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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024

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Actually, Christian observance in America reached a new high in the postwar era. The height of weekly church attendance in America was in the 1950s. America was less religiously observant in 1920 than in 1950, hard as that may be to believe.

On a typical Sunday morning in the period from 1955-58, almost half of all Americans were attending church – the highest percentage in U.S. history

Meanwhile, the height of Protestantism in the US was probably the 1840s as a percentage of the total population. It’s just that American Christianity was never staunchly ethnonationalist, it existed alongside ethnic nationalism but it wasn’t of it. The same is true in the Islamic world today, you can have tribes with a strong sense of ethnic identity, but it’s not because of Islam, it just exists alongside it.

Actually, Christian observance in America reached a new high in the postwar era. The height of weekly church attendance in America was in the 1950s.

No atheists in foxholes indeed.

Actually, Christian observance in America reached a new high in the postwar era. The height of weekly church attendance in America was in the 1950s. America was less religiously observant in 1920 than in 1950, hard as that may be to believe.

I said nothing that contradicts that. I instead explain why this stopped being the case due to the demographic change in elites.

It’s just that American Christianity was never staunchly ethnonationalist, it existed alongside ethnic nationalism but it wasn’t of it. The same is true in the Islamic world today, you can have tribes with a strong sense of ethnic identity, but it’s not because of Islam, it just exists alongside it.

I don't understand what this means. Ethnonationalism is just an expression of ingroup bias. Any group based belief or ideology relies on ingroup bias. When you don't have ingroup bias you end up with contemporary 'Christianity' which is just a hedonistic gay progressive with AIDS calling themselves a bishop. You start worshipping the outsider and humiliating yourself for their validation and acceptance. Which is what the broad modern Christian movement is at this point.

contemporary 'Christianity' which is just a hedonistic gay progressive with AIDS calling themselves a bishop.

This is a small minority of denominations and they are typically doing very poorly.

As best I can tell the trends that resurged in 1960 began in the early 1900s but we're interrupted and delayed substantially by the great depression and world war 2.

That shifts my priors to the root of the problem isn't something that happened in the 1960s it happened in the 1890s to 1920s or perhaps before that (if the panic of 1907/Civil War just delayed an older trend)

If anything, it has a lot to do with urbanization and industrialization in general.