that from the sixties on, many of those radical thinkers of the sixties were able to take places of great power in the institutions, those places in society that determine the way we all think. Someone has described this as “the great march through the institutions.”

    You would have to agree with me that, since the sixties, changes have occurred. Americans, like no other people, not only tolerate but have institutionalized divorce, abortion, homosexuality and radical feminism. All this has happened because the religious consciousness of America has changed. When Mr. and Mrs. Clinton entered the White House, they were alleged to have said, “This is our time.” They seemed to have understood what was happening. The question is, what does the word “our” mean? Well, certainly it meant, for instance, twenty-seven openly practicing homosexuals being appointed to the administration for the first time in American history. It meant access to the White House for some pretty radical people. Marianne Williamson, who popularized A Course in Miracles; Jean Houston, a New Age channeler, and others have all had important roles to play within the White House. It seems to me that we have indeed seen some of these changes taking place and that the sixties revolution has, in a sense, gone mainstream in the nineties.

    Some of you are aware of David Horowitz and Peter Collier, who wrote the book Destructive Generation. I believe Horowitz was a Ph.D. student at Berkeley in the sixties. These two men were members of the inner circle of the radicals. They were editors of Ramparts magazine. They knew everybody who was anybody in the movement, from Huey Newton to Jerry Rubin to Tom Hayden to Jane Fonda. Having helped foment the revolution, they now are concerned with misgivings about what they did. Neither of them are religious people, as far as I can tell.

    Certainly there were some excellent things in the sixties revolution. I think free speech is an excellent thing, and those original campus folks at Berkeley sought to get free speech. I think the sixties attack on racism is a wonderful thing. But the sixties revolution very quickly became radicalized, and we will look at what those radical notions were. But this is what David Horowitz and Peter Collier say – that that generation was a destructive generation: “The stones we threw into the water of our world in those days caused ripples that continue to lap on our shores today – for better and more often for worse.”

    What was destroyed by this destructive generation? Nothing less, I believe, than the dominance of Western Christendom and civilization. This, at least, is the view of a spirit guide who channels messages to Ken Carey, who then gives them to Harper San Francisco, who produces books from them. Says the Spirit Guide: “Our communications during these closing years of the seventies are reaching past the social fringes of your culture that was contacted during the sixties. This time, we are reaching deep into the heart of global civilization… We are not in much contact yet” – and this was written in the eighties – “with the government officials, nor with world banks or international financiers. Our first contacts with them will occur during the most powerful transmissions of 1987 to 1989. Those who we are contacting now, nevertheless, are critical enough in the maintenance of your social systems to ensure that the world will make some incredible leaps in consciousness during the next decade.”


    Impact of the Sixties Revolution

    What was the impact of the sixties in terms of the destruction of the general Christian world- and life-view that was common in America to that date? I’d like to look at the sixties in its destructive element via three notions: the rejection of authority, the rejection of biblical sexual norms and morals, and the rejection of Christian spirituality. Let’s look at those three.

    First of all, the rejection of authority. The New Left radicals of the sixties wanted to “bring the system down.” History will show that they did just that, against all odds, by simply taking it over. It is sort of quaint to see the old newsreels of the sixties, where the radicals rejected the authority of landlords, university senates, the police and the federal government. But that has gone mainstream in our time to such an extent that it’s sometimes heard on campuses: “Hey ho, wha d’ya know, Western Civ has got to go.” In other words, the entire structure of the civilization in its authoritative, canonical role now must be undermined. Today’s radical students reject the dead white male authors such as Plato, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Jonathan Edwards, and so many more, and the general contemporary intellectual chorus calls for the dismantling of “patriarchy”. Again, the notion of authority as it was maintained in Western Christendom has been attacked in a profound way during this generation.

    Of course, the sixties’ rejection of authority really is much deeper than what I’m saying, and is no doubt part of a whole intellectual movement called “deconstructionism”. Deconstruction is the tool whereby the modern world is deconstructed to give rise to what is now called the “post-modern” world. The deconstructed world of modernity arises because of the conviction that truth is merely power, that there is no authority, really—only social constructions, what people decide to impose on other people. A good example of this would be Michel Foucault, the French philosopher and homosexual, who argued for deconstruction, particularly on the level of homosexuality, by saying that there is no such thing as normative sexuality; there is simply the majority imposing their morals, their particular choices, on the minority. So it’s really a power play of the heterosexuals imposing their views upon the minority, the homosexuals. That is a classic expression of what is known as deconstruction. All authority is deconstructed and is viewed with suspicion because it is merely socially constructed.

    We really are now in the presence of a massive rejection of authority in general. There is no authority. There is no absolute truth. Seventy-some percent of Americans no longer believe that there is any absolute truth. Even amongst evangelicals, forty percent no longer believe that there is any kind of ultimate truth. We really are in the presence of a massive change in the way people view authority.

    The second great rejection of the sixties was the rejection of biblical sexual norms and morals. It began as a heterosexual movement; it was “anything goes” heterosexual love. One of First Lady Hillary Clinton’s spiritual gurus was Michael Lerner, who is now a Jewish rabbi, editor of the journal Tikkun, which is actually a term that comes from Jewish kabbalah, namely, deep mystical Judaism. In the sixties, Michael Lerner was the leader of the Berkeley Students for a Democratic Society. On his first wedding cake he had written: “Smash Monogamy,” which he proceeded to do, I guess, with a series of marriages. But of course that smashing of monogamy really has gone mainstream and diversified in the nineties. The sexual revolution of today goes beyond the sixties extra-marital, pre-marital and post-marital heterosexual activity. “Anything goes” has become the boundless expression of many kinds of sexuality – heterosexuality, sadomasochism, bisexuality, unbounded pornography, pedophilia – and surely bestiality cannot be too far behind.

    Gary Bauer of the Family Research Council reacted to a government policy for the promotion of condoms in pornographic television ads by saying this: “For the first time in our nation’s history, a generation of young Americans is being told by the government leaders that, if they will just use condoms, promiscuity is perfectly safe, and in fact, no big deal.” It seems to me that the point of that small example is this: that the “free love” of the sixties radicals, marginals at the time, has now become official government policy in the nineties, and many of those radicals now head government agencies.

    Finally, the rejection of Biblical spirituality. I think it’s important to note that the sixties revolution is a spiritual revolution. It is something that surely should touch us, even as we are critical of many elements within that movement, that there was a great search for spirituality in an America that, while seemingly so Christian, perhaps had lost some of the deep spirituality of true Christianity. So the sixties revolution was a search for genuine spirituality. Some of you older ones may even be those who were touched by the Jesus Movement of the sixties as part of that search for genuine spirituality.

    But I must say that the most powerful aspect of that search for spirituality went against Christian spirituality, because the radicals turned East. Woodstock was a spiritual happening, the drug trip a search for the Garden of Eden, and the radicals went East to find a new, though very old, form of spirituality. You could have it on the fast track with LSD, or you could have it on a slower track with less danger to your body through the practice of meditation.

    Richard Alpert, otherwise known as Ram Dass, is a classic example of this search for a new spirituality. Richard Alpert was raised in a very successful non-practicing Jewish family. He made it as an intellectual, and he was appointed as a lecturer at Harvard in Freudian psychology. One of his colleagues was Timothy Leary. Those men surely realized that what Freud was saying was such a reduction of the human being to a mere mechanism of sexuality, that they were searching for something deeper. They were searching for the spiritual dimension. Both Richard Alpert and Timothy Leary felt they had found that in LSD, and so they promoted LSD on the Harvard campus in the early sixties and were finally asked to leave.

    Richard Alpert then, having been turned on to LSD and turned on to this kind of spirituality, went east to India and studied in an ashram and became a Hindu. He became a Hindu guru by the name of Ram Dass. I heard him give a lecture once in San Diego, and in that lecture he said that, thanks to Hinduism, he had finally discovered his true Judaism; he had become a true son of the covenant. Recently I was in La Jolla in a New Age bookstore – I tend to go in those kinds of places – and I picked up a book: The Jew in the Lotus. Remember that Hindu phrase, “the jewel in the lotus”? The Jew in the Lotus – again, another expression of a Jew who said he had found his true Judaism through Buddhism.

    Richard Alpert describes his first spiritual experience through LSD: “I found the way that psychedelic drugs can prompt a shift of consciousness and a radically different view of one’s identity.” See, this wasn’t just like you often have on the campuses, a sort of alcohol binge where you simply lose your senses and do foolish things. This is a spiritual trip. Describing his first trip, he says this: As he felt his inner self sort of leaving his body, he didn’t know what was happening to him. He said, “At least I have my body.” But then he looked down at the couch where he was supposed to be, and his sense of his body had vanished as well. He said: “Nothing in my philosophical materialism…” You see that? He was a Freudian. “Nothing in my philosophical materialism prepared me for that, and I freaked. I started to call for Timothy Leary, when the thought went through my mind: Who’s freaking out? If I’m not my body, and I’m not all my social roles, what’s left? And then something suddenly connected for me. It was like a figure/ground reversal, a complete change of world view. I became aware of a part of me, an essence that had nothing to do with Life and Death.”

    Think about that incredible spiritual experience: “A part of me… that had nothing to do with Life and Death.” That means you’ll never die, right? That means you’ve discovered something that will take away all the fears of the future and indeed explain to you all the mysteries of the past. “…[A]lthough everything by which I knew myself, even my body in this life itself, was gone, still I was fully aware! Not only that, but this aware “I” was watching the entire drama, including the panic, with calm compassion. Instantly, with this recognition, I felt a new kind of calmness… I had just found… a place where “I” existed” –[notice this]– “independent of social and physical identity… And something else – that “I” Knew – it really Knew.” Here is a spiritual experience that gives Richard Alpert a sense of absolute knowing, absolute knowledge. “I felt like I’d come home.” Ram Dass, then, is a fantastic example of what happens spiritually to many, many people through that rejection of an old world view; in his case it wasn’t even the Christian world view, but it was the Judeo-Christian consensus.

    It’s interesting that at that very time in the sixties was declared the “death of God.” I know because when I was at seminary they made me read this stuff, and I couldn’t figure out what it meant. Some people said, “Well, we didn’t even know he was sick.” But the “death of God” was a serious spiritual movement. One of the “death of God” theologians said this: that it was indeed at the death of God that we experienced the rebirth of the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece. He said, “It may be that this need to recall an old symbol system [namely, polytheism] for new purposes may be behind the recent interest in the occult, in magic, in extraterrestrial life, in Hindu India and Buddhist Japan, in multidaemoned China, in sorcery, in new forms of multiple family life, in communes, in the “new religions,” and many other alternate life-styles and meaning systems which have been hitherto foreign.” That was said by one of these “death of God” theologians in 1971.

    Searching for a New Spirituality

    The sixties, then, represent not simply the rejection of authority, or a liberation, if you like, of the sexual morals of the Judeo-Christian world view, but also this searching for a new spirituality. The Beatles went East and the gurus came West. This is what has been happening religiously and spiritually in America in the last generation; in our time, the East and the West have been drawn together. There are very powerful forces that project the West to the East. What do I mean by the East? I mean, in particular, Eastern spirituality—Hinduism, Buddhism, and various Chinese religions. There has been a powerful movement of the West to the East, in particular as the West promotes its hard-earned notions of capitalism, democracy and technology. Those three elements the West has given to the East. You can go to the jungles of Borneo and you will find primitive peoples with transistor radios. The West has succeeded in exporting its great achievements to the East. Of course the big question is: How long can China resist? China is really the only great standout. But of course, already China has bought Western economics, so how long will the rest then stand? But apart from China, the East really has bought the whole Western approach to capitalism and technology.

    But at the same time as the West exports its technology and its capitalism and even its democracy, the East has exported its spirituality. As the West has broken with its own spiritual roots, namely Judeo-Christian consensus, a new spirituality has flooded into the West – a very different spirituality, a very different world view. In my next lecture I will spell out just how different that is.

    The superimposing of these two totally antithetical world views on each other produces an extremely confusing situation. Have you noticed how confused people are in trying to make decisions about morals or ethics, or even about spiritual things? We’ve probably never lived in a more confusing time. What was once at the center of Western culture now is pushed to the margins. What was the very backbone of the West – namely, Christianity – is now sort of simply expressed at the edges. That’s why we often hear that Christianity is a marginal, bigoted way of looking at things. This is the occasion for the institutionalization and the great spread of the new paganism, as we in the West accept many of the fundamental notions of Eastern paganism.

    It’s true that the baby boomers are accurately called “a generation of seekers,” as the sociologist Roof wrote recently in that famous book, A Generation of Seekers, which many people have read. Only 4 percent of baby boomers are atheist or agnostic; 96 percent, he said, are into religion of one kind or another. So the real enemy of the Christian faith is no longer atheistic humanism. We all used to fear that that was going to be the great enemy—materialistic, Marxist atheism was the great enemy that was infiltrating into America. So you had the McCarthy era, of which really the sixties were an immense reaction.

    But the real spiritual struggle is not between atheism and theism any more; it’s between theism and pantheism. It’s not “no God” versus the true God; it’s the true God versus all the other gods. In America in the nineties, in “Christian” America, the choice is not God or no God, but the choice is the God of the Bible, the God of theism, or the god of pantheism, the god of spiritual monism, the god of religious paganism.

    In closing, while it is true that we are being called upon to adopt tolerance and inclusiveness, I would exhort you to see that behind that exhortation to inclusiveness there is a new but very old world view that is taking over, which seeks to include all the gods in a pagan pantheon. The two systems, monism and theism, stand in direct contradiction one to the other. My next lecture will develop what that is – the antithesis between pagan monism and Christian theism.

    http://members.dcn.org/gvcc/sermon_trans/Special_Speakers/Pagan_Revival_in_Christian_America.html

  14. Swarna Jha, on September 12th, 2009 at 7:02 am Said:

    Pagan christianity by Frank Viola and Barna

    http://www.paganchristianity.org/endorse.htm

  15. Swarna Jha, on September 12th, 2009 at 9:06 am Said:

    Take Your Gun and Gospel to Church
    By: Robert Parham
    Posted: Friday, September 11, 2009 5:47 am
    Section: EthicsDaily.com’s Latest Articles

    Coming, perhaps, to a sanctuary near your home is a new version of the Bible, one released by the National Rifle Association. It has a camouflaged cover, quotations from some of America’s great patriots at the beginning of each book of the Bible, and a bookmark that contains the Second Amendment in bold red letters.

    More importantly, the NRA Bible updates some time-honored texts in words more reasonable for today’s Christian gun owners and offers helpful commentary related to passages that are often misused by those who would strike the Second Amendment.

    For example, Luke 11:21 reads, “When a man is strong, he is fully armed. He guards his own home and his goods are safe.”

    Christian gun owners couldn’t have a better proof text from Jesus than this one in the new NRA Bible.

    Or take Luke 22:36, where Jesus gave his disciples their instructions at the Last Supper before the crucifixion. The NRA text reads: “And let him who has no gun sell his overcoat and buy one.”

    Again, the modern American Bible for gun owners is clear: Jesus told Christians to bear arms. It is an act of obedience.

    Matthew 26:47-52 is a more difficult passage that requires interpretive commentary. Here is the story about Jesus’ arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane and the action of a disciple, probably Peter, who sliced off the ear of one of the arresting attendees. The text rightly translates that Jesus told his disciple to put up his sword. The accompanying textual commentary points out that Jesus didn’t tell his disciple either to register his sword with the Roman government or to surrender his sword to the authorities. The commentary notes Jesus’ instructions to his followers to be armed always: “Put the sword back into its place.”

    Again, the NRA Bible provides a supportive text for always having a sidearm. If one substitutes the word sword for gun, then it’s unmistakably clear. Jesus affirmed the right for his followers to be armed, not to disarm voluntarily or surrender their weapons to the federal government. Jesus told one of his closest followers to pack heat.

    Since the Constitution is based on the Bible, the Second Amendment rests securely on a biblical foundation in Matthew 26.

    One text, however, goes a tad too far in updating the words of Jesus. Rather than “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34), the NRA text reads: “If any want to become my followers, let them arm themselves, take up their Second Amendment and follow me.”

    But so far, patriot pastors have not complained about the NRA’s rewording of the passage in Mark.

    As one patriot preacher said this summer on an NRA broadcast: “In history and Scripture, the patriot and Christian go hand in hand.”

    Now, why is this make-believe column about the absurd fusion of God, the Gospels and guns so completely believable?

    Robert Parham is executive editor of EthicsDaily.com and executive director of its parent organization, the Baptist Center for Ethics.

    http://www.ethicsdaily.com/news.php?viewStory=14849

  16. Swarna Jha, on September 18th, 2009 at 3:54 am Said:

    The Democratization of American Christianity

    A reassessment of religion and culture in the early days of the American Republic, arguing that during this period American Christianity was democratized and common people became powerful actors on the religious scene. This book was co-winner of the 1990 John Hope Franklin Publication Prize.

    User Ratings and Reviews
    5 Stars “We the people” religion
    Thanks Mr. Hatch for writing this book!

    How did the church in America get to its present position where it fails to realize that the body of Christ is dependent on God raising up distinctly graced individuals to authoritatively, accurately, and relevantly preach the Word? Read this book and find out.

    Clearly demonstrates how the church which is supposed to be led by the Spirit of Christ, has instead been disasterously infected by the spirit of ‘76 since the time of the revolution. God help us!

    5 Stars An Eye-Opening “People’s History” of American Protestantism
    The United States is unique among its peers due to the strong religiosity of its people in comparison to other Western industrial powers. “The Democratization of American Christianity” by Nathan O. Hatch, a highly influential scholar of American religious studies and current president of Wake Forest University, argues that this is due to the ongoing force of a populist strain of Protestant thought that first arose in the 1790s with the widespread demand that the Revolutionary rhetoric of freedom and democracy be fully realized in politics, society, and, inevitably, religion. The Second Great Awakening, which ran through the 1830s, was a time of millennial experimentation and renewal, as well as upheaval within the old Calvinist denominations.

    Impoverished Americans of the early nineteenth century have been nevertheless described as a “set of fierce republicans” fully aware of the Revolutionary promises of liberty and equality. The preachers of the Second Great Awakening frequently reminded their audiences of the humble origins of Christ and his early followers, as well as their oppression by the ruling classes – a theme that blended nicely with the fervent Jeffersonianism that characterized the early American republic. The post-Revolutionary era saw the rapid growth of newspapers, volunteer societies, the organization of political parties, new definitions of citizenship and the role of women, and virulent attacks on elite professions, especially the clergy. As forms of hierarchy in all areas of life began to collapse, radical Jeffersonians began to reclaim the Revolutionary rhetoric, which had once united colonists from all walks of life, to rouse the common folk against “aristocrats.” Drawing on the anti-Federalists, they scorned the idea of society as an organic chain of command and argued that it was instead a veritable motley crew of competing interests. Dissent, in other words, came to be defined against accepted tradition, especially as the rush to settle the frontier removed many citizens from established centers of authority. Meanwhile, the deterioration of their economic prospects in the 1780s and ’90s, despite promises of prosperity, only deepened the rural poor’s resentment and sense of social alienation. Within this milieu the “coarse language, earthy humor, biting sarcasm, and commonsense reasoning” of backcountry preachers held enormous appeal and left educated ministers at a loss. Instead of respecting “tradition, learning, solemnity and decorum,” upstarts such as John Leland, Alexander Campbell, Lorenzo Dow, and Francis Asbury exalted the individual conscience.

    For all their differences, however, each of the upstart leaders and sects arising out of the Second Great Awakening stressed the simple motifs of sin, grace, and conversion. They embraced spontaneous experience and dismissed any religion that struck them as cold, detached, and intellectual. Unlike their predecessors of in the eighteenth century, they quite self-consciously threw off the weighted traditions of the past and rejected learned theology; they also demanded that clergy and laity be placed on equal footing, sought to create a new history that called for inquiry and innovation, and, above all, proclaimed the inalienable right of every Christian to read and understand the Bible for themselves. The story of Christianity since the time of the Apostles, they charged, has been a sad conspiracy of elite clerics to keep the full Truth out of the hands of the people to enrich their own power. Stone and Campbell pushed this logic to its extreme and renounced any form of church government; Stone and his colleagues even dissolved their own organization. There can be no creed, many argued, but the Bible. This was a crucial departure from the First Great Awakening, which had not gone so far as to use the Bible itself to combat theology, history, and tradition. The Bible also provided solid footing for a populace shaken by rootlessness, political controversy, and fragmentation.

    Despite the radically decentralized nature of most of the period’s religious movements – their overemphasis on subjectivity destabilized them in the long run – Hatch’s book draws a clear line of descent from Second Great Awakening leaders such as Alexander Campbell, Elias Smith, Lorenzo Dow, John Leland, Francis Asbury, James O’Kelly, and Barton W. Stone and such modern Christians as Pat Robertson, Oral Roberts, the late Jerry Falwell, Billy Graham, Kathryn Kuhlman, Robert Schuller, and Jimmy Swaggart. The true power of American Christianity, Hatch asserts, has been its recognition of the supernatural in everyday life while maintaining the characteristically American values of autonomy and popular sovereignty. Fundamentalism, the Holiness movement, and Pentecostalism – dismissed by critics as “holdovers from an age of rural simplicity” – continue as vital spiritual forces to this day, especially among the rural Southern poor and urban working classes in the Midwest.

    Nevertheless, too many historians, Hatch claims, have dismissed the early American republic as a mere epilogue to the Revolutionary years and prologue to the Jacksonian era. The result has been an unfortunate lack of scholarship covering this period, as well as little recognition of the continuity between the Revolution and the Second Great Awakening. What little work that has been done has all too often merely reinforced the tired stereotype of religion as tool of social control and repression. In order to demonstrate the inherently populist character of American Christianity that has distinguished it from other Western nations, Hatch draws extensively on both modern scholarship and a wide variety of contemporary pamphlets, sermons, religious journals, memoirs, journals, and letters. Most intriguing, however, is his inclusion of an appendix of anticlerical and anti-Calvinist songs and poems by ordinary Americans that “translate theological concepts into language of the marketplace, personalize theological abstractions, deflate the pretensions of privileged church leaders, and instill hope and confidence in popular collective action.” Many were extracted from songbooks published by Elias Smith and Lorenzo Dow, demonstrating not only the spiritual sentiments of ordinary folk but of their leaders as well. All in all, “The Democratization of American Christianity” comes highly recommended, especially for anyone wondering at the comparatively religious character of American society.

    5 Stars A Christian perspective.
    If you want to understand why the twenty-first century American Evengelical Church is rife with heretical teachings and outright apostasy, read this book. In The Democratization of American Christianity, Nathan Hatch demonstrates how the American Revolution spawned the so-called Second Great Awakening, a religious rebellion, which led to an abandonment of Orthodox Christianity in favor of a pluralism that plagues American Protestantism to this very day. The egalitarian values of the Enlightenment that dominated the American conscience of the early nineteenth century allowed a host of false teachers to lead a revolt of the laity against a clergy that, while Biblically Orthodox in their doctrine, had allowed affluance and intellectualism to overcome their sense of Christian charity. Spicing their sermons with coarse language, emotional appeals, Jeffersonian quotations, quaint stories and rabald humor, these populists taught that every individual must interpret the scriptures according to their own conscience. These “teachings” led to an “anything goes Christianity” that included the embracing of such heresies as Arminianism, Mormanism, Perfectionism and Universalism, the apostasy of Unitarianism and even Transcendentalism: anything other than Biblical Orthodoxy. One hundred and fifty years later, this pluralism continues to permeate American Protestanism, currently manifesting itself in the Emerging Church movement, which is a blending of Christianity with New Age spiriualism that denies the authority of scripture itself. Though Hatch does not set out to do so, he demonstrates the great truth that heresy always leads to apostasy.

    5 Stars “Religious Populism” in the Early Republic
    Nathan O. Hatch uses the second sentence of The Democratization of American Christianity to inform the reader that the book argues “both that the theme of democratization is central to understanding the development of American Christianity, and that the years of the early republic are the most crucial in revealing that process” (3). To this end, Hatch focuses on the diffusion of the Methodists, Baptists, Mormons, Disciples of Christ, and African-American Christians across post-revolutionary America as a challenge to more established denominations, like the New England Congregationalists and Virginia Anglicans, and political elites.

    The brilliance of Hatch’s argument lies in its illustration of a confluence of Protestant growth with the expansion of democratic thought and application in the country. The book’s most central contribution to the study of American Christianity is the concept of “religious populism” in the early republic, which at once speaks to the American Christianity’s innovative ability to reach out to various populations, and to the loyalty to American religion that such outreach efforts endeared among its adherents. In some sense, a demand for less-elitist, more-egalitarian forms of worship and congregational life existed, and the predominantly unlettered, zealous, “bold intruders” (aka ministers) of faith adapted preach styles and techniques to meet that demand.

    The book begins to fill a gap in our understanding of religious life in 1780s and 1790s America. In the historiographical section–a must-read for any scholar–”Redefining the Second Great Awakening: A Note on the Study of Christianity in the Early Republic,” Hatch confronts the question of difficulties surrounding the religious history of the early national period. “There are more generalizations and less solid data on the dynamics of American religion in this period than in any other in our history” (p. 220). Though he cannot single-handedly erase this deficiency, Hatch, for his part, has crafted a needed work that illumines the power of popular religious movements through the actions and travels of their dynamic leaders.

    The stars of The Democratization of American Christianity are Lorenzo Dow, Alexander Campbell, Richard Allen, Francis Asbury, Joseph Smith, John Leland, and other religious leaders. Hatch builds his case for a popularizing religion on the backs of deft religious leadership and their success at movement-building. Although these Christian “insurgents” held differing beliefs and employed various techniques, these men excelled at popular written and verbal communication, triggered a revolt against Christian tradition, and inaugurated a new era of religious life in America. Hatch’s portrayal of early America’s religious leaders presents them as revolutionaries, not wholly unlike the colonials in Philadelphia who laid an ideological foundation for the Revolution.

    Christian adherents and secular historians alike will benefit from this excellent account of Christianity’s democratic and westward shift in the early republic. The Democratization of American Christianity is neither dogmatic nor apologetic. Well-researched and brilliantly-conceived, the book locates the spread of American Christianity within a post-Revolutionary context marked by less paternalistic and more populist ideas. To that end, “the most striking evidence of the democratization of Christianity in the early republic was that black preachers successfully laid claim to ‘the sacred desk’” (p. 112). Hatch’s book and Gordon Woods’ Pulitzer-Prize winning The Radicalism of the American Revolution demonstrate the fertility within the first generations of American nationals for popular democracy and religious zeal.

    Hatch’s emphasis on movement-making and the management of revivals distorts his analysis of Christianity’s spread across America by limiting or excluding any discussion of spiritual renewal. The fault, however, is now entirely his. The historical profession remains largely incapable of documenting and validating the role of spiritual activity within the human condition. Historians are much more comfortable attributing mass religious conversions and life-changing ideals to marketing techniques and popular political environments. Yet, when the eighteenth-century camp meetings and preachers awakened “spiritual convulsions” in revival participants, it seems incumbent upon scholars to more fully examine and evaluate peoples’ interaction with God in religion. That said, Nathan O. Hatch’s The Democratization of American Christianity is a bold step in a constructive direction; a step that the current and future field of historian would do well to follow.

    5 Stars The Democratization of American Christianity
    Bought this for my friend Justin D. Vollmar. Justin mentioned to me that he was so excited to read the book!

    http://www.goddiscussion.com/489/the-democratization-of-american-christianity/

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