The End of Protestantism and Biblical Scientism

The end of Protestantism is ambiguous in a number of ways. We might use it to describe the destination or objective thereof. Alternatively it might imply the end or eschatology of Protestantism. They would be naturally linked anyway. But it more plainly could refer to the cessation, termination and demise of Protestantism. Again, cessation could correspond with the end times or the fulfilment of the covenants they believe in. But Protestantism in the form or its  ‘traditional’ confessional orthodoxy could easily encounter an end in the sense of a demise. That is not to say that other forms of Protestantism are not doing well and expanding rapidly. However the growing brands are different, diverse and usually non-denominational.

If we consider Protestantism as a historical phenomenon primarily based on the European iterations in recognisable structures, the optimism of expansion to the sunny south vanishes in the early morning mist. We can posit an actual end of Protestantism as it was known up to a generation ago especially in Europe. Countries that were traditionally Protestant are no longer so in actuality and may be Protestant in name only. The countries have become secular, those allied to former established churches do not believe in God, the cultural role has been eclipsed and they are simply no longer Protestant. Indeed we could state that predominantly Protestant countries have become, theist, deist, secular, plural and multicultural in an almost consistent progression even to Islam. This same progression may happen eventually to Catholic countries. Granted this has taken a few centuries, but it seems to be the inevitable end. There may be more hope for those groups that remained separate from the state. Nevertheless, Protestant countries end being Protestant and probably Christian. The Catholic might say - that was inevitable! The movement was actually backing away from Christ and not merely Catholicism. At the same time, the contribution of Protestantism’s concentration on the Old Testament may have challenged the Catholic Church positively. The simple critique from the context of power relations might suggest that the links with the Catholic Church were severed for control by princes and royalty.

But then the US will be cited as the context which disproves any idea of inherent decline in addition to the expansion of global Southern Protestantism and vitality of Southern Baptists for example. However, the more likely explanation is that the historical trajectory is a bit longer. That would mean that the European experience of a few centuries would require a bit more time to demonstrate or disprove the hypothesis. Thus the US is not an exception or even an example that refutes the hypothesis but rather another candidate which will come to such a conclusion. Why would this be? What might explain this apparently inevitable progression?

If the argument that princes controlled the destiny of the churches is valid, then we might look for similar relationships in republican or constitutional democratic contexts. If that argument is valid, then the implications are that control of Protestantism was a useful tactic in an historical trajectory. When the purpose is complete, the pretence can be dispensed with. The intensive, consistent and massive closure of Protestant churches in Europe demonstrates that the motive power has gone. Already in the 1960’s Marxists had begun to take over the institutions. That has been studied in countries like Sweden. Such a phenomenon did not obviously trouble the state.

In the United States, the subjugation of Protestantism to the military-industrial complex is patently obvious. The surprise for me about the public surprise about Ted Cruz’s revelation of his perceived Christian commitment to intervention in the Middle East, was that people were surprised at all. Since the 19th century and the Great Game between the Russian and British Empires, an imperial imprint was put on religious interpretation within Protestantism and afterwards affected ideas of Atlanticist intervention in the Middle East. There are strange tinges of British-Israelism which portrays the British as being among the lost tribes of Israel. Protestantism has hitched its wagon to an heretical interpretation of the Bible and end times which came from an imperial-infused reading thereof and justifies present intervention. The construction of the Rapture which has tens of millions of adherents is part of this as well as the annotation of the Bible (here I talk about the Rapture and John Nelson Darby). Some generally see this as part of the end times. Other sees it as hastening the end times. Eventually it will lead to the end of Protestantism, quicker than it might have been. This will happen because the globalist goals were achieved or because they spectacularly fail.

Part of this movement may be described in terms of scientism. The milieu from which certain fairly radical Protestant doctrines emerged corresponded with an internal imperial movement towards science and secularism. Scientism is a description of extension of science beyond the range of its utility and capacity into a claim to knowledge it does not possess and authority it never had. I have described this as the Empire of Scientism. By analogy we might say that we also had the rise of a pseudo-Christian cult paradoxically based on the Old Testament. This purported to find new messages particularly about the end times through a close reading that most church fathers had missed for nearly two millennia. We could say that this involved a type of Biblical Scientism which was equally spurious. It referred to an existing corpus but extrapolated beyond its scope with the appearance of care and comprehensive analysis. This Biblical Scientism was a product of empire, consciously and unconsciously, and was useful for leverage of foreign policy when Britain had become more interested in the Middle East. That leverage would continue through the Atlanticist bridge and a shadow of the New Atlantis of Francis Bacon with its scientific utopia. We begin to find this crossover manifest in an odd present preoccupation with the Temple, King Solomon and possession of Jerusalem. The Western esoteric background behind the neo-imperial expansion and return to ancient lands, including Babylon seems to piggy-back and be parasitic on a Protestant deviation. It will be the end of Protestantism, as we know it. With the Gospel of Empire transmuted into a globalist campaign, Protestantism will lose its soul. False theology, empire and pseudo-science merge in induced or accelerated apocalypse and Antichrist delivered by intellectual Caesarian section. The protest against an ecclesiastical empire was procured by princes to produce a theological narrative that could be twisted paradoxically into the present policy of neo-imperialism, following imperialism inspired with commercial contributions from Calvinism to become not just not Catholic but not Christian and even not Protestant. The journey through the Pillars of Hercules that Bacon indicates is not just a tale of prospective Atlantic and American domination but an indication of crossing the esoteric boundary beyond rationality and certainly beyond the presumed Protestantism that was wrongly presumed to be the presupposition of the whole, colonial enterprise.