How Large?

We think we are in a political battle, but a large part of America is living through a moment of spiritual ecstasy. This is how theocracies are born https://t.co/4485Ft0pRn

— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum) July 12, 2021

Great Awakening large? Second Great Awakening large? Third? As large as the audiences for Jimmy Swaggart, Oral Roberts, the 700 Club, Jim and Tammye Faye Baker, Jerry Falwell and James Dobson?  As many as made Rick Warren a best-selling author?

Yeah, what happened to all those people?  Falwell was a king-maker (supposedly); Robertson was a GOP Presidential candidate (briefly); Warren actually moderated a debate between then Sen. Obama and then Sen. McCain.

Or maybe it's as many people as backed Lyndon LaRouche, who proclaimed the Queen of England the center of an international drug-smuggling conspiracy.  Or as many as the supporters of David Duke, who was never sufficiently ostracized from decent human society as I would have liked.  He did Trump one better; Duke damned near made the KKK a respectable topic of conversation.

Spiritual ecstasy?  Like that of Teresa of Avila?  Margery Kempe? St. John of the Cross?  Francis of Assisi? Aimee Semple McPherson?  The Shakers? The Pentecostalists?

American history is littered with stories of influential individuals caught up in "spiritual ecstasy" who amass thousands of followers.  Some form religious groups, like the Shakers.  Some are tent revivalists.  It's as American as apple pie, and about as dangerous to the fabric of society.  In some places it is the fabric of society. Oh, I know it's worse now because "Trump," but please: lighten up, Francis.  "Spiritual ecstasy" is what led to the Salem witch trials, which were less about religious experiences than about seizing power and property from the marginalized (almost all the women accused of witchcraft were widows or never married).  It was a small and shameful aspect of American history, but it also occurred almost in isolation.  It wasn't a contagion that spread across the land like a religious fervor.  We aren't really much for religious fervors in this country, despite the publicity of tent revival shows and TV hucksters (cable made them, in the '70's; and cable has destroyed them.  It didn't really take long, when you look back on it).  This new "spiritual ecstasy" is more than anything the blush on the cheek of a dying age.  I've read that pastors are concerned about their evangelical churches being hotbeds for Q conspiracy theories.  It sounds like a natural fit for me.  But I'm also convinced Q adherents are like your average church members:  they're perfectly content to see things done as they would have them done, and also perfectly content to let someone else do it.  In the church the people who complain most loudly and fiercely all aim their ire at the pastor, who should "do something about it!"  When it's pointed out they could help out rather than just complain, they only get angry.  If they get angry enough, they lash out: but only verbally.  And then the recriminations become so bitter the entire enterprise explodes into a round-robin of accusations and animosities that only serves to implode the organization they wanted to save by complaining about it in the first place.  But lift a finger for it?  That's what the pastor is for; or at least the church council.

That can happen in a church because a church is a voluntary organization and only the church judicatory is going to step in to try to right wrongs.  A government is not a voluntary institution, and one of the lessons of late 2020 is that the courts, in almost 60 cases, rejected the errant nonsense of claims of "fraud" which mostly weren't even that.  Government has powers to perpetuate itself that no church does.  It is quite a leap from "spiritual ecstasy" to outright anarchy, or even revolution.  Frankly, we were closer to the latter in the 1860's, and again in the 1960's, than we are today.  And there was more "spiritual ecstasy" in the late '40's and 1950's than there is today, when church attendance after the war soared to heights never before seen in America.  That's what made us think we've always attended church faithfully and always been good, conservative WASP's.  But if you pay close attention to Abraham Lincoln's invocations of the Almighty, he still the "greatest President" we've ever had, you'll find he is much closer to 18th century Deism than he is to 21st century evangelicalism. Our national spiritual ecstasy is waning again; those who think they will revive it, especially in the name of Trump, are going to find they are leading a parade which no one is following.

Yes, it's appalling that people at C-PAC think Trump is still President, or worse that he'll be reinstated once the "fraud" is revealed (and no, it doesn't work like that; it never has, it never will.  To the courts the remedy is the next election, not judicial interference at so base a level.).  But C-PAC has always been where the crazies gather; they need that to reassure themselves.  It's telling they need it twice already in 2021 alone.  Looked at that way, it's suddenly far less scary, and much more pathetic.  And does no one remember the small crowd of protestors who greeted President Kennedy on that fateful day in Dallas?  We've obsessed so over the mechanics of the assassination we've never looked at the social venue of it; which is not to blame people in Dallas for Lee Harvey Oswald, but at the same time protests against Presidents have always been with us.  At the time of his death Kennedy had been in office for almost 3 years, and yet what greater repudiation of the legitimacy of a President is there than assassination?  The closest we've come to that since was Reagan on the sidewalk before a guy who thought he was impressing Jodie Foster.

Spiritual awakenings can be disruptive and chaotic, and the powers-that-be often react against them.  Margery Kempe was not a nun or an anchorite, so her work was repudiated by the Church even as Julian's was approved.  Mass spiritual eruptions, of ecstasy, of theology and ecclesiology (the Pietist movement) are often too disruptive for the current order, but in retrospect we see them as a benefit, even a necessity.  That isn't to say all spiritual "eruptions" are an unalloyed good; but they happen.  Will this one truly lead to an American theocracy?  Well, honestly, if Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell couldn't do it (and Lord knows they tried), I don't see it happenening under the banner of Trump as Q Messiah.