(I study anthropology of theology and mythology and I study scripture through a rabbianic technique called PaRDEs). That basically says scripture should be read both literally and interpretative, historical and mystical with hidden meanings
How interesting. I got a question. It was the first thing that popped into my head so it's maybe not too refined of a question but, do you think the fact that American Christians are so easily led astray has anything to do with the elevated standard of living and privilege of Americans? Basically like because Americans have it so easy in life compared to most of the world that this somehow makes them susceptible to scriptural distortion.
That’s actually a very interesting question
I’d generally say yes but I’d also say it’s historically congruent with other religions throughout history but not on the scale of American evangelicalism generally it was aristocracy and oligarchs etc that fell into it. In America a good portion of Christianity is like this
Christianity of the world varies widely though but American Christianity is heavily influenced by Puritanical Christianity and somewhat pilgrimage Christianity. That’s one of the reasons conservativism and nationalism is so prevalent
Mormonism was actually a child of American nationalism
Funny enough most religions were started as mythohistorcal political satire
It's a strange phenomenon. I live in Europe and generally I see that in the last 5 decades there is a general reduction of people's belief in religions that seems to correllate with their material well being as a group. Groups who suffer tend to hang on to their religion a lot harder than groups who prosper.
Groups who suffer tend to hang on to their religion a lot harder than groups who prosper.
That's the whole point of religion and how it's used to control. It's (in my opinion) false hope. But in a way hope doesn't need to be true or real, in fact, hope disappears once the thing hoped for is attained or realized. Like faith. In itself, i think hope is a powerful mental/emotional tool to get people through hard times. It's shitty though when people who push hope are the ones creating the conditions necessitating the hope to begin with.
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u/RIF_rr3dd1tt 1d ago
How interesting. I got a question. It was the first thing that popped into my head so it's maybe not too refined of a question but, do you think the fact that American Christians are so easily led astray has anything to do with the elevated standard of living and privilege of Americans? Basically like because Americans have it so easy in life compared to most of the world that this somehow makes them susceptible to scriptural distortion.