You never see these obnoxious nerds converting to Lutheranism or whatever, it's always Catholicism or less often some form of Orthodox Christianity because they want to imagine themselves as DnD paladins
Counterpoint, the absolute least favorite person I have the dissatisfaction of knowing is both a virulent race science dweeb but also a Methodist. And like a good Methodist too, specifically into Methodism or whatever the fuck. I've known some pretty based methodists, episcopalians, and presbyterians though.
They are looking for a illiberal ideology, so they turn towards branches of Christianity that predate liberalism. Protestantism is just liberalized Christianity, after all.
There's something to be said for them choosing the feudal aesthetic fascist fundamentalism over the settler-colonialism aesthetic fascist fundamentalism. For tech nerds and their hangers on, including the R rationalists, this tracks as more exotic and magical (which considering the shallowness of their lives, it gives them rituals to do) than the coffee bar mega church that is targeting lower and upper middle class people to build a petit bourgeois minded death cult.
Yeah, Evangelical movements are slop for hooting and hollering peasant morons like Chris Pratt, not for cool & edgy dark intellectuals like these people
The complex theology at least partially accounts for it. When you can't rationalise your chuddery through science you can usually find some extremely cranky catholic theologian who was considered heretical at the time but was boosted so that Pius IX could dunk on the guy who stole his country.
Yeah, it seems to have at least something to do with the crowds these people run with. It looks like Libresco is closely associated with a bunch of Catholic sugar-daddy-funded make-work "journals" (First Things, Crisis), at least partly through her husband. I don't know if that came before or after her conversion. There is a definite "type" here: the Breunigs, quasi-paleocons like Damon Linker, radtrads like Andrew Bacevich, etc. You see it even in the pop culture with the very public conversion of Dasha from Red Scare. It's probably an aesthetic preference as least as much as an intellectual conversion, but it's not just aesthetics for most of them. Protestant fundamentalism has become anti-intellectual to the point of hostility toward any form of higher education. So radtrad Catholicism and nonsense like ROCOR (Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, basically Orthodox radtrad-ism) are really the only options for the educated. I think Rod Dreher eventually joined ROCOR after leaving Catholicism.
Simple ego probably drives people like this as well. Libresco is a rising "star" on Catholic networks like EWTN. She is now on the tradcath/radtrad speaking circuit and playing the prodigal daughter on Catholic TV.
You never see these obnoxious nerds converting to Lutheranism or whatever, it's always Catholicism or less often some form of Orthodox Christianity because they want to imagine themselves as DnD paladins
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Catholicism is unironically better than any branch of American Protestantism*
*Methodism not included
edit: I am not very familiar with Lutheranism, but I am fairly confident it is better than Catholicism but it is very much not American.
Counterpoint, the absolute least favorite person I have the dissatisfaction of knowing is both a virulent race science dweeb but also a Methodist. And like a good Methodist too, specifically into Methodism or whatever the fuck. I've known some pretty based methodists, episcopalians, and presbyterians though.
I can't be certain having never met them but I'm guessing the race science part is the most objectionable.
Quakers have their moments. And I have a soft spot for Mennonites despite a lot of horrible takes.
I would describe the type of mainstream Lutheranism the average Finnish person grows up with as mild and mostly inoffensive
There's female priests and they don't even hate gay people that much
The songs we had to sing in religious school morning assemblies were very lame and cringe though
They are looking for a illiberal ideology, so they turn towards branches of Christianity that predate liberalism. Protestantism is just liberalized Christianity, after all.
There's something to be said for them choosing the feudal aesthetic fascist fundamentalism over the settler-colonialism aesthetic fascist fundamentalism. For tech nerds and their hangers on, including the R rationalists, this tracks as more exotic and magical (which considering the shallowness of their lives, it gives them rituals to do) than the coffee bar mega church that is targeting lower and upper middle class people to build a petit bourgeois minded death cult.
Yeah, Evangelical movements are slop for hooting and hollering peasant morons like Chris Pratt, not for cool & edgy dark intellectuals like these people
The complex theology at least partially accounts for it. When you can't rationalise your chuddery through science you can usually find some extremely cranky catholic theologian who was considered heretical at the time but was boosted so that Pius IX could dunk on the guy who stole his country.
Yeah, it seems to have at least something to do with the crowds these people run with. It looks like Libresco is closely associated with a bunch of Catholic sugar-daddy-funded make-work "journals" (First Things, Crisis), at least partly through her husband. I don't know if that came before or after her conversion. There is a definite "type" here: the Breunigs, quasi-paleocons like Damon Linker, radtrads like Andrew Bacevich, etc. You see it even in the pop culture with the very public conversion of Dasha from Red Scare. It's probably an aesthetic preference as least as much as an intellectual conversion, but it's not just aesthetics for most of them. Protestant fundamentalism has become anti-intellectual to the point of hostility toward any form of higher education. So radtrad Catholicism and nonsense like ROCOR (Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, basically Orthodox radtrad-ism) are really the only options for the educated. I think Rod Dreher eventually joined ROCOR after leaving Catholicism.
Simple ego probably drives people like this as well. Libresco is a rising "star" on Catholic networks like EWTN. She is now on the tradcath/radtrad speaking circuit and playing the prodigal daughter on Catholic TV.