(Hi, I’m Wood. I’m a friend of Bob’s. Bob asked me if I’d like to contribute to his fine blog. I’m British. That doesn’t make a bad person. Right?)

So. I came across this fascinating post from an alumnus of a seminary who has concluded that the Christianity espoused by the Religious Right in your fine country is not, in fact, Christianity, but is in actuality a bizarre folk religion.

Read it at God School: Christianity vs. American Christianity.

Go for it; look at it phenomenologically, look at it sociologically, and what do you see? Basically a syncretic folk religion, based primarily on American nationalism, an expression of the “pervasive religious dimension of American political life”… Its purposes are basically civil and political. Its morality is taken from a highly selective and individualistic reading of the Old Testament, and it mixes in bits of consumerism, Zionism, Republican political values, and corporatism for good measure. Add to this an almost romantic sentimentality concerning the person of Jesus, much like the contribution of Catholicism to Vodou religions, and suddenly it all makes sense.

More people need to read this. If only because it’ll wind them up. But from this outsider’s view, it seems really quite convincing.

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