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What is this persistent fixation on trying to establish a link between progressivism and Christianity? I am progressive precisely because I am not Christian, I don't think there's any "next life" where all virtue and sin is accounted for to compensate for the unjustness of the earthly realm. You and I see sin being rewarded and virtue being punished every day, you may pick any definition of "sin" and "virtue" that aren't the circular "good behaviour is when good outcome" type.
I'm the motte's favorite tradcath poster, I don't think that Christianity causes progressivism or that progressivism is just Christianity or whatever. That maybe was more to call attention to someone else who noticed the same pattern.
I don't buy into Moldbug's calvinism thesis and think that something progressivism adjacent is the inevitable result of secularizing a Christian society(and progressivism is not particularly Christian, but it is very definitely post-Christian in a way it is not post-Islamic or post-Shinto or whatever), but I understand how someone who makes that observation could make a link between progressivism and Calvinism, especially when many of the most 'liberal protestant'/heterodox-by-way-of-progressivism churches are creedally Calvinist and one of the most progressive parts of the country was literally founded as a Calvinist cult colony. It wasn't a particularly strong maybe, I think it's more likely that Calvinism is just uniquely prone to abandoning any of the actual religious parts to become post-Christian, and that post-Christianity is unusually fertile ground for progressivism. The west's path out of progressivism is to re-embrace the faith of our fathers.
Good deeds sometimes get punished, and bad deeds rewarded, that's true. But most impoverished westerners are impoverished because of their or their parent's poor decisionmaking skills, upward mobility is very high for well-behaved working Americans. Most poor people who make good decisions become normal working class people, and most normal working class people who make bad decisions become poor people. Virtue is normally rewarded and vice normally has negative consequences. Yes, there are exceptions, but I'm pretty sure you understand averages.
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