No one will forget the Democrat freakout of 2016 but the Evangelicals have been doing a slow burn freakout ever since 2008. My favorite example was all the Evvies saying they were going to move to Australia or New Zealand to get away from free healthcare. It’s true, they really said that. Because just one election is enough to make them want to leave after hundreds of years. Because despite all logic someone could actually be worse at being President than George W. Chimp. But it wasn’t one election, it wasn’t one kid from Honolulu who thinks he’s Black and everyone is too embarrassed to say anything. The slow burn Evangelical freakout is because the dream is dying. The dream of America being a giant machine to turn the whole world Protestant. This dream began before the Evangelicals even arrived. Before the days of immigration from Ulster the first colonists were English and dreamed of America being a city on a hill whose shining example would save the world. Not invade the world. Not invade every country that doesn’t use toilet paper because the Bush family said so. Save the world by example, by proving self governance and Christian love could be the basis for a country. And then the Evangelicals arrived and took that plan and added a little here, took away a little there. But still the dream that America is the turning point of human history, the country that will change everything. Christ is Greek for messiah, America was to be the messiah country and bring the world to Evangelical Christianity. And then the dream died and suddenly New Zealand becomes the new dream, really the new fantasy, for those who find reality too hard.
The dream the Evangelicals had was to use this country as a giant machine to turn the world to their kind of Christianity, the Ulster kind. The glaciers scraped off the top soil leaving Europe poor in farmland and Ireland was no different, what little good land it has is concentrated in Ulster at the northern end. This was the population center and cultural center of the island for millennia but around 1670 the English decided to evict all Catholics from this rich farmland and give it to any Protestant who wanted it. Landless Scots wanted it and got it. There was enough of an ethnic mix that ethnicity wasn’t enough to hold this group together. Some Irish converted to keep their land, some English arrived and some Protestants arrived from continental Europe. All the farmland in Ulster was quickly replaced by a mostly Scottish group that was diverse enough to need a new identity. That identity was religious, this group I refer to as Ulster-Scots quickly became the most Protestant group of people in the history of the religion. More Protestant than Luther himself. And their focus was always on the key distinction between Catholicism and Protestantism, salvation by faith alone. No group in history has matched their devotion to faith alone. When a diverse group arrived in 1670 unified only by being Protestant and wanting a free farm the wet clay was quickly formed into a new cast and the groups defining features set. The Scottish background was not forgotten. The Confederate flag is the cross of St. Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland. That’s called a clue. The Evangelicals are not trying to hide anything. Yet it remains hidden, this disproportionately influential group was forged in another land and retains its traits in this land. The defining trait is faith in salvation by faith alone.
The dream that died was that faith alone would come to be seen as the answer to all questions and America would be a giant machine for making this happen. It has to be the answer to all questions. Otherwise a Catholic could go to heaven and then guilt would have to be felt for taking their farms. But don’t worry, all Catholics go to hell. The explanation is simple, the explanation is old. Jesus left behind a religion whose rules allow anyone to enter heaven. When asked the entrance requirements during the Sermon on the Mount he said love god and love they neighbor. A non Christian could do that and enter heaven. In Matthew 19 he was asked the same question and listed the five commandments where the victim is a fellow man and added love thy neighbor. A non Christian could do that and enter heaven. But human nature loves exclusivity. Human nature pulled St Augustine away from non Christians entering heaven and his mind formulated the reason. Yes, if you do what was asked you will enter heaven. But to do what was asked you must be be given a magic potion from God called efficacious grace. While this magic potion goes unmentioned in the Bible it must be real. You can only get it if you pick the right religion, you can only get it if you pick my religion. And so human nature pulled St Augustine in this direction. Free will, our own agency, must be denied to make heaven exclusive while keeping enough of the New Testament to still convince ourselves we are Christians. The pattern was set, but the Catholic Church never accepted Augustine’s innovation as doctrine. Instead it was Martin Luther who accepted it as doctrine by crossing out the part that said Christian and righting in Lutheran. And so agency must be denied to deny heaven to the Catholics. You Jews and Hindus are just collateral damnation, it’s the Catholics that Lutheran cared about. And so a theological justification for a heavenly gate narrower than described in the Bible was established, and it all relied on lack of agency for its mechanism. You don’t have agency, you are given it by the magic potion which you can’t get unless you join our own special kind of Christianity. This is the basis of the religion of the Ulster-Scots, of Evangelical Protestantism.
The denial of agency is necessary for the denial of heaven to non Protestants. But there is a price. To keep up appearances you have to live your own life as if you have no agency. This is the price that must be paid for the future worldwide religious takeover. Your own life has to be lived according to the formula, you have to deny your own agency. But how can one contribute, how can one improve without crossing this line? One answer is Lazy Fairy economics, the closest thing to salvation by faith alone in politics. We don’t have to act at all, the market acts for us. We don’t have to decide at all, the market decides for us. We don’t have to do anything at all, the market does it all for us. Just like the Godhead in salvation by faith alone. What about social contributions? Don’t worry, the Evangelicals have a plan. Make gay marriage double illegal. This will increase faith in straight marriage and you know what faith does, it saves everything. What about politics in general? Libertarianism. It’s weird, but it’s the closest thing to salvation by faith alone. You don’t have to decide or do things or provide services. You don’t have to do anything at all, just sit there and let the market do everything for your. The lazy libertarian fairy will save us all. But these are ridiculous answers that never work and involve all sorts of compromises and sacrifices to keep up the appearance of hope. For one thing if you truly believe in libertarianism you have to believe in open borders. If you don’t believe me ask any card carrying Libertarian. I have and you have to believe in open borders to be a real libertarian. How does that help us when open borders is our single biggest problem? How does this salvation by faith alone plan of action get anything done that I want done? It doesn’t. The dream dies. The denial of agency necessary to deny heaven to Catholics requires certain things on this earth to keep up appearances. The price is too high, the dream dies.
How are Evangelicals going to use America to take over the world if they can’t stop the world from taking over America? Protestant America has been relying on passive resistance since the Moynihan Report in 1965 exposed to the world their weakness, their need to explain away why the former slaves they converted to Protestantism are not Calvinist bankers from Geneva. This passive resistance only slows the decline, slightly moderates the abuse. And it only works with overwhelming numbers. The first US Census to count Latinx was in 1940 and counted them at 2% of the country. They never bothered counting them before because there were so few of them. They are not few now. Passive resistance is just a delaying tactic, sort of like relying on the Electoral College map for rescue. Go ahead Evangelical, post another map of the Electoral College to The_Donald, you know you want to. This is just a delay, not a deliverance. Millions stream through the southern border and your salvation by faith alone does nothing. Your Lazy Fairy economics and bow tie conservatives do nothing, your libertarianism does nothing and truly your salvation by faith alone does nothing. What is needed is not thoughts and prayers. What is needed is work and action. Our country does need to be saved, it needs to be saved by work.
The Evangelicals faithed their hearts out from 2000 to 2008 for the big chimp. They rejected catholic Giuliani in the primaries and selected the one candidate who gave the least evidence of having succeeded through effort and good decisions. They selected the candidate who appeared to have most relied on the hand of fate to bring him to where he is, the one who overcame alcoholism through faith. No working here. No working at all in the Bush household. Anything they have in life is from the hand of fate, or one might say the hand of God. And for eight years the Evangelicals thoughts and prayed away to make it work. They supported the Bush family dream of invading and planting the American flag in every country on earth that doesn’t use toilet paper. That’ll show ‘em. They supported thousands of young men sent of to die in a senseless war. The more distance I put between myself and the age of 18 the more I hate war and the more I hate sending men that age off to even risk death. It must not be the same if you are an Evangelical, I never saw them care. But they cared about George W. Chimp and his crazy wars. And after eight years of faithing and thoughting and praying away they got millions more Latinx immigrants, dead sons and President Obama. The dream died. The Evangelicals gave it their all, it just wasn’t enough. Their all was missing something. It was missing hard work and good decision making. It was missing reality. Getting those free farms in Ireland just for being Protestant was a one time thing. It never happened again after that. You Ulster-Scots will not spend eternity being gifted wealth just for being a Protestant. Unless you are a Bush wealth requires hard work and sound decision making. Which is why Trump is a billionaire, which is why he calls second corinthians “two corinthians”. Because the dream has died and sixteen years later the Evangelicals selected the business version of Giuliani to be President.
I believe America will be a city on a hill that is a shining example to the world. It has already done that and inspired democratic institutions around the globe. I believe America will do even more in the future. But it won’t be through Lazy Fairy economics, libertarian politics, Bush wars, or salvation by faith alone. It will be through hard work and sound decision making. One dream, the faith alone dream has died and America is a post Protestant country. But it is not and never will be post Christian or post Western. The challenges are great but they will be met. And the Ulster-Scots will contribute, once they realize thoughts and prayers are not a contribution. Once they realize St Augustine was an idiot and Luther a plagiarist. Several times Jesus was asked what a man must do to enter heaven. His answers never involved a magic potion, his answers were sensible answers and when the Ulster-Scots realize this they will contribute to America being a city on the hill. Until then all they have is NASCAR and the Allman Brothers.