So you are enroling cultists for the supreme court now?
Yeah, that's a complicated issue. I don't know if you have anything similar to parachurches in Europe, but in America they are a big thing, kinda. Not big enough to make the nightly news, but it's big in conservative circles.
Quick history lesson:
The religious right was not always what they are today. Most denominations hated each other, and were too paranoid to work together. Most of them were even pro-life. When the first amendment was written, it was mostly to prevent all the denominations from waging holy wars over control of government. This state persisted, until the late 1970s. After Watergate, the conservatives were in crisis for most of the 1970s, until Jerry Fallwell put the moral majority together, and Regan rose to power on their backs. Falwell did for the Republicans what the Clintons did for the democratic party in 92, with their 'third way' strategy (which is killing us in 2020, but that's a diatribe for a different time).
Most denominations made a few concessions here and there to make the moral majority work. One of the big concessions was when they agreed to the Roman Catholic church's demand for a anti-abortion plank in their platform. Before this, the protestants and rednecks weren't all anti-abortion.
Since then, the moral majority declined, as America became more secular, and the Republicans learned from people like Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich that they can win political power through pure obstructionism easier than they can by playing games with the preachers. Trump seems to have completed this lesson for them. Now they know they can win more power by agressively fighting than they can with preachers. The democratic party leadership doesn't seem to comprehend this.
So the preachers want their 1980s power back, but how? Nobody is going to church any more. The only Catholics left are people who don't care about child abuse. Churches are closing down all over the place. Gay marriage is legal, marijuana is legal, most people don't support Netenyahu in Israel. So they are now at a point where they need to reconsolidate. How do they do that?
They form little prayer groups that kind of take a little from other religious denominations and mash them up. This isn't actually a new thing. Messianic jews have been around since forever. Over the past decade or so, though, they have been doing this a lot more. The groups are now called parachurches. They are like little cults that exist in the gray areas between denominations.
So you have, say an anglican who likes anglicanism, but wants the services to have the energy of a southern black baptist church? Done.
A Catholic who misses the time before Vatican II, and wants there to be more mysticism in Catholicism, in the form of charismatic glossolalia? Done.
A methodist who wants a bit of those Catholic theatrics in their rituals? Done.
I know this is a bit out of left field, but if you think about it the way neo-pagans think about their traditions, it makes perfect sense. Most neo-pagans I know kind of pick and choose between a little bit of wicca, a little bit of egyptian or norse mythology, a sprinkle of transhumanism, or maybe some satanism... they mash up beliefs until they get something that just fits them. This is kind of like that, but not as individualized. Christian parachurches are groups that take a little bit of various christian traditions and stick them together to form their own little cabals, which grow. Some grow a lot. There are many nation-wide parachurches operating in America right now.
At first, this kind of intermingling was not accepted by clergy at all. I have some family members who have been involved with some of these groups for years, and they were forced to change their meeting places from church to church for a while, when priests kicked them out. They were forced to meet in each other's homes for a while. After a few years, though, the churches came to see it as an ecumenical movement. The charasmatics seem to like this most of all, because most of these groups just stuck speaking in tongues into their current beliefs, which drove more people to convert to charasmatic churches when they left the Catholic church over things like child abuse.
I have heard that some of these parachurch groups are even incorporating non-christian religions into their parachurches. I hear falun gong has a parachurch or two, which is really weird to me, because they are basically Chinese scientology. They probably work with the christians because they are Trump's largest backers, because they believe he's bringing about the end of the world... that's another rant for another time.
For what it's worth, from my personal experience with parachurch people, parachurches are usually a lot more cultish than proper denominations.
Anyway... the group that
Amy Barrett is in is one of these parachurches, called
People of Praise. They seem to operate in cult-like ways, demanding their members take oaths, and then take a partner to keep them on the straight and narrow, like alcoholics anonymous, or something. Having a partner like that is something Catholic monks and clergy have always done in seminaries, so it's not new, but in modern times, it's a bit creepy.
The reason why people are saying Barrett is the front runner to replace RBG right now is because when Trump nominated Kavenaugh, a reporter asked him why he didn't pick Barrett. His response was that he's saving Barrett to replace RBG. That could be him talking out his ass like he always does, or maybe he was serious. Nobody knows.
We will probably find out one way or the other tomorrow.
nypost.com
