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I'm going to sketch out a pretty broad and thin theory here, about Christianity and how the Protestant Reformation has had downstream effects on American politics for a while. Please feel free to poke holes in this, I'm really just spitballin'.
My basic idea is something like this: the Catholic church in Western Europe went way too hard enforcing the persecution of heresy, especially against mystics and those practicing contemplative-style prayer outside of monasteries, where they could be easily controlled. You see this especially in the persecution of the Cathars, which while their gnostic ideas were obviously wrong, I think the Catholic church made a huge mistake by not incorporating the obvious need for more direct mystical and experiential understanding of the faith amongst the laity, and disaffected factions.
Fastforward a few hundred years, and you have the Inquisition, the Protestant Reformation, and all the wars. Christendom in the West is basically fractured entirely, with the Protestants generally attracting folks that are more into mysticism, experiential acts of faith, and contemplation. Whereas the Catholic church tended to keep those focused on structured, ordered discipline and an explicit, rational understanding of the faith.
Ok, this is where the theory gets a bit out there. Personally I believe this split has continued into the modern day, with the modern progressive and conservative movements. I think that by and large the spirit of Protestantism has shifted away from explicit religion and into the more progressive, ideological wings of especially American, and increasingly world society. People on the left are by and large much more focused, in my experience, on experiential states, following the heart, and of course contemplative, mystical spiritual practice.
Because of the fact that the conservative branch of Christianity (even many Protestants, like the extreme Southern Baptists) continued to be staunchly against mysticism, ultimately they acted as a foil to the Protestants who wanted more of this mystical, experiential relationship with God. This is why the New Age/Buddhist/Eastern traditions are so appealing to folks on the left, because they are able to indulge freely in their mystical experience, without having any mean conservatives telling them they need to you know, get a job, and raise kids, and generally have structure in their lives.
Ultimately I think this is a major issue, and one at the core of the modern 'meta-crisis.' Taking a page out of Jordan Peterson's book, I think that much of especially human society can be seen as a dialectical tension between chaos and order. I think that the left I've broadly sketched here represents chaos, and the right represents order.
We desperately need both in various ways - we need order for structure, discipline, and to ensure the trains run on time, so to speak. We also need chaos for renewal, for fun and play and joy, and to make sure that authority doesn't get too corrupt, that people have a direct line to God, or if you're more secular, at least to a deep range of authentic human experience.
Overall I don't see the culture war rift being healed until we are able to conceptualize this breakage that has it's roots far in the past, and try to bring the two sides of the culture together. To help progressives understand that they need conservative structure, discipline and order, but also to convince conservatives that we need renewal, revitalization, and a check on corrupt authority.
As to how to do this, well, that's the million dollar question. I'm definitely curious if anyone has thoughts!
This is not true, the Catholic church has space for mysticism in form of over 10 thousand saints - including doctors of faith - having mystical experiences, for which the Church is of course mocked by atheists and protestants alike. The point being is that Catholic church examines these experiences to weed out heretic beliefs exactly in order not to introduce them to the fold. Otherwise before long you will have female bishops wedding 4 polyamorous gays. It is only rejected mysticism let's say related to Arianism or Gnosticism which were rooted out. But the Catholic church acknowledges things like stigmata, exorcism and miracles to this day when they venerate a new saint.
I think the core of the issue is misunderstanding of what true united church would look like. Catholic church was for thousands of years a world spanning organization now encompassing billions of people. For some like you, they focus on scholastic and rational tradition of Thomas Aquinas. For others, Catholics were anti-science barbarians and yet for some, Catholics are heretics engaging in dangerous mysticism not supported in scripture. You can pick and chose what to criticize, a root meaning in the word heresy. When protestants disagree, they splinter in one of now 40,000 churches. When Catholics disagree, they have a process which includes pluralism and syncretism to keep the core beliefs intact under other pillars of the church.
See, Jordan Peterson is a Cultural Christian and basically an atheist. For him the Jesus Christ is anything but a historical figure, Son of God who was resurrected for our sins. His Christology is heretical - he views him as an archetype, as a good story and anything but what he really was. He even refuses to answer what he thinks about historical Jesus for dozens of times when asked, hedging his response exactly in Jungian terms. He literally picks and chooses what he likes about God and Christ and weaves that into his understanding - which is literal definition of the word heresy or hairesis (αἵρεσις) - to choose. To choose what you accept, what you ignore and what you add.
The Jungian dialectics between chaos and order, the supposed feminine and masculine principle or even political left and right is definitely not part of Catholic teaching. In fact it is closer to the Hegelian understanding of the state of things, which in turn is very close to Gnosticism - a belief that God is supposed to be realized by humans who interact via social structures. This is as anticatholic as it gets, it goes back to early church when they combated this heresy.
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