{"id":8122,"date":"2020-06-07T08:50:54","date_gmt":"2020-06-07T14:50:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=8122"},"modified":"2020-06-07T08:50:54","modified_gmt":"2020-06-07T14:50:54","slug":"america-in-the-aftermath-of-george-floyd-between-paganism-and-christianity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=8122","title":{"rendered":"America in the Aftermath of George Floyd: Between Paganism and Christianity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joshua Mitchell<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Most of human history is pagan. The advent of Christianity is a relatively recent affair. Some say Christianity is now receding. Some say Christianity has not yet fully taken hold. Is secularism taking hold? Is paganism reemerging? Do we live in a strange time characterized by a return to paganism, though with Christian characteristics? Whichever account is correct has implications for America in the aftermath of George Floyd\u2019s death.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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The pagan world was the world of many gods, each associated with a people who made payments and sacrifices to their gods. Rousseau wrote in <\/span>The Social Contract<\/em> <\/span>that when pagan nations battled other pagan nations, soldiers did not battle soldiers; rather, gods battled gods. Hence, the cathartic rage of pagan wars.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Christianity toppled the pagan world. The cathartic rage of war, Christians argued, in which one nation purged another, could not solve the problem of man\u2019s stain, which was <\/span>original<\/em>, a term we no longer really understand. <\/span>Original<\/em> <\/span>sin means that sin is always already there, <\/span>prior<\/em> <\/span>to a person being born into membership of <\/span>this<\/em> <\/span>nation or <\/span>that<\/em> <\/span>nation. What this means is that blood rage <\/span>cannot<\/em> <\/span>expiate stain; the sins of <\/span>my people<\/em> <\/span>can no longer be purged by cathartic rage toward <\/span>your people<\/em>, and vice versa. That is why Rousseau concluded that Christianity had ruined politics, and had produced a civilization of pacifists, whose rage toward other nations could not be enkindled for the purpose of war. If you doubt this, ponder the fact that Christianity developed a \u201cdoctrine of just war,\u201d according to which cathartic rage <\/span>could not be <\/span><\/em>reason enough to go to war.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Against the backdrop of pagan history, Christianity is revolutionary, not evolutionary. The evolution of paganism, had it occurred, would have brought about novel forms of cathartic rage toward other peoples. Christianity declared that no matter what evolutionary \u201cadvance\u201d paganism might bring, it could never adequately address the problem of man\u2019s stain. Christianity was revolutionary because it declared that we must look elsewhere than toward others, with cathartic rage, to expiate our stains. That \u201celsewhere\u201d is divine, not mortal. Only through Christ, the divine scapegoat, who \u201ctakes upon himself the sins of the world\u201d (John 1:29), can man be cleansed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joshua Mitchell: Most of human history is pagan. The advent of Christianity is a relatively recent affair. Some say Christianity is now receding. Some say Christianity has not yet fully taken hold. Is secularism taking hold? Is paganism reemerging? Do we live in a strange time characterized by a return to paganism, though with Christian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8122"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8122"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8123,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8122\/revisions\/8123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}