Dear Spengler,

You identify a trend whereby religions which once were tied to particular cultures and thus expressed themselves politically have evolved into or been supplanted by universal, personal, and “religionless” creeds. As St. Augustine might put it, the City of God has been disentangling itself from the city of man, and I think he would be as pleased as Kierkegaard to see it.

At the same time it seems that even personal religions are incapable of resisting the temptation to use temporal means to accomplish their spiritual ends. This pattern is cyclical, because shortly after the faithful have made their Faustian bargain they find that their message and their organization have become identified with the elite and the powerful: like Wotan they sow the seeds of their own destruction in their attempts to build paradise. Only after all their works are destroyed can a pure faith reappear from the ashes.

So while it’s clear that Americans have less of an incentive to identify Christianity with the peculiarities of any one culture, they are still just as intent on building a city on a hill as ever, and it seems that the capitalist elites of the Republican Party are more than willing to accept the evangelical vote in exchange for some vague hints of overturning Roe v. Wade. If American Christians are willing to make these bargains, how can they avoid re-enacting the same tragedy as Europe’s Christians? Don’t they remember what happened when King David decided to count his fighting men rather than trust in Jehovah?

On a similar note, I think the jury is still out on whether the rationalism of Protestant theology represents a step in the right direction – toward a more universal religion – or if it is yet another hubristic attempt to accomplish by human effort what only faith can do. As you’ve pointed out, the conflict between original sin and free will is intractable to rationalist philosophy. Protestants may have hitched their cart a little too tightly to this particular horse, who has a troublesome tendency to jump into abysses. The Catholic Church may have made the right choice in letting this one remain a mystery.

Perhaps you would be interested in a friendly wager: in 200 years, or whenever French and German are being spoken exclusively in hell, it’s going to be the Catholics that matter, not the evangelicals.

Berkeley, CA