/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18903837]

How Calvinist is America now? Do you read Calvin and the Puritans?

[Anonymous No.18903849]

>>18903837
I was browsing the zero viewer section of Twitch and saw a black Calvinist reading from a bible to nobody. I started talking to him and he explained Calvinism, it seems pretty based.

[Anonymous No.18903861]

>>18903837
>How Calvinist is America now?
America isn't sincerely christian, culturally. It hasn't been for quite some time.
> Do you read Calvin and the Puritans?
No, I'm Catholic.

[Anonymous No.18903978]

>>18903861
I don't think most of "The West" (= non-Ottoman-occupied Europe and its colonies) has been sincerely Christian for a long time either desu

[Anonymous No.18904034]

>>18903978
Why do you think so?

[Anonymous No.18904061]

>>18903849
Voddie Baucham?

[Anonymous No.18904073]

>>18903861
>America isn't sincerely christian, culturally.
America is the most Christian country on Earth. It just replaced God with liberal ideals.

[Anonymous No.18904098]

>>18904034
Look at how quickly the faith evaporated after WW2 in particular. Even countries with state-sanctioned Catholicism basically revolted against it (Spain/Portugal). Obviously post-WW2 "Nuremburg Values" are derived from Christianity, but from a position of viewing it as insufficiently egalitarian and concerned for victimized people(s).

[Anonymous No.18904107]

>>18904098
Quebec is also a good example. Catholicism basically disappeared overnight. Clearly Christianity was much weaker than it seemed the whole time.

[Anonymous No.18904147]

Urban America is largely irreligious. Rural America is a combination of something straddling the border between atheism and generic theism, or else a generic sort of evangelicalism. If you were to challenge “believers” on what they believe, you’d find they believe God exists but they don’t have to go to Church and not everything in scripture is true or important. Very few people have religious conviction which is aligned with any traditional notion of Christianity.

[Anonymous No.18904152]

Once upon a time Calvinists lectured at Google

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9THu0PZwwk

[Anonymous No.18904168]

>>18903837
calvinism was always an intellectual project first and foremost, but it had become unfashionable by the early 19th century when unitarians took over the harvard faculty. the liberal currents which eventually became modernist theology in the 20th century all started as anti-calvinism in the 18th and 19th, with moral objections to penal atonement being a particular sticking point.

[Anonymous No.18904178]

el puritANO

[Anonymous No.18904279]

>>18903861
>America isn't sincerely christian, culturally
Doubt. America remains one of the most religious developed nations. And if you look closely at our polotics its always been intertwined with Christianity. Read MLK. Or on the right Evangelicals remain one of the largest voting blocs.

[Anonymous No.18904418]

>>18904168
>unitarians took over the harvard faculty.
I feel that this is an insufficiently-appreciated event in the US that set the stage for the US Left in its current iteration. Even today books like "White Fragility" are published by an arm of the Unitarian Universalist Church. Not totally sure what led people to Unitarianism though beyond the penal atonement issue you mentioned.

[Anonymous No.18904741]

>>18904418
it's probably the least-understood chapter in american religious history, and the one least-studied today unless you're a unitarian historian. i haven't looked into it much myself but william ellery channing's baltimore sermon was seen as a rallying cry by unitarians at the time if you want a basic primer on what was going on: http://people.bu.edu/dklepper/RN212/unitarian.html
at the time i think it was still primarily a theological persuasion with relatively minor political implications. i don't think it became noticeably politically left-wing until the 1840s when the transcendentalists - almost all from the cohort of second-generation students at unitarian-controlled harvard came to prominence. it was also very distinct from universalism at the time, which was more a movement of barnstorming preachers of dubious academic credentials. they thought themselves to be sincere believing christians at the time too - it wasn't until the 1870s that hegelian biblical criticism began to permeate the denomination and you started seeing internal heresy trials.

[Anonymous No.18904760]

>>18903861
Complete horseshit. You're either a coastal liberal or a foreigner.

[Anonymous No.18904868]

>>18904760
>catholic
Probably an illegal spic

[Anonymous No.18905322]

>>18904168
Intellectual Christianity died with textual criticism.

[Anonymous No.18905330]

calvinism is idolatry, just read the bible

[Anonymous No.18905335]

>>18904098
Peter Hitchens said WW1 killed Christianity. Maybe he just meant the british.

[Anonymous No.18905424]

>>18905322
i think this is largely correct. the case for christianity in academia by the 19th century seems to have rested jointly on paley-style design arguments and accounts of miracles in the bible. obviously hume had attacked both but he seems to have been a nonfactor in the english-speaking world at the time.
the transcendentalists attacked the authority of miraculous accounts in the bible by saying that even if they were true they couldn't confirm any divine revelation, because only a personal experience of the divine was capable of doing that. the textual critics took a much more effective tack, arguing that the biblical accounts were unreliable as history.

[Anonymous No.18905436]

>>18903837
americans don't need to read calvin because his thought is already in our DNA

[Anonymous No.18905445]

>>18904418
the dream was to find a religion so efficient it didn't even need god

[Anonymous No.18905452]

>>18903837
I read Ryle and the Puritans.
As far as 16th century I prefer Bullinger to Calvin.

[Anonymous No.18905460]

>>18903861
america is so incredibly christian that even devoted anti-christians act and think like christians. just because the positive content of religion changes doesn't mean the structure vanishes. just look at the last two years, the blm summer was basically the great awakening without jesus and covid hysteria the wars of religion

[Anonymous No.18905466]

>>18905452
envious of this shelf rn

[Anonymous No.18905484]

Many protestants are but they call it reformed theology and avoid calling it Calvinism unless you get the acolytes in private. In the bible belt of the US our culture is still very tactful despite there being some calvinists becoming common, but ironically many nom-Christian Dutch and Germans in Europe are incredibly blunt culture as a legacy of Calvinist attitudes toward truth. I will say that even denominations of any religion are rarely monolithic, each individual church has a gray area of people who dont agree with eachother and there is a push and pull of beliefs that nom-church goers will simply never see.

[Anonymous No.18905503]

>>18905424
>the textual critics took a much more effective tack, arguing that the biblical accounts were unreliable as history.
What they actually did was prove a lot of the traditional beliefs about the bible to be wrong.

[Anonymous No.18905537]

America is Episcopalian, fuck Calvin

[Anonymous No.18905568]

>>18903837
After seeing so many flags of Israel flown under American flags, and hearing so many fundamentalists say Jews are God's chosen people, I don't know what the fuck kind of Christianity Americans practice. Long-Nosed Vanguardism I guess.

[Anonymous No.18905597]

>>18905537
There are Calvinist Episcopalians.

[Anonymous No.18905623]

>>18905597
sad

[Anonymous No.18905648]

>>18905452
Are you Anglican?

[Anonymous No.18905652]

>>18905436
This. The average American has not read any Calvin at all, and this has been true for generations. Calvinism instead became ingrained into US culture, so for us it's just normal.

[Anonymous No.18905689]

>>18905568
Must be too much time on the internet because I’ve spent my whole life here and never seen or heard that even once.

[Anonymous No.18905728]

>>18905689
in the southern baptist churches i grew up in it's pretty endemic. it's taken as a given that the establishment of israel as a nation-state was a literal fulfilment of prophecy and that christians have a duty to support it. it's strongest among end-times obsessives who follow hal lindsey or jon hagee.

[Anonymous No.18905743]

>>18905648
Presbyterian. I probably would have been Anglican if there was a Evangelical Anglican parish near me.

[Anonymous No.18905759]

>>18903837
Calvinism was the foundation of the yankee culture that has dominated american society since the civil war so in a philosophical & moral sense America is still very Calvinist even if the religious aspect has faded into a superficial veneer

[Anonymous No.18905770]

>>18905743
Stop your rebellion & just come home to Papa anon.

[Anonymous No.18905789]

>>18905770
>No.

[Anonymous No.18905823]

>>18905689
No, this experience was first-hand account during a business trip to the states. It may be relegated to a specific area like >>18905728 suggests, as it was in the South I saw all this. Nonetheless, it is very strange, especially given that the South is supposedly a racist area.

[Anonymous No.18905842]

>>18905789

[Anonymous No.18905873]

>>18905743
What do you think about Orthodox Christianity? Are there any theological intersections of Eastern Orthodoxy and some Reformed/Calvinist/Presbytarian denominations?

Also I read that John Wesley was ordained by an Orthodox bishop. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasmus_of_Arcadia

[Anonymous No.18905900]

>>18903837
In general, no. I believe most American Christians are either Catholics (whether devout or just claim to be because of roots) or Armenian Protestant in their practice of faith.

t. Baptized and raised United Methodist, now a member of PCA.

[Anonymous No.18905908]

>>18905900
>Armenian
Arminian?

[Anonymous No.18905916]

>>18905823
anglophone christianity has been pretty philosemitic going back at least as far as cromwell, when puritans lobbied to allow jews back into england on the logic that they needed to be converted before christ would return. i think there's some cultural legacy of that in southern philosemitism, albeit strengthened by the fundamentalist embrace of premillennial eschatology and cold war alliances (the soviets backed egypt/syria against israel up through the mid-70s).

[Anonymous No.18905925]

>>18903861
>America isn't sincerely christian, culturally. It hasn't been for quite some time.
Came here to say this. America has rejected God and now is a disgusting nation, falling apart

[Anonymous No.18905936]

>>18905908
Correct. Thank you. ^^;;

[Anonymous No.18905972]

What do I read to become calvinist? I'm a tradcath talibani guenonian at the moment

[Anonymous No.18906007]

>>18905972
>talibani guenonian
Cringe

[Anonymous No.18906008]

>>18905925
Why do you talk about a state like it's a person? It's not. America doesn't have a mind. It's not a living being, and it has never been more than a thought.

You should've said "Americans have rejected God". But even that would be incorrect. I know many Americans who are deeply religious. I'm sure you know some too.

[Anonymous No.18906053]

>>18905972
When I read Weber, I got the impression that scholastic theologians are wrong, and some Protestant ideas in ethics sound reasonable. Not Calvin's idea of predestination, but the idea of inner-worldly asceticism.

[Anonymous No.18906073]

>>18906053
>idea of inner-worldly asceticism
Russian Old-Believers have something like this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJUHFakKYNs

[Anonymous No.18906079]

>>18905972
>I'm a tradcath talibani guenonian at the moment
it sounds like you've already reached your final form anon

[Anonymous No.18906086]

>>18905972
Start with the Westminster Shorter Catechism and the Westminster Confession of Faith.

Then read Institutes of the Christian Religion by Yuhanna Kalifin (pbuh).

[Anonymous No.18906171]

>>18904147
The only Christian Americans I have seen were the ones in the movies. All the Americans I have talked to had this strange simmering hostility in them ready to burst at all times.

[Anonymous No.18906202]

>>18905873
>Asking a protestant what he thinks about eastern-flavored catholics

[Anonymous No.18906287]

>>18906202
>Orthodox are just Catholics with no Pope
That's just not true. We have more in common with Catholics than say, Baptists, but there is still a pretty big divide between Rome and the East

[Anonymous No.18906305]

>>18906287
Protestants dislike venerating saints
Protestants dislike altars and clerics
Protestants think Mary wasn't anything special
Protestants think that communion in the way it's celebrated by both catholics and orthodox is akin to idolatry
If someone has a problem with catholicism they have a problem with orthodox christianity as well

[Anonymous No.18906334]

>>18906305
Yeah I get that, Protestant retards think any Apostolic Christianity is paganism, but Orthodoxy is not just the Catholic Church in Greek/Russian clothing

[Anonymous No.18906384]

>>18905759
>in a philosophical & moral sense America is still very Calvinist even if the religious aspect has faded into a superficial veneer
True. There is still the Puritan concept of a "City on a Hill" that is still believed by modern america.

[Anonymous No.18906641]

>>18905873
I don't think about Eastern Orthodoxy too often and I've not engaged with many of their works. They aren't interested in systematic theology the way Roman Catholics and Protestants are and their theological vocabulary is different than ours in Western Christianity.

[Anonymous No.18906679]

>>18905568
Anon that's literally just Protestantism. I mean for fuck's sake you had Anglos running around calling themselves the Sanhedrin and proudly declaring that they were Judaizers.

Why would you think that taking the Jewish holy book and making it your holy text wouldn't result in people reading the parts about Jews being God's Chosen People seriously?

>>18906287
>We
You are not "Orthodox", you are a LARPer.

[Anonymous No.18906719]

>>18906679
>You are not "Orthodox", you are a LARPer.
how do you know

[Anonymous No.18906777]

>>18906719
"Orthodoxy" is a meme that American neophiles cling to so that they can play e-dressup. People who are actual adherents of Greek Orthodoxy, Georgian Orthodoxy, Coptic Orthodoxy, etc know that there is no such as "Orthodoxy", there's just their Patriarch, who was put in charge by Jesus himself, and they do what they're told because they're an X.

[Anonymous No.18906891]

>>18906679
The old testament is to understand the Jews and their background, so as to garner a closer understanding to Jesus himself. The new testament is the law of Jesus and Jesus proclaimed all the world's people as God's chosen. I care not for his origin as he cares not for mine. The Jews have rejected Jesus and so I too reject the Jew.

[Anonymous No.18906909]

>>18906641
https://energeticprocession.wordpress.com/reading/
https://energeticprocession.wordpress.com/2020/01/03/on-books-and-the-spiritual-life/
https://energeticprocession.wordpress.com/2010/04/12/why-i-am-not-an-episcopalian/
https://energeticprocession.wordpress.com/2009/03/08/anglicans-in-exile/

Also
https://www.puritanboard.com/threads/church-fathers-reading-list.95058/
https://tentsofshem.wordpress.com/2016/02/11/a-church-fathers-reading-list/
https://tentsofshem.wordpress.com/2018/12/11/a-patristic-linkstorm/

[Anonymous No.18906936]

[Anonymous No.18907031]

"An old Puritan legend has it that Ussher read the fathers every day."

https://www.puritanboard.com/threads/puritans-and-patristics.86295/

[Anonymous No.18907145]

>>18907031
Naturally, Puritan works are replete with quotations from the early church fathers.

The 17th century Puritans were highly educated.

[Anonymous No.18907296]

>>18906777
.t seething heterodox

[Anonymous No.18907310]

how do i become conversant in russian orthodoxy? i know i can never be a true russaboo unless i study up

[Anonymous No.18907437]

>>18906777
holy digits…

[Anonymous No.18907463]

>>18904073
this is the hammest sandwich on earth, I just replaced ham with turkey

[Anonymous No.18907467]

>>18907310
Don't convert cause you think Russia is cool, convert cause you think it's the true faith. If you go to a church and take converting seriously people will love you there, but if you act like a LARPing retard they're going to hate you

[Anonymous No.18907494]

>>18907467
but i don't have any intention of converting, i'm just a fan

[Anonymous No.18907961]

>>18905972
Don't stray from the path you are currently on

[Anonymous No.18908001]

>>18904279
>Calling Evangelicals christians

[Anonymous No.18908862]

>>18908001
They are

[Anonymous No.18908873]

>>18903837
>Unitarian Universalism
>Counts for all Unitarians
Retard

[Anonymous No.18908887]

>>18908873
Was meant for>>18904418

[Anonymous No.18909121]

>>18907310
Read John Meyendorff, Jaroslav Pelikan, Alexander Schmemann, Kallistos Ware

Also check https://svspress.com

[Anonymous No.18909126]

>>18908001
coooope

[Anonymous No.18909218]

I am a Catholic so I will keep my opinions on the United States to myself.

But if you wish some literature about it, read Hawthorne. Read Hawthorne's tales. They will teach you about the Puritans, about all the myths surrounding them.

[Anonymous No.18909828]

>>18903849
Holy based

[Anonymous No.18910393]

>>18903837
Puritan prayers are comfy.

[Anonymous No.18910918]

>>18909218
hawthorne was a polemicist. the well-bred and educated children of puritans had learned to despise their ancestors by the mid-19th century in a tradition which continues down to this day.
you'd do well to read a fellow catholic's denunciation of hawthorne. he didn't hold his ancestors guilty of any particular crimes as much as that they made unrepentant sinners feel shame. http://orestesbrownson.org/the-scarlet-letter.html

[Anonymous No.18911236]

>>18910918
Hawthorne's view on the Puritans is far more complex and nuanced than whatever Brownson says. His characters and narrators, like Shakespeare's, reflect a variety of views that cannot be said to be wholly representative of Hawthorne's. Through the vantage of hindsight and access to writing Brownson probably did not have when he wrote, we can say now that though Hawthorne was not much of a church-goer, he certainly believed in traditional morality after his experiences at Brookes Farm, and he even encouraged his daughter Rose's own conversion to Catholicism. The Puritan trope was used only in Scarlet Letter and a few short stories. The rest of Hawthorne's novels deal with contemporary issues in a more realist mold. Melville actually did hold views more akin to what Brownson is describing, but Hawthorne was closer to Brownson than he realized.

tl;dr Brownson misfired lumping Hawthorne in with the transcendentalists. Hawthorne was a traditional moralist without being reactionary.

[Anonymous No.18911949]

>>18906909
>https://energeticprocession.wordpress.com/2010/04/12/why-i-am-not-an-episcopalian/
>https://energeticprocession.wordpress.com/2009/03/08/anglicans-in-exile/
I wonder if he came up with all this theological wankery before or after he converted

[Anonymous No.18912794]

>>18909218
America gonna be Catholic soon

[Anonymous No.18912804]

>>18912794
America gonna be 'Catholic' soon

[Anonymous No.18912927]

>>18904279
>read MLK
>a man who has been dead for half a century
1960's America may have been Christian, but modern America is not. Evangelicals are still a powerful voting block, but they're in decline and arguably less powerful than the progressive voting block now.

[Anonymous No.18912932]

>>18912804

[Anonymous No.18913040]

>>18912804
Hispanic Evangelical*

[Anonymous No.18913309]

>>18912932
How many in the red area leave a dollar at the local santa muerte shrine every week for good luck

[Anonymous No.18913917]

>>18913309
https://youtube.com/watch?v=_fvo2uMXXSU