Religion, Fear and the Regression of the USA

Fear turned me to Christian fundamentalism. Fear of death. Fear of my economically collapsing life. Fear of my extreme 1 in a 5 million body. Religion, my almost dying and fear joined together into a dance with each other. Fundamentalism and Fear go together. My deconversion was not only about freedom, but moving life beyond fear. I got tired of being afraid. The narcissists made me afraid all the time, my then religion taught me to fear hell,  I was told to toe the line over and over or fear the consequences.

America is a very fearful place. Falling down the economic ladder with a thud, has this place in a panic. Fear has people operate from the lowest base, cooperation, care and love disappear. An online friend I will call Mr. Tibbles, and I got into a discussion about religion and fear and politics.

He wrote:


Fearmongering is pervasive in US society right now, because it works. People give in to it, so it's a great method of gathering and maintaining power. So politicians and church leaders everywhere are using it. And they're using it to deflect attention, too. People can see their lives and neighborhoods worsening, but can't see why.

They turn on the TV and there's Fox News, fearmongering, saying it's the fault of brown people, the fault of women, the fault of gays and the fault of bums who refuse to work. And because they don't hear anything different in their communities, they believe it. I mean, I don't know of any nationwide TV progressive equivalent of Fox News. Do you? And the fundies use fear because right now it works. The people give in to it. They let themselves be ruled by fear. Just as phobics do. Only, with phobics, the damage is individual. But with a whole people, the damage is society-wide. Entire nations get damaged. Fearmongering kills democracies and sets up totalitarian police states. And all police states run on fear. But a people can decide to throw off fear. People always see through lies eventually...then they get fed up and stop knuckling under to it...a people then becomes ungovernable and the elites have lost all power over a society.

The same exact way you and I both threw off the Christian Church, and for the same reason. The church promised us heaven but delivered nothing but oppression, intolerance, and a terror-filled hell on earth. I got sick and tired of living in fear of a control-freak God who seemed anything but loving to me....got exposed to other views of the world, views that gave me freedom and got rid of the fear and the nightmares I used to get of being sent to hell over and over again, often through no fault of my own... The British lost their empire because they became too oppressive, and people worldwide got fed up with it and rebelled. The British use of fear as a governing principle didn't work anymore. Happened right here in the US, in the 18th century as you recall. The Catholic Church lost their hold on civilization the exact same way. They were benevolent in the beginning. They gave people aid and comfort and kindness and tolerance and acceptance...so the church grew. Too bad they didn't stay kind and tolerant. The bigger the church grew, the meaner they got, until they created The Dark Ages...which worked for a while...until the people got fed up with living in fear and quit, in droves, and launched a continent-wide holy war, and won.

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I wrote back:

This place is utterly ruled by fear. Fear is running this show now and building an extreme authoritarian police state and fundamentalist and evangelical religion is fueling a lot of it. People are so fearful in the United States. I see posts of people from Europe who come here, who are in shock at how on edge Americans are, and they can barely stand it. People from the third world, have talked to me about how anti-social and unfriendly Americans are on a certain level like they are afraid of one another. Sadly I would say this is true.

We are stuck in an obey and command culture. It is ruled by punishment. Even our economic system is formed around the basis of punishment for not having enough money.  "Might makes right" and the farther to the right one goes the more this is true. Leftists desire some aspects of cooperation while rightists worship power.  Narcissists and sociopaths rule by fear. They don't want freely thinking populaces who feel safe and empowered. They profit off people living on the edge all turning against each other.

Why do evangelicals and fundamentalists support Trump? I left the religion realizing the core of it was authoritarianism. The strong man leader overlaps with a strong man God with no vulnerabilities or sensitivity. Trump advances fear every chance he gets. There is an enemy around every corner and if they can't find an enemy they will make one up.  Everyone outside of the white Christian middle class with men at the top of the pyramid are the enemy or outsider. Trump inside is a three year old brat, remaining immature on a certain level, but that's every narcissist. Selfishness rules.

I see Trump as a three year old brat. If people simply made the decision to not show up that would go a long way. I think some of us have checked out. I am scared because he has done worse things then Nixon by far, and nobody is doing anything. Mueller's investigation was just another distraction, another joke.

I have seen this cowardice in the face of narcs and sociopaths before you see. Our entire country is being run like a family with a sociopathic narc at the helm. They all operate using fear to run the show. He is a symptom of this culture, the epitome of the whole screw or be screwed mentality. The darkness of mankind shows up in the evil assholes they make leaders. Yeah while some of the elites rule, many of the elites live afraid, always scared of losing their money. One can tell they have disconnected from society only swimming in their own circles, out of touch with reality. 

There's some good rich people who go around helping people, Bill Murray goes around saying hello to his neighbors. Many of these aren't members of the 1 percent, but they are out there too. Who are the ones getting all the attention though? Who are the ones in charge making the rules? Who are the ones who are always concocting laws to worsen everyone's lives? Right now we have the neo-liberals pushing mega-corporatist Biden to the fore-front. They are blocking out real progressives like Bernie and the slew of younger ones like Buttigieg are being closed out. It's Hillary 2.0 but with sell out Biden. They may want to get Trump re-elected.

Neo-liberals helped to empower these conservatives as they turned more and more extreme. Now we are facing down full Dominionism, the religious right vying for ultimate power above the desires of the majority. Who did this? Why is it happening? Religion helped to pave the way here. I remember all my indoctrination, and I held out, holding against war, and still standing for unions as so much of America at the behest of their preachers marched to the beat of the drum of the capitalists.

Why can't we make everyone's lives better? Why does society have to focus on crushing punishment as the answer to every problem?  Sometimes I have thoughts about how religion made our society so punishment focused. Some who believe in hell, seem to want to make life here as much like hell as possible. Shouldn't mankind evolve beyond that? It doesn't work anyhow.

Why do people have to be PUNISHED for losing the job Lotto?  Why should someone become homeless or life ruined because someone behind a desk decided they did not like them. The USA is backtracking on decades of progress, the meanness needs to stop. Many conservatives are a miserable lot, always afraid someone won't suffer enough just to eat or be housed. Some people who want to progress are dreaming of a different future, but there's so many who want to dial the clock back to the dark ages. Europeans and Canadians are watching this place with horror, they have their own economic and other problems but they see where extreme religion and fantasy thinking is taking the United States.

Neo-liberals destroy a place while being socially liberally but when it comes to money they are just like their Republican counterparts, because the rents rise just as high. It is based on Social Darwinism too. Calvinism helped fuel the false morality of the rich narcissists as well. The whole country has been programmed to gaslight themselves believing their poverty is all their fault instead of a crooked system full of injustice.

Many of the young are for progressive and democratic socialism but sadly there's too many living in the past. They think someone can walk the street and ask for a job directly when the reality is most are lost in the online application process and a computer program is weeding out their resume. They get lost in computer files and paperwork. We have a generation directing life for everyone else based on 40 year old precepts that no longer apply and getting reality through to them seems impossible.

One reason the United States is regressing is, at least  on one half of the side of the equation, is it has lost interest in science, progress is now seen as a negative. Carl Sagan's warnings are coming true now. The anti-vaxxers have now created pockets of the country again where measles is roaring back. What is ironic is that all the fear and religious talk about "end days" is ensuring more trouble for human beings and more things for people to be afraid of.

You know I left Christianity realizing the darkness within it, politically and otherwise. I woke up one day and have written about this before where I did not want to be on the side of the oppressors. Yes there are Christians outside of the evangelical system with it's horrifying authoritarian politics but the extreme ones are taking our country down. I hope for liberal Christians to align with those who want progress but sadly they must realize that many of the churches are aligned with political and economic oppression. These folks have more power then they should have.

What is ironic is when I was still a Christian, I used to warn from my belief in bible prophecy that churches would join with the Antichrist. While I no longer believe in the Bible now, we definitely have seen religion and politics join together in a quest for evil in this country. It is interesting how this has occurred supposedly at the same time, the statisticians are telling us that more people are abandoning Christianity. People don't realize the trouble, the USA is facing, with the Dominionists on the extreme right.

Mr Tibbles responded:

The problem with most religions is they create such ossified, frozen societies, frozen in time. There's no mechanism in place for altering rules or beliefs, or growing in societal wisdom, no mechanism for learning better ways of living together. Any proposal to make changes is seen as heresy, the work of the devil, and therefore evil. So you get stuff like the Jews versus the Muslims in the Middle east, locked in combat for more than 1400 years straight, with no real means of reconciliation or living together in harmony, since both depict the other as Evil, and negotiating a way to live together is seen as compromising with Satan and becoming tainted with evil yourself.

The ironic part is all religions are changing all the time, including the Abrahamic ones like judaism, Islam, and Christianity. They've all split into endless variants, and even the same sect changes greatly over time despite claims of being "the eternal unchanging church". I.e. the Catholic Church and Vatican II. 

I predict that eventually, centuries or millenia from now, Christianity will fade away and be considered mythology, just as we regard the Roman pantheon of gods like Zeus, Minerva, Apollo, etc, as mythology now. No one considers that a real religion anymore, though 2,000 years ago it definitely was.

The dark Fundamentalism had overwhelming influence on you, but I have read articles showing that Christianity is actually fading very significantly in the USA. Lots of churches and monasteries all over the US are closing their doors, nuns and pastors having to take up non-religious jobs because congregations are shrinking and the money just isn't there to keep them going anymore. 

This article, and this one, among many others, saying 4,000 churches "go out of business" every year in the US.

Neither article explores why congregations are shrinking, but I can make a number of easy guesses. You and I are both Exhibit A and B for why. Christianity itself has turned itself into a liability, not an asset. People are happier without it. Too many Christians including clergy promise heaven but create hell. I'm just not interested in participating or supporting that. If I join an abusive church, that makes me complicit, doesn't it?

It's not all bad. The old stone cathedrals with their stained glass windows are gorgeous, and that organ music and the choir singing is pretty wonderful. I have a number of gospel songs in my music collection. I even have entire albums of Gregorian chants, sung in the original latin by actual monks and I love listening to it. There are many beautiful stories and movies that came out of it. "Going My Way", "Bells of St. Marys".Margaret Craven's "I Heard the Owl Call My Name", .... and another beloved fiction book about a church kitten called "Magnifi-Cat" by Carolyn and Edmund Sheehan--heartwarming tearjerker, that story's adorable..lol

And all churches are supposed to have a mission of giving comfort, wise counseling, and aid especially to the needy. Clergy were the first therapists. 

If the churches could just hold on to that stuff, and drop all the fearmongering and the control-freak intolerance and abusive stuff....I think they would be doing a whole lot better in society. But power goes to their heads,and priests and pastors and ministers and popes can't change that any more than any other human can.

Have any of you wondered why hard core evil is not discussed in the churches? Not since I was a kid, actually. Always seemed obvious to me, why; because they're complicit in the hardcore evil.

The more power they gained, the more oppressive and fear-based they became. I read my history of the Dark Ages. They didn't call it that for nothing.

And nothing turned me off Christianity as much as the whole pedophilia crisis; not just the acts of some very sick priests, but how the church responded to it, protecting the evildoers instead of the victims and further victimizing the victims. "No true church of god would behave this way."
Then I read of similar behavior from the Buddhist monks in Tibet.

And there was that bombing incident in Bangladesh thats in the news right now....done by self-described Buddhists. So Buddhist extremists can be hate-filled, intolerant, and violent terrorists too. Every single religion I ever studied has a dark side like that.

I do get people saying "those are extremist fanatic crazies...they don't truly represent that religion. Most believers are peaceful and tolerant. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater."

To which I say..well...agreed that all religions have good in them....they all have bad in them, too. Problem I have, there's an authoritarianism in a lot of them that really bothers me ethically.
But more important...there's all these different belief systems, and they contradict each other, and none of them fit my own experience 100%. They all have good parts I agree with. They all have bad parts that strike me as evil.
I don't think joining any religion 100% wholesale absolves me of the responsibility to figure out for myself right and wrong. I was given a brain. I'm pretty sure I was meant to use it.
So I pick and choose what seems wisdom to me, from wherever I find it. And knowing there's an inherent contradiction in this; the twin imperatives of one the one hand, behaving well, and on the other hand of the other imperative to survive and flourish, knowing that immoral people have an apparent advantage over moral ones hamstrung by moral constraints, at least in the short term.
This becomes keenest for victims of abuse and exploitation and various kinds of theft, some of which are legalized.