The Radical Resurgence

The asteroid has struck, the sky is darkening, and the mainstream churches and any evangelical megachurch you care to name are the dinosaurs.

The asteroid is late capitalism and it is darkening the skies in at least two ways.

(1) The global economy is putting an end to national economies and marginalizing the modern nation state. The present recession is the result of our inability to understand or control global financial flows. People in the right places press a few keys on their desktops and laptops and vast amounts of money leap across boundaries and around the world and ‘national’ economies are twisted into bizarre pretzel shapes by the event.

Capital intensive forms of church and parachurch will undergo a mass extinction event as this recession is followed by later ones. It is impossible to predict (much less control) the outputs of what mathematicians call ‘ a chaotic system’ so this will just be the first of many such downturns each resulting in yet another episode of what the economist Shumpeter called ‘creative destruction”.

(2) Historic cultures are replaced by a symbolic marketplace. Cultures are looted in order to replace them with niche markets, lifestyle options, and colorful commodities. Counseling options of all sorts become available (Freudian, Neofreudian,and Postfreudian psychotherapy are joined by Jungian depth psychology, Adlerian analytical psychology, gestalt therapy, rational-emotive therapy, reality therapy, Skinnerian behavioral modification, hypnotherapy, group therapy, New Age spiritualities et cetera, et cetera).