Thread by @PnictogenHorses

we have never had the stomach to watch @KirkCameron's repulsive "Saving Christmas"—even in capsule review form, the movie (and Cameron's extreme smarminess) are difficult to take.

it's clearly an interesting document though—a snapshot of #Christianity in profound decay.

~Mona

St. Nicholas is reduced to a thuggish brute, dealing with the famous "Arian heresy" by clubbing Arius over the head; @KirkCameron is the *fascɪst* sort of #Christian, the sort whose weak faith needs support from violent enforcement.

what is the "Arian heresy", by the way?

~Mona

it's a fascinating interpretation of the Incarnation, a reasonable one in fact—Arius (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arius) posited that the Son of God, like all other human beings, was *bound to Time*. he was conceived at a certain moment (so said Arius) and did not exist before then.

~Mona

in mainstream #Christian doctrine, however, the Son of God is held to be eternal—to have been, in fact, one of the three pillars of eternal Godhood, always existing alongside Father and Holy Spirit.

Arianism requires, however, that the Son of God be regarded as _limited_.

~Mona

to be bound to Time is to be limited by Time, whereas the Creator is (according to accepted dogma) eternal, unbound by Time's limitations.

Arianism, therefore, was inimical to the concept of the Trinity, and Trinitarian doctrine won the ideological war for #Christianity.

~Mona

the victory of Trinitarianism was the result of decades of scholarly infighting—and the meddling of the Roman tyrant Constantine, who was pushing for official codification and enforced unity in #Christianity.

unified enforcement of a Trinity seems...self-contradictory.

~Mona

Constantine was himself no strong proponent of Trinitarian doctrine; nevertheless the Roman monarch convened the #Christian ecumenical councils which settled upon the Trinitarian creed, and ensured that the doctrines of these councils would be enforced with a heavy hand.

~Mona

perhaps @KirkCameron really did convey the underlying truth of the matter, in his "Saving Christmas": #Christian dogma ultimately was a *tyrannical* thing, something decided upon without the people's approval, and enforced at swordpoint.

from the *start*, it was violent.

~Mona

it might have been Roman imperial thugs and Christian bullyboys doing pogroms and beat-downs in the streets of Mediterranean cities, rather than a brute assaulting someone in a tavern, but still...#Christianity asserted itself through violence, and @KirkCameron knows it.

~Mona

there's a delicious irony in this situation: @KirkCameron's form of #Christianity, "evangelical" Christianity, is so intellectually and morally *degenerate* that it scarcely counts as Trinitarian any more. evangelical Christians have practically rejected Jesus's humanity.

~Mona

they've more or less conflated Father and Son—because they're terrified of Death, and so try as hard as possible to pretend that the Son of God never died, or that somehow his death was a negligible, indeed a trivial thing—as if Jesus were scarcely a human being at all.

~Mona

does @KirkCameron really *understand* the Trinity and its implications? does Mr. Cameron grasp that the most important fact about the Son of God was that the Romans murdered him?

I rather doubt it. after all...this film I'm critiquing is about *Christmas*, not *Easter*.

~Mona

Christmas was not the most important holiday to #Christianity for long stretches of centuries; Ash Wednesday, Lent and Easter were the really important holidays, for they were a lengthy reminder that Jesus was dead. from dust He came, and to dust He (and we) must return.

~Mona

modern #Christianity, however, the @KirkCameron sort of Christianity, is an extremely superficial and consumerist thing—and #Christmas is cemented in contemporary capitalist culture as a time for coarse, crass overspending, and gluttony, and great greed for shiny presents.

~Mona

more importantly, though, the modern obsession with Christmas, the unbalanced attention and weight given to Christmas and its modern commercial trappings, is literally *infantile*. it's about @KirkCameron et al. losing themselves in gauzy visions of infancy and childhood.

~Mona

the *reality* of the Son of God and the Incarnation—if you credit these concepts with any validity at all—is the reality of Death. Death was omnipresent in the lives of early Christians; they dwelt in a violent society, for Rome was always at war, especially with herself.

~Mona

modern-day #Christians of the @KirkCameron variety tend to be extremely bloodthirsty and fond of violent fantasies, but they're also very *soft* people, sheltered from suffering. violence, to them, is something from movies and TV and video games—or #CSLewis #Narnia books.

~Mona

these Christians want to think Death has been forever banished to the utmost margins of their existence, and the months-long wallow in #Christmas suggests that childlike desire to keep Death at a distance, smothered in sentimental excess and iconography of heavenly babies.

~Mona

in its senescence, #Christianity has become a contemptibly *crude* sort of religion, one dominated by performative gestures and heavy spending—"faith" practically means little more than *brand loyalty*. one is a "good Christian" if you buy the right products and vote @GOP.

~Mona

religions *do* come to an end, frequently. often they're simply murdered—"Western civilization" has slaughtered entire cultures and faiths, as well as untold hundreds of millions of human lives.

perhaps #Christianity needs to come to an end. has it done any lasting good?

~Mona

"Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas" invites us all simply to *accept* that Christianity is this crude, degraded thing—a mere matter of lavish Christmas parties and visions of violent assaults on "heresy". but if that's all there is...then why does it need to exist?

~Mona Drafter

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