Entropy on the Right
18th January 2025
The Cathedral of St. John the Divine is a cathedral of the Episcopal Church, the fourth largest cathedral in the world, and unfinished. Begun in 1892, it is more exhibition hall than gathering for Christians. Given the rate of decline of the Episcopal Church, once called the Republican Party at prayer, it can safely be written that the last Episcopalian has been born in the United States.
Like other progressive denominations, the Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church USA, United Church of Christ, and others went searching for relevance in the present age and left behind Christendom. They are now the most rapidly declining church denominations in the United States. In 1998, Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong wrote “Why Christianity Must Change or Die,” and every theologically progressive denomination that embraced change has begun dying. In 2000, the average national Sunday attendance of the Episcopal Church was 856,579 congregants. By 2030, attendance is projected to be 350,000.
Often attributed to historian Robert Conquest but definitely connected to Margaret Thatcher’s former speechwriter and National Review editor-at-large John O’Sullivan, Sullivan’s First Law (perhaps Conquest’s second law) states, “All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.” Combine O’Sullivan’s law with Rudolf Clausius’ statement on the second law of thermodynamics: “The energy of the universe is constant. The entropy of the universe tends to a maximum,” which means the universe heads to disorder. We get a picture of institutions which, when not led by those committed to the founding orthodoxy, head slowly to disordered irrelevance. That, unfortunately, leads me to the Heritage Foundation.
And National Review, and the Kristol Krew, and….