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I’m surprised I haven’t seen this in the answers yet, but here goes: for the vast majority of Christians, faith, hope and charity should vastly outweigh political concerns.Does it matter what your political affiliation is? I suppose. And in my own faith, Catholicism, political activity is meritorious.From Pope Francis: “Politics, according to the Social Doctrine of the Church, is one of the highest forms of charity, because it serves the common good,” he explained. “I cannot wash my hands, eh? We all have to give something!”Going back a ways, there’s an extraordinarily rich and deep tradition of Catholic social thought. Here’s a decent primer: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. But, this really is the study of a lifetime (after four years of it in college, I only scratched the surface).But. I highly doubt Pope Francis, St. Augustine, or St. Thomas Aquinas would classify Facebooking or tweeting as “political activity.” Regardless of your affiliation, does “being” right wing include any of the following:Are you going to city council meetings?Are you calling your local representative to advocate for or against policies?Are you reading academic papers to educate yourself on the issues?Are you creating a grassroots political network?Running for office?Engaging yourself in meaningful work around one or more political issues that you care passionately about?If you are doing these things, then by all means, identifying how your Christianity positions you on the political spectrum is probably important. But if you aren’t, then I posit it doesn’t really matter what your political views are.You don’t change a landscape, political or otherwise, by viewing it.Given that, it is much more important for a practicing Christian to practice Christianity than to practice politics.If I truly believe that a carpenter born in Palestine two millennia ago is the divine Son of God, coeval with the Father; that that carpenter’s words provide a sure guide to living in a chaotic and difficult world; that God loves me, and you, and all of us, beyond all measure or understanding; and that following this “God-man” will likely require radical spiritual changes that will transform my life and all the lives it touches…Then my sole concern should be, not: “Is this right wing?” but “Is this right?”

When invoking science in debates with religion, many people mistakenly appeal to scientism, an irrational system of belief based on pseudo-science as opposed to science itself. Science is nothing more an academic discipline based on the premise that conclusions about the physical world can be arrived at through the use of inductive reasoning, when applied to repeatable experiments. No scientific discipline has ever ruled conclusively one way or the other on the existence of God. However, adherents to scientism have irrationally extrapolated from scientific research a belief system that excludes the possibility of a God.Modern science does have many aspects common to most religions. Most religions present a story of origin for instance. Explaining a of meaning of life is one of the core functions of a religion. Often times, religions attempt to explain how we got here in order to explain why we are here. While the traditional scientific disciplines of physics, biology and chemistry have provided significant insight in answering questions like, “How did we get here?” They have failed to address many of the other questions common to the world’s religions like, “Why are we here? How should we live our lives? What is the correct moral code to live by?” While modern psychology has attempted to address some of these questions, the methods employed have been psuedo-scientific at best. As a result, classical science simply does not meet the criteria to be considered a religion.Modern scientism was born out of the enlightenment, which in turn was born out of the Protestant Reformation. When the Protestants discarded the Christian tradition by adopting a policy of “sola scirptura,” a faith in scripture as the sole authority in matters of Christian theology, they weakened the faith. Rather, they made the Christian tradition solely dependent on the literality and veracity of the bible. In doing so, they made Protestantism vulnerable to attacks on the bible. If the bible could be disproven, their whole religion would become invalidated.At best, science has proven that the narrative posited by the Book of Genesis is highly unlikely. Adherents to scientism rely on evidence like radiocarbon dating, Darwin’s theories of evolution and a myriad of other evidence that suggest that the true age of the earth is closer to 6 billions years than 6,000 years. In doing so, science has merely disproven biblical claims that have been treated with skepticism since the time of St. Augustine. Nevertheless, these attacks did manage to significantly harm the credibility of Protestantism, due to its reliance on sola scriputa. However, other Christian schools have fared far better in the face of these recent scientific discoveries. The Catholics and especially the Orthodox adhere to a tradition of doctrine rooted in logic, making them more resilient to such attacks.Despite the fact that science has disproven that the earth is 6,000 years old, science has never been able to prove or disprove the existence of God. Nevertheless, science has been unable to disprove any of the other claims of the Christian faith. Science has also certainly been unable to disprove that the values espoused by Christ are good principles to organize one’s life around. As opposed to Protestantism, Orthodoxy presents an internally consistent, logical world view that has been largely unchallenged by these recent, scientific discoveries. According to the Orthodox, God created man with a purpose, and that purpose is to love his fellow man.By contrast, many adherents to scientism irrationally posit a set of believes that are logically unjustifiable in the absence of God. As Dostoevsky pointed out, “If there is no God, everything is permissible.” That is in the absence of a God, who both created the universe and determined right and wrong in doing so, no objective morality can exist. In a purely materialistic world, humans are simply piles of reacting chemicals, and their actions cannot be any more morally right or wrong than any other chemical reaction. Nevertheless, many proponents of scientism promote an irrational belief that ensuring “human rights” is the meaning of life.Adherents to scientism place unreasonably their faith in the ability of science to explain all reality and knowledge. Nevertheless, they are blind to the fact that science cannot make value judgments. However, as a tool focused purely on evaluating material phenomenon, science is impractical for making prescriptive or evaluating morality. Morality is a metaphysical, not material phenomenon. At its core, the world’s religions seek to tell us how to live our lives. By the very nature of the discipline, science is unable to guide us in these matters.

I’ve read years ago, that Jung considered Hitler to be a psychopath whose appeal to the German people was that he had virtually no personality of his own but reflected the fears and feelings they had during the hard times after WWI.Jung’s theory of the archetypes as phenotypic unconscious tendencies and potentials passed on from ancestral generations, led him to think sometimes in terms of “national character”; once a widely accepted theory that became tainted and rejected after WWII due to genocidal Nazi policies and crimes.Jung did make broad stereotypical negative generalizations about physical and personality traits of Germans, Jews, Americans, and others.On the concept of national character—see quote following from:https://dezintegracja.pl/the-concept-of-national-character-and-the-problem-of-humanity-in-kazimierz-dabrowskis-perspective-en/ (https://dezintegracja.pl/the-concept-of-national-character-and-the-problem-of-humanity-in-kazimierz-dabrowskis-perspective-en/)The Concept of National Character and the Problem of Humanity (in Kazimierz Dąbrowski’s Perspective) by Tadeusz Kobierzycki“A text by a psychiatrist, Kazimierz Dąbrowski (1902–1980), O narodowym charakterze Polaków, (ca. 1957–1962) (On Polish National Character) has its origins in the Romantic theory of history, nation and character. As a good context for his arguments can be regarded the remarks of Hegel, the great German idealist who gave a new meaning to such categories as Zeitgeist and Weltgeist. They were and still are used, either overtly or covertly, by the philosophy of history of the 19th and 20th century.Particular exemplifications of the German Romantic theory of character can be found in the thought of Polish mystics, poets and writers as well as historians, psychologists and cultural anthropologists. This German concept was transformed in Poland by a Judaic and Christian messianic project, which forms the basis for the description of “Polish national character”. In the 20th century it is complemented by theories of temperament, founded on the data from the field of normal and pathological psychophysiology.In European culture the concept of nation emerges relatively late. In Europe the most productive in respect of the emergence of nations is the 17th century (Spain, France), later on they are joined by Italy and Germany. A century earlier a nation had been formed in England. The process of nationalization of tribes, families, peoples, districts, cities, principalities lasted immensely long. An Oxford academic, Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975), in his twelve-volume work “A Study of History” (1934–1961) defined the nation as a combination of tribalism and democracy.Hubertus Duijker and Nico Frijda (1960), Dutch scholars, distinguished six types of definitions of national character, corresponding to the research methods adopted.11. National character: a set of psychological traits that is characteristic for the people belonging to a nation and that sets them apart from other nations.2. National character: the most common type of behavior of the adult members of a society.3. National character: a system of conducts, values and convictions shared by the majority of a society.4. National character: a basic (permanent and continuous) structure of personality of people belonging to the same culture, based on the processes of standardization, socialization and education.5. National character: learned and inherited cultural behavior and systems of norms, values and aims that are used by institutions of culture and are present in its products.6. National character: the mentality that is present (explicitly or implicitly) in literature, art and philosophy which functions as national “spirit”. One of the first philosophers who took up the question of nation after World War Two was José Ortega y Gasset. The lectures on nation that he gave in Berlin after World War Two entitled “De Europa meditation quaedam” were published in 1960 under the title “Meditación de Europa” and in Poland as “Rozmyślania o Europie” (2006). He analyzed the relations between the concept of nation and Europeanism in the moment when many nations in Europe had been destroyed, seized, altered, subdued and divided. Yet he didn’t find new categories to describe the post-war reality of Germany, leaving the mythological (“German”) and therapeutical understanding of the concept of nation.The propagators of the old theory of nation identified, e.g., the chosen nation, the nation of mankind, the person-nation, the autonomous nation, the cultural nation, the federal nation, the European nation, the self governed nation, the legal nation, the subdued nation, the free nation, the mythical nation, the nation without land, the united nation, the dispersed nation, etc. The aim of these concepts was to determine the differences and boundaries between awareness and unawareness of a community.For a long time either historical psychology (cf. Robert Mandrou [1921– 1984]) or psychological history has been studying and describing various areas of human life, e.g.: dance, theatre, magic, customs, superstitions, different farming methods, folk songs or suicides, etc. The present paper presents the problems of the psychology of national character as a fragment of the psychology of history and the psychology of nation. As long as the object and subject of history are nations (cf. Johann. G. Herder [1744–1803]) and Leopold von Ranke [1795–1886]) the study of their character is substantiated.2Historical psychology, the psychology of age, the psychology of nation as well as the psychology of empire are not concerned with studying principles, but the image and purpose of the psychological phenomena occurring at a specific time and in a specific space, where the aims of the whole structure harmonize or disharmonize with the aims of groups and individuals.In Poland the diverse problems of the philosophy and theology of history in the post-war period at present are discussed, in terms of theology, by the Rev. Czesław Bartnik (2001) and the Rev. Jerzy Lewandowski (1982). The issues of humanity in context of the open (phenomenological, Judaic-Christian and Buddhist) ethics, in her own understanding, are presented by Halina RomanowskaŁakomy (2001).HUMAN NATURE, DIGNITY, HUMANITYThe issues of nation are frequently examined in relation to human nature, dignity and humanity. According to Max Scheler (1874-1928), man is a “transition” from the “country of God” to the “country of nature”. The readiness to go beyond the self, the willingness to become a “superman” or “God” is fundamental to the primitive understanding of humanity. He thinks that the realization of every “I” and “we” is governed, above all, by the biological and ecological reproduction (A. Adler), sublimation (S. Freud) and sacralization (St. Augustine of Hippo, C. G. Jung).Originally, in the history of philosophical (ethical, legal, psychological) thought, the concept of humanity was identified with holiness (Greek hosiotes), which, even in Plato’s writings, is still considered as a constant characteristic of personality. And although it was removed from the Aristotle’s theory, it persisted and lingers as a basic category of the sacred Christian principle of humanity. After the centuries of supremacy, the principle of humanity was complemented by the humanistic principle, which broadened the discourse concerning man beyond the current collective and individual categories, beyond the differences and boundaries of his activity and thought. From the 18th century on, it radically manifested itself in anthropological thought as the “principle of reason”.Historically, the problem appears as the problem of Ideal, Good, Unity, Community, Entirety, Holiness, Dignity, etc. It is to be the response to the problem of Concretum, Evil, Difference, Individuality, Singularity, Secularism, Property, etc. The philosophical problem of humanity emerged in philosophy in the European Renaissance.”