THE COURTSHIP OF WINDS

Miles Whitney

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 A New Religion Emerges

 

     A lot happened to me in the first two years of Covid. My ex-husband died, then my beloved dog. I met and married my spouse. My daughter died. 
     The world also literally began to burn. When it was not burning, it was flooding. 
     One morning I went outside to put my dog out in her run. It was the end of August, when the light begins to shift. The sun felt soft, the air was warm but not unbearable. The redwoods had dropped piles of leaves all over the patio. The pool was still comfortable. The beauty of all of it felt more poignant knowing that these could be the final days of earthly habitability.
     I suddenly felt the cumulative losses. Beyond my personal losses swirled a deep sense of communal destruction. So many things had changed. People who had been active members of the world had retreated during lockdown and never returned fully to society. Restaurants and stores had closed. There were incalculable ripple effects. No one could find a therapist. 
     If that wasn’t bad enough, half the country seemed to be living in a fantasy world that would have been laughably stupid if not backed by state power and a seething sense of vendetta. Those were people too that I lost, and along with them the optimism I once had about other Americans. It would have been one thing if those I lost just had a different sense of the best way to live or the best way to run the country. But it was all personal, petty, mean. There seemed to be no possibility of unified work to solve our common problems. The hatefulness began to take form, coalescing into some kind of rough movement.
     One thing stood out in the early days. Winning didn’t make the winners happy. The cruelty, the pettiness, the insatiable need for destruction seemed to metastasize. Sneering contempt was the primary mode of expression. 
     The movement did not diminish with their subsequent political losses either. In fact, it purified itself, banishing those who did not embrace its worldview wholeheartedly. Although originally centered in politics, the movement seemed to be growing beyond its original container. 
     I had long thought the world was ready for a new religion, one that would speak to the baffling conditions of now. I believed that one would begin to emerge organically, the way Christianity had started small, but had spoken to something compelling enough that it spread across the globe. I had imagined that the new religion would be a positive force, perhaps because I naïvely assumed that its generation would have been sparked by the Divine. 
     What seemed to be emerging instead was a new death-centered, materialistic religion. Christianity may contain certain propositions that are difficult to prove factually, but it also holds spiritual truths of breathtaking beauty. The Christians I remembered growing up with, mostly evangelical or Catholic, didn’t fight and didn’t swear. If they had rather rigid views of sexuality and gender roles, those values did not exist in a vacuum. These Christian children were self-denying in other ways. They held themselves apart from the world. They weren’t mean. In their quiet way, they seemed to gain courage from their faith. 
     Once in middle school, my Catholic friend was being bullied while we waited in line in the gym. We were wearing the worst one-piece polyester gym outfits, which would have been valid cause for harassment except that everyone wore the same thing. My friend did not fight back at all, but calmly stood her ground and responded with a statement of her faith. She told her tormenters that God made her and loved her, therefore the cruel words they spoke were lies. The bullies had little response to that, lost interest and wandered off. 
     At that age, I was a coward, terrified of other kids. Meanness, and the possibly of meanness, shook me. If faith could have given me my friend’s invisible coat of armor, I would have wanted it too. Years later, I read of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, walking around in the fire. I thought back to that friend, how she seemed untouched by the flames of earthly cruelty. No one stood between my friend and danger save God, and her belief in her God, and she prevailed without lifting a hand or speaking a harsh word.
     This new religion’s god, in contrast, is pathetically weak. This god cannot hold true without an army of his followers shoring him up with secular laws enforcing their creed. This god cannot protect his followers from their enemies, whether spiritual or corporal. His supremacy cannot withstand conflicting ideas, even secular ones. 
     Even with the powers of the state legislating and enforcing the movement’s rigid gender rules or denying enemies the vote, nothing can protect this new god’s followers from true spiritual threats. Of course, the followers describe their struggle for political and state power as spiritual warfare, but what defense are all those laws to the unseen? The one they call Satan had already taken their minds when they abandoned their faith in God and centered it in themselves, in mortal leaders, in force and in their clenching, grasping desire for control. Had they learned nothing, had they not read the holy texts? God protects, God saves. Not men. 
     I witnessed the beginnings of this corrupting force stealing souls one by one, long before it had coalesced into a veritable movement. The first time I saw it was a decade ago. I was at a dinner with some people I barely knew, in another state. One man, a local Republican leader, proceeded to get drunk. He lived in a rural area, and he started talking about his guns and how he hoped someone would one day walk up his driveway to his door. His eyes glistened, his lips were wet, his big meaty hands were balled into fists on the table. He ordered another beer. Having realized his statement had been met with silence in this mixed crowd, he seemed to register that he may have revealed too much. He tried explaining that, out where he lived no one would ever get lost, implying that any stranger who approached his house deserved to be shot dead. Several years after that, I remember reading about a man who laid a trap for some dumb local kids who had been stealing from his garage. The man gleefully gunned the kids down when they took the bait. 
     A decade later, more true believers gunned down delivery drivers, teenage girls pulling into the wrong driveway, kids who were lost and knocked at the wrong door. Of course, the followers of this weak new god loved guns. The gun seemed a fitting symbol of a religion that required men to defend god. I find nothing inherently wrong with a love of guns or even the symbolism of a gun; the cross was originally a gruesome torture device. What was spiritually sick, however, was the barely concealed, itchy hope that someday they could use the weapon on a living human being, possibly even another child of God. I questioned some believers about it. Would the memory of having ended a life stay with them, even if they had been legally in the right? What if they killed someone by mistake, an old person with dementia who had wandered into their yard at night? 
     There was never a sentiment that killing was a necessary evil, or even an acknowledgement that they might feel regret if they killed someone who turned out not to be out to get them. If they could not openly acknowledge their desire to kill, neither they imagine a scenario in which they would have regret or sorrow over it. 
     In the new religion, everything is subject to the death penalty. Its followers now do not just turn a blind eye to killing by one of their own, the killers are lifted up. Their god does not appear to have been introduced to mercy, and probably wouldn’t like the idea if he was.  
     I lived in Africa for a time as a teenager. When we traveled the continent in the 1970s, there were few hotels even along the main highways, so we often stayed with missionaries. As problematic as missionaries might have been then and still may be, they had an astounding vision. Even Africans living in the villages and practicing the old ways were children of God worthy of being saved, undeniably spiritual equals. The missionaries endured serious hardships and sacrifice. No matter how harshly missionary work may be judged, no equivalent is found in the new religion. No one is asked to sacrifice themselves for another, unless the other is a fetus. The stranger is not a potential convert, he is an animal, irredeemably evil. 
     The new religionists do not seem to even see other American Christians as their brothers and sisters in Christ. No quarter is given to those who claim to follow Christ, even those who attend church every week and know the Bible, if their church was welcoming and accepting. No Democrat or liberal could possibly be God’s child. The new religionists can see directly into everyone’s heart. The state of a man’s everlasting soul is measured by his willingness to despise the right people; his piety revealed by his smirk and his delight in cruelty.
     Once, years ago, I heard a call-in radio show in which some well-meaning but frightened man read something in the Bible about feeding and sheltering the poor. In a panic, he called in, asking the host, “Do I really have to let poor people into my house?” The host laughed condescendingly, “Of course not!” he responded. The host went on to explain that Jesus had been talking about the poor in spirit! No need to deal with the literal, filthy poor, praise God! 
     What if that worried man had let the poor into his house and fed them instead of calling in to the radio show? Maybe his guest would have converted. Remember those stories we read about sometimes, where in a war or crisis, someone risked his life to save a stranger? And thereafter, the savior quoted scripture to explain their outlandishly kind and brave behavior. The life of the stranger was saved. But what happened to the savior? How did his faith grow or change, he who had put his trust fully in God and the holy texts, treating those words as true as the metal latch on a gate, the sun setting behind a field of sunflowers, a feather in the dust? Not just spiritually true? What kind of faith is that, how transformative could it be, to trust completely? 
     The new religionists express no need to feed, house or clothe the literal poor. It is doubtful that they feel any obligation toward the spiritually poor, either. 
     The new religionists claim the sacred texts as the underpinnings of our legal system. But I have read the texts, and they contain warnings, and not just against sodomy or harlotry. The texts warn, constantly, against corrupt judges and leaders. They warn against mistaking human traditions for the will of God. (Isaiah 29:13.)
     I wondered what would happen if, due to the movement’s great success, only judges who followed the new religion were placed on the bench. What if one of those judges was corrupt? I understood the new religionists’ impulse to put a corrupt judge on the bench if the alternative was a Satanist, but what if the corrupt judge would only be replaced by another of their shared faith? The answer began to take shape; corruption was welcomed! Justice Thomas is in no danger of being removed from the bench, yet none of the new religionists think his behavior is of any concern. In fact, he is vigorously defended. I wondered, if this behavior is condoned, weren’t the new religionists worried that a liberal judge could also be bought? That is when it became clear that corruptibility was the point. A corrupt judge could be bought, would not think independently, would not decide that the law inconveniently had been settled on an issue that made the new religionists sick. Putin’s supporters are paid handsomely, so long as they never question him. Control the judges; they cannot be trusted. The risk of a corrupt liberal judge would be minimized by making sure that liberal judges were never appointed, or by trusting that the new religionists had deeper pocketbooks and could out-buy the competition. 
     In contrast to Christianity (or Judaism), the new religion asks for nothing of its followers. If there are theological questions, the answer is always simple, “Full stop, end of story.” There is no need to struggle with the big questions. The only real sins are the ones the followers are not inclined to succumb to, and almost all of them are sexual. They are the travelers on the road that walk past the stranger who had been beaten and left for dead. When they ask, “Who is my neighbor?” the answer is, “Only those exactly like you.” Violence, cruelty, death and lies are the fruits of the new prophets. We were warned. 
     As the movement progressed, it became clearer that although they call themselves Christians, this is not Christianity. Even in the early days, I was struck by the apparent lack of Biblical fluency of its followers. Many appeared to be unable to coherently back up their dearest convictions, such as their obsession with an immutable sexual binary. I sought in vain the theological underpinning for this belief but found nothing but the shallow observation that in Genesis, God created male and female, later followed by the Vatican’s vague four paragraphs loosely referring to human dignity. There certainly was no clear theological explanation of how questioning of sex or gender was the greatest spiritual threat to creation. 
     I learned later that the man that created the God made Trump commercial had never read the Bible and does not go to church.  I learned that many, if not most, of the movement’s most fervent followers did not attend church regularly at all. Those who seek to have Christians installed in positions of power and influence according to the Seven Mountains Mandate do not clarify who qualifies as Christian. It certainly cannot include a Democrat or liberal, no matter how devout that person is. Paxton’s lawsuit against Catholic charities helping migrants in Texas pointed to the answer. It isn’t belief in Christ that qualifies. It isn’t churchgoing. It isn’t thousands of years of church history or knowing the Bible. It is the calling themselves Christian, detached from the religion(s) itself. When they say they want Christians installed into positions of power, it is obvious they are referring only to new religionists.  
     I understand that there is a longstanding dispute about the term religion, but without getting into that debate, I will refer to a basic definition which includes certain elements: (1) belief in superempirical beings or powers, (2) ethical norms, (3) worship rituals, (4) participation believed to bestow benefits on participants, and (5) those who participate in this form of life see themselves as a distinct community. 
     The new religion contains all five elements. The new religion believes in God. The new religion’s god appears superficially to be the same as the Christian God. The movement has adopted or borrowed various Christian elements, including belief in Jesus and the Bible. Some followers may continue as traditional Christians, attending their former churches. The two faiths are not incompatible in that way. 
     The new religion has its ethical norms. Most of these norms are centered on sex and sexual practices. The new religionists are staunch intransgederists, boldly claiming that the sexual binary is innate and immutable, created thus by God. The fetus is an object of reverence, worthy of life even if preserving that life results in the mother being maimed or killed. The fetus is protected even against its father’s authority. The new religion treats traditional gender roles and heterosexuality as godly. 
     Although some of those norms overlap with some strains of Christianity, what is different in the new religion is the emphasis. Formerly Christian ethical norms have retreated. Besides not being expected to attend church, it is also not necessary to read the Bible. The Christian ethical rules against adultery, for honesty, against divorce and for humility and self-sacrifice have lost significance. 
     This phenomenon may be best observed in the current leadership of the movement. Although some strains of the movement insist that political power and leadership should be reserved to “Christians,” they don’t actually care whether the leaders are Christian in practice. The leaders have to say that they are Christian and uphold intransgenderism and fetal supremacy, but are otherwise free to participate in domestic violence, desert their families, cheat, divorce, engage in threesomes, rape and to take bribes. They are free to lie, to bear false witness. They must hate the stranger, the opposite of what Jesus described as the second greatest commandment.   
     Part of what makes the new religionists seem to be nothing more than hypocritical Christians is that they claim Christianity while excusing all kinds of departures from the expectations of the old faith. But looking at the movement as a new religion, the behavior and beliefs are not hypocritical, just different. 
     The departure from traditional Christianity may be explained by the new religion’s belief system, which relies on men as protectors of the divine, consistent with their god’s impotence. The most their god can do is select the leader(s) and protect them with some kind of angelic shield.  In this theology, then, it makes sense to elevate the protectors such that they themselves become worthy objects of worship and adulation, and also to treat their leaders as nearly infallible and outside both civil and Biblical law. 
     Also, consistent with this belief system, the search for earthly power and force are elevated to sacraments. Believers should be willing to kill without regret or remorse, and to applaud and honor such killings done by others in the name of the faith, because to do so is to honor their god and his army. It is not politicians using Christianity to obtain power, it is the new religion’s very structure that requires access to power. The virtues of battle are the virtues of god now. Their god is uninterested in peace or the virtues of peace. The new religionists will not be washing anyone’s feet, turning the other cheek or giving their cloak to the thief. No one is going to ask them to die for their friends.
     The exhortation to “Make America Pray Again!” summarizes this creed. Prayer no longer is regarded as an affair of the heart and conscience, a sacrifice that often arises spontaneously and cannot be bought or sold. Prayer, for the new religionists, is something that can and should be coerced by men. 
     The new religion’s interest in politics is perhaps in part due to its history, in which it started to emerge around a presidential candidate and later president. However, the reverse is also true, in that the deification of men as protectors of god gives rise to the belief that using political and state power to force obedience to their god is not only good but essential. The importance of earthly power is such that many followers seek to rid themselves of secular government or any of its checks. The corollary is true, that any form of government that gives the protectors the maximum ability to protect their god is desirable. 
     The relationship of the new religionist’s god to its protectors is complex. The movement does hold up its leaders as suffering or sacrificing for them, in the battle between good and evil. A basic premise is that there is a battle, lest the protectors be bereft of their divine role. But in contrast to Christianity, the protectors are not expected embrace a life of poverty and service or live a quiet life in godly obscurity. They may, however, be persecuted here on earth before they prevail. They might have an election stolen from them or be forced out of office. They might suffer civil penalties. They might give up a life of fabulous wealth for leadership with somewhat less wealth. But as poignantly expressed in sentiment and memes, the protectors are suffering for their followers in ways we cannot possibly imagine. The suffering is nothing that ordinary people can see or understand. It is unclear whether this unique suffering is spiritual pain, psychic pain, or having to see the full horror of evil that is hidden from the rest of us. 
     The structure of the new religion also dictates a radically different approach to non-believers. Although many followers claim to be evangelicals, there is almost no evidence that the movement seeks to carry the good news to those outside the fold. Outsiders are consistently painted as evil, demonic, invaders and criminals. Nonbelievers are bent on destroying believers, their god, their way of life and their country. In fact, the existence of evil outsiders is essential to their faith.  
     The new religion has its own worship rituals. The new religionists listen to podcasters and news programs that support their faith. They attend rallies and wave American and Trump flags. Trump rallies have become increasingly religious in format and feel over time, now complete with alter calls and baptisms.
     Many of the new religion’s rituals are conducted online, befitting a religion that has emerged in the internet age. Although Trump rallies may take the place of church service or even a pilgrimage, most followers do not regularly attend them. Most of the rituals are public proclamations of faith, posted online. They publicly proclaim their hatred of Democrats, progressives and liberals. They performatively boycott products. They post memes. Sometimes they use firearms, but more ritualistically, they post photos with guns or buy the chance to fire weapons with Kyle Rittenhouse. They proclaim that Trump won the 2020 election. They post about how the mainstream media can’t be trusted, but also constantly posting how the media will not report on this, even when the media is reporting on it. 
     As observed by others, even something as outside politics as Covid-19 generated powerful rituals. Forgoing vaccines and rejecting masks may not be rituals in themselves, but publicly proclaiming opposition is. 
     The new religion’s god does not seem capable of withstanding ideas, so the protectors must use earthy power to suppress those as well. DEI, critical race theory, LGBTQI+ ideas and countless books must be eliminated, preferably by law. The followers ritualistically post in support of such suppression and the leaders who advance it. 
     And finally, or foremost, the movement is shot through with racism and xenophobia. Some followers are proud white supremacists while others might still feel the taboo of stating such beliefs outright. The relationship of racism to the new religion is complex and messy. However, there are certain ritualistic statements of belief, often tracking the Great Replacement theory. Posting about “open borders”, “invasions”, Democratic-led cities being hellholes, government being a method of siphoning hard-earned taxpayer dollars to freeloaders in exchange for votes, all fall within proper declarations of faith. 
     The roots of this type of ritual preceded the movement by years if not decades. Before there was the current universe of online platforms and podcases, there was talk radio. Listeners then and now had certain shorthand, formulaic phrases or words that contained within them a deeper meaning. People outside this world would have little or no understanding of a phrase like “pallets of cash,” referring to a payment made to Iran under Obama’s presidency. Today, we have “Hunter Biden’s laptop,” “rigged and stolen,” “man in a dress.” These short, memorized phrases that summarize the new religion’s articles of faith may be an early version of its catechism, especially given that often the memorized answers are given in response to a question or statement in an online forum. Repetition of the catechism by the faithful allows newcomers to also memorize and understand the main tenets of their new spiritual home. 
     Much has been written about the support the movement gets from white evangelicals. This fact, like the movement’s embrace of Christian identity, symbols and rituals, tends to obscure the emergence of something new.   But notably, the movement has grown significantly since 2016, owing much of its growth to people who previously were unaffiliated.  These new followers call themselves evangelicals, but their beliefs may not correspond to the traditional theology, in one case being labeled “political evangelicals."   Often, the new converts are not being brought into the fold of existing churches or branches of Christianity but instead are directly converting to the new religion.  These new converts, the first generation untethered by the restraints of Christianity, may never read the Bible or attend a traditional church service. As this first generation grows and raises its offspring, the connection to Christianity will become more and more attenuated. 
     The new religion’s tenuous connection to Christianity is reflected in its embrace of persons who otherwise might be outsiders, had they not become followers themselves. The new religion will accept and uphold hard-right Israelis while rejecting large swaths of Christians who are not in line with its beliefs. It will accept practicing Hindus to a certain extent, if they are true to the movement. It is less receptive to Muslims. Although the new religion loves white Americans, it will support and uphold a person of another race if that person walks the line. It upholds heterosexuality but will accept gays who have joined the fold. Although it is obsessed with “Real Americans” and borders, it is international in scope, supporting leaders like Putin.  
     The new religionists believe that their participation in these rituals, and elevating their leaders, will benefit them. By installing the protectors over all civil life, they not only will be free to exercise their religion however and wherever they see fit, but their god will be saved. If they fail to participate in enough numbers, their god, and civilization, will be destroyed. 
     There appears to be another perceived benefit of participating in this movement. In the framework of a battle for good and evil, in which leaders stand in the breach, evil is externalized. No matter how many traditional sins their leaders commit, the leaders remain always in the camp of the good. No matter how many kindnesses an outsider may perform, or how devout a Christian, the outsider is evil. The leader not only protects the follower from external worldly and spiritual forces but takes on the burden of evil. Followers may be unable to protect themselves from evil or fight evil in any way other than supporting the leader through votes, prayers and memes. Belief in the movement and the leaders is all that is needed for the followers to be saved and protected. The relief from the need to be accountable for one’s sins must be significant, and make the protectors even more worthy of adulation. 
     The new religionists believe themselves to be a distinct community, although they have yet to give themselves a formal name. MAGA may be the closest umbrella term, embracing various wings of the movement, including traditional white evangelicals, new converts who may be described as nominal Christians but devout new religionists, others not particularly interested in Christianity much at all as a religion rather than an identity, such as many white supremacists and nativists, and those who are solely interested in political power. The last category may seem to disqualify MAGA as a religious movement, but for the elevation of earthly power and protectors as a creed. 
     However, MAGA is and has been associated with one man’s political campaign, and to that extent fails to capture the extent that it is more than just a political slogan. The emerging outlines of the new religion outlasted Trump’s presidency and continued to grow and evolve. Although Donald Trump has clearly been given a unique position as the greatest protector amongst protectors, the movement survived his political defeat and various troubles. It appears that the movement will outlast a potential defeat in the polls, and probably will outlast the man. Perhaps Trump will be revered as a founder if he is not elevated to some type of holy figure after his death or political defeat. Unless the battle between good and evil is concluded once and for all, new protectors will be needed and found. If the movement succeeds in installing adequate protections for their god in all of government and society, protectors will still be needed to maintain them and fill the positions of power.  
     I felt some hesitation in declaring the new religion to be a bad one, but I did. Perhaps it was my left-leaning background and education. I used to believe that the Bible spoke poorly about other ancient religions as justification for slaughtering those people and taking their land. Or perhaps more charitably, simply as a way for the followers of the Jewish God to distinguish themselves from the surrounding cacophony of faiths. 
     Then it occurred to me that the texts addressed the difficulty of living amongst incompatible faiths. Now, I question, sincerely, whether at least some of those old religions were objectively bad.
     There is some indication that the Jewish God commanded His / Her people to reject the surrounding religions for a reason. What if those other religions worshipped power and excused violence? Maybe their sexual practices were nonconsensual and destructive. At Sinai, when God gave the Israelites detailed rules for living, one theme mentioned repeatedly was not to follow other gods or to bow down to sculpted images. The rules also warned against favoring the wealthy or powerful, mistreating orphans, widows or the stranger. God seemed to know that rules which required consideration of others, especially the powerless, would be challenging. In explaining why the inhabitants of the land would be driven out before the Israelites, God said, “They shall not remain in your land, lest they cause you to sin against Me; for you will serve their gods – and it will prove a snare to you.” (Exodus 23:33.) What was right for the Hivites, Canaanites and Hittites, was perhaps a sin for the Israelites not only for involving other gods, but because the behavior those gods permitted was sinful. 
     I also will not serve the new’ religion’s god, lest I sin. 
     As the High Holy Days approached, I considered the destructiveness of the new religion and resolved to trust God in all of it. My spouse and I had recently fought, but we reconciled in joy and connection. I followed God, and we healed. It is not always that way, of course. Addicts relapse and die, children die, wars rage on. But my experience, this one and others, let me put my trust in Torah. I trusted the words with wild love and found that the words were real. The sacred words changed me and changed my life. The answers are there, have always been there and will, God willing, be there in the future. New religions may come and go but this ancient one holds us and sustains me, Amen.

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