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One can see a microcosm of the current state of Christianity in America in my own family. When I talk to my family about Christianity, it feels like talking to a wall, and I wonder if I should give up given how poorly it seems I attempt to explain things from their standpoint,
but I try anyway because they ask for my opinion. I feel like I want to punch a wall when, despite coming from an RC background, the talk of the word “rapture” flows from their lips. Many of them are indeed Protestants, but I think they didn’t understand that before I brought it
up to them that the rapture is a recently invented doctrine from evangelical Protestantism that has no link to historical Christianity; thus, the magisterium of the RCC, the EOC, and many Protestants formally reject it. They also seem to mix up rapture with the concept of the
apocalypse & the final judgment. And this isn’t just them. One of them mentioned a Catholic friend who dreamed of “the rapture” and discussed “the rapture” with them before. A significant portion of them is rooted in Sola Fide or a form of (crypto-)universalism. They assert that
faith alone in Christ determines one’s salvation. Some of them accuse the EOC position of works-based salvation, and that works don’t determine one’s salvation. None of the Holy Sacraments in their view has anything to do with one’s salvation. It doesn’t matter how little or
often someone receives communion. They see no issue of someone who gets “baptized” multiple times on their own will. They see salvation as a one-time event, but one can receive a “baptism” numerous times, just like receiving communion. The Evangelical Prot & Baptist pastors have
taught them that if you are 99% sure that you are saved and not 100% sure that you are saved, you are not saved. Hence the possibility of having multiple “baptisms” because if you had a falling out, then you have yet to “be saved,” and having another “baptism” is like a recharge.
Of course, as I and everyone know from the Nicene Creed, there is only one baptism, and “it is a one-time event.” They think any of the procedures surrounding communion to offer the Eucharist to someone are nothing but “man-made rules.” Those who prevent people from receiving
communion are essentially being “mean and judgy.” But I would say these “man-made rules” are there out of love & preventing people from naively receiving in an unworthy state & bringing at the very least condemnation on themselves and, at worst, death as the Holy Scriptures say.
Closed communion protects the Orthodox just as it protects the heterodox. The Eucharist can be regarded as the fruit of life, as opposed to the forbidden fruit that Eve partook & gave to Adam that brought forth first a scandal by Eve but ultimately death into the world.
But this fruit of life, the Eucharist, must be taken in a worthy state because it’s a Divine Fire that sears the unworthy. (See Isaiah 6:6-7 and 1 Corinthians 11:27-30).
I attempted to convey that the West’s historical debate between faith and works is a false dichotomy. If you have the love to move mountains but do nothing with it, then your faith is dead. Even the Demons tremble before God, but that doesn’t mean “they’re saved.” Your life is
not a role-playing game where it is a race to do as many “works” as possible and accumulate a bunch of salvation points throughout your life to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Salvation is given by grace. It is neither by faith alone (James 2:24) nor by our works alone
(Ephesians 2:8-9). It is a gift of God. Salvation is a process and deification through theosis where the Kingdom of Heaven enters your heart; it is not a one-time event. Nonetheless, the way I attempted to articulate this didn’t resonate with them. They remained convinced that my
position seems to be a “works-based salvation,” and I didn’t argue with them much on the significance of the Holy Mysteries or sacraments. This confrontation with them demonstrated the general spiritual problems & spiritual damage that occurs when you debate topics like this &
the debates get heated, especially with your own family. It is better to live simply and practice patience. Love thy neighbor and know the faith through experience and living it.
However, this discussion with them firmly roots my position that the Christianity they believe in & the vast majority of Americans is “moralistic therapeutic deism” as the sociologist of religion Christian Smith has identified as the “standard Christianity” in America.
In this conversation and other conversations, they place a great emphasis on “being a good Christian” or being a Christian is about being “a good person.” But these maxims are virtually empty statements when it goes hand in hand with their theological positions.
It’s just a feel-good and be nice pseudo-religion with the Christian label attached to it because it draws inspiration from Christianity. However, it’s all but a simulacrum of predominantly Protestant Christianity. This phenomenon really starts to come out at me when they ask
the question why don’t certain Christians believe in science? They think it is irrational to believe in “blind faith” over science. “Believing in science” is an irrational faith in of itself. It is the irrationality of scientism.
Science is not meant to be believed in but a tool of analysis. Yet, it seems they think that science should take precedence over Divine Revelation when it comes to faith or religion. https://twitter.com/SpenglerPravda/status/1347437594070679552?s=20
But at the same time, you also have this same pseudo-religion coming out of self-identified Catholics. You can see a part of this when Catholics seem to have no issue with using Protestant materials to learn from that would contradict their own orthodoxy, even though they could
easily use Catholic materials, but it is all fine because “we’re all Christians.” At a first-level analysis, it seems to be like the heterodox heterodoxifying each other. A step further than that, I would say America is not a Protestant country despite most Americans identifying
as a particular Protestant confession. America is a post-Protestant country, adhering to a simulacrum of Protestantism under the Christian label. You can see this with the very existence of groups like “Liturgical Baptists.” Liturgical worship clearly goes against the traditional
orthodoxy of Baptists because Baptists saw liturgical worship as the hallmark of Catholicism, which they deemed heretical, yet these Liturgical Baptists justify themselves on the need to be more connected with the Early Church. Just acknowledging this refutes themselves, yet they
continue to exist. Many evangelical churches are now going “high church,” which goes against their own orthodoxy in observing Lent, Advent, and other observed periods on a liturgical calendar even though it is a part of the orthodoxy of evangelicals to reject a liturgical
calendar on the basis that you don’t see a liturgical calendar outlined in the Holy Bible itself. It’s a general trend of an orthodoxy of heterodoxy for all where this ecumenical pseudo-religion is dominant over all orthodox dogmatics without critical examination.
In my conversations with my family, it can be so odd to hear the Catholic justification of St. Peter being the rock of the RCC but in the next breath hearing this x theological position, practice, or tradition, whether it be RC, EOC, or Prot, is “not biblical” all from the same
person. Even when you are debating with an atheist, you are usually debating with a Fundamentalist Baptist with liberal politics because of the post-Protestant reality that is also intertwined with the post-political reality in America. Thus you have self-identifying Catholics,
mostly the “I went to Catholic school” ones, in America who think like Prots when it comes to many theological issues. Part of that lies with poor catechesis, but also, it’s them just absorbing all the stuff that society throws at them without critically disregarding it.
