Christianity In The USA

[Northumber]

With the general American public you see a lot more Catholic to Protestant conversions rather than vice versa, but in elite conservative circles you'll see there's a bit more of Protestant to Catholic conversions. JD Vance is a prime example:

https://wng.org/articles/the-lure-of-rome-1767834305

Perhaps because elites tend to move towards institutions. So they'd move towards more institutional Churches. Things can be built to last and things can be stable with institutions behind them. You can build beautiful things. But this eventually comes at the cost of a loss of authenticity. People mistake the institution for the thing that is greater behind it. The lower classes, sense loss of authenticity more than elite people because they are less exposed to making moral compromises for whatever is perceived to be beautiful, (or simply for convenience or more comfort). So the general populace moves towards the simple, less institution, or no institution in their Churches. That would be Protestant churches. But it can come at the cost of stability.

 

[GodfatherPartTwo]

With the general American public you see a lot more Catholic to Protestant conversions rather than vice versa, but in elite conservative circles you'll see there's a bit more of Protestant to Catholic conversions.

This isn't surprising to me. If your primary focus is politics, Protestant theology doesn't lends itself as easily to that end as the sacralist churches do.

 

[Wutang]

Perhaps because elites tend to move towards institutions. So they'd move towards more institutional Churches. Things can be built to last and things can be stable with institutions behind them. You can build beautiful things. But this eventually comes at the cost of a loss of authenticity. People mistake the institution for the thing that is greater behind it. The lower classes, sense loss of authenticity more than elite people because they are less exposed to making moral compromises for whatever is perceived to be beautiful, (or simply for convenience or more comfort). So the general populace moves towards the simple, less institution, or no institution in their Churches. That would be Protestant churches. But it can come at the cost of stability.

One of the things mentioned in the article was that Catholics have done a better job of building up institutions such as top tier universities with Georgetown as an example. Liberty University doesn't compare to it.

Littlejohn thinks a big part of the problem is that conservative Protestants don’t have many of their own prestigious institutions in which to train up leaders. By contrast, conservative Catholics do.

Protestants once dominated positions of cultural leadership in America, but things began to change in the second half of the 20th century. Many Protestant institutions became theologically liberal, and conservatives either left or were ejected. They tried to start new, conservative institutions, but without much success.

“If you have these inherited institutions from generations of being in the majority, you don’t really know what it looks like to create a countercultural institution,” Littlejohn said.

He thinks Protestant institutions also failed to flourish because of an anti-intellectual streak that assumes people become liberal from “too much book learning.” Moreover, the dispensational eschatology held by many Protestants compounds the problem, according to Littlejohn. They think, “We’re not going to be around much longer. So what’s the point of creating another Princeton?”