Commentary on "What Is Identitarian Religion?"

My commentary below on an interesting essay: http://www.radixjournal.com/blog/2014/3/27/what-is-identitarian-religion

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The article begins by recounting that an internet friend of the author, a self-identified "Trad Catholic," has left the Church because of the liberalism of his parish priest. Whatever the true details of this story, the very act of apostasy reveals that "Trad Catholicism" was merely a political label or at best a self-imposed identity, rooted only in the lightest sense in supernatural Faith, for there are few sins greater than deliberate apostasy.

The article notes the modern evolution of Christianity in its two main forms, one outside the West (especially in Africa and South America) and one within the West, which is dominated by "Cultural Marxism." These observations are astute and as far as I can tell accurate.

The author cites the well-known biologist E.O. Wilson's comment that religion is adaptive from an evolutionary standpoint, providing multiple benefits to the social cohesion of a group. Modern Western Christianity is "maladaptive" because of its complete assimilation and equation with Marxism through the philosophical impetus of the Hegelian dialectic and the principle of immanence, by which man judges all values himself.

The conclusion: the author sounds a return to "ethno-religion," the combination of an acceptance of the hard reality of "race" in defining social groups as well as religion. The historical support is that the vast majority of humans have fallen within this group. I am not sure of the legitimacy of this "fact," but let's assume it is true for the moment.

The author continues with this line of reasoning: "But the question here is whether competing forms of Western identitarian religion can get along. Within the larger framework of Western identitarian religion, can, for example, Identitarian Christians and Pagans coexist. I don’t see why not."

And even further: "And what of identitarian atheists and agnostics? Can they co-exist with identitarian religion? Since identitarian religion is not at odds with nature, and thus not at odds with evolutionary science, it does not threaten secular knowledge but offers itself as an additional societal glue." (Source)

Something has gone terribly wrong from the perspective of objective truth. The core of Christianity is faith in a supernatural reality, independent of any construction of the mind or for the purposes of any social cohesion or evolutionary fitness. God exists as a Trinity, and this Trinity has revealed itself specifically in Jesus Christ, God and man. If this is true, paganism is false. If this is true, atheism and agnosticism are false. These facts have political and social consequences, particularly in human relations and the ordering of society.

But the point of the article is not a return to true religion, but it merely adapts religion under the broader category of pragmatic truth, the truth that works, according to the pragmatists. This conception of truth follows immediately from the philosophical acceptance of evolution and Hegelianism. Religion is seen as useful and perfectly compatible with atheists/agnostics/neo-pagans in a libertarian commune and hence is stripped of the absolutely core question: is it true? Regardless of its social usefulness, is it true beyond the feelings, beliefs, and perceptions of finite minds?

Hence we return to the so-called "Trad Catholic." This person did not sufficiently consider the fundamental question: is it true? And therefore, he did not beg God for the grace of perseverance because to him, whatever the details of his belief may have been, we can at least say they were not sufficiently rooted in reality, supernatural reality.

This brings us, at last, to the irony of this article. In condemning cultural Marxism, the article itself adopts the very philosophical foundations that make Marxism possible: philosophical evolution, Hegelianism, immanentism, and all the trappings of Enlightenment epistemology. How, then, can "ethno-religion" be a true solution to the problem of the decline of religion in the modern West?

The answer: it cannot.

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Source: Alfred W. Clark, "What Is Identitarian Religion?," Radix blog, March 24, 2014, accessed February 2, 2017, http://www.radixjournal.com/blog/2014/3/27/what-is-identitarian-religion.