Unmaking the myth of the "white Christian worldview"

 Robert P. Jones, an ex-fundagelical of some sort, talks at Time about escaping the "white Christian worldview."

But, as two Tweets of mine say to him, to avoid typing twice, the piece is problematic and simplistic.

First, the reality of American Christianity today is more complex than his Mississippi birthland:

.@robertpjones .. several things in your piece are mix of fallacy & overstatement. Reality?
1. Not all white Xns are Protestant
2. Not all white Xn Protestants are conserv. evangelical or fundamentalist.
3. And, more and more whites are "nones" not Xn. 1/xhttps://t.co/ZWyJI9Bic2

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) September 30, 2021

My midwestern Lutheranism, while socially and religiously conservative, was nothing like his religious childhood. (I've been to white and black Baptist services, I'll add.)

Within the piece, he mentions the recent sharp decline of Southern Baptists. Yes, and mainline Protestants declined before that. And Catholics are declining as well. And, as time and motion studies have shown, Americans have long lied about frequency of church attendance, even before the rise of the "nones." (That said, the rise of the nones is NOT all it's sometimes cracked up to be.)

Second, the reality of American Christianity when he was a young'un and St. Ronald of Reagan was running for president was more complicated outside the South than he notes, which leads to this.

Even if dead weight of tradition makes point three nugatory? Especially outside the South, points 1 and 2 were in effect when you and I grew up. A better piece would separate out regional and cultural politics being fused with religion and nationalized.

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) September 30, 2021

It's true that Reagan (maybe told so by his horoscope, and yes, he believed them, as he turned Nancy on to astrology, not the other way around) pandered to the Religious Right and helped fuel this fusion, but that helps make the point of my second tweet! Especially when you tie this to the lying about church attendance. It's cultural Christianism, a fundagelical version of Samuel Huntington's angle.

That said, in some way, shape or form, that's been the case in much of the Christian world since Roman emperor Theodosius made Christianity the state religion of the empire nearly 1,650 years ago. Political types (and, yes, politics exists outside democracies) have long grifted on cultural Christianism. It hasn't had racism attached to it; "racism" as we know it today didn't really exist in antiquity, after all.

But, if he wants to talk about real Christian sins, he should deal with that.

Since I'm a secularist, I've written enough about another rescue attempt for American Christianity.

Note: This is part one of a three-part series. The second will expand on the decline of evangelical Christians. The third will note that the rise of the Nones has itself hit a speed bump. Both will rely on new polling and analysis from this summer by Jones' outfit, PRRI.