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The end of white christian america? What Will That Mean?

Kelsdesu

Member
We will never be able to shake these silly puritan values we still hold as a nation. They would fight tooth and nail to preserve it too.
 
White Christians will attempt to assimilate white presenting Hispanics first

Not if they kick em all out of the country first. That NYT opinion piece the other day touched on this some ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/opinion/only-mass-deportation-can-save-america.html?mcubz=3

Religious piety — especially of the Christian variety? More illegal immigrants identify as Christian (83 percent) than do Americans (70.6 percent), a fact right-wing immigration restrictionists might ponder as they bemoan declines in church attendance.
 
White Christians will attempt to assimilate white presenting Hispanics first

They won't; whiteness is central to their brand of Christianity.

If Donald Trump has proven anything, it's that whiteness is more valued among white American Christians than piety.
 

johnsmith

remember me
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HStallion

Now what's the next step in your master plan?
Without good white christian morals the nation will fall into chaos of abortions, gay marriage and insanity.
 

tmarg

Member
If Donald Trump has proven anything, it's that whiteness is more valued among white American Christians than piety.

Pretty much. The nation is becoming less and less pious and our countries supposedly pious base is actively forcing out the religious coming in. Latino Catholics would easily identify with some of the conservative rights platform if the right wasn't a steaming racist pile of trash.
 

Aurongel

Member
White identity and Christianity may be synonymous with one another now but there is zero reason to believe that the two are inseperable. I think what we'll see is a slow refocusing of American Christianity towards Hispanics while the overall national trend towards irreligion continues. The Republican Party will also use that refocusing to sidestep many of their existential "demographic issues" that historians see down the road for them.

But before any of that, you'll see the GOP push way harder on disenfranchising these demographics.
 
And they'll have even greater power in the Senate, considering 70% of Americans will be living in just 15 states by 2050, according to projections.

This is going to be ugly.

Hopefully that happens concurrently to a liberalized house. Political gerrymandering only gets one so far.
 

see5harp

Member
There are so many Christians and religious people in this country that the thought is laughable. All of these crooks, black, white, and Korean (yes there are Korean megachurches) need to be paying taxes like everyone else.
 
Never really understood why the black community doubled down on the religion of white slave owners...

Total side comment but the article made me think about it.
 
Immigrants are usually Catholic, an actual Christian denomination. Prosperity gospel evangelicals aren't Christians. The fewer adherents there are to that garbage 'interpretation' of the bible the better.
 

rrs

Member
Yeah, but they're probably fake Christians who believe in dumb things like helping the less fortunate, and not important things like intimidating homosexuals and making sure poor people don't have easy access to birth control.
ha ha I needed a good laugh
 

Cocaloch

Member
After the 19th century I'm not seeing the line of millenarianism he's trying to draw.

Never really understood why the black community doubled down on the religion of white slave owners...

Total side comment but the article made me think about it.

Because it some ways it was a liberating force, and African Americans generally did not follow the religion of the slave owners which was normally one of the two established British churches, Episcopalian or Presbyterian.
 

Dice//

Banned
Yeah, but they're probably fake Christians who believe in dumb things like helping the less fortunate, and not important things like intimidating homosexuals and making sure poor people don't have easy access to birth control.

HTTPS9tZWRpYTQuZ2lwaHkuY29tL21lZGlhL0xPMldQSzc3Rm94N3EvZ2lwaHkuZ2lm.gif
 

Cocaloch

Member
We will never be able to shake these silly puritan values we still hold as a nation. They would fight tooth and nail to preserve it too.

America has never been that puritan. It's always been more Virginia than Massachusetts. One of the great failings of American popular historiography is getting that wrong.
 

Vectorman

Banned
It's frustrating how the modern American Christian church has become so insular and hateful (Evangelicals...cough). In their mindset, they are constantly in survival mode instead helping spead the faith in a good and decent way. It's becoming self-fullied prophecy with people becoming negative and it's pushing away the youth and the disillusioned. Also it doesn't help that our current administration uses the faith as a justification for the heinous shit they are doing.
 

g11

Member
Personally I don't hold "white" Christianity as a whole in contempt. Unfortunately, last I heard anyway, it's the evangelicals who were swelling their ranks, while the more harmless Christians like Episcopalians were dwindling as more and more people become agnostic or atheist. In general though, less religion the better IMO. Plenty of amoral people wear the cloak of faith as a shield against the consequences while they get away with absolutely heinous behavior, so I don't buy into the idea that religion helps keeps people on the straight and narrow. I know plenty of people who don't adhere to any religious doctrine and are some of the most upright and good people I know.
 

Kelsdesu

Member
America has never been that puritan. It's always been more Virginia than Massachusetts. One of the great failings of American popular historiography is getting that wrong.


Hmm. Further investigation is needed on my part, but as it stands I don't agree.
 

Cocaloch

Member
Hmm. Further investigation is needed on my part, but as it stands I don't agree.

I would recommend Greene's Pursuits of Happiness for a good overview of the historiography on this topic, though this conception is generally pretty widely accepted among historians now.

This isn't to say that America isn't religious, it absolutely is, but that its religion has had more in common with mainstream British religious life than the Puritans who had themselves become decisively nonradical by the early 18th century.

Making the Puritans the center of the story traditionally comes out of a desire to avoid having slavery be a foundational aspect of America.
 
But what happens when White Christian America ends? Does that mean we'll get a slew of "Right-wing/Alt-Right" Atheists that will try to use "scientific fact" to back up their racist and bigoted views, pay for "fake" study results just to sway others that "Yes, Whites are genetically superior... thus natural selection and evolution hath dictated!!". Christianity has given reason for a LOT of fucked up things to happen, but even if that disappears, as a POC, I find it hard to think we'll be any better off. That group of "White people" that uses Christianity as a banner to put others down with just' find some other fuckin' way to justify their hatred.
 

jstripes

Banned
I imagine that as White Christianity gets pushed more and more into a corner, it will become more and more radical. This is already starting to happen, and it's going to get worse.
 

Aurongel

Member
I imagine that as White Christianity gets pushed more and more into a corner, it will become more and more radical. This is already starting to happen, and it's going to get worse.
That's a bit of an inevitability given how socially isolated groups tend to turn. Christianity doesn't need a singular race to maintain prominence in society, they will handle the demographic shift much better than other white identity groups will.
 
I imagine that as White Christianity gets pushed more and more into a corner, it will become more and more radical. This is already starting to happen, and it's going to get worse.

Yep, like electing Donald Trump, and the rallies in Charlottesville, etc. They aren't going down easy.
 

Cocaloch

Member
There's plenty of Christians who aren't white or "evangelical".

This is the ever present problem of not being aware of sectarian issues. Generally I think from context it's fairly clear that the article is specifically talking about predominantly white Evangelical Sects of Christianity, but you're right that it's something that should be taken into account.
 
My question is are black churches going through the same thing?

Black church-goer here. Yes, it is.

Black churches are getting disproportionately older in average attendee age as young people (< 40) are disappearing with great speed. This is, of course, a death sentence for many of them, as the income from seniors is unsustainable (for obvious reasons).

However. Black folk that used to go to church but do not presently are very unlikely to say that they aren't Christian anymore. We very rarely drop our beliefs, though they may get deferred or otherwise de-prioritized over time.

The question is: when they want to come back, where there be a church for them to go back to? Who knows.
 

kamineko

Does his best thinking in the flying car
Getting rid of white evangelism would be fantastic.

Unfortunately, when Methodists and Episcopalians supported the civil rights movement, all the bigots who coudn't handle it went Southern Baptist or worse.

Same thing happened with women clergy and (in the case of the Episcopal Church) same-sex marriage and LGBTQ clergy.

American evangelism has rode on a tide of hatred, swelling their numbers with bigots who cannot abide the Christian mandate of universal love. It has been a safe space for hatred through the 20th century and beyond.

The ones who need to go are sadly the ones who are most successful. Jerks need to feel like they belong someplace, even though the white supremacist patriarchy already has that covered for them.
 

GPsych

Member
And they'll have even greater power in the Senate, considering 70% of Americans will be living in just 15 states by 2050, according to projections.

This is going to be ugly.

Whoa...is this accurate? Do you have a source by any chance? I'm not questioning you, just curious to read the actual projection.
 
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