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I think you’re hitting the core here.
If Vivek moved here, converted to Catholicism, named his kids Sean and Brad, starter personally going by Jim and became an obsessive football fan, maybe I’d buy it.
Because that’s basically what my ancestors did. They changed their names, punished their kids if they tried to speak the old language, named their kids almost comically American names, and just thanked god they were allowed to be here. They wanted to be American not lecture Americans on how to be better.
Four generations from now if some Vivek descendant wants to “rediscover their roots”, then fine. But America does have a culture, actually, and if you want to be an American the good news is they you can! You just have to actually do it.
Here is the actually comically American list of names
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Shouldn't he be converting to, like, Episcopalianism or Presbyterianism or something? Catholicism is the religion of low-skill immigrants trying to replace the founding stock of America.
I think the internet has just been devastating for Protestantism. I don’t really think there are any “serious” Protestants left.
If Vivek “converted” to some pointless Evangelical mega church, it would just feel hollow and unserious.
Catholics (and I include the orthodox in this) have basically just won. Protestantism isn’t taken seriously anymore, and so a “conversion” to Protestantism would similarly not be taken seriously.
Hi there. I'm a serious Protestant.
It's worth bearing in mind that in the real world, as opposed to the internet, evangelicals are doing a much better job of holding on to faith than Catholics or Orthodox. News stories about youth conversions to Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy are usually looking at a few high-profile outliers rather than the overall demographic trend.
The Catholic Church in the United States, demographically, is buoyed up by large numbers of Hispanic Catholic immigrants, but if you restrict yourself to looking at people born in the US who were raised Catholic, they look very similar to mainline Protestants, i.e. in decline. They have noticeably lower retention than evangelicals. Church attendance is consistently higher among evangelicals than Catholics, as is consistency on moral or social issues. (Go through and compare if you like - 59% of Catholics are pro-choice, 70% support same-sex marriage!) If you compare what Protestants and what Catholics say about why they stay in their church, Protestants are significantly more likely to say that they believe in the religion's teachings and that it gives them spiritual comfort, while Catholics are more likely to say that it's because it's just the religion of their family or community. Note also that 1% of Americans are ex-Protestant Catholics, and 4% of Americans are ex-Catholic Protestants, which seems suggestive.
I'm not American, but I work in a religious field and I will say that just anecdotally I have run into a number of ex-Catholic evangelicals, and I would say that for every person raised a Protestant who felt that they were given a shallow spiritual education, and looked longingly at the riches of tradition and liturgy in the Catholic and Orthodox churches (and I count myself as one such person), I have met a person raised a Catholic who found that faith numbing and deadening, but who came alive on discovering evangelical Protestantism, which gave them the tools to cultivate a more passionate, heartfelt relationship with God.
I don't say this as a triumphant evangelical myself. I'm a mainliner, and I will forthrightly confess that the mainline churches are hollowed out, frequently heretical, and dying. I'm part of what I hope will be a small but devout rump of surviving mainline Protestants. My own institutions are largely betraying the faith and receiving in their own congregations the due penalty for their error.
But I would suggest that if you think that Protestantism in the broader sense isn't being taken seriously any more, or that Catholics have just won, or are in a healthier position overall, you may be in a bubble. Evangelical Protestants are probably the healthiest large church tradition in America.
What’s the point here? If Reddit claimed itself as a Christian church, there would be more Redditors than Catholics too. They could say that posting on Reddit is “attending church”, that being a Reddit moderator is being a “pastor”, claim each subreddit as a denomination even!
The point here is about how seriously a conversion by Vivek would be taken. Vivek attending a mega church every week would move the needle either 0 or negatively.
I'm responding to the idea that "Catholics have basically just won" - no specific comment on Ramaswamy intended.
If Ramaswamy were to convert to Christianity, I agree that he would probably pick Catholicism, because that's a religion more acceptable to elites. Evangelicals are hated by elites, and they generally hate elites in return.
This is just demonstrably not true. How many members of the current President's cabinet are evangelicals? One of the primary debates happening around our politics right now is funding for Israel, which is something almost entirely pushed by evangelical protestants.
I think that there tend to me bore Catholic intellectuals (like members of the Supreme Court); I think that's where the cleave happens.
We might be using different definitions of elites? I'd say that Donald Trump, for instance, is hated by elites, and he's the most powerful man in the country. I think that evangelicals are generally looked on with contempt by the intellectual and cultural elites of the United States.
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It's funny, this is a particularly Catholic argument, in that whenever I see a Catholic culture warrior online, they are usually saying basically this ("I mean, the culture wars are basically over, we won" - first saw it during the Clinton administration). Not sure if it's an aggressive and slightly delusional form of conviction or cope, but it's almost charming, for the vast majority of us, especially in the US, who really don't care much about the schism. It's almost like seeing a "papist!" epithet in the wild.
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I don't know what you mean by "serious" Protestants. There are clearly plenty of Protestants who are serious about their beliefs. If you mean that Evangelicals are tacky and unintellectual, I won't argue, but I don't see why that would make it unserious (plus, I think the main difference between megachurch evangelicals being tacky and Roman Catholics having ornate gravitas is about 1500 years). I'm also unsure on the role of the internet in this - Evangelicals started on their current trajectory well before the internet. And, of course, Evangelicals are not all American Protestants.
I don't think it's true that Protestantism isn't taken seriously. Rather, Protestantism lacks the centralized hierarchy, unified style guide, and Ancient Traditions^tm of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, which puts it at a disadvantage with people who really like those things. The aesthetics/values/ideas of American Protestantism (especially capital-L Liberal Protestantism) are heavily conflated with general American aesthetics/values/ideas, and, much like American culture as a whole, lives in an eternal present. The power of Catholic identity is not that it is inextricably tied to America, but that it isn't.
What I mean is that Protestants are not intellectually serious, and that most of the claims keeping people in their church don’t stand up to basic scrutiny.
“The Church is hiding the Bible from you they don’t want you to read it only WE have the true words of God!” was a convincing argument when it wasn’t easy to find out that this is just very literally not true.
As far as conversation to Protestantism being unserious: not only could I become a Protestant tomorrow if I wanted to, I could become a Protestant pastor, and so could Vivek.
Vivek Could announce tomorrow that he is starting a church, could call it a “Christian” church, and go around trying to convince people in Ohio that he’s a very serious Christian of some kind.
But this would all take 5 minutes, and be meaningless.
If he wanted to become Catholic, there’s a process to it, he’d need to get his marriage convalidated, baptize his kids, etc. If he wanted to become a priest (to contrast this with the seriousness of becoming a Protestant pastor), it would take him around a decade of philosophy and theology classes, he’d need to leave his family, etc. (Although I'm not sure The Church would take
That’s the point I’m making. It Vivek went through OCIA, got confirmed, convalidated his marriage, went to mass at least weekly, and baptized his kids, I think people would see it as more likely to be genuine.
If he showed up at some mega church or revivalist thing a few times and bought a Bible, I think it would read as performative.
I have to be honest, this seems like you, personally, have a disdain for Protestantism's decentralization and comparative lack of ritual. Like, yes if Ramaswamy started the Church of Ramaswamy and tried to convince everyone he was a Christian now, everyone would think it was laughably fake and/or he'd lost his mind. But it's not at all clear to me that he'd be taken any less seriously if he became a regular church-going Baptist or Lutheran (e.g.) than a Catholic. Possibly moreso, since the RCC has a reputation for attracting LARPers. Nikki Haley converted from Sikhism to Methodism and as far as I can tell no one significant has called her sincerity into question.
I asked another person here who hasn't responded either: can you link me to some examples of what you mean when you say "serious" protestants?
I can point you to...like Pope Benedict, who wrote books such as Introduction to Christianity, obvious people like Saint Augustine or Thomas Acquinas, or even just normie youtubers like Trent Horne. If somebody asked me "show me who the serious Catholics are" it would be them.
Who are the equivalent protestant "fathers"? CS Lewis is one, but who are other "serious" protestant philosophers, or contemporary apologists? Is the Anglican lady who just became their Archbishop putting out any meaningful intellectual work? Or is Sean Rowe? Is Tracey Malone contributing anything meaningful to the discourse? Or Mariann Edgar Budde? I know she did a real scathing sermon about Trump last year at the national prayer breakfast, but are people reading "How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith" and getting some important theology insight from it?
These are the leaders of various protestant churches. Which one is the most academically serious or would you think of as a good representation of what you mean when you think of "serious" protestants?
This is a colorful way of saying: "you have experienced a lot of protestants and have formed an opinion on their beliefs and activities" which...is just how anybody could form any opinion about anything in the world? What is even the point of saying this? "Gee it sure seems like you think stuff"?
Martin Luther, Calvin, Kierkegaard, John Bunyan, Karl Barth, any number of preachers like Oswald Chambers, John Wesley, Spurgeon. Tim Keller and Os Guinness would qualify as (near) contemporary Protestant apologists. But Protestants can claim Augustine and everyone else from his era just as well as Catholics.
Great, now like I’ve asked multiple times: link me to a contemporary Protestant apologist who you think has done a good job in a debate with a Catholic, please?
Here’s one: https://youtube.com/live/kn7qdPSHSJk
I guess you could just say that Protestants don’t really do debates or think about their claims academically, which I would agree with.
I do think this guy did a pretty good job, but again I think that he’s on kindof an impossible mission here. Protestant claims, especially claims like “sola scriptura” don’t even stand up to basic middle school level scrutiny.
Btw, to make my point you don’t even have to be Catholic! If Vivek converted to Orthodoxy, that would still be more meaningful than Protestantism, or even Mormonism! Mormons are serious, make serious contemporary attempts at apologetics (which I do think fail pretty quickly), and genuinely seem to be serious about what they’re saying.
Protestants just…don’t. It doesn’t even seem like they’re trying anymore. Protestants aren’t generally appealing to people intellectually, that’s why it’s coffee shops and laser projectors and carnival rides in the parking lot.
This is now just now true Scotsman. How many of the people are your local mega church are reading or talking about or thinking about or even know who Saint Augustine is? Are a lot of them reading The Summa do you suppose? I can think of a Protestant friend in “seminary” right now and how he reacted when I asked him about this, and I’m going to tell you the answer is no. No, finding one example of one person at one “seminary” who referenced this one time does not matter to the general point I’m making here.
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While doing some fancy footwork about "ah but they were really Reformed/Baptist/whatever and not Catholic", even though they would have called themselves Catholic, and engaged in stuff Catholics did (e.g. St Augustine as a bishop would have celebrated Mass).
The example of this that makes me laugh is Northern Ireland Presbyterians claiming St Patrick as one of their own, yes he was a true-blue Wee Free No Pope Here Calvinist, ignore what those Papists down south say!
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My goodness this is the most lazy straw man of protestantism I've ever seen. What the hell is it doing on this forum?
Please look into literally any main line Protestant church and you'll find plenty of in depth scholarship and apologetics. That you haven't done this basic legwork, I imagine, means you are languishing in the Catholic influencer bubble - but I would have thought you'd at least have encountered some of the 'debunking' material they put out so regularly.
Link it. Is there a good formal debate I could watch that you think represents a good example of “academic” Protestantism?
Also what’s the strawman here, exactly? If Vivek started a new Protestant church tomorrow, who has the authority to say it’s fake?
Someone outside Christianity could criticize Christianity the same way. They could say some hypothetical larper could come along calling himself a Christian despite teaching Jesus never existed, and who would have authority to say he wasn’t a Christian? Would this be an effective own of Christians? No, obviously not. Protestantism is decentralized but so is Christianity itself
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Just your daily reminder that in the US, the average Roman Catholic Sunday mass is tacky, and does not particularly follow unified style guides. That isn't even trad griping about things which aren't my preference like altar girls and the like; I am the Lord of the Dance Said He is a much more common hymn than anything like Faith of our Fathers, let alone the lovely classical music that inspired so many composers. Mass prayers may differ much less in verbiage, but when sung they are often set to cheesy folk music, or evangelical praise-and-worship light. Guitars are more common instruments than organs. Catholic churches vary strongly in architectural quality but the average Catholic goes to mass in an uninspired pseudo-amphitheatre decorated with designed-by-committee religious art that has nothing in common with the historical churches of Europe that nobody goes to, in a brutalist style if they're unlucky. The typical vestments look, literally, like burlap sacks. The 'ornate gravitas' that you speak of is uncommon enough in America to have special names for it(and is far less available than the other common strong liturgical preference- 'charismatic style' which apes evangelical worship services much more strongly. The majority of deeply religious Catholics in the USA imitate Evangelical outward forms). It's popular with Hollywood because it's easy to show on a screen looking and sounding cool. Most American Catholics have never heard Gregorian chant in a church service, see incense a couple of times a year, and dress worse for mass than protestants do.
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Confessional protestantism and fundamentalist evangelical-adjacent protestantism are going strong, and they don't restrict the internet anymore than hardcore Catholics do. They're hard to track and more geographically constrained but they do exist.
Can you link me to an example of a church where, if Vivek Ramaswami converted to it, Americans would see this as a strong signal that he was all in on America?
Southern Baptist. Evangelicalism as a whole heavily enmeshes Protestant Christianity with a certain flavor of American nationalism.
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The Mennonites don't count? I mean, Anabaptists are very much Protestant (a product of the "Radical Reformation"), and they seem rather "serious" about it to me.
Doesn't this prove my point pretty cleanly? The Mennonites are not using the internet.
It's evidence for the "the internet has just been devastating for Protestantism" part, perhaps, but it's also evidence against the "there aren't any “serious” Protestants left" part.
Just an anecdote, but I just read this webcomic by a Finnish webcomic artist Minna Sundberg (apparently her main webcomic Stand Still, Stay Silent was pretty big in that sphere? I hadn't encountered it before, though I had encountered some panels she had drawn), with the comic detailing her conversion from atheism to Calvinism through listening to online Calvinist content makers. Converting to Calvinism is really really rare here, the parish she goes to was established in 2018 and I'm not sure there even were any formally Calvinist parishes here before, say, 2015. Seems like there's some pull, at least.
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Okay. It Vivek converts to Mennonism, stops using the internet, moves to a farm, and gets rid of his car, I think people would take the conversion seriously.
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The conservative true elite is increasingly Catholic, but evangelical megachurchianity is more common for the masses. Episcopalians and Presbyterians are… not common, and don’t go to church anyways.
Wasp churches have largely died out. Catholicism still has an intellectual class which makes Catholicism the closest thing to a national religion now. Evangelicals lack intellectual rigor and have outsourced that to Catholics. Mormons are honestly probably the number 2 Waspy Christianity today.
It does seem like we’ve already had one great replacement. True heritage Americans seem to have already died out.
I don't think this is actually true per se, but evangelical intellectuals who are known for being evangelical tend to be theologians. Evangelical intellectuals in other fields exist, but they often aren't known for their evangelicalism – and conversely, evangelical theologians often aren't known outside of evangelical communities or sub-communities. (I reckon it's very Protestant to double-down on theology, do a better job developing it than Catholics, and then mostly drop the ball in other areas because they're of "secondary importance" with the predictable consequences.)
For a variety of reasons I think Catholics are better at bridging the gap between mainstream culture and Catholic culture – one of the notable reasons being that "Catholic" isn't shorthand for "right wing" whereas "evangelical" is, which tends to make Catholic intellectuals more respectable. (However I also think it's true that the Catholics have built better mechanisms/pipelines for their intellectual elite. They deserve both kudos and study for that.)
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Episcopalians are still going- shrinking congregations that skew much older than the average church, but they're not about to die out, there'll just be fewer of them. Methodists are still there, albeit older and slowly shrinking, PCA has managed to avoid full collapse even if it's got hard times for the forseeable future. ELCA(mainline lutherans)- famously not a waspy denomination- are the real mainliners who won't be around when their current congregants kick the bucket(which won't be that long).
Are you thinking of the PCA, which is confessional or evangelical, or the PCUSA, which is mainline?
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I haven’t been to many other churches. The one wedding I went to was the type that had a library filled with books with titles like “why white people are bad”.
I looked it up and it’s Episcopalian. Inclusive etc and the alphabet soup acronyms in their website. I guess that is still existing but it’s not the wasp religion anymore.
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There were Catholics here from the start.
The efforts by modern Catholic nationalists to insert themselves into the founding ideology of the United States is a weird sort of stolen valor. They were always a small minority, even in the places that were meant to be tolerant of them like Maryland, and American Republicanism was strongly associated from the outset with Protestantism. One of the Intolerable Acts pertained to toleration of Catholics! And, of course, anti-Catholicism flared up again with large scale Catholic immigration in the mid-19th century.
(You can, of course, admit Catholics into the founding mythology, but then you have to admit basically everyone)
You can sneer at Maryland but you can't make it go away. Many have tried, none have succeeded.
Establishment of Catholicism, by giving the Midwest to Quebec.
Maybe one day we'll be so lucky.
Could you work on New Jersey instead?
*Monkey's Paw: Twists*
What was New Jersey is now gone. The land and its residents have been annexed into NYC. A helpful new subway line with two stations appears: it connects 125th & Lex to @The_Nybbler's neighborhood.
See also this map I made a while ago.
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I'll take whatever I can get.
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Yes that’s one thing I dislike about Vivek. That he seems culturally alien to America.
My second complaint is that at about a 70% probability I think his mental model of the world is incorrect. Striving only boost output in maybe medicine. I don’t think striving culture would boost American wealth.
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