Soft Totalitarianism 

   Part 2

    If there is no sacred order, then the promise of the serpent in the Garden of Eden - "you will be like God" (Genesis 3:5) - is the foundation of the new culture. 

   Sociologist/author Rod Dreher said, "Without shared belief in and submission to a sacred order what you get is an 'anti-culture,' which is inherently unstable." He doubted that those raised in this culture would be willing to return to the old ways. He foresaw the future of religion as devolution into watery spirituality, which could accommodate anything. 

   In 2005 two sociologists of religion coined the phrase Moralistic Therapeutic Deism to describe the form that Christianity (and other faiths) had taken in contemporary America. They saw a general belief that God exists, and wants nothing more than for us to be nice and to be happy. 

   Today, the great sin is to oppose the freedom of others to find happiness as they wish. Note the sexual revolution and ethnic or gender identity politics, and the utopian focus of the radical left. Cultural revolutionaries have an ally in advanced capitalism - that nothing should exist outside of the market and its value according to human desires. 

   If true freedom is freedom of choice, as opposed to choosing virtue, then the door is open to reforming religion around subjective experience. Many conservative Christians, it is said, cannot explain victories of transgenderism. This phenomenon affirms psychology over biological reality, and is a logical culmination of a process that started long ago. 

   Christian resistance to the anti-culture has been fruitless, the article says. The spirit of the therapeutic has conquered the churches. Relatively few Christians are prepared to suffer for their faith, because society that formed them denies the purpose of suffering and the idea of bearing pain for the sake of truth.  

The lessons

   Dreher provided lessons for those who may face cultural and political harassment, gleaned from those who suffer totalitarianism elsewhere: 

* Stand firm but let bitterness stand down

* Avoid becoming hysterical 

* Value suffering but be merciful to those with less fortitude

* Practice hospitality and don't fear being seen as weird

* Speak up with the truth

* Don't worry about being prudently silent at times 

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