Owning Up To Tradition

THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION has always enjoyed a dominant position in american society, we can agree, although considerably less today than previously, and still declining. Today approximately seventy percent of the american people self identify as Christian, down from about eighty five percent a mere two decades ago. In the nineteenth century, the percentage was undoubtedly even higher, though exact statistics are unavailable. The essential fact is that Christianity is the most powerful cultural force in America, traditionally, unless one considers capitalism, which enjoys an equally elite status. The two are intertwined. Overwhelmingly Christianity and capitalism are intertwined; both as core value traditions, and attract the same people, conservatives, for whom traditional values are the basis of their political and religious ideology. Liberalism, on the other hand, is associated with religious diversity, non religion, and socialism, all of which represent a departure from tradition, and may be generally classified as "non traditional", or change oriented. or anti-establishment. Because of its dominant position, nothing of any importance has ever taken place in the United States without the explicit or implicit permission of the Christian community. With a religious orientation embraced by well over four fifths of the population, how could it be otherwise? This includes all the unsavory traditions, the core American values of which we so love to expediently omit mention, including white male supremacy, economic inequality, subordination of ethnic minorities and women, slavery, and racism. As proof of this consider the Ku Klux Klan, and the new alt right, both white Christian organizations which value tradition, including capitalism and racism. There existed an abolitionist movement, but it wasn't strong enough. Consider the fate of John Brown, who could have, if given sufficient assistance, led the way in the abolition of slavery. There exists resistance to racism today, but it isn't strong enough. It is not an exaggeration to say that the Christian based community could have, with the wave of a hand or the snap of a finder, eliminated slavery before the year 1800, could have ended racism before the year 1900, or could end racism today. Again, merely with the wave of a hand from the pulpit. We do not hear racism being condemned from the pulpit in modern American churches. The fact that it does not demonstrates clearly that modern racism is the product of long standing tradition, is a traditional, or conservative value, and has been and still is supported, if only tacitly, by the modern conservative Christian community. Since we all seem to agree that racism is an undesirable tradition which should be eliminated, the question arises: "of what value is the contemporary conservative Christian community"?