Giving Xtianity a foundation in modernity
Our post yesterday on the ‘fate of Xtianity’ needs to be seen in the context of the eonic effect, and the progression of ‘new ages’ it suggests: the Axial Age religions are forced to either recreate themselves or pass away. One solution is to look at the outcome of the Protestant Reformation and create a new foundatiopn in modernity. The world of the Enlightenment, of Kant, Hegel, and Marx, can suggest a new form of Xtian relevance. The whole baggage of the religion now is an archaic package from the era of the Roman Empire.
The fate of Xtianity
http://darwiniana.com/index.php?s=communism+ultra+far+left+xtianity
Two days ago we posted a ‘Help Wanted’ article, for a revolutionary Buddha, also a communist. We have, of course, had a lot of posts on a ‘ultra far left Xtian communism’, but while the response was large, as curiosity, Xtians have no real sense of the way in which their religion is 1. a revolutionary tradition, too often coopted by reactionaries, and 2. something larger than its beliefs, as an historical movement connected to the Axial Age. The reality of Xtianity is that the Reformation created something new, and capable of rapid evolution to a new religious format. Xtianity in its current forms is dying on the vine, and the rightwing cooptation of the religion as some kind of adjunct to capitalist ideology is a gross distortion, and the death knell of American churches.
I think the comparative shallowness of the ‘New Atheist’ movement, a lost opportunity, creates a potential for Xtians to actually do that job for the atheists, as strange as that might seem. The reason is that beliefs as to ‘god’ are, by and large, so decayed, chaotic, if not blasphemous, that a kind of ‘semi-atheist negation’ of those beliefs leads, not to actual atheism, but a sense of the implicit mystery of divinity, beyond words and concepts.
I think that embracing a radical left perspective by a ‘remnant’ and ditching the rest could revitalize the religion, and make it an adjunct to secularism, not an antithesis. Ironically, ‘atheists’ would find this appealing, because their instincts are to create a religion, while denying, as an effort to escape the primitive confusions of theism.
New Man, New Age, New Socialism 