Counter-Currents
Is Another Conservative Christian Resurgence On The Horizon?
Robert Hampton
Pastor Allen Nelson IV with a Jolly Roger
1,588 words
America’s two largest conservative congregations — the Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention — experienced major internal battles last week. Conservatives led the charge within both to turn their respective denomination against a particular social ill. For America’s Catholic bishops, it was the second Catholic president being the most pro-abortion chief in U.S. history. For the Southern Baptists, it was Critical Race Theory and its influence over the SBC. The conservatives triumphed within the US Conference of Catholic Bishops while they suffered a narrow defeat at the SBC’s conclave.
Could these events signal a conservative takeover of these important institutions? Are we ready to see these churches turn into bulwarks against liberalism? Not quite. Both are notable events but they come at a time when both denominations are in steep decline and a sudden commitment to conservative values won’t change that fact.
The USCCB’s proposed order to encourage the denial of communion to politicians who support abortion gained the most attention. The decision was clearly directed at President Biden, an allegedly faithful Catholic who expanded access to abortion. The proposal didn’t explicitly order the refusal of communion, but it did make clear that the Church disapproves of politicians who strongly support abortion. The overwhelming majority of bishops voted for it. This is the number one issue to the American Catholic hierarchy. The bishops were much stronger on the issue in the era when Roe v. Wade was first enacted. The prelates back then insisted that overturning the Supreme Court order was not enough and the nation must ban the practice throughout the nation. (Roe v. Wade simply legalized it in every state. If it was overturned, its legality would fall back to the states, not be banned outright.)
Biden is only the second Catholic to be president. The news media loves to mention that he’s a devout Catholic, possibly even the most religious president we’ve had in decades. (This, of course, leaves out George W. Bush, an evangelical so fervent that liberals worried he may turn America into a theocracy.) But, despite being super devout Catholic, Biden seems largely uninterested in any of his church’s interests. He’s the most pro-abortion president in U.S. history and he opposes “religious liberty” principles that allow Christian non-profits to operate without complete submission to the gay agenda. His family is hardly the model Christian unit either. None of this stops the forced coverage of the choir boy as commander-in-chief.
The churches likely won’t affect Biden in any case. The decision to withhold communion would be up to the Archbishop of Washington, who says he will continue to offer the sacrament to the president. Pope Francis also warned his bishops to not withhold communion from Biden. The big fuss around the move is the church publicly declaring itself anti-abortion, a stance it has long taken and not been shy about expressing. The bishops’ announcement was not well-received among Catholic Democrats. Sixty Congressional Democrats signed a letter criticizing the “weaponization” of communion. One Catholic Democrat, California Rep. Ted Lieu, publicly declared his differences with the church on Twitter and dared its priest to deny him communion.
Dear @USCCB: I’m Catholic and I support:
-Contraception
-A woman’s right to choose
-Treatments for infertility
-The right for people to get a divorce
-The right of same sex marriageNext time I go to Church, I dare you to deny me Communion. https://t.co/bUmiyJ8TtH
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) June 18, 2021
You can buy Greg Johnson’s It’s Okay to Be White here.
Conservatives were thrilled with the bishops’ proposal and felt it was necessary to induce politicians to follow church teaching. But the intense backlash doesn’t appear to show it changing political behavior. Moreover, the flock may be more inclined to side with Biden. At least 56% of American Catholics believe abortion should be legal in most or all cases. In contrast, 55% of Protestants believe it should be illegal in most or all cases. The difference is striking when one considers that the Catholic Church has always opposed abortion while many conservative Protestant denominations, including the SBC, were neutral on the matter pre-Moral Majority. Additionally, 68% of Catholics oppose overturning Roe v. Wade. The bishops may think abortion is a vital issue, but their flock doesn’t.
The SBC battle over Critical Race Theory is a bit different. Rather than its leaders imposing a position on the flock, it was the flock rebelling against its leaders. The largest Protestant denomination hosted its first meeting in two years last week and witnessed a revolt stirred up by the Conservative Baptist Network. The CBN is a recently-formed pressure group aiming to eliminate “wokeness” from the SBC and return the congregation to biblical simplicity. These renegade pastors who adopted the Jolly Roger flag as their symbol took particular issue with CRT. They derided this amorphous term as anti-biblical and racist.
“It’s just the opposite of the gospel,” Indiana pastor Michael Wilhite told reporters. “Under critical race theory, there is no hope. If you’re white, you’re automatically a racist because of white supremacy. But with the gospel there’s hope. I don’t need critical race theory to diagnose what’s wrong with mankind. I’ve got the Bible, and it does a fine job doing that.”
Several prominent theologians and leaders condemned Critical Race Theory last year, but many of those who signed it later walked it back after black pastors left or threatened to leave the SBC. This issue has embroiled the denomination thanks to recent woke resolutions passed by the SBC that support “anti-racism” and “diversity.” The previous president of the SBC endorsed Black Lives Matter. The CBN’s main objectives were to elect a more conservative president and revoke a 2019 resolution that tolerated CRT and other Left-wing ideologies “as analytical tools subordinate to Scripture.” The CBN failed in both objectives, but by close margins. The group pledges to keep fighting on these issues within the convention.
The CBN’s concerns reflect broader tensions within America. All across the nation, parents are fighting school boards over CRT and transgender lessons. Republicans battle over the future of the party and whether it should better advance the interests of the grassroots or cater more to liberal suburbanites. The SBC fight is another battle featuring Middle Americans trying to claw back an institution from the grasp of liberal elites. Much of the SBC leadership are anti-Trump and believe in systemic racism. They also believe their followers need to check their white privilege and do more to serve non-whites. That’s why the CBN wants new leaders to better reflect the whites in the pews.
This is also a more relevant fight than the USCCB controversy. Most Americans don’t care about abortion, even if they will say they’re pro-life or pro-choice. It’s been legal for nearly 50 years and it will stay legal (at least in most parts of the country) for the foreseeable future. It’s not an issue that directly affects American lives. Anti-white racism, on the other hand, does. More of the SBC is on the side of the CBN than ordinary Catholics are with their pro-life bishops.
It would have been great if the CBN had succeeded. Taking over a powerful institution and stripping it of its anti-white traits would undoubtedly be a plus. Regardless of your opinion of Baptists, one hopes they carry the fight into the future.
But there’s a bigger problem for both conservatives in the Catholic Church and SBC: membership is in serious decline. A 2015 Pew study found that over half of adults raised Catholic had left the church at some point in their lives. And that was before the most recent sex abuse scandal. Polls found that at least a third of Catholics consider leaving the church over those revelations. The SBC’s membership has dropped by over a million since 2017 and baptisms are in stark decline. The broader evangelical movement faces the problem of its younger members being far more liberal than its older congregants. Young evangelicals actually want the SBC to promote Critical Race Theory and mandatory diversity.
Whites, in general, are becoming less Christian. All Christian institutions look to the third world for their futures. Even if conservatives did take over these churches, they would still likely back mass immigration to replace the whites who leave. The Catholic Church has already shifted to this position, which is why it dedicates so many resources to refugee resettlement and immigrant advocacy. That’s on top of ensuring the third world never receives contraceptives, which leads to more overpopulation and more migration.
These fights occur at a time when Christian institutions are retreating from public life. The Catholic Church’s attempt to pressure Democrats to not fully bend the knee for the pro-abortion crowd won’t work. Most Catholics never go to confession, don’t know the basics of the catechism, and only attend church on Easter and Christmas. They’re not going to care what their bishops say about abortion. Evangelicals, like the Southern Baptists, generally take their faith more seriously, but they no longer have the clout that they had in the George Bush era. Their only hope is to keep poisonous influences out of their own cultural sphere.
The only way there can be a resurgence in healthy Christianity is if the ruling order changes. Until then, most churches will be happy to render their submission unto Caesar.
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10 comments
Judas was a black. Positively certain of it. Rage fueled jealous fanatic who sold out a white to the imperial and religious authorities. Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice as adapted by the Director in the 1973 movie made a compelling case for the possibility.
Although European Christendom was a period full of greatness for our people (pace the oracle of Weimar), the post WW2 churches in the West, long browbeaten by the Enlightenment, imploded along with the whole culture, swallowing with it the suicidal fraud of White success as crime, racial equality, multicultural kumbaya and pathological altruism. Shed a tear for what they once were, but expect nothing from them but further betrayal.
I disagree. Christianity today is an enemy of the West, but the real question is whether this is theologically necessarily so, or if, rather, the Churches have become de-christianized – more liberal than Christian? This is a point of profound disagreement within the white preservationist community as it implicates a wide variety of contested religious, philosophical, psychological and historical beliefs.
First, is theism true? If not, does a racially reformed “Christianity for the delusional morons” still have instrumental value, and is such an improved Christianity theologically and sociologically possible? Second, if theism is true, is Christianity its correct version? If yes and yes, then, third, go back to my first question above: is Christianity inherently hostile to white preservation {WP} (ie, to taking the hard coercive measures that now will be necessary to reconstruct the WP status quo ex ante), or has the Faith been theologically perverted or otherwise misunderstood in ways furthering white dispossession and extinction?
Given that a) (imo) most people everywhere have religious impulses (whether as a function of genetic hardwiring, or because those impulses correspond to something in external ontological reality; b) Christianity has deep roots in our heritage, and continues to be by far the majority religion (and even, loosely speaking, ethical worldview) among our people – and especially among Americans; c) the Faith, even in its rancid, modern, deracinated versions, remains a bulwark of traditional family values and advocacy, which in turn positively correlate with higher white procreation and proper child character formation; and d) Christians, very much including white Christians, simply tend to be better quality people than seculars (just compare the white people at GOP vs Democrat conventions: the white Republicans are more likely to be Christian, and more likely to be of higher moral and psychological quality, than the white Democrats; progressive whites tend to be morally crappy, as well as generally low quality, mentally unstable humans), and that WPs need higher quality people to ‘convert’ to our cause, I think the proper white nationalist stance towards Christianity should be one of friendship, endless patient outreach, and civil discussion.
More deeply, I think it is very worth WP effort to investigate whether racial cuckery is in fact theologically necessary for Christians, and if not (as I suspect), to develop a proper Christian ethics of race, which would begin with recognizing the moral right of distinct peoples to preserve themselves and live in their own sovereign communities, which of course in turn requires a legal and physical reversal of treasonous, state-mandated coercive population replacement policies – policies which, I argue, were/are neither mandated by Christian doctrine, nor in conformance with it (properly understood).
As a white advocate I believe the question of abortion is entirely irrelevant, and I doubt I’m alone in this. If Christians gain some sort of immense moral victory against the abortion industry, this will not reverse the decline of white folk, in fact it will likely do the opposite. The only point of interest here is the CRT battle, which they lost. Racial salvation will not come from religion. Religion, like women, only follows the winner, they are not winners themselves.
Mr Lieu seems to want to have his cake (or communion wafer) and eat it — and of course loudly proclaim the fact on Twitter.
Might he be better off staring his own sect — or simply joining one where ‘anything goes’: the Liberal Catholic Church perhaps?
Overall, I am glad the Christians are in a dither and are actually battling against each other, and may it continue. I am so vastly against contemporary Christianity, because of their opposition to birth control and abortion both. Lack of birth control in the Third World is the biggest problem we face on Earth, and is a far greater problem than all the oil-drilling and cattle-raising worldwide in promoting Climate Change. And all the insane leftists screeching about the dangers of climate change never once even mention Third World women popping out 5 to 10 babies each! Worldwide, it is Catholicism, followed by Evangelical missionaries who encourage women to have as many babies as they want. — “they’re a blessed gift of God”. And Islam and Hinduism have strictures about birth control — forbidden by both — and allow a man to have multiple wives as well. These three major religions are a recipe for disaster!
And Catholicism and Evangelicals embracing Critical Race Theory is like the absolute ‘last straw’ that breaks everybody’s back! This absurd Liberation Theology, which was the harbinger of CRT about 30-40 years ago, starting in South America, is now tying our hands completely in ever getting rid of CRT. They are presenting CRT as a moral message! CRT is basic Marxism/Socialism/Communism, wrapped in a gleaming theological package now, which even the moral upstanding parents shouting about it will soon be quieted by accusations of immoral racism on their part.
This is the greatest threat to Western Civilization, and ultimately, any civilization, that has every been planted on this planet, and if we do not uproot it now, we’re finished for sure, and I can’t imagine the horrid ghettos worldwide which will sprout in our place.
The last two sentence are quite correct. The churches bend to the will of the governing powers no matter which way the wind blows. Nothing will change unless there is a remarkable top down shift in what is promoted now at every level.
At the rate things are going, the next Pope will be a celebrity tranny who openly promotes pedophilia and twerks during Communion.
A week ago, Dr. Gullick posted an essay here on Nietzsche and Islam. I wrote a couple of comments I think are relevant to this discussion, and so am reposting:
Lord Shang
June 18, 2021 at 3:14 am
I’ve read only a bit of Nietzsche; I probably should read a lot more. But I wonder how much relevance he has to our current racial struggle? I know very little about Europe, but in America, we are losing because a) the Left has gained control of the means of cultural influence (schools, media, entertainment, churches), and b) far too many on the Right are Christians who are thoroughly misguided about the what their religion requires of them wrt race relations. They are misled as to the actual Christian ethics of race. Our task (insofar as we are discussing intellectual contributions; what we really need is white community political organizing, as well as institutional mechanisms to facilitate mass relocations of prowhites to a few contiguous states, from which the next generation can reasonably commence the push for ethnonational independence and sovereignty) therefore is, first, to build up shadow cultural institutions to give our people a healthy alternative to antiwhite content, and second, to effectuate a sea change in Christian racial ethics through which at least ideologically conservative Christians shall come to realize that wokeness and multiculturalism are evil, and that even mere multiracialism is unnatural, imprudent and above all morally unnecessitated.
Many white salvationists believe that our path to ultimate victory (ie, communal life, liberty, territory and security for our people) must be “through the Jews”. I disagree. I think that in America is goes through the Christians. We must convince a sufficient number of them that, to put it rather plaintively yet accurately, they are not “bad people” (ie, destined to rot in Hell) for either recognizing racial differences and their political and security implications, or for wishing to live exclusively with their own people. Nor are they bad people for resenting and resisting the negrophile agenda of today’s elites.
Nietzsche, interesting though he might be, is not going to help our Christian outreach and dialogue.
Reply
Dr ExCathedra
June 18, 2021 at 10:03 am
In Harold Covington’s Northwest novels, the job of mediation and peacekeeping in the new White ethnostate falls, amusingly, to the National Socialists, who attempt to keep the feuding White Heathens and White Christians from sabotaging the whole project.
IMHO, Western Christianity in its current state (as opposed to its long history before the so-called Enlightenment) is pretty much a lost cause. BUT, for WN outreach to those Christians who can be salvaged, I suggest these kinds of questions:
Your Christian ancestors, who believed in the faith at least as fully as you, were quite content to live with the obvious realities of racial/ethnic differences and incompatibilities as part of the God-created order. Why do you feel that you, with your primary allegiance to multiculturalism, etc, are better believers than they were? Where does this increased virtue come from? And ask yourself ,who it is who is teaching your churches that they must condemn their Christian ancestors, from whom they received the faith, in order to please…well, to please who? You now passionately hold that things like racial integration and equality are essential to the Gospel? Why do you know this and so many generations of faithful believers before you did not? They had far far harder lives than you do. What has made you so much better?
Reply
Lord Shang
June 19, 2021 at 4:53 pm
I agree completely. I’ve been using some variations of those types of questions for decades, usually in an attempt to foster a bit of intellectual humility in my discussants. “Your Christian ancestors, usually more pious than you/us (or than our generation), didn’t feel that recognizing racial realities, as well as prioritizing their own people’s or clan’s morally legitimate interests over alien others’, somehow jeopardized their standing with Christ. So why do you believe differently, and why are you sure that you’re correct and your ancestors were in the wrong?”
Unfortunately, that type of argument is usually pragmatically (as well as certainly theoretically) insufficient. Their response is almost invariably something along the lines of positing a “growth in moral consciousness or awareness over time”. I happen to agree with that, though I wouldn’t exaggerate that growth, and I do always point out that, while there has been moral improvement in some areas (eg, rejection of slavery, rejection of legally enforced caste hierarchies, partial rejection of imperialism, greater respect for individual rights), there has been considerable moral backsliding in others (sexual immorality, acceptance of plain theft via the institutionalized looting known as the “welfare state”, impiety and blasphemy, etc), so that it’s hard to know if modernity’s ‘moral ledger’ is in the black or red.
The better way to approach (intelligent + evolutionarily/genetically non-defective) Christians is through a renewed understanding of the nature of justice, which has been utterly perverted by what is, in Christian ethical terms, unjust “social justice”. I hate “victimology” in general, but it is a fact that we whites have been the main victims of racial injustice, both legally and rhetorically, in postwar America (and everywhere else). We have been shamelessly slandered and defamed in rhetoric, as well as transformed into second class citizens in our own fathers’ land in law and policy. Our people built a nation, and for the past half century have had it progressively stolen from them via demographically dilutionary mass immigration (which was legislated in 1965 via an entire onslaught of intentionally mendacious propaganda as to the new immigration law’s elements and likely effects). You need to get Christians first to recognize these realities, and then persuade them that we have every moral right to challenge the lies told about whites in the media and schools, as well as to repulse this foreign colonization and transmogrification of our country. Of course, that involves a whole other level of moral analysis, one explaining why we have, at a minimum, at least as much moral latitude to preserve our country as we wish as our enemies correspondingly have to pursue its transformation, but that analysis is straightforward.
It is only right that the various churches are in decline because the leaders of the them are unwilling to excommunicate those who openly go against most basic teachings such as ‘Thou shall not kill’ (abortion), ‘Thou shall not commit adultery’ (re-marriage after divorce) and it’s inability to protect the young from sexual deviants is the most damning of all. They want to be liked by everyone but this is not only impossible but foolish. Only through being sure of what is right and being willing to go against those oppose your views can one gain respect and eventually authority.
Blah blah blah. Eggheads. Work hard, make white babies, don’t cuck or bend a knee. And white flight away from diverse shitholes. Preserve your genetic inheritance, and trust it. That’s my religion.
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