- I got angry but I understood him.
The evangelic branch of the Lutheran faith found a good soil in Germany. One of the advantages of the Lutheran religion is that it lowers the standards abruptly. In fact, the main reason for its creation was the simple fact that Catholic faith seemed too complicated, too uppity for the reemerging trade bourgeoisie. Catholicism firmly detached God from the flock and placed him into the Gothic Cathedral. A person had to go there and listen to all those Latin litanies. Then there was an issue of commitments and donations with no control. Also Catholic Church required education and promoted a sense of conscience and a strive for change to become better. At the meantime the whole point of becoming a merchant, a burger was not to become anything else, to remain who you are. Money was becoming the only criteria; it pushed away morals and honor. The new way of faith adjusted to it- it placed God firmly at the service ot the flock, made him a property. You could have God for yourself only and your riches could be associated with the perception that God serves you quite well. God blesses your deals and your coffers, He watches over you and you are in control up to donations and commitments.
For the country full of small merchants such convenient philosophy was truly a gift from God. From now on God was embedded into the egoism. A person was free of all obligations but to thyself.
It did not happen in one night. I attribute it to the huge influx of Germans to the New World somewhere in the 18th -- 19th Centuries. In fact, you can call the German immigration one of the most organized ones- there were agencies, routes defined, places to go to. John O'Hara defines inner Pennsylvania as a German Coutnry but so is North Dakota. The vast majority of those Germans were small merchants and craftsmen, the people under the same general name of Michel as they were called in the Old Country. Those Michels brought with them their convenient evangelical Jesus, the best immigrant of all. He was simple, understandable, accessible and cheap. It spread like a fire especially during the great events of the 19th Century. No matter who the person was by denomination -- Jewish, Catholic, Lutheran or Moslem- the covenant of God helping you in your efforts to become successful took over completely and became a primary IDEOLOGY of the new emerging empire and its citizens. They needed the feeling that God was with them in whether they massacred Indians or built the Hoover Dam. They needed no doubts. They needed an unconditional support. No wonder they called this country The Country of God. They wanted God to live here. I was always wondering how did Union and Confederacy coped that controversy until I saw Pat Robertson- a German to the core. The matter is solved.
Germanization of this nation is a great equalizer. Racce does not matter. They can show us black folks dancing in their churches as something very original. That is because they do not know about Passion of Jesus shows in the medieval Germany ( they still do that in Bavaria). There they sing songs, dance and perform every year. It is a tradition. Of course, here , the African heritage added its flavor to the boredom of the German Almighty but the essence stays the same.
Not only German Jesus proved Himself great for the US masses; he sold Himself to the Elite big time. He was and is first and foremost God of obedience and humility in front of authority. Every person knows that it is very difficult to obey another person; it is much easier to obey God. So God is associated with that another person -- when you obey your boss you obey God, follow His rules. It is my suspicion that the religious spiritual soup fed to the African slaves here was predominantly evangelic; it is unlikely any black slave- child received a Catholic communion. Evangelical Christ was OK with slavery the same as He was OK with anything; no commitment, remember? As in France they said that the bourgeoisie was everything, in the US it transformed into a "salesperson is God', and who are we all here but salespeople?
Whoever read the great book "To Kill a Mockingbird' might have noticed how the seemingly religious town of Maycomb did not pay much attention to God. The great world of God for the Humanity did not exist for those people. It is because they thought that God lived there, in that town. They did not have to go seek Him. In fact such attitude is pagan. Historical Chronicles tell us about the pagan mountain tribes in Caucasus who when they were introduced to Christ, merely included Him into the group of mountain Gods they worshiped. From that moment he became a tribesGod and resided on some High Mountain from which He looked at them. They did not need to go to the Cathedral- it was all there.
US is one of the least religious places in the world. It is the revenge of this Land. It belonged to pagans. When the newcomers destroyed those pagans the Land in her fury transformed their original faith into pseudo- faith, made it pagan, reduced Jesus to a symbol, a totem. The people of the US are truly born again but they are born again at the Pet Sematary from Stephen King's novel. They are resurrected as pagans.
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