When we reach the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Revolution in
2027, will Protestantism still be a presence in the United States?
America is
no longer a Christian country. Deal with it and act accordingly. Denial will
get you nowhere. After death, however, there is the possibility of
resurrection.
What is the
definition of a Christian country? Mine is a country that has a majority of
citizens who believe in and publicly profess the Nicene or Apostles Creed, as
these creeds have come down to us from the Ancient Church –
people who at least attempt to live according to the Ten
Commandments.
Of course,
we are all sinners. But the proof that we are even more pagan than formerly
Christian Europe – or the Islamic countries for that matter – is the piling up
of more than a million abortions per year (killing our own citizens) since
1973.
“Christian”
America has already killed enough of its unborn to easily surpass Nazi
Germany’s extermination camp total and may soon catch up with the death rolls
of the U.S.S.R. and Red China. No true Christian country that has recourse to
democratic voting could countenance such massacre without regime change or
rebellion.
On top of
this, the number of divorces and illegitimate births continues to rise, as
fewer “couples” bother to get married and the number of people addicted to
pornography skyrockets. In short, the social revolution of the 1960s captured
the culture and converted much of the nation. According to a new Pew poll, the number
of Americans who profess a belief in no religion at all has tripled since the
1990s, now accounting for one in five of our countrymen.
My purpose
here, however, is not to prove that America is no longer a Christian country
but to reflect on why and how it happened.
Many of the
first settlers came to the Americas to escape religious persecution. With the
solitary exception of Maryland (my home state, settled by Catholics), these
early settlers were Protestants of various persuasions. They differed from one
another in dogma, but generally agreed in professing and attempting to live a
moral life based on the Ten Commandments.
Though
bestowed by God on Mt. Sinai, the Commandments are also commonly held (even
when not lived up to) by non-Judeo-Christians and unbelievers who recognize the
natural law written on our hearts.
With the
passage of time, homegrown American Protestant sects sprang up so profusely
that they now can be counted in the thousands. Despite this variety, almost all
shared a biblical moral philosophy not far removed from Catholics. The
loosening of divorce laws and the propagation of the birth control pill in the
Sixties, however, precipitated further retreat mere decades later by mainstream
and traditional Protestant denominations on other moral fronts, including
abortion, homosexual activity, and most recently same-sex marriage.
The primary
reason is the lack of dogmatic authority in Protestantism and the reliance on
the principle of private judgment. Leaving people to rely on only their
opinions or feelings as moral guide is not enough to sustain a country that was
once Christian and now is increasingly pagan.
What is the
solution? Can American become Christian again? In my judgment, mainstream
Protestantism is in an irreversible freefall. Don’t count on any great
religious revivals. America needs witness, not enthusiasm. The United States
will either become predominantly Catholic in numbers, faith, and morals or
perish under the weight of its unbridled hedonism and corruption. As Alexis de
Tocqueville, the nineteenth-century French observer who arguably best understood
the United States, observed:
At the
present time, more than in any preceding age, Roman Catholics are seen to lapse
into infidelity, and Protestants to be converted to Roman Catholicism. If you
consider Catholicism within its own organization, it seems to be losing; if you
consider it from outside, it seems to be gaining. Nor is this difficult to
explain. The men of our days are naturally little disposed to believe; but as
soon as they have any religion, they immediately find in themselves a latent
instinct that urges them unconsciously towards Catholicism. Many of the
doctrines and practices of the Roman Catholic Church astonish them, but they
feel a secret admiration for its discipline, and its great unity attracts them.
If Catholicism could at length withdraw itself from the political animosities
to which it has given rise, I have hardly any doubt but that the same spirit of
the age which appears to be so opposed to it would become so favorable as to
admit of its great and sudden advancement.
One of the most ordinary weaknesses of the human intellect is to seek to reconcile contrary principles and to purchase peace at the expense of logic. Thus there have ever been and will ever be men who, after having submitted some portion of their religious belief to the principle of authority, will seek to exempt several other parts of their faith from it and to keep their minds floating at random between liberty and obedience. But I am inclined to believe that the number of these thinkers will be less in democratic than in other ages, and that our posterity will tend more and more to a division into only two parts, some relinquishing Christianity entirely and others returning to the Church of Rome.
One of the most ordinary weaknesses of the human intellect is to seek to reconcile contrary principles and to purchase peace at the expense of logic. Thus there have ever been and will ever be men who, after having submitted some portion of their religious belief to the principle of authority, will seek to exempt several other parts of their faith from it and to keep their minds floating at random between liberty and obedience. But I am inclined to believe that the number of these thinkers will be less in democratic than in other ages, and that our posterity will tend more and more to a division into only two parts, some relinquishing Christianity entirely and others returning to the Church of Rome.
I hope and
believe that readers will live to see that happen in this life – if not the
next.
Fr.
C. John McCloskey III is a Church Historian and Research Fellow at the Faith and Reason
Institute in Washington, DC.
