Why communist China is terrified of a New York-based dance company



For more than a century, the Chinese Communist Party has sought total ideological dominance in China and has never hesitated to persecute those who step out of line — even those outside the mainland. The CCP, an authoritarian force with no tolerance for dissent within its own ranks, has launched a ruthless campaign against Shen Yun, a New York-based dance and music company that portrays and celebrates 5,000 years of traditional Chinese culture — before communism.

The CCP’s obsession with controlling the cultural narrative is rooted in its history and ideology — and is essential to its survival. Since seizing power in 1949, through Mao Zedong’s reign of terror that killed tens of millions and impoverished hundreds of millions, the CCP has worked systematically to dismantle traditional Chinese values that once defined the nation’s cultural fabric.

While the CCP claims to be the sole guardian of Chinese civilization, Shen Yun debunks this myth by showing the real China before communism.

The Chinese Communist Party embraced the concept of “Year Zero,” a radical idea first implemented by Mao’s Cambodian ally, Pol Pot. Under this doctrine, everything that existed before the communist revolution was considered corrupt and had to be erased. Acknowledging that prerevolutionary society had any merit threatened the very premise of the regime’s legitimacy.

This systematic rewriting of history and destruction of culture reached its peak during Mao’s Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. Communist authorities dismantled traditions, purged intellectuals, and turned families against each other. Universities became arenas for ideological warfare, where those labeled as enemies of the revolution faced public humiliation and violence. Chaos and brutality followed, leaving a society fractured in the name of ideological purity.

Communism can’t create culture

The CCP’s “forced” culture is contradictory to the very definition of culture itself. Culture is the collective result of the shared beliefs, values, behaviors, and the joint creations of millions of individuals — not something a top-down authority can manufacture.

Shen Yun, founded in 2006 by Falun Gong practitioners in the United States, directly challenges the CCP’s false and deadly narrative through the classical arts. The group’s performances are the only efforts to revive 5,000 years of traditional dance that the Cultural Revolution sought to erase. The CCP initiated a campaign to persecute the Falun Gong in 1999, and it has only expanded and intensified since.

Performing in over 150 cities globally, Shen Yun’s performances revive pre-communist Chinese culture, emphasizing spiritual depth and moral values that the CCP wants erased. The vision of China before communism that Shen Yun presents undermines the entire premise of the CCP’s necessity — and exposes it as a deadly force in the process.

While the CCP claims to be the sole guardian of Chinese civilization, Shen Yun debunks this myth by showing the real China before communism. The CPP’s “culture” is revealed for what it is: a perversion of thousands of years of history.

Shen Yun’s mission goes beyond artistic expression; it is a cultural and ideological counterpoint to the CCP’s worldview. Weaving together classical Chinese dance, music, and storytelling, while also portraying the CCP’s human rights abuses — including organ harvesting and suppression of dissent — strikes at the heart of the party’s efforts to whitewash its record.

Media toes Beijing’s line

Unable to suppress Shen Yun directly within China, where it is banned, the CCP has turned to a multifaceted disinformation strategy and influence operations abroad.

Western media has become a key weapon in China’s arsenal — notably the New York Times. Once a target of CCP censorship, the Times has recently pivoted to align with Beijing’s interests, publishing articles in 2024 that attack Shen Yun with dubious claims and inaccuracies. These pieces, penned by reporter Nicole Hong, allege financial misconduct and cult-like behavior within Shen Yun — accusations the performing arts group has firmly rebutted as “riddled with inaccuracies.”

The CCP’s involvement in these attacks is undeniable. Jennifer Zeng, a well-known blogger and whistleblower, exposed a key connection: Hong’s father serves as a director of a CCP United Front organization, a group dedicated to expanding the party’s influence abroad. This link raises serious concerns that Hong’s reporting may serve as a vehicle for CCP propaganda.

The suspicion grows stronger when considering the Times’ evolving stance on Beijing, which softened after years of restricted access in China. Adding to the controversy, a former Shen Yun artist cited in Hong’s articles publicly rejected the Times’ portrayal, accusing the outlet of distorting his words to fit a predetermined narrative.

The CCP’s efforts go beyond media manipulation. Using diplomatic threats and economic leverage, it has actively pressured foreign governments and theaters to cancel Shen Yun performances. These tactics align with the party’s larger objective of silencing Shen Yun and preventing it from reaching global audiences. Every performance contradicts the CCP’s claim that its rule embodies the height of Chinese civilization.

The CCP’s assault on Shen Yun is not merely about one performing arts group; it is a microcosm of a larger struggle over who defines Chinese identity. By reviving a cultural heritage that predates and transcends communism, Shen Yun offers an alternative to the CCP’s vision — one that honors spirituality, freedom, and human dignity.

For the CCP, controlling the cultural narrative is a matter of survival, and its determination to control it reveals its insecurity. How weak is the CCP’s ideology if it can be threatened this much by the performing arts?

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Eyes everywhere: The AI surveillance state looms



Rapid advancements in artificial intelligence have produced extraordinary innovation, but they also raise significant concerns. Powerful AI systems may already be shaping our culture, identities, and reality. As technology continues to advance, we risk losing control over how these systems influence us. We must urgently consider AI’s growing role in manipulating society and recognize that we may already be vulnerable.

At a recent event at Princeton University, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt warned that society is unprepared for the profound changes AI will bring. Discussing his recent book, “Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit,” Schmidt said AI could reshape how individuals form their identities, threatening culture, autonomy, and democracy. He emphasized that “most people are not ready” for AI’s widespread impact and noted that governments and societal systems lack preparation for these challenges.

In countries already compromising privacy, AI’s proliferation could usher in an omnipotent state where freedoms become severely restricted.

Schmidt wasn’t just talking about potential military applications; he was talking about individuals’ incorporation of AI into their daily lives. He suggested that future generations could be influenced by AI systems acting as their closest companions.

“What if your best friend isn’t human?” Schmidt asked, highlighting how AI-driven entities could replace human relationships, especially for children. He warned that this interaction wouldn’t be passive but could actively shape a child’s worldview — potentially with a cultural or political bias. If these AI entities become embedded in daily life as educational tools, digital companions, or social media curators, they could wield unprecedented power to shape individual identity.

This idea echoes remarks made by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in 2023, when he speculated about the potential for AI systems to control or manipulate content on platforms like Twitter (now X).

“How would we know if, like, on Twitter we were mostly having LLMs direct the … whatever’s flowing through that hive mind?” Altman asked, suggesting it might be impossible for users to detect whether the content they see — whether trending topics or newsfeed items — was curated by an AI system with an agenda.

He called this a “real danger,” underscoring AI’s capacity to subtly — and without detection — manipulate public discourse, choosing which stories and events gain attention and which remain buried.

Reshaping thought, amplifying outrage

The influence of AI is not limited to identity alone; it can also extend to the shaping of political and cultural landscapes.

In its 2019 edition of the Global Risks Report, the World Economic Forum emphasizes how mass data collection, advanced algorithms, and AI pose serious risks to individual autonomy. A section of the report warns how AI and algorithms can be used effectively to monitor and shape our behaviors, often without our knowledge or consent.

The report highlights that AI has the potential to create “new forms of conformity and micro-targeted persuasion,” pushing individuals toward specific political or cultural ideologies. As AI becomes more integrated into our daily lives, it could make individuals more susceptible to radicalization. Algorithms can identify emotionally vulnerable people, feeding them content tailored to manipulate their emotions and sway their opinions, potentially fueling division and extremism.

We have already seen the devastating impact of similar tactics in the realm of social media. In many cases, these platforms use AI to curate content that amplifies outrage, stoking polarization and undermining democratic processes. The potential for AI to further this trend — whether in influencing elections, radicalizing individuals, or suppressing dissent — represents a grave threat to the social fabric of modern democratic societies.

In more authoritarian settings, governments could use AI to tighten control by monitoring citizens’ every move. By tracking, analyzing, and predicting human actions, AI fosters an environment ripe for totalitarian regimes to grow.

In countries already compromising privacy, AI’s proliferation could usher in an omnipotent surveillance state where freedoms become severely restricted.

Navigating the AI frontier

As AI continues to advance at an unprecedented pace, we must remain vigilant. Society needs to address the growing potential for AI to influence culture, identity, and politics, ensuring that these technologies are not used for manipulation or control. Governments, tech companies, and civil society must work together to create strong ethical frameworks for AI development and deployment that are devoid of political agendas and instead embrace individual liberty and autonomy.

The challenges are complex, but the stakes are high. Schmidt, Altman, and others in the tech industry have raised alarms, and it is crucial that we heed their warnings before AI crosses an irreversible line. We need to establish global norms that safeguard privacy and autonomy, promoting transparency in how AI systems are used and ensuring that individuals retain agency over their own lives and beliefs.

When Romanians went to work on Christmas Day



Most Americans get Christmas Day off, but it wasn’t like that for embattled Romanians back in 1989. Under Stalinist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, Romania was one of the most oppressive states in the world, practically on the level of Enver Hoxha’s Albania. Ceaușescu bulldozed churches and banned the celebration of Christmas.

In the city of Timisoara, Ceaușescu's Securitate attacked pastor Laszlo Tokes for criticizing the regime, and on December 17, 1989, the people organized an anti-government demonstration. Ceaușescu ordered his forces to fire on the crowds, killing nearly 100 protesters. Mass protests broke out across the country, and this time, the military sided with the people.

Totalitarians believe they can get away with murder, but sometimes the people prove victorious.

Ceaușescu fled in a helicopter, but the pilot forced a landing and soldiers took him into custody. Nicolae and wife Elena were swiftly tried for crimes against humanity and sentenced to death.

On Christmas Day, an elite unit led the pair toward an outdoor toilet block in a courtyard. Nicolae sang the “Internationale” while Elena shrieked filth at a soldier, who hauled off and smashed her face. The troops then stood the pair against a wall, set their Kalashnikovs on full automatic, and opened fire. Unlike the bloody scene in Timisoara, the rifle reports came as tidings of comfort and joy.

For the first time in decades, Romanians openly celebrated Christmas, and the next year, the nation held free elections. Too bad that the vile Ceaușescu was the only Stalinist dictator who got what he deserved.

Josef Stalin, murderer of more than 20 million, died of a heart attack on March 5, 1953. According to “The Black Book of Communism,” Mao Zedong’s genocidal campaigns claimed more than 60 million victims. China’s “Great Helmsman” died peacefully on September 9, 1976, at the age of 82.

Albania’s Enver Hoxha died of complications from diabetes on April 11, 1985, at the age of 76. Erich Honecker, communist dictator of the German Democratic Republic and builder of the Berlin Wall, died of cancer in Chile on May 29, 1994, at the age of 81.

Khmer Rouge dictator Pol Pot, whose campaign of genocide took down nearly 2 million innocents, about 21% of the population, died in his sleep on April 15, 1998. Sado-Stalinist Fidel Castro, darling of American leftists, passed away peacefully on November 25, 2016, at the age of 90.

Totalitarians believe they can get away with murder, but sometimes the people prove victorious. As Americans celebrate in freedom, they might recall Romania’s Kalashnikov Christmas, and in the new year take a lesson from Milan Kundera in “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.” In all nations, at all times, the struggle against tyranny is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

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Reductio ad Hitlerum: Why ‘Trump is Hitler’ isn’t just empty rhetoric



Hillary Clinton’s mentor, Saul Alinsky, preached a cardinal rule of the left: to accuse opponents of precisely what they are doing. The former first lady recently accused Donald Trump of being Adolf Hitler, a charge repeated by leading Democrats, with Kamala Harris defaulting to the boilerplate “fascist.” The reductio ad Hitlerum was once the last rhetorical refuge for someone losing an argument, like a drunk at the end of the bar. Over time, the Hitler slander became politicians’ first resort, serving several valuable purposes.

Demonizing someone as Hitler is a justification for violence against them. On July 13, a 20-year-old with no tactical experience somehow evaded the Secret Service, gained access to a rooftop fewer than 150 yards from the stage where Trump was speaking, and fired eight shots, grazing Trump’s ear, killing rally attendee Corey Comperatore, and wounding two others.

For coincidence theorists, it’s all pure happenstance. In reality, the Trump-as-Hitler jihad signals a convergence going back nearly a century.

Common enemies

Consider the account of British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, author of the magisterial “Chronicles of Wasted Time.” In the early 1930s, Muggeridge visited the Soviet Union as the Moscow correspondent of the London Guardian but planned to remain as a partisan of the communist regime. Joseph Stalin’s forced famine in Ukraine, which claimed millions of lives, changed the journalist’s mind but inspired Hitler. As Muggeridge explained, Soviet communism and German national socialism were essentially Slavic and Germanic versions of the same tyranny. This was confirmed by a distinguished resident of Hitler’s regime.

Hans-Jurgen Massaquoi was born in Hamburg in 1926 to a Liberian father and a German mother. More than half a century later, as a naturalized American citizen, Massaquoi wrote “Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany,” a remarkable account first published in 1999 and now more relevant than ever.

Barred from university, Massaquoi read James Fenimore Cooper, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Miguel de Cervantes, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain, Victor Hugo, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Such authors became an “indispensable survival tool” against “constant racist attacks.” Massaquoi survived because “unlike Jews, blacks were few in number and relegated to low-priority status.”

For supporters of Biden and Harris, people who want the nation to be great are deplorables — the Untermenschen — and this lays the groundwork for violence against them.

The German National Socialists hailed their virtue and blasted communist evil, but Massaquoi found their propaganda “a distortion of facts.” The truth was, “in their many bloody clashes for dominance in Germany, the Nazis and Commies were virtually indistinguishable. Both were totalitarians, ever ready to brutalize to crush resistance to their respective ideologies.”

And they did.

The 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact divvied up Europe between the regimes, which both invaded Poland in September 1939, starting World War II. During the Pact, Stalin handed German Jews directly to Hitler’s Gestapo. For details, see “Under Two Dictators: Prisoner of Stalin and Hitler” by Margarete Buber-Neumann. After the war, Stalin swung the people of the USSR back to their habitual anti-Semitism, branding Jews “rootless cosmopolitans.” That was also the case in the communist regimes of Eastern Europe.

Witness theSlansky show trial in Czechoslovakia with its 11 executions. As director Robert Rossen (known for “All the King’s Men”) testified to Congress, the victims “were all hung, in my opinion, for being Jews and nothing else.”

Anti-Semitism remained a component of the left in the 20th century, culminating in its collaboration with Islamic terrorism. For example, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine deployed the “Che Guevara Group Brigade” to hijack an Air France flight in 1976 that wound up taking hostages to Idi Amin’s Uganda. The Che Guevara squad consisted of two Arabs andGermans Wilfried Bose and Brigitte Kuhlmann, who were also members of a leftist group called the Revolutionary Cells. The Baader-Meinhof group, another leftist German terrorist organization, showed similar tendencies.

The late Christopher Hitchens could easily imagine Andreas Baader as “an enthusiastic member of the Brownshirts.” Some members were recruited at the University of Heidelberg’s Socialist Patients Collective. One of them, Ralf Reinders, planned to destroy the Jewish House in Berlin, once gutted by the Brownshirts, “in order to get rid of this thing about the Jews that we’ve all had to have since the Nazi time.” The contemporary left also has a “thing about the Jews.”

In the style of the PFLP and PLO, the left construes the Middle East conflict as colonialism, a doctrine expounded on by Marx and Lenin. October 7, 2023, the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust, caused campuses to reverberate with shouts of “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” meaning Judenrein, the goal of Nazi Germany. The American left is down with it.

Rainbow supremacy

Ivy League campuses like Harvard couldn’t figure out whether their DEI policies, speech codes, and “woke” measures against bullying applied to calls for genocide against Jews. As Harvard’s then-President Claudine Gay said, it alldepends on the “context.”

The Nazis touted their master race theories, and the communists hailed the “new Soviet man.” As it happens, the United States of America is developing its own brand of Übermenschen through the LGBTQ construct, construed as a “community” possessed of extraordinary powers. Consider Sneha Nair, a Biden-Harris appointee at the National Nuclear Security Administration and co-author of “Queering nuclear weapons: How LGBTQ+ inclusion strengthens security and reshapes disarmament.”

Nair claims queer people “make fewer errors, discuss issues more constructively, and better exchange new ideas and knowledge.” Not only that, “queer people have specific skills to offer that are valuable in a policy and diplomacy context.” The alphabet people are just better, but there’s more to the intersectionality now.

Democrats appear to believe that national socialist Germany allowed “Klaus’ Assault Rifles” shops on every corner, calling for citizens to “Get your Sturmgewehr and Schmeisser today!” As Stephen P. Halbrook showed inGun Control in the Third Reich: Disarming Jews and 'Enemies of the State,'” the German National Socialists ruthlessly suppressed ownership of firearms. They used the registration records of the Weimar Republic to find out who owned guns and barred possession of ammunition. The government crusade against “assault weapons” is more like Nazi policy than people might think. See also Halbrook’s “Gun Control in Nazi Occupied France: Tyranny and Resistance.”

California’s Firearms Violence Research Center at UC Davis aims to find out “who owns guns, why they own them, and how they use firearms.” As in National Socialist Germany and its occupied territories, “ve vant zuh names.” The state also requires background checks for ammunition sales and uses them toconfiscate guns. These are not the only National Socialist-style measures the people now face.

The groundwork for violence

During the pandemic, government health bosses — white coat supremacists — demanded vaccination papers for entry to various establishments. Dr. Deborah Birx branded the uninfected “non-symptomatic carriers,” suddenly, it was “your papers, please.” NIAID boss Dr. Anthony Fauci promoted vaccines that failed to prevent infection or transmission, even for children — the least vulnerable group. Fauci was commanding a medical experiment on the entire population, but comparisons to Josef Mengele are unfair — to Mengele.

Since then, the United States of America has become more like National Socialist Germany, not less. Witness Joe Biden’s September 1, 2022, speech, which looked like something staged by Leni Riefenstahl. The Delaware Democrat also compares Trump to Hitler and calls Trump’s supporters “garbage.” For supporters of Biden and Harris, people who want the nation to be great are deplorables — the Untermenschen — and this lays the groundwork for state-sponsored violence against them.

Black American Hans-Jurgen Massaquoi, who died in 2013, would be shocked. So would those Americans who actually defeated the Nazis, liberating their captive nations and concentration camps. Fewer than 70,000 of the veterans remain, and they pass the torch to generations since born.

The Ansis — American National Socialists — are coming. Fight them on the internet, in the academy, and fight them at the ballot box. Sooner or later, everybody will have to pick a side.

Clinton calls for continued demonization of Trump and jailing of Americans over 'propaganda'



Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton appeared on MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show" Monday, encouraging fellow travelers to continue with the anti-Trump rhetoric that set the stage for two assassination attempts and recommending the prosecution of American citizens over so-called undesirable speech.

After Maddow concern-mongered without interruption for over a minute, Clinton suggested that the mainstream media's failure to "cover Trump the way that they should" has "threatened the physical safety of so many people."

Clinton was not referring to President Donald Trump, who was targeted for assassination the previous day, but rather the illegal aliens he has criticized.

'I don't understand why it's so difficult for the press to have a consistent narrative.'

Clinton intimated that dissenting views are the problem — that the press should adopt a single narrative moving forward.

"I don't understand why it's so difficult for the press to have a consistent narrative about how dangerous Trump is," said Clinton, a proponent of the Russian collusion hoax and an advocate for punishing standout journalists who faithfully fulfilled their duty.

It's unclear how much more conformity it would take to satisfy Clinton. After all, the mainstream media has consistently attacked Trump and portrayed him in a negative light over the past eight years.

Blaze News previously reported that Pew Research showed 20% of stories in the press about Obama in his first 60 days in office were negative and 42% were positive. In Biden's first 60 days, 19% of the stories were negative; 27% were positive. In Trump's first 60 days, 62% of the stories about his presidency were negative and only 5% were positive.

A Harvard University study found that 80% of the press coverage of Trump during his first 100 days was negative.

The Media Research Center revealed last month that on CBS, NBC, and ABC, Kamala Harris was painted in a favorable light in 84% of the networks' coverage, whereas Trump was depicted negatively in 89% of their coverage, reported the New York Sun.

The coverage has not only been consistently negative but hyperbolic. The mainstream media has dutifully worked in concert with Democrats to characterize Trump as a would-be dictator or a reincarnation of Hitler.

Having apparently not learned anything from the actions of Thomas Matthew Crooks and Ryan Routh — or perhaps just enough — Clinton stressed that Americans should be "outraged by what [Trump] represents," adding that he is a "very dangerous man."

After recycling Democrats' well-worn Project 2025 falsehood and joining Maddow in once again resurrecting fears about Russian election interference, Clinton suggested that Americans engaged in what she believes constitutes foreign-sponsored "propaganda" should be "civilly or even in some cases criminally charged."

'Something makes me feel like she might be talking about some friends of mine.'

According to Clinton, clamping down on the constitutionally protected speech of Americans accused of advancing Russian talking points would "be a better deterrence because the Russians are unlikely, except in a very few cases, to ever stand trial in the United States."

Responding to Clinton's comments, Blaze Media co-founder and nationally syndicated radio host Glenn Beck said Tuesday, "Something makes me feel like she might be talking about some friends of mine. I don't know. But that seems like dangerous talk and a slippery slope."

Clinton alluded to the suggestion by some Republicans in Congress that their colleagues had parroted Russian propaganda on the House floor. She appears to be referring to Ohio Republican Rep. Mike Turner's assertion to CNN earlier this year that "there are members of Congress today who still incorrectly say that this conflict between Russia and Ukraine is over NATO, which of course it is not."

Turner, who was reportedly advancing an accusation made earlier by Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas), added, "To the extent that this propaganda takes hold, it makes it more difficult for us to really see this as an authoritarian versus democracy battle, which is what it is."

Americans who would dare exercise their constitutional rights to suggest that NATO expansionism was a motivating factor behind Russia's invasion would apparently be ripe for prosecution if Clinton got her way.

Clinton has been pushing for a clampdown on speech she finds undesirable for a while.

In 2021, Clinton told the Guardian, "The technology platforms are so much more powerful than any organ of the so-called mainstream press, and I do think that there has to be not just an American reckoning but a global reckoning with the disinformation, with the monopolistic power and control, with the lack of accountability that the platforms currently enjoy."

"In particular Facebook, which has the worst track record for enabling mistruths, misinformation, extremism, conspiracy, for goodness' sake, even genocide in Myanmar against the Rohingya," continued Clinton. "So governments are going to have to decide right now that the platforms have to be held to some kind of standard, and it's tricky."

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Blaze News investigates: American de-Christianization: Why it's happening and what it will mean for the republic



America appears to be fast undergoing a process of de-Christianization. This phenomenon will have profound social, spiritual, political, and legal implications for the country.

Scholars and others who have investigated various aspects of American disenchantment and religious disaffiliation have provided Blaze News with penetrating insights into what is taking place; what is driving or at the very least exacerbating this trend; and what consequences lie in wait for an un-Christian America.

Barring some miraculous revival or a generational reversal, it appears that radical transformation may leave it unrecognizable and worse for wear.

Background

Some scenario modeling has indicated that the number of Americans of all ages who are Christian may shrink significantly over the next few decades — from what is presently less than 65% to as little as one-third of the population by 2070, assuming that many of the mainline and evangelical churches will continue losing followers to the ranks of the religiously unaffiliated.

The Public Religion Research Institute published the results of a survey of over 5,600 American adults earlier this year, indicating:

Around one-quarter of Americans (26%) identify as religiously unaffiliated in 2023, a 5 percentage point increase from 21% in 2013. Nearly one in five Americans (18%) left a religious tradition to become religiously unaffiliated, over one-third of whom were previously Catholic (35%) and mainline/non-evangelical Protestant (35%).

The Pew Research Center indicated last year that roughly 28% of American adults fall into the unaffiliated camp populated by agnostics, atheists, and nothings in particular — a cohort referred to as "nones."

Around the same time, Gallup found that only 45% of respondents would say religion is, in their own lives, very important. When Gallup asked Americans this question in 1965, 70% said religion was very important.

Church attendance and church membership among Americans also appear to have dropped precipitously in recent decades.

Between 1940 and 2000, the percentage of respondents who told Gallup they belonged to a formal house of worship bounced around 70%, then took a nosedive following the advent of the new millennium: 45% of respondents told Gallup last year that they belonged to a church.

Not just another bust

The U.S. has seen many a boom and bust in Christian religiosity.

Despite many betting against its return — including Thomas Jefferson, who figured traditional Christianity for worm f­­ood — the faith has repeatedly found its way out of the grave and into a new era of packed churches.

There is, however, something anomalous and possibly cataclysmic about this current bust that has even longtime critics contemplating what civilizational blessings will be lost along with Christianity as the dominant religion and what, ultimately, will become of civilization should the fate foretold come to fruition.

Shortly after British atheist Richard Dawkins admitted that "it would be truly dreadful" to replace Christianity with any other religion and for his country to lose its "beautiful parish churches," Derek Thompson, a self-identified agnostic at the Atlantic, said of the PRRI survey results, "I wonder if, in forgoing organized religion, an isolated country has discarded an old and proven source of ritual at a time when we most need it."

Thompson added, "It took decades for Americans to lose religion. It might take decades to understand the entirety of what we lost."

While America is already losing beautiful parish churches, it is not altogether clear what else this isolated country stands to lose should the disaffiliation highlighted in recent polling data continue and Christianity shrink as a cultural, political, and spiritual force within its borders.

Heretical Christianity's sacrifice regime

Dr. Joshua Mitchell is a professor of political theory at Georgetown University, where he also served as chairman of the government department. Mitchell is the author of several books, including, "American Awakening: Identity Politics and Other Afflictions of Our Time."

When asked by Blaze News whether Christianity is actually in decline or whether something else is afoot, Mitchell indicated that what may appear in the polls is better understood as a kind of heresy.

"The churches gave up on that difficult combination of God’s judgment and God's love," said Mitchell. "Americans no longer wanted to talk about sin."

Mitchell told Blaze News that over the past two centuries, "we became very uncomfortable with the idea that human beings are sinners, and we moved to just one-half of the Christian claim, which is that God is love. Americans and everybody else, however, still need a way to figure out what I call the moral economy of stain and transgression, but the churches no longer provided it."

"St. Paul says this: The Christian claim is a scandal — Christ was an incarnate God who came to take away the sins of the world. Both are staggering claims," said Mitchell. "So here is the problem: Human beings have this sin that only God can save them from. The development of what’s called 'liberal Christianity' was an attempt to be Christian and not be embarrassed by the scandal of the cross and the scandal of sin."

'Identity politics, like the earlier incomplete religions, can only be vanquished if Christians reclaim their scandal.'

"When the churches disregard sin, you don’t get rid of the idea of sin and guilt and unpayable debt. You relocate them," added Mitchell.

Part of the appeal of various 20th-century social movements, such as those associated with civil rights, the LGBT agenda, and feminism, was their promise of a way to think about "purity and stain that was no longer an option in the churches."

"White people — I detest the term — came to be stained because of the history of slavery in America. Black Americans and, after them, women (victims of patriarchy and misogyny), gays and lesbians (victims of hetero-normativity) all have taken on the mantle of innocent victimhood. Conservative blacks, I should add, have long fought back against being called victims, but today in America, the only way you get a hearing is if you can wear the crown of innocent victimhood," said Mitchell.

"So when the Pew Charitable Trusts notes that American church attendance is going down, I say, 'You don't know where to look,'" said Mitchell. "If we call religion 'institutionalized Christianity,' well, then of course the numbers are going down. But if we call religion 'the search for a way to think through purity and stain, innocent victimhood, and historical sin in order to find atonement,' then in America today we're having a religious revival."

Mitchell characterized the phenomenon under way as a "great awakening in America without God and without forgiveness."

"We're the most religious people we've ever been because every single day, people are getting up and figuring out whether they're innocent victims or whether they're transgressors," continued Mitchell.

This popular system of ascribing guilt and assuming innocence — identity politics — is effectively a form of "heretical Christianity" that has become America's "established church," suggested Mitchell.

Adopting a term he indicated was previously used by Alexis de Tocqueville, Mitchell suggested that when Christianity first began to falter, the consequence was not secularization but rather the rise of a series of "incomplete religions." The leading examples are the French Revolution, Marxism, the post-colonial theory that dominates the pro-Hamas student protesters today, and, of course, identity politics, which we see everywhere.

We didn't move from Christianity to a secular world. We moved from one incomplete version of Christianity — complete with a designated innocent victim and a moral economy that says who's purified and who’s damned — to the next. Identity politics is the latest iteration of an incomplete religion.

"We're living in a time of heretical Christianity," said Mitchell. "My argument is that Christians have been fighting heresies from the very beginning, and they battled and won [against] the heresies by asserting the claim that's the scandal to reason, namely: Christ was crucified for our sins. Identity politics, like the earlier incomplete religions, can only be vanquished if Christians reclaim their scandal."

Mitchell indicated that if identity politics is left unchecked, then it will overturn the rule of law and has already shown signs of doing so.

"I'll just use this example. You will recall the rioting — the 'summer of peace'? 'Mostly peaceful protests'?" said Mitchell, referencing the BLM riots cheered on by Democrats that inflicted at least $1 billion in damage, claimed the lives of between six and 20 people, and left over 2,000 police officers injured. "Well, much of it was a violation of the law. But within the framework of these incomplete religions, these derivatives of Christianity, your actions are at the higher spiritual level, because you're an innocent victim. That is why if you break the law, it doesn't matter."

"There's a higher spiritual economy that recognizes transgression of a different sort the law can't recognize," continued Mitchell. "So you might be a so-called innocent victim and, you know, burn down a building, but you're justified in this higher spiritual economy because you have special standing in the spiritual economy. This spiritual justification shreds the idea of the rule of law that applies to everyone equally, because in these incomplete religions, everybody isn't equal."

Noting that it has already taken root in America, Mitchell indicated that this identity politics "hierarchy of purity and stain" could ultimately displace equality under the law altogether.

While the current target of this regime appears to be white, heterosexual Christian males, Mitchell indicated that the heretical incomplete religion of identity politics will ultimately move on to the next perceived transgressor until all options are finally exhausted: "This could go on for hundreds of years. This is the beginning of something, not the end."

Along the way, the incomplete religion will likely seek the extermination of its complete origin.

"Heretical religions will always try to destroy the institution from which they came," said Mitchell.

Noting that analysis of this trend is often sociological and concerned with the material side of the equation, Blaze News asked Mitchell whether he suspected one of the drivers here may be a manifest evil.

"I am a social scientist who studies the 19th century. I'm a Tocquevillian scholar. I put great stock in sociological and political analysis up to a point. But my Christianity tells me that there are spiritual forces of darkness here that we cannot fight without divine assistance," said Mitchell. "African Christianity, in a way, has it over the West because in African culture there's a deep awareness that there are demonic forces at work."

"Without Christ, there is no rescue from the demonic forces," continued Mitchell. "We have to proceed, then, in two ways. We have to do what we can politically and socially, but with the full understanding that there are forces at work here that are dark and that nobody will ever understand. And for that reason, prayer is probably equally important to anything we might do."

While recommending an "all-of-the-above strategy" — which includes prayer, reclaiming the "scandal of the cross and the problem of the brokenness of man," and having church leaders get their houses in order — Mitchell told Blaze News that a course correction "is not going to happen until people realize that fault lies within, which is the most astounding historical eruption into time, this Christian-Hebrew thing that says 'fault is within.' That astounding historical insight erupts into time with the Hebrews and the Christians. The West is inconceivable without this eruption. We are losing that insight today, which means we are not becoming more secular; rather, we are relying on an incomplete religion according to which fault is always external, in which your sins are always somebody else's fault."

Losing identity, not belief

Professor Mark Movsesian teaches contract law, law and religion, and federal courts at St. John's University. Extra to serving as director of the Mattone Center for Law and Religion, he is on the board of Cambridge University's Journal of Law and Religion and co-hosts the "Legal Spirits" podcast.

When asked whether recent polling reflects real trends under way as it pertains to the de-Christianization of America and the rise of the "nones," Movsesian noted at the outset that there may be some issues with the surveys (e.g., low response rates; discrepancies between respondent definitions about religion, with some equating their faith to a relationship with Christ).

However, Movsesian indicated that the General Social Survey executed by the University of Chicago, which has a high response rate and is regarded as the "gold standard for sociological research," has clearly indicated a major increase in recent decades of persons indicating they have no religious identity, and these results appear to match up with the polling data from Pew and other polling outfits.

"It does seem to me that religious disaffiliation is a trend," Movsesian told Blaze News. "Now, we have to understand what's meant by that."

"It's not that these people are becoming atheists. The number of atheists — who flat-out say, 'I don’t believe in God,' 'I don’t believe in the supernatural' — that number has been consistently in the single digits, like 5%, 4%, for a long time. So that's not what's going on," said Movsesian.

Instead of necessarily rejecting God, Americans are abandoning religious institutions.

"We have to understand what's meant by religious disaffiliation. It's not a loss of belief. It's a loss of identity with a specific organized faith," said Movsesian, adding that this comes amidst a broader trend of Americans "checking out of these institutions which were once part of American life."

When it comes to nailing down what exactly is to blame, Movsesian indicated there are numerous factors, not the least of which is religious intermarriage.

'Disaffiliation seems to be from people in the middle.'

"If one parent is in one religion and the other parent is in another religion, which is quite common in America, the kid tends not to be in any religion," said Movsesian. "Because the parents say, 'Well, you can decide for yourself what you want to do,' and oftentimes the kid doesn't do that."

The children of "nones," like those born to inter-religious couples, are also unlikely to pick up Christianity or another other traditional religion inside the home.

Other drivers of this trend include divorce, social media, the "clerical sex abuse crisis," and the sexual revolution. In the case of the latter, Movsesian indicated that some people have been turned off by religious institutions' moral teachings, concluding, "'My church is telling me that this is wrong. I don't want to be in this church any more.'"

When Blaze News raised the possibility that this may be just be the latest bust in a long-standing cycle, Movsesian highlighted the example of the colonial period, when the "number of nones would have been very high because there were not a lot of churches. This was a frontier society and you just didn't have a lot of churches to belong to."

"So rates of religious disaffiliation have been high in America before," continued Movsesian. "And of course, you know what happens at the end of the colonial period: the first Great Awakening. So maybe we're due for something like that. I mean, we had two or three Great Awakenings in America. Maybe another one is coming."

Movsesian was not, however, overly optimistic about an inbound awakening.

When it comes to disaffiliation, the professor made clear the religiously lukewarm are the ones sloshing around.

"Disaffiliation seems to be from people in the middle," said Movsesian. "If you ask people, 'How intense is your religious identification? Is it very serious for you?' … That percentage has not changed at all. That percentage — like 37%, 39% of Americans who say 'religion is very important to us' — that has stayed the same."

Those who previously told pollsters that religion was only somewhat important to them now appear to be joining the ranks of the nones.

"So you're seeing a kind of polarization right there: the people who don't care at all and the people who are very into it. That might be a sign that those people who are very into it, if they can make a push, they might be able to get some people back."

"It's not like these people are atheists. It's not like they just don't believe in anything," said Movsesian. "I mean, there may be some way to get to people who have some sense that spirituality is important, the transcendent is important."

Movsesian stressed that what the disaffiliated largely reject is "authority, religious authority — someone who says, 'Okay, this is the way to go. This is the path.'"

While nones reflexively reject authority and tradition, that is no guarantee against de-churched conformity.

"There are some people who will just go down their own path. Henry David Thoreau, right? 'I will find my own path.' But most people aren't Henry David Thoreau," said Movsesian. "Most of us are middling people and so we're going to receive something. We're not going to come up with our own thing. And a lot of what you see among the nones looks sort of similar."

Blaze News asked Movsesian about possible legal consequences of de-Christianization, inquiring further whether a recent study he previously discussed may provide a hint.

'Law follows culture more than culture follows law.'

After reviewing various religious liberty decisions in federal courts, Gregory Sisk, a legal scholar and professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, and Michael Heise, a law professor at Cornell, indicated in a 2022 paper that "a decrease in religious affiliation may not inevitably be accompanied by a secularist opposition to acknowledgment of religion in the public square or the robust participation of religious persons and entities in public life."

"What they said is that judges who are nones, they would expect them to be very strong on the Establishment Clause — they’d want to get rid of all the religious symbols on public property and so on, and Greg and Michael didn't find that," said Movsesian. "If you're a none, you probably don't care that much about religion. You're just kind of checked out. So the idea that there's a cross on public property, it's not going to bother you terribly much."

Movsesian indicated that nones in the judiciary may, however, be prickled by the perception of special treatment for Christians and for other religious Americans.

While a handful of irreligious judges have been indifferent to religion in the past, Movsesian would not rule out the possibility that a de-Christianized America could be hostile to religious citizens, noting that even the seemingly laid-back none judges alternatively care about exemptions afforded to those who, for instance, do not want to serve a gay wedding on religious grounds.

"The fact that more and more people are unfamiliar with institutional religion, with organized religion, with religious communities, I think you're going to see more fights when it comes to religious exemptions," said Movsesian.

As for American law in general, Movsesian said, "Law follows culture more than culture follows law. So if the culture becomes disaffiliated and religion is not important to large groups of people, then of course the influence of religion on the law is going to be less."

Modernism's prize

Dr. Ryan Cragun is a professor of sociology at the University of Tampa and the coauthor of "Beyond Doubt: The Secularization of Society."

Cragun suggested to Blaze News via written responses that the "massive religious decline" under way can broadly be attributed to "modernization" — what he and his co-authors described in "Beyond Doubt" as a "transition from a traditional, rural, non-industrial society to a contemporary, urban, industrial or post-industrial society."

While he generally credited "modern ways of thinking" with causing problems for religion, he also highlighted generational changes, clerical scandals, and corruption as factors for the decline in American religiosity.

"Younger generations are increasingly liberal and more likely to question traditional religious teachings, especially when these teachings conflict with modern values such as gender equality and LGBTQ+ rights," wrote Cragun.

'As religion declines, humans are returning to more "human" ways of living.'

Cragun indicated that perhaps more impactful than American youth pursuing paths of least resistance are the breaks in lines of cultural transmission.

"The real key here is the 'transfer' of religion from parents to children," wrote the sociologist. "There has been a radical shift in how people parent their kids in that parents give their kids a lot more autonomy today than they did 40+ years ago. Because kids have more autonomy, when they are asked if they want to continue to go to church, many kids are opting out of religious services. In many Western countries, the 'mechanism' of religious decline is generational change."

Cragun suggested further that financial misconduct and sexual scandals within religious institutions have served to damage the credibility of organized religion and have likely served as a repellant.

In terms of the consequences of religious decline, Cragun appeared to see only upsides.

"I would argue that as religion declines, humans are returning to more 'human' ways of living that don't involve the supernatural and human exceptionalism," he wrote.

Satanic Temple co-founder Lucien Greaves did not similarly adopt a triumphant tone in his response to Blaze News, noting that the decline is "at least partially a result of religion's increasing politicization" and emphasizing that "it is apparent that religion can play an essential role in enriching, contextualizing, and guiding communities."

Working under the assumption that "religion doesn't make society function," Cragun noted that the decline of religion will not produce "meaningful changes in donations to charities, volunteering, health, happiness, marital satisfaction, tolerance, kindness, valuing family, morality, etc."

Cragun did, however, highlight a political impact: "The decline in religious participation has led to a weakening of the influence that religious institutions have over policy and public life. This can be seen in the increasing support for policies that conflict with traditional religious teachings, such as same-sex marriage and reproductive rights."

In response to the question of whether there are substitutes (i.e., for religion), Cragun answered, "This is the wrong question. This assumes that religion is a core or essential part of what it means to be human or for societies to function. That is not true."

"Religion is just one way people have found to accomplish some of the things humans enjoy or prefer, including explaining some aspects of the world, providing a community, giving people some moral perspectives, etc.," continued Cragun. "But religion is not and never has been necessary for any of these things. In other words, nothing 'substitutes' for religion because religion is not the default way of being."

The pagan empire

John Daniel Davidson, an Alaska-based senior editor at the Federalist, is the author of "Pagan America: The Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come."

Citing the "wealth of survey and sociological data that we have built up over years," Davidson told Blaze News that Christianity is indeed declining in America. Unlike past busts, which largely took place within the context of a highly religious and religiously homogenous society, Davidson noted that this decline, long in the making, has "coincided with a kind of cultural revolution and a societal transformation."

Previously, Christian groups may have splintered off from one another, but this time around, Davidson indicated, "people are just kind of dropping out entirely."

Like Movsesian, Davidson emphasized that the resulting nones are not necessarily atheists or cold hard materialists. In some cases they are "spiritual, not religious."

"They are consciously disassociating themselves from formal religious structures, namely in America and the West, in Christianity, and instead are drawn to new forms of religion, which are really old forms of religion — paganism in a modern context," said Davidson.

'Once you cut liberalism off from its source, it will wither and die. And once liberalism withers and dies, what you have is brute force.'

Davidson indicated that the neo-pagan ethos, which has come to dominate public life in America, "is a kind of inversion of the Christian ethos, which is to say a rejection of transcendental truth, of a transcendent god, of objective morality, or even of objective reality and an embrace of relativism, an embrace of subjectivism, an embrace of the divinization of the here and now: the immanent versus the transcendent."

Davidson underscored that paganism — not secularism, rationalism, or materialism, which he regards as outgrowths or aberrations of Christianity — is the only real alternative to Christianity and that this old and real enemy "is coming back to fill the vacuum, refuting that humans are made in the image of God; that they have innate dignity and worth; and that human rights are an inheritance of Christendom."

"So the pagans say, 'All men are not created equal.' They don't have equal rights, so therefore there's no need to have consent of the governed. There's no need for me to respect the weak, for example, because human beings are, by nature, unequal. That's why all pagan societies were slave societies across vast expanses of time and geography and culture."

There's apparently no basis for tolerance either, certainly not of violations of the public morality, which is distinct from private religion under pagan regimes. It is for this reason that those Christians who silently pray near abortion clinics in the increasingly pagan U.K. are hauled away by British police, he suggested.

Contrary to Cragun's suspicions about the post-Christian world to come, Davidson indicated that liberalism and its other extensions celebrated by secularists won’t survive in the pagan empire.

"Liberalism is going to go away," said Davidson. "Its source of vitality comes from a Christian society, from a Christian worldview, and it depends, for its coherence, on that. So once it's cut off — you don't get the culture without the cult. Once you cut liberalism off from its source, it will wither and die. And once liberalism withers and dies, what you have is brute force, a society that's organized not around the idea of human rights, but a society that’s organized around brute force."

Tocqueville, invoked earlier by Mitchell, indicated that the breakdown of religion would "prepar[e] citizens for servitude" in such a despotic state. Tocqueville stated in "Democracy in America":

When religion is destroyed among a people, doubt takes hold of the highest portions of the intellect and half paralyzes all the others. Each person gets accustomed to having only confused and changing notions about the matters that most interest his fellows and himself. You defend your opinions badly or you abandon them, and, since you despair of being able, by yourself, to solve the greatest problems that human destiny presents, you are reduced like a coward to not thinking about them. Such a state cannot fail to enervate souls; it slackens the motivating forces of will and prepares citizens for servitude. Then not only does it happen that the latter allow their liberty to be taken, but they often give it up.

A silver lining in this dark cloud is that "those who remain faithful Christians, who are going to be keepers of the flame, so to speak, will become more potent. They'll become more powerful in a sense because there won't be any social benefits or prestige associated with being a Christian," said Davidson.

The beleaguered church, too, would be reduced to the faithful and the defiant.

'If that means persecution, then so be it. Let's return to an era of persecution.'

According to Davidson, this coming pagan empire's attacks on Christians may ultimately be its undoing: "Historically, the only thing that has broken the stranglehold of paganism over any society was its encounter with Christianity because Christianity posits a radically different way of seeing the world. It's from this smaller but more potent, faithful Christian community in the West, Christian church in the West, that I think the neo-paganism era that we're coming into now is going to be shattered."

Though he suspects "we're going to win," Davidson acknowledged that there will be bad times first and that the current generation may not see the earthly victory in their lifetimes. Nevertheless, it is incumbent upon them to fight for their children and grandchildren "in hopes that they might be able to reclaim the Western Christian inheritance that was lost on our forebears' watch."

"Find ground that you can win on and fight on that ground," said Davidson. "At the same time, you protect your family and you protect your church, and you build up the community around you to weather the storm. But then you don't just keep your faith in those private spaces. You take it out into the street."

"If that means persecution, then so be it. Let's return to an era of persecution. The blood of the martyrs is the seeds of the church," added Davidson.

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