Culture Wars | 61 comments (61 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Not a culture war like in the US (none / 0)

There are still considerable and growing numbers of Evangelicals in Britain and the Netherlands, in particular.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Mon Jan 22nd, 2007 at 03:14:24 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Not a culture war like in the US (none / 1)

Of what variety? Are they premillenial dispensationalists, i.e., fundies? There are evangelicals who are liberal in both the political and the religious senses of the term, like Jimmy Carter and Jim Wallis. Not all evangelicals are fundies, although the American corporate media nevertheless unfortunately usually uses the two terms as if they were synonymous.

A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns

by Alexander on Mon Jan 22nd, 2007 at 03:43:52 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Not a culture war like in the US (4.00 / 2)

Fundies, real fundies, albeit not one third of the population. The Netherlands has its own Bible Belt.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Mon Jan 22nd, 2007 at 03:49:25 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Not a culture war like in the US (none / 1)

How are they organized? Aren't there established Churches in the Netherlands, like there are in Germany? I don't see how the hierarchy of an established Protestant or Calvinist church would allow the teaching of premillenial dispensationalist doctrine, because of its unorthodoxy.

So do they set up their own churches? If so, are they officially recognized?

I must say, I find this very disturbing. Also, I guess there must be fundamentalists in Finland as well, since I ran into a group of them in the U-Bahn in Munich once. (Although it is possible they just acted like fundies, without holding their theology: I didn't sit down to discuss theology with them.)

A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns

by Alexander on Mon Jan 22nd, 2007 at 04:08:04 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Not a culture war like in the US (4.00 / 2)

I don't know about the Netherlands, but in Britain the Federation of Independent Evangelical Churches and the Assemblies of God (Pentecostalist) have gradually been permeated by dispensationalist eschatology. Then there are still the Plymouth Brethren. And other sectarian groups either loosely based on neighbourhood and house prayer/Bible study groups, or on a more "cult" organisation. At least one of these last that I know of has very close contacts with similar Dutch groups. (That sect, btw, grew in the 1960s out of a Baptist Church).

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Mon Jan 22nd, 2007 at 04:30:07 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Not a culture war like in the US (none / 1)

In the US, there is an active movement by dispensationalists to infiltrate mainline Protestant congretations, turn the congretation against the Pastor, and get him replaced with a dispensationalist. But this does not get reported in the mainstream press.

I had no idea that the Plymouth Brethren were still around. Interesting.

I have a pet theory by the way that fundamentalism can only take root in a society where the prevailing philosophical culture is empiricist/liberal (Hume, Mill) but not in which it is rationalist/communitarian (Kant, Hegel). The anglophone tradition took the position that religion cannot be understood rationally, whereas German idealism attempted to reconcile science, philosophy, and religion (i.e., Christianity). Philosophy and religion never divorced themselves in Germany as they did in Britain. Fundamentalism is the product of that divorce.

A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns

by Alexander on Mon Jan 22nd, 2007 at 04:53:20 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Not a culture war like in the US (4.00 / 2)

So, does that mean that fascism and radical racism can only take root in a society which is 'rationalist/communitarian (Kant/Hegel' :)

by MarekNYC on Mon Jan 22nd, 2007 at 04:59:36 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Not a culture war like in the US (none / 1)

And let's not forget some of the currents in German twentieth century Protestantism:

Twisted Cross

Or if we prefer Catholicism, how about the twentieth century Spanish incarnation of the Church Militant eagerly supporting the crusade against modernity.

by MarekNYC on Mon Jan 22nd, 2007 at 05:18:47 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Not a culture war like in the US (none / 0)

Interesting book. I guess Protestantism is one of those common antecedents of Nazism and German idealism that I spoke of. In this sense: Luther held that you can only know God through faith, I believe. That is anti-rationalist. And anti-rationalism was constitutive of Nazism, in my opinion.

As for Catholicism, I don't think that anyone has ever argued that Catholicism has an easy relationship with modernity. (I was raised Russian Orthodox, and I think that Orthodoxy has an even less easy relationship with modernity.) In Hegel's view, the impetus that produced modernity was Protestant. Catholicism accommodated itself to the new conditions (not entirely successfully, some would say), but did not play a role in producing them.

A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns

by Alexander on Mon Jan 22nd, 2007 at 06:06:33 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Not a culture war like in the US (none / 0)

Haha. I think that is still an open question. For about two years after 9/11, I thought the Bush regime might morph into full-fledged fascism, but I don't find that likely any more. (It must be said, however, that some people, like Chalmers Johnson, think that America still might turn fascist in the next 10 or 20 years or so, as a result of strains caused by its militarism.)

I suppose it is fair to say that there is a correlation between rationalism/communitarianism and fascism (the Nazis), but I would claim that anything in Kant or Hegel only condemns fascism, rather than supporting it. The way I would look at it is that German idealism and Nazism have some common antecedents, the way that liberalism and fundamentalism do. (By the way, after Hegel's death, there was a gradual decline in German philosophical culture (and the effort to regain that culture is being carried out mainly in the US, not in Germany) which I still don't understand. Thus, at the time when Germany started taking its wrong turn (after Bismarck's death), the German idealist tradition was not very influential any more.)

I would consider American slavery to be a form of radical racism, wouldn't you? And then there is the genocide of the native Americans... Thus I don't think rationalist/communitarian societies have a monopoly on that.

As a final note, one might speculate that fundamentalism might be the anglophone equivalent of fascism, as you were getting at. Certainly, when I look for something comparable to fundamentalism's anti-rationalism in modern Europe, the first thing I think about is the Nazis.

A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns

by Alexander on Mon Jan 22nd, 2007 at 05:31:27 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Not a culture war like in the US (4.00 / 2)

That's a compelling view, though, in my view both Calvin and Luther were fundamentalists, and the later more liberal views were a consequence of the 30 Years War.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Mon Jan 22nd, 2007 at 05:04:13 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Not a culture war like in the US (none / 0)

You're probably right. I haven't really studied either. But the point goes which I made elsewhere that when one calls them fundamentalists, one should use the word in scare quotes. Back in their day, the idea that the Bible should be taken literally was not all that crazy, since the tension between religion and science was not that great. Luther started a long learning process that ended with modernity, but he wasn't (fully) modern himself.

A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns

by Alexander on Mon Jan 22nd, 2007 at 05:41:13 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Not a culture war like in the US (none / 0)

Luther started a long learning process that ended with modernity, but he wasn't (fully) modern himself.

In my view, that's the central myth of liberal Protestantism, and wrong. While biblical literalism was not that strange for his age, it was still a move aimed backwards not forwards, it included resurrecting the darkest Dark Ages in form of religious persecution and (real) witch hunts (which, contrary to popular wisdom, were worst not in the Middle Age), anti-Jewish pogroms (Luther became a rather crude anti-semite in his old age), and establishment of opressive theocratic communities (Calvin's original wasn't any better than Salem). The learning process libral Protestants ascribe to Luther could really start only once religious absolutism led to disillusion and (unlike during all previous Western Christian internal religious wars) failed to achieve victory by arms.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Mon Jan 22nd, 2007 at 06:01:11 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Not a culture war like in the US (none / 0)

Thanks for clearing that up. I couldn't figure out the relevance of the Thirty Years War when you brought it up before. Like I said, I haven't read Luther, or studied much about him. I accept everything you say, and thank you for educating me. (I was never a fan of Calvin's, btw.)

A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns

by Alexander on Mon Jan 22nd, 2007 at 06:13:49 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Not a culture war like in the US (4.00 / 2)

I may have erred about the Netherlands Bible Belt being evangelist (don't know European-root fundies that much, I know fundamentalism only through creationism), but there are evangelicals with a US ideological source all over Europe, and it is indeed a worrying (and usually totally ignored) problem. Yes, they set up their own churches, they are officially recognised in most places, and they organise and proselytize and pass teleevangelists around, and write anti-science LTEs. They are not too visible due to relatively low numbers, but I consider them a contagious disease.

In England, there is even a small network of private creationist schools, who got a permit with Bliar's approval. In Germany, they even have a party, which received 0.23% in the last elections.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Mon Jan 22nd, 2007 at 04:53:05 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Culture Wars | 61 comments (61 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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