In Analyzing the Decline of Religion, Expect the Unexpected

When Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend in 1822 that he anticipated the rapid decline of traditional Christian belief in the U.S., he was unaware that a young preacher named Charles Grandison Finney had already set in motion what would later be known as the Second Great Awakening. So observes Ross Douthat in commenting on a recent gathering that may turn out to be significant in the history of American religion:

[A] Christian college in rural Kentucky, Asbury University, has just experienced an old-school revival—a multiweek outpouring that has kept students praying and singing in the school chapel from morning to night, drawn tens of thousands of pilgrims from around the country, captured the imagination of the Internet, and even drawn the attention of the New York Times. . . . [W]hatever the Asbury Revival’s long-term impact, the history of Finney and Jefferson is a reminder that religious history is shaped as much by sudden irruptions as long trajectories, as much by the mystical and personal as by the institutional and sociological.

Secular experts writing about religion tend to emphasize the deep structural forces shaping practice and belief—the effects of industrialization or the scientific revolution, suburbanization or the birth-control pill. Religious intellectuals tend to emphasize theological debates and evangelization strategies. (Should Christians be winsome or combative? Should churches adapt to liberal modernity or resist its blandishments?)

These analytical tools are always important; the sociological doesn’t disappear just because the mystical has suddenly arrived. . . . But the experiences themselves remain irreducibly unpredictable. Why Asbury? Why Saul of Tarsus? Why Charles Grandison Finney?

When it comes to the religious future, you should follow the social trends, but also always expect the unexpected—recognizing that every organized faith could disappear tomorrow and some spiritual encounter would resurrect religion soon enough.

Read more at New York Times

More about: American Religion, Christianity, Decline of religion, Thomas Jefferson

 

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF