The New Religion - Tom Holland | Maiden Mother Matriarch 81

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“Vibes” don’t last. Without a bedrock on which to stand, the vibe will spin whichever way the wind blows. There’s nothing there but chaos.

I think a big weakness in Tom's argument here is the way he inconspicuously slides from the Christian concern for innocent life to the idea of "bodily autonomy", as if the latter were at all the same. Not only are the two concerns very distinct, but I would argue that bodily autonomy is actually an anti-Christian idea. Our bodies aren't our own, they're God's. That's why you're not allowed to jump into bed with whoever you want, even if you're both "consenting adults" and "you're not hurting anyone." The problem is that you're defiling your body which is the temple of the Holy Spirit, as 1 Corinthians puts it. The reverence for bodily autonomy is not an extension of Christian belief but a repudiation of it.

I would make Tom Holland’s magnum opus “Dominion” required reading for those who truly wish to understand western civilization. It is a work of pure genius.

If Christ and the scriptures are removed from Christianity there ceases to be a thing called Christianity. That is not "reformation". It is obliteration.

21:15 "Every heresy is a truth taught out of proportion." G.K. Chesterton

I wish Louise would have pushed back a bit harder- a culture without orthodoxy, running on ‘vibes,’ as Holland accurately puts it, is not strong. Belief is much stronger than vibes and gut feeling, and radical belief is both stronger than vibes and far more dangerous.

Such an interesting interview! Looking forward to Tom's forthcoming book.

As an atheist, i miss the old gods, because the new ones scare the hell out of me

That ain’t Spiderman!

The first Reformation was related to the beginnings of capitalism. The second Reformation is related to late capitalism.

A Johnathan Pageau interview would be helpful

So Christianity is explicit, if Christ has not been raised then the faith is futile (1 Corinthians 15:17). There is a big difference between whether communion/eucharist is literal or not. If the resurrection didn’t happen, then Christianity is false by its own rules. No one goes from Atheism, Judaism, Islam, or Hinduism etc to Progressive Christianity. They are all people who chose liberalism over Christianity from more conservative churches. I do think Louise is right. This is a Christian heresy, not a new religion, and it’s not new. This is another form of Gnosticism that has been an issue for Christianity since the beginning. Examples include the Nicolaitans, the 2nd century Gnostics, the Cathars, and so on.

The basic problem with his argument is you can't prove a negative. He says anything is Christian because he can argue some link, akin to five degrees of Kevin Bacon, then expects that alone to be proof. It's hard to argue he's wrong because you can't DISprove the link because it's simply a connection of vague ideas rather than a historical claim you can argue with.

Well timed interview! I am now on my second read through of dominion after finishing persian fire. Looking forward to the next title

The 60’s counterculture which you call the 2nd reformation may have started reasonably enough with young people not wanting to die in a war they didn’t believe in and it did produce some good music, but quickly devolved into something very selfish and destructive. All about illegal drug use, promiscuity, misogyny and self indulgence. Every generation since, that venerates the longhairs of 60 years ago and holds tenaciously to their progressive ideas becomes more intolerable and full of ego. Add to the mix, social media and pornography and you can see the results.

Tom Holland's obersvations are brillant, and I have long been a huge fan. However, Louise's point is even supported by his arguments: by masking openly religious Christianity as universal secularism and "Western culture", the Western societies seem to have forbidden themselves to forcefully defend their democracies from people who openly plan to replace Western democracies with the caliphate. The question is: do Western societies believe they have a right to want to maintain their culture ?

There is already a name for this heresy/movement, and it didn't start in the 1960s, but the mid nineteenth century, and it is called "Modernism"

I suspect Louise's more pessimistic predictions about the future (Islam, nietzschean attitudes to abortion and euthanasia) will prove to be more correct than Tom's.

The pro-life concern is not only with the autonomy of the mother over her own body, , but it is with the baby, which is genetically and demonstrably a separate human being. It is "following the science."