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How do you think religion in the West will interact with the Culture War in the next few elections, and in the future? Up until recently, the religious right seemed to be a mainstay of at least American politics. In Europe of course, Christianity is mostly an irrelevant force (though theoretically Catholics should have some weight?).
However, the evangelical right has been losing quite a bit of power and cultural cachet, and we're seeing the rise of more traditional versions of Christianity such as Catholicism and to a lesser extent, Orthodoxy. Buddhism has also made inroads in a more serious way, as well as Islam mostly via immigration of Muslim peoples.
In the future, how will these religions impact politics? Personally I see a fusion of Buddhism x Christianity already happening, and expect a sort of Christian orthodoxy mixing in Buddhism mental techniques as the most successful religion of the 21st century. That being said, I feel it could shake out in many different areas on the political spectrum - ironically, many of the Orthodox priests I know personally are surprisingly liberal.
One area we could see a resurgence is in monasteries, and the potential downstream impact in local communities. Within the Catholic community (and Orthodoxy in the U.S.) there has been a groundswell lately of pushes for more monasteries, and revitalizing the monastic order in general. We'll see how it shakes out.
Tell me, what do you think religion will do to the modern political landscape?
I think America particularly will become more and more secular. I think that the TradCath community will grow but will end up like the Amish or Hasidics. I think the majority will be secularish. Axial age religions are not they only religious framework and Science can replace a lot of what pre-axial religions are very mechanistic and less concerned with morality. Sumerian religion barely had an afterlife and in that sense was rather athiestic. China was morally guided by philosophy more than religion for thousands of years. I don't think a retvrn to societies centered on moralistic religions promising eternal bliss is a given. The intense religiosity of the Middle Ages and Early Modern period seem to be something of an outlier.
I could see a kind of Progressivism as a unifying philosophy combined with many different faiths ala Confucianism. We can see this a little bit with woke people today they don't care what religion you are as long as your beliefs are subservient to woke tenants.
We are nothing like the Amish or Hasidic. We speak the majority language of our surrounding communities, our homeschooled kids work normal jobs when they grow up and often enough play sports on normal teams, we don’t have a separate court system internally, etc, etc.
Mormonism is much closer sociologically. Not identical but closer.
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