Is this cause of the decline in mainline Xianity in America? Or because of it?My kids wandered into a Christian paraphernalia store on our Tennessee vacation.
— Matthew D. Taylor (@TaylorMatthewD) July 24, 2024
What does it say about American Christianity that overtly partisan, election-denying, & hostile messages like these are coded & sold as de rigueur "Christian"? pic.twitter.com/wownSwcjp4
(Personally, I think it’s due to the postwar (WWII) climate which coupled American status with God , and got supercharged by the Red Scare (godless commies).
American flags were not a feature of American worship spaces before WWII. I met a young German pastor who was visiting UCC churches here. Her denomination was one of the ancestor churches of the UCC. She was disturbed by the flag in my church’s worship space (do was I), because the Nazis took over the church in Germany (and flags were one sign of that subservience). It got worse on “Scout Sunday” when the scout troop we sponsored was honored. That was fine, but parading the flag into worship and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance (“You shall have no other gods before me”) was a bridge too far. Not that I could stop it.
So even apolitical congregations (I never preached politics) were “political.” That lasted through the fifties, became untenable in the’60’s, and finally broke out into “us” v “them” in the’70’s and ‘80’s. And it’s only gotten worse.
So, yeah, the roots of that display (in the pictures) lie in the’60’s and the reaction to the anti-war movement (there are probably still a few “POW-MIA” flags in those stores). The past isn’t over; it isn’t even passed. But the dominant sentiments are equal parts reaction to the declining cultural authority of Protestantism, and the cause of that collapse. Because it’s now the public face of American Xianity. The face that isn’t old people, who to the young are “an alien people clutching their gods.”
Stuff like that ☝️ is what rushed in to fill the void. IMHO, anyway.)
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