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Entry: Post-Christian America Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/post_christian_america#27647 Post contents: Both Buchanan in his article and most of the commentators talk about "Western Christian tradition." Please, please, please, do pay attention to the crucially important detail that over its history Christianity has several times changed drastically. Furthermore, as Christians at the time noted quite emphatically, some of those changes were very significant indeed. A summary of one of these changes, the total reinterpretation of Christianity's message that took place in the late medieval period, can be found in the last two chapters of Peter Burke's "Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe." Luke Landtroop's description of the duty to hate the sin and not the sinner points to one source of changes, because the description rises several questions: 1) what are the sins that have to be hated? 2) how do you detect those sins in yourself and in others? 3) by what methods do you overcome the sins and develop a hatred of them? 4) how can you detect that you really hate the sins? 5) how can you make sure your hatred of sin does not grow excessive and in itself become sinful (keep in mind that hatred is a mortal sin)? The importance of the above questions can be seen in modern America: what Christians traditionally regarded as the sin of pride is in today's American religion -- particularly in Protestantism -- thought to be the virtue of self-esteem. What used to be the virtue of humility has totally disappeared from modern religious morality. (How humble are the dispensationalists?) The change is quite impressive indeed, since in the Bible pride is the sin of the devil, and Christ emphasized humility in both his teaching and in the role-model he set by his actions. In the 20th century, American "christianity" abandoned Christianity's central moral ideals. Sent at: 2008 11 20