New new wars of religion?
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I’ve got a cold and this is a very half-baked thought so if it doesn’t make sense do me a solid and pretend it does, mmkay!
I never cared about history (sorry!) until panny when I needed something to focus on that wasn’t stressy. Since then I’ve been listening to audiobooks on medieval and renaissance monarchs like it’s my job. To the point that I’m behind on all my podcasts. Even 60 Songs That Explain the 90’s. I’ve read one about Catherine the Great, Edward the III, Catherine de Medici, Catherine Howard, Queen Isabella, and Mary Queen of Scots. We love a female monarch.
Two things have stood out to me from all this content.
Even for the most powerful queens, men have still been in charge to a larger degree than I would have guessed
Protestantism was a big damn deal
I knew the Protestant Reformation was a big deal and that a lot of people died. But I had no idea how much it influenced nearly every aspect of all these monarch’s reigns (except of course Edward and Isabella who predated the whole thing).
I’m starting to see parallels between the PR and today’s culture wars. These include that there are three main groups of people on both sides.
True believers. They make for great rabble rousers. They’re better at winning converts and pushing people to action than more cynical actors.
Cynical operators. Most people in power use religious ideology to win and retain power for their side.
Everyone else. The vast majority just want to avoid starvation and eternal damnation.
I’m going to propose that in today’s culture wars the theocrats are the Catholics and hyper-progressives are the Protestants.
Liberalism is an awesome thing. Today I’d be pretty surprised if the theocrats did another St. Bartholomew's Day massacre against the hyper-progressives. Yet we’re certainly not out of the weeds yet when it comes to theocrat violence against hyper-progressives.
The theocrats are the Catholics because they subscribe to an ideology which is older, more established, shared by a greater percentage of the population (at least nominally), more overtly and widely superstitious, and is more bound up with existing government power structures.
The hyper-progressives are the Protestants because it’s a newer ideology which exists to critique and offer an alternative to existing power structures which it sees as unfair, unjust, and fundamentally unfixably corrupt.
During the renaissance, there was a lot of drama at the top about religious practices like mass, the Pope, and transubstantiation. People in power used these arguments to help determine whether and to what extent other people were ingroup or outgroup.
But the vast majority of people didn’t really care. Many Protestants went to Mass on major holidays. Many Catholics did Protestant shit sometimes.
The theocrats are doing a much better job than the hyper-progressives when it comes to… most things. But especially funding the movement, riling up the base, ideological conformity, and sacraments. Who are the left-wing equivalents of Peter Thiel (a literal Catholic theocrat), Charles Koch, Dennis Prager, etc? Despite Jesus being extremely pro-immigrant, the theocrats have done an amazing job convincing the people that immigrants pose a grave danger to them. While the hyper-progressives ostensibly take the opposite position, their leaders and base are much less disciplined and activated. Or look at the sacraments. The theocrats have church attendance, picketing abortion clinics, running crisis pregnancy centers, protesting drag brunches, etc. The hyper-progressives have mutual aid, land use acknowledgments, cultural appropriation, and CRT.
Like the PR couldn’t have happened without the printing press, I can’t imagine hyper-progressivism happening without the internet.
Just like in the renaissance, people in power use these arguments to help determine whether and to what extent other people are ingroup or outgroup. But most people neither know nor care much about them.
What’s the lesson here? I don’t know. I don’t really want either “side” to “win.” I want… liberalism. I want tolerance, empiricism, cosmopolitanism, freedom, etc.
Western humanity did eventually get to a place of greater liberalism. But the path was rough and bloody. I’m hoping we can keep on this path with minimal violence.
Header images come from me putting the headline or some body copy when the headline violates the TOS into OpenAI’s DALL-E. Today’s prompt was “renaissance painting of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre.”
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