Thread by @owenbroadcast

so ive been looking into 1800s american christianity, particularly the more (respectfully) atypical or fringe or weirder manifestations of it, those that could be said to have somewhat uniquely developed in that time. i have turned a corner in understand the cause and effect here

there is definitely a surge of novelty and “new schools” (not gonna say this every time but i mean this all from a theologically neutral perspective). the conventional explanation i always got was basically “well, new county, new vibe, they needed new religious stuff”.

i generally dislike this kind of top down backwards causality explanation of social trends because i dont think it explains how individual people on the ground are acting. its not like these people thought this way, “hey, new nation, lets make a new form of christianity for it”.

maybe there is something true about it but it doesnt really explain how or why it happened. i think it makes more sense to see it from the perspective of incorporating the reality of the top down theological authority control system elsewhere (again, whether thats good or bad).

people are generally familiar with the fact that you could be executed in europe, at least parts of it, for denying certain things or being blasphemous, things like that. i suppose the most famous case here is servetus and calvin (that story isnt so cut and dry but, whatever).

so, it isnt really so confusing when u consider that, + then move forward slightly in time, now all of a sudden you have a ton of christians in this place where no one is policing what they think or teach in [almost] any way. when was the last time that happened? not for a while.

this explanation of “the abundance of new schools is a result of people being unpoliced, thought wise, for the first time in a very long time” is a lot more satisfying, to me. it also fits perfectly with their own explanations of what they were doing + the trends i have observed.

for example, a massive trend is the attempt to return to what the church “originally was”, or what christianity “originally was”. this makes sense with this explanation because they were totally “away” from these sources of “tradition” telling them what to do for the first time.

you see this vector of “thats the goal” in everything from seventh day adventism to even something like mormonism which has their own concept of this great falling away and then a return to what christianity was supposed to be. thats the real underlying general trend, that goal.

oddly im not sure what this means about the other interesting phenomena here which is the abundance of self proclaimed prophets. suppose that would depend on what u think about those individuals, it being mystical charlatanism or God actually speaking to people, or something else

certainly seems like there was at least something in the water in america in the 1800s. the other thing i noted was that although the 1800s sounds like americas “second century” because we started in the 1700s, its really the first century of america, if u think about it.

anyway i will relay one interesting tale of theological trolling that reflects this and would be right at home here on twitter. i havent looked into this debate or this particular tale yet so this is just something random someone told me, at this time.

part of the 7th day adventists “whole thing” was that the bible doesnt say to rest / go to church : make the holy day sunday, its supposed to be saturday, + they would have debates asking people to find sunday as the day in the bible and apparently as they tell it win quite often

their case was that the pope, the catholic church, made the day sunday, it was supposed to be saturday, so american protestants were actually deferring to + giving authority to the pope by going to church on sunday so, why are u doing that, stop doing that, look, its not in there

so at one point they took out a newspaper page with this info, as kind of a challenge and to win people over. well, interestingly and quite cunningly some catholic organization or bishop or something saw this and took out his own page or ad in the paper later, responding.

his response was not to the adventists but to the general public saying, yeah, theyre totally right. look in the bible, its not in there. you go to church on sunday because its part of the tradition the church established, just like everything else you do as christians.

essentially flipping the accusation and saying, of course its not in the bible, its something we established, just like almost everything else you do, so if you really want to be consistent with your actions you should come and join the church that ur already deferring to.

of course this unfolded over at least a week or two or three because it was via newspaper (im assuming that timeframe) so you have to imagine the feeling when you reply to someone with a perfect gotcha on here but someone at a desk with that feeling simmering for multiple weeks.

annoyingly the deeper i go into such things the more i can kind of see where everyone is coming from, im reminded a little of a positive explanation of the sophists i heard once (mentioned this and this anecdote on the painting show before) but i have to go walk my dog.