There’s definitely a sort of American Protestant to reactionary Catholic pipeline that I feel hopelessly inoculated against having been raised Episcopalian. Even in the US, there’s too much English irony in the Episcopal demeanor to take too seriously the earnest Augustinian conversion narrative. “Smells and bells” are nice, though.
I think you're the third Episcopalian among my regular readers! I am attracted only to extremes of Catholicism and Protestantism, but they balance each other out, creating an effect of psychic equilibrium similar to irony. (Also ironic: my Protestant side is reactionary, my Catholic side progressive. It's why when I wrote that short story in 2015 about an art-school girl becoming quasi-fascist in the Dimes Square manner, I had her go from cradle-Catholicism to Calvinism!)
Among the churches I've been part of, I've seen this transition most commonly in other bookish young men enchanted with theology and philosophy. Most American Protestant branches don't make as much room for philosophy as Catholicism does, which is a particularly American oversight (see the centuries of Reformed teachings and their thorny partisans). One of my pastors has joked with me that the studious ones who don't become Catholics will likely end up Anglicans. There's a thread there too: several of the post-liberal thinkers I prefer to Vance are Anglicans, rather than Catholics.
Yes, I don't know the specific religious context you mention, but in general I have always suspected the real or apparent Anglo-American lack of philosophy turns many a seeker toward the darker gods of old Europe, instead of turning them to what Anglo-America has always had in place of philosophy, which is poetry. I am mainly thinking about the analytic vs. Continental divide, though, and I trust you that there's a robust Anglican theological tradition. Who are the good Anglican post-liberals?
I'd say Susannah Black Roberts (of Plough), the converted Tara Isabella Burton (her nonfiction rather than her fiction), Bethel McGrew (she's the most conservative of this group), and James K.A. Smith (former editor of Image). They share much with the non-nuts Catholic writers, like a certain social democracy and theo-philosophical critique of modernity, but so far they draw back from the political extent of a Vance, Ahmari, or Deneen.
The specific context is the non-denominational Protestantism Vance likely withdraws from. (In my experience, this status usually applies Baptist-to-Presbyterian practices without naming them.) Curious note about American poetry: Dickinson, Thoreau, and the rest have that religious quality nearing Gnosticism, itself an old near-eastern god we Americans tend to like.
A sociologist might say it's the collegial mode of academia running into the much tougher style of literary journalism! (Not that academics aren't brutal to each other, but it's drier and more subtle; words like "disgusting" are not used.)
There’s definitely a sort of American Protestant to reactionary Catholic pipeline that I feel hopelessly inoculated against having been raised Episcopalian. Even in the US, there’s too much English irony in the Episcopal demeanor to take too seriously the earnest Augustinian conversion narrative. “Smells and bells” are nice, though.
I think you're the third Episcopalian among my regular readers! I am attracted only to extremes of Catholicism and Protestantism, but they balance each other out, creating an effect of psychic equilibrium similar to irony. (Also ironic: my Protestant side is reactionary, my Catholic side progressive. It's why when I wrote that short story in 2015 about an art-school girl becoming quasi-fascist in the Dimes Square manner, I had her go from cradle-Catholicism to Calvinism!)
Only the third? Too bad. The say where there are four Episcopalians you’ll find a fifth.
Among the churches I've been part of, I've seen this transition most commonly in other bookish young men enchanted with theology and philosophy. Most American Protestant branches don't make as much room for philosophy as Catholicism does, which is a particularly American oversight (see the centuries of Reformed teachings and their thorny partisans). One of my pastors has joked with me that the studious ones who don't become Catholics will likely end up Anglicans. There's a thread there too: several of the post-liberal thinkers I prefer to Vance are Anglicans, rather than Catholics.
Yes, I don't know the specific religious context you mention, but in general I have always suspected the real or apparent Anglo-American lack of philosophy turns many a seeker toward the darker gods of old Europe, instead of turning them to what Anglo-America has always had in place of philosophy, which is poetry. I am mainly thinking about the analytic vs. Continental divide, though, and I trust you that there's a robust Anglican theological tradition. Who are the good Anglican post-liberals?
I'd say Susannah Black Roberts (of Plough), the converted Tara Isabella Burton (her nonfiction rather than her fiction), Bethel McGrew (she's the most conservative of this group), and James K.A. Smith (former editor of Image). They share much with the non-nuts Catholic writers, like a certain social democracy and theo-philosophical critique of modernity, but so far they draw back from the political extent of a Vance, Ahmari, or Deneen.
The specific context is the non-denominational Protestantism Vance likely withdraws from. (In my experience, this status usually applies Baptist-to-Presbyterian practices without naming them.) Curious note about American poetry: Dickinson, Thoreau, and the rest have that religious quality nearing Gnosticism, itself an old near-eastern god we Americans tend to like.
A sociologist might say it's the collegial mode of academia running into the much tougher style of literary journalism! (Not that academics aren't brutal to each other, but it's drier and more subtle; words like "disgusting" are not used.)