Christianity in North America in TL -191

[Michael E Johnson]

HT largely ignored the role of the Christian church in North America(especially the CSA) in TL-191(maybe to avoid controversy??). He dropped a few hints that the war and the Black Holocaust were causing some serious doubts amongst many in the black population at least. We can assume that the churches(Protestant and Catholic) in the CSA were mostly silent(at best) about the Holocaust. Some churches probably lended tacit and even direct support.However given the dominance of the Christian church in the CSA this seems especially shocking-even more so than in OTL Europe where those who were being murdered were mostly non-Christian "Christ killers". This is an area that seems to need some discussion. Speculate -what role did they play and what does the future hold for them?

 

[Max Sinister]

Since Featherston is the Hitler equivalent: Hitler claimed to be Christian, but he'd have prepared if Christianity was eradicated and completely replaced by National Socialism. (He found Xianity too peaceful and tolerant for his taste.)

 

[Michael E Johnson]

Since Featherston is the Hitler equivalent: Hitler claimed to be Christian, but he'd have prepared if Christianity was eradicated and completely replaced by National Socialism. (He found Xianity too peaceful and tolerant for his taste.)

True but most of the German/Confederate population was Christian-with the Confederate society being even more strongly influenced by the Christian church than OTL Germany.

 

[zoomar]

Hard to say. As you state, HT is almost completely mute on the whole issue of religion (except for the Mormons in Utah, the Jewish CSA propaganda minister, the corrupt Quebec collaborator priest, and the Jewish polititian from NYC). Not a single main POV character is specifically identified as Christian.

My speculation goes like this:

(1) One of the reason religion (Christianity) remained and remains so important in the OTL USA is because the US largely avoided the destruction and horrors associated with WW1 and WW2. Many Americans could still believe God is good and and that he/she/it looks with favor on mankind - or at least them.

(2) Also, in OTL, there was no successful CSA and hence no permanent division of the Christian Churches into separate Northern and Southern branches. In general, the Christian churches gradually became a supporter of civil rights and integration thru the whole country, further helping them survive in a more secular society.

(3) In HT's TL, you both had a permanent division of the country (and probably church structures), but more importantly, the US and CS fought 3 bitter wars between 1865 and 1945, with massive destruction, violent revolutions, holocausts, the rise of a nationalistic socialism in the north, racist fascism in the south, and millions of casualties. In this dystopian North America, it is reasonable to imagine American attitudes toward Christianity would mirror developments in Europe. Directly faced with a world of evil and war, Americans would become disenchanted with the church and faith in a supposedly good god who lets all this happen. As with Europe in the 1940's period, America would become post-Christian.

So, my theory is that HT hardly talks about Christianity because it is totally unimportant to his characters and he tells his story only thru them. Other than the Mormons and maybe the Catholic Mexicans, most people are probably essentially atheists in how they view the world.

By the way...it's great to see you back!

 

[The Federalist]

Since Featherston is the Hitler equivalent: Hitler claimed to be Christian, but he'd have prepared if Christianity was eradicated and completely replaced by National Socialism. (He found Xianity too peaceful and tolerant for his taste.)

The big difference between Nazism and the Freedom Ideology is that Freedom never had any quasi-religious mystic Thule society type, ancient Aryan master race "selected by providence to rule the world" ideas and such. The Freedom Party just hated black people, plain and simple, they never tried to justify it with racial theories or theologies like what the Nazis did. So its pretty hard to imagine a Confederate "Swastika Night" type society where Featherston is worshiped as a god.

 

[Max Sinister]

No racial theories? What about the bit that blacks are descendants of Ham and thus quasi-cursed to serve the whites forever?

 

[Bulldawg85]

Hitler

Hitler claimed to be Christian

Where do you get your basis that Hitler claimed to be Christian? From everything that I read he never did so. He cloaked nazism in the trappings of mysticism, a belief in a master race, a belief in other bizarre things.

 

[Max Sinister]

He often claimed that he was executing God's will and used a lot of well-known Christian symbolics in his speeches. Like the Thousand-year empire/Reich, just to name one.

 

[Sovereign12]

I once read an article on religion in the CSA at the start of the ACW. Many of the protestant churchs supported the keeping of slaves. The part I found interesting was the veiw of the catholic churchs in the south. While the Vatican at the time decried slavery and wanted it stopped worldwide, many of the roman catholic churches actually supported the south's right to keep slaves and were quite vocal about.
I wondered why the Vatican had not tried to keep these priests, nuns, and followers more quite?

 

[MrP]

I once read an article on religion in the CSA at the start of the ACW. Many of the protestant churchs supported the keeping of slaves. The part I found interesting was the veiw of the catholic churchs in the south. While the Vatican at the time decried slavery and wanted it stopped worldwide, many of the roman catholic churches actually supported the south's right to keep slaves and were quite vocal about.
I wondered why the Vatican had not tried to keep these priests, nuns, and followers more quite?

Interesting point, that. Even today there are some . . . odd members of the Church's hierarchy. I recall some South American bishop who was defrocked/excommunicated after he decided to get married.

Maybe the Church was wary of imposing its opinion on the Americans in case they schismed or lost a load of congregants to the Protestants?

 

[Nekromans]

Where do you get your basis that Hitler claimed to be Christian? From everything that I read he never did so. He cloaked nazism in the trappings of mysticism, a belief in a master race, a belief in other bizarre things.

..........

My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who - God's truth! - was greatest, not as a sufferer, but as a fighter.

In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison.


Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross.


As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice...


And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery.


When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exploited."

 

[Michael E Johnson]

By the way...it's great to see you back!

Thank you.

As far as a more secular America in TL-191 that is something I would welcome and it could fit into the alternate historical developments but I'm skeptical about that. As far as churches being more unified in OTL USA considering that the Southern Baptist Converntion and the other black and white Protestant organizations- sectional and racial divisions in Christian churches seem alive and well in the USA.

 

[Michael E Johnson]

No racial theories? What about the bit that blacks are descendants of Ham and thus quasi-cursed to serve the whites forever?

Exactly and I expect that the Freedomites and Christian churches who supported them would have been shouting this ideology from the roof tops.Also the extermination program that the CSA visited upon Haiti definitely was done in the same systematic fashion as the OTL Holocaust in Poland. If both weren't done with an idea of racial supremacy in mind I dont know what was.

 

[zoomar]

Originally Posted by Hitler, Munich, 12th April 1922
My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who - God's truth! - was greatest, not as a sufferer, but as a fighter.

With reference to this and the rest of the post, there is no doubt that the politician Hitler claimed early in his carrer to be a Christian. However the Christ Hitler professed to worship bore little resemblance to the JEWISH man described in the new testament, he of "turn the other cheek" and Passion fame. Also, it is important to note this was in 1922, when it was very necessary for AH to appear to as broad a segment of the conservative end of the German spectrum as possible. Hitler was not, by any normal definition, a Christian.

 

[zoomar]

As far as a more secular America in TL-191 that is something I would welcome and it could fit into the alternate historical developments but I'm skeptical about that.

Why skeptical? HT describes no devout Christian characters (except Mormons if you count them) and I think my argument that 3 destructive wars in 90 years would have created a very different American perspective on religion in general is very consistent with the world HT describes.



As far as churches being more unified in OTL USA considering that the Southern Baptist Converntion and the other black and white Protestant organizations- sectional and racial divisions in Christian churches seem alive and well in the USA.

You have a point regarding the Baptists and other non-denominational sects, but most of the mainline protestant denominations (Lutheran, Methodist, etc) and the Roman Catholic church are not sectionally or racially split in OTL America. In OTL they fosterd a fairly consistent social message in both north and south. In HT's world, they would almost certainly have been nationally divided, and given the virulent hostility between the US and CS, would have become little more than hateful cheering sections for their own nations - or more likely lost much of their relevance altogether.

Actually, if a more secular America (US and CS) was the result of HT's timeline, this would have tremendous impact on a lot of international developments as well. In OTL, the USA is easily the most powerful and influential proponent of religion and religious perspectives in the western world - far more than even the Vatican. Think of all the American missionaries, as well as those of other countries influenced by US missionaries. If this doesn't exist, who knows what impact this might have had outside the borders of the USA. Perhaps an essentially post-Christian western world altogether?

 

[Jasen777]

Hard to say. As you state, HT is almost completely mute on the whole issue of religion (except for the Mormons in Utah, the Jewish CSA propaganda minister, the corrupt Quebec collaborator priest, and the Jewish polititian from NYC). Not a single main POV character is specifically identified as Christian.

There was the fir and brimstone old-school presbytarian?, the one who like the flamethrower. And the Greek Orthodox guy. I'm not sure I buy the rest of your post, hard times are just as likely to make Americans more religious. Although, African-American Christianity is likely less because of the increase in Marxism in TL-191.

As far as churches being more unified in OTL USA considering that the Southern Baptist Converntion and the other black and white Protestant organizations- sectional and racial divisions in Christian churches seem alive and well in the USA.

All of the major denominations split in the run up to the civil war in OTL. The Baptists were the only ones who didn't get back together eventually (that's why the United Methodists are called "united"). Obviously, in TL-191 you'd expect these splits to be permanent.

Confederate churches would support (or at least not question) the extreme segregation/discrimination that exists in the Confederacy, using the same arguments that were used to support slavery.

I would expect some dissent to the mass killings. The vast majority of Christians though would be co-opted or silent, and dissenting leaders would be disappeared.

 

[Michael E Johnson]

Some info from the series abount Xianity not mentioned here from the HT yahoo group Videssos.

On 8/16/07, Patrick Healy <patrickjhealy2001@...> wrote:
>
> One Confederate POW remarked to Cassius that Jake Featherston loved
> Jesus and was loved by him. Jeff Pinkard was married in a Christian Church;
> his second wife seemed almost prudish about issues of sex and adultery.
>
> If these few examples are assumed to reflect the general opinion one might
> conclude that the issues of race and religion were divorced in Confederate
> psychology. Time and time again we hear that they are "only residents not
> citizens"; that they are "just niggers". Yet they are horrified by the
> taking and shooting of white southern hostages because these are "people
> that matter".
>
> Granted, the view that race and religion have nothing to do with one
> another is inherently absurd. However, it does explain how otherwise humane
> and reasonable people would approve a policy of mass murder. Flora
> Blackford's assessment though harsh is quite reasonable -- if these people
> are Christians, it's a strong case for atheism or Satan-worship.

 

[Dave Howery]

I had the opposite view on this... it seemed to me that the two Americas were a lot more secular and not particularly fanatic about religion, although few people seemed to be out and out atheists, and most were expected to go to church regularly, for appearances sake. Granted, we don't get a good look at this, but the few people who discuss it don't seem to attached to their native religions. Flora was Jewish, but didn't seem particularly observant. Her husband Hosea was so indifferent to his Christianity that he let his child be raised as Jewish. About the only characters that I can recall were devout were the hispanics in the CSA, and that crazy character in the GW series who used a flamethrower on the enemy....

 

[David bar Elias]

I had the opposite view on this... it seemed to me that the two Americas were a lot more secular and not particularly fanatic about religion, although few people seemed to be out and out atheists, and most were expected to go to church regularly, for appearances sake. Granted, we don't get a good look at this, but the few people who discuss it don't seem to attached to their native religions. Flora was Jewish, but didn't seem particularly observant. Her husband Hosea was so indifferent to his Christianity that he let his child be raised as Jewish. About the only characters that I can recall were devout were the hispanics in the CSA, and that crazy character in the GW series who used a flamethrower on the enemy....

Aye, Gordon McSweeney. There's been speculation on another thread about what kind of career he would have had had he not been killed.

Or even worse...in a different TL-191 where the Entente wins but McSweeney survives...

 

[Redem]

Aye, Gordon McSweeney. There's been speculation on another thread about what kind of career he would have had had he not been killed.

Or even worse...in a different TL-191 where the Entente wins but McSweeney survives...

Maybe there they would decide to go even harder on the CSA than they do in the book and apply the black holocaust to the whole CSA population