Everybody's Turning So Pagan: Part Two
Every Word of God Proves True, He Is a Shield to Those Who Take Refuge in Him
It appears I am starting a haphazard series on the religious inclinations of my American compatriots. Almost a month ago I was noodling through The Shadow Work Journal and thinking about the end of my homeschool year. Now I am skirting along the edges of the Republican National Convention and thinking about the sketchy contours of American spirituality.
In my lifetime America has never been what I would call robustly Christian. In fact, when I first moved here, being quite young and feeling very special about my disappointment and discomfort, I immediately wanted to write a memoire. I intended to call it “From Binghamton to Babylon.” It was going to be so moving. Everyone was going to be astonished by my wisdom and deathless prose. It was going to illumine the religious thoughts and prayers of Americans and explain where it all went wrong. By the grace of God, you may be happy to know, I didn’t have a scrap of time to write any such thing, thus being spared the humiliation of trying to explain anything to anyone in my twenties.
Where I live is post-Christian. In many respects, like other pockets of American life, the citizenry, through the long desultory habit of church going without proper teaching, were inoculated against true religion. People now are “Catholic” but don’t bother to go to church. They self-identify as “Christian,” sometimes, but without being able to articulate any content. But that does not mean that there is no religious hunger. Most people cobble together their spiritual feelings as best they can. They know there is something out there, and they feel like it might be God, but they don’t want to be too picky about it. So many people I know personally, and see online, live in a world of omens, of signs, of searching out a sense that Something—who knows what—lies beyond the veil.
And this state of affairs is on full display in the aftermath of the assassination attempt on Mr. Trump, and as Republicans try to prevail in the Forthcoming. This morning I have just two short examples. The second is the Sikh prayer by Harmeet Dhillon, and the first is a short clip from the Megyn Kelly show. Megyn had several experts on to talk about how it was possible that no secret service agents were on that roof. But they quickly wandered into matters of spirituality.
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