Are Americans Religious Secularists?

Americans are and always have been religious secularists; we inherited this from British Protestants who, just before they colonized America, colonized nearby Ireland; they did this brutally and efficiently so they could have more wheat and meat.

The secularization of the American church deeply troubles Rod Dreher, a conservative Catholic.  So Dreher wrote a book on the problem and the solution called The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation.  Dreher says:  "Christians today may think we stand in opposition to secular culture, but in truth we are as much creatures of our own time as secular people are."  American Christians are secular Christians.

Dreher is strong on philosophy---ideas have consequences; strong on the history of the church; strong on family and community.  But he is a terrible sociologist; he ignores the biblical imperatives of love and justice; he ignores the church's neglect of love and justice.

At one time in the West, everything was God-centered; slowly but surely the West became man-centered, secular.

Americans are religious secularists who worship God on Sunday but who live as secularists the other six days.  But even their worship of God may be tainted by secularism.

Though American Christians created the fiction that they came to America to create a Christian nation, and most believe this fiction, from near the beginning of colonization in the 1600s, the real goal quickly became the elimination of Native Americans and the enslavement of Africans.

As with the Jewish Pharisees, Americans chose "full of greed. . . .and neglect of justice and the love of God."  See Luke 11:40-42.  American chose prosperity and privilege based on ethnocentrism and oppression.  At the very same time, they were building churches on nearly every block, building Christian colleges where they trained more religious secularists.  These colleges have not created a theology of oppression, a desperately needed theology, nor a NT theology of justice.

Some American theists engaged in the slave trade and slavery; some American deists engaged is the slave trade and slavery.  Theists did not stop slavery at the founding of our country; instead they legitimated it.

White American Christians prize their prosperity and privilege, so much so that they self-righteously refuse to repent and restitute, repair and rebuild the damage their oppression has caused.

Dreher admits that the church is secular, implying that secularism seduced the church; wrong, the church chose to mix individualistic, materialistic secularism with religion.