Tolkien 3.0

[Lord Varys]

9 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

You're judging Tolkien's marriage by his quantity of creative output? Good grief.

No, that was actually me complaining about his creative output as a reader. Considering that apparently he greatly needed approval and support from the people around him to get anything done, it seems rather likely that the end of the Inklings, the cooling down of the relationship with Lewis, etc. wouldn't have affected his output late(r) in life as much as it may have done if he had a partner who was interested in his work and had encouraged him the way his male friends had.

9 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

(I can't speak for Tolkien - and honestly, most of what I know about him and Edith comes from Humphrey Carpenter - but I tend to write less when I'm in relationships. Girlfriends can be distracting time-wise).

Well, one would imagine that they don't prevent you from doing stuff when you also happen to be a retired old man who does pretty well due to book sales... And the idea that Edith would have been 'distracting' at a time when they were old people who slept apart isn't very likely.

9 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Yes, Tolkien was pro-Franco. Something his detractors rarely bring up, even though it remains the biggest black mark against him. Applying the label 'fascist' is just lazy though. Tolkien was an idiosyncratic reactionary, with very little time for actual fascists, and on the monarchist front, his preferred monarchy was one where the King spends his days poring over his stamp collection.

This is why I compared his tastes to the clerico-fascists in Austria prior to Nazi takeover. They would actually have been a tidbit milder than Franco and (if possible) even more Catholic than the Franco regime.

But one has to keep in mind that the views of what we call 'fascism' would have been very garbled in the UK at the time. You would oppose certain systems in certain countries because of what this regime meant in relation to your own country, especially after the Great War.

What I mean by saying that Tolkien's true colors showed in the Franco incident is that he was in favor of totalitarian brutal regime if it was distinctly Catholic. Nazism and the Italian fascists were not - could not be, in fact, considering the history of the Italian nation and the two 'state churches' of Germany. Prussia was Protestant to the core, and any unity in Germany needed both churches to get their share, not just the Catholics.

I'm not sure how well-spread the talk/rumors that the Nazis were 'atheist' or 'against Christianity' was back in the 1930s and 1940s - but if that was used to discredit them, then this certainly might have shaped the views of men who valued religion over everything else. This is all factually wrong, of course. The Nazis worked with the churches, not against them. There were differences about the amount of power the churches should wield in the state, but that was essentially an internal matter. Thanks to the Nazi concordat with the Vatican - which is still in effect over here - we are still in a worse position in church-state separation issues over here in Germany than we were in the Weimar Republic.

My take on the fascist angle is that you don't have to be distinctly fascist (i.e. adopt all their core ideological nonsense) to be one. Being German, I know that those people voting for fascists or their allies, working with them, agreeing with them only on key issues that are important to you, personally, doesn't really matter when you help them take power. There is no excuse for people who say 'I just wanted abortion to stop' or 'I just wanted the Church to get back what they deserved' or 'I just wanted to put the immigrants back in their place'.

The party Tolkien would have supported had he been German - the Catholic Center Party - supported the Enabling Act of 1933. If Tolkien had been German, he definitely would have joined the Nazi party - even if he hadn't agreed with all their tenets, he would have done so to save his career at the university.

[Werthead]

Tolkien was not so much pro-Franco as rabidly anti-Communist and anti-Russia, to the point of blaming Russia for the timing of the outbreak of WWII, which was quite a stretch (he meant by them signing the Nazi-Soviet Pact, but the notion that Hitler wasn't going to invade Poland anyway was farcical, even with the knowledge of the time). It took him a good year or two into the war before he realised what a total lunatic Hitler was and that Russia would be needed as an ally to defeat him. This was not an uncommon view in the UK before the war. He was very much of Churchill and Patton's mind on the threat posed by the Soviet Union, but unlike them he also had a deep, abiding hatred of warfare and was not keen on the idea of declaring war on Russia to force it out of Europe at the conclusion of fighting Germany.

Tolkien was also pro-Catholic in most of his dealings; the reason for the cooling of his relationship with Lewis is that he effectively made converting Lewis to Christianity his own personal project for over a decade, and when Lewis finally acquiesced, he chose Protestantism, which Tolkien took as a slap in the face. He also hated the Narnia books and did feel, however spuriously, that Lewis would never had written them without listening to Tolkien's own lectures on fairy stories, and having read The Hobbit, parts of The Silmarillion and the early chapters of LotR. Lewis did use "Numinor" as a place name in another book as a nod to Tolkien, so he had some rational basis for that. Finally, Tolkien felt that Lewis marrying a divorcee was amoral, although it was actually Edith who befriended Joy and made her feel welcome when a bunch of other Oxford wives took against her (Edith may have felt some kinship there, as apparently some of the Catholic community felt sniffy about Edith because of her Protestant upbringing, never mind that she converted to Catholicism a good twenty years beforehand).

As for Tolkien's relationship with his wife, it is abundantly clear they did share love and affection throughout their lives. They had several sharp disagreements in their life, and it is clear that Edith was irritated by being forced to convert, and in later life she basically gave up on Catholic mass and attended Anglican services instead, and Tolkien wasn't happy at moving but AFAWK he kept that to private correspondence and private conversations with Christopher and a few close friends. He wasn't throwing it in her face every five minutes, and he seemed genuinely delighted when the move to the seaside seemed to rally her health for a time. They also clearly shared a great deal of affection in other areas, especially their family dealings. Calling their marriage "a failure" without being party to their day-to-day life is grossly unfair and inappropriate.

[The Marquis de Leech]

On Franco, I would note that Tolkien was backing him in the context of the Spanish Civil War. In short, Tolkien (as was common for most Catholics of the time) backed the Nationalists over the Republicans. That is rather different from him advocating the replacement of his own country's political structure with a Francoist Regime.

(To put it another way... most of us would back the Soviets against the Nazis. That doesn't mean that we're all advocating for Stalinism. Not that the Spanish Republic was analogous to the Nazis, or that Tolkien didn't see things he liked about Franco in a more general sense, but favouring a side in a war doesn't automatically mean complete endorsement of their agenda. I think most of us today would favour the Republicans over the Nationalists, but that says comparatively little about our own ideology, and certainly doesn't imply that we are all on the same page). 

[The Marquis de Leech]

5 hours ago, Werthead said:

Lewis did use "Numinor" as a place name in another book as a nod to Tolkien, so he had some rational basis for that.

The book is That Hideous Strength, and Numinor is used as a throw-away synonym for Atlantis/Ancient Lost Civilisation. It is only a throw-away homage though - it's hardly plagiarism. Lewis even acknowledges this shout out in his introduction to the book, where he directs the reader to Tolkien.

In terms of actual ideas, Lewis' Space Trilogy, of which That Hideous Strength is the third volume, actually owes more to David Lindsay and H.G. Wells than Tolkien. The interest is therefore less about Tolkien-as-influence, and more that Lewis partially modelled the series protagonist, Ransom, off Tolkien the man. For his part, Tolkien referred to That Hideous Strength as That Hideous Book. Having recently suffered through it myself, I entirely agree). 

[SeanF]

I recently read a horror novel called The Loney, which involves a group of fundamentalist Roman Catholics whose views would probably have been similar to Tolkien's.  Their (and his) political outlooks just don't synchronise well with either the left or right of the British political spectrum.  They are left wing on issues like Irish nationalism and workers' rights.  Right wing on issues like sexuality or abortion.

Tolkien would have opposed the Spanish Republicans because of efforts to suppress Catholic worship, and the killing of priests.

[Jussi]

5 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

To put it another way... most of us would back the Soviets against the Nazis. That doesn't mean that we're all advocating for Stalinism.

Here in Finland, we were allied with the Nazis against the Soviets after the Winter War in 1941-44. Because of our geographical position, the Soviet Union was much greater threat to Finland's independence (or remaining as a nation) than Nazi Germany. I'm sure that most Finns today would back the Nazis against the Soviets. Here Stalin is considered to be "a greater evil". Not a single Finn was killed in the Holocaust, but tens of thousands Finns died in the Soviet camps.

During the Winter War (1939-40), the Nazis and the Soviets were allied. Hitler and Stalin agreed that Finland will be a part of the Soviet Union, just like the three Baltic countries. After Finland's peace treaty with the Soviet Union, there was Lapland War between Finland and Germany in 1944-45.

[Werthead]

2 hours ago, Jussi said:

Here in Finland, we were allied with the Nazis against the Soviets after the Winter War in 1941-44. Because of our geographical position, the Soviet Union was much greater threat to Finland's independence (or remaining as a nation) than Nazi Germany. I'm sure that most Finns today would back the Nazis against the Soviets. Here Stalin is considered to be "a greater evil". Not a single Finn was killed in the Holocaust, but tens of thousands Finns died in the Soviet camps.

During the Winter War (1939-40), the Nazis and the Soviets were allied. Hitler and Stalin agreed that Finland will be a part of the Soviet Union, just like the three Baltic countries. After Finland's peace treaty with the Soviet Union, there was Lapland War between Finland and Germany in 1944-45.

Finland did play Hitler like a fiddle though. It very carefully executed a war plan with limited, realistic and achievable goals (the recovery of territory lost to the USSR), did not overreach (unlike Germany) and made peace with the Soviets and the Allies when it was sensible to do so. Also Finland pointblank refused to hurt, restrict or imprison its Jewish population, and told Hitler to fuck off when it was suggested to them. Mannerheim seems to be one of the few people that Hitler genuinely respected, so he didn't press the issue, and Finland switching sides (before it actually did) would have made life very difficult for the Germans.

Finland was never a formal member of the axis, was a democracy and executed a path of realpolitik in WWII which is quite remarkable, all the moreso because it retained its post-war independence when the USSR could have invaded it quite easily and with probably a limited willingness of the Allies to stop them.

[Zorral]

On 9/29/2019 at 9:49 PM, The Marquis de Leech said:

The sad thing is, there are genuine criticisms that can be made of the way Tolkien approached Beowulf. The Monsters and the Critics (1936) does not mention a single female character until the appendices. Trying to interpret the poem through a racial lens, however, is downright silly.

I just have to say though, that racism, like sexism, is embedded in language, something philology and other language studies studiously ignored for far too long. There is no such thing as a 'pure' language study since it is always filtered through the student's and translator's own unexamined, unaware biases.

[The Marquis de Leech]

19 hours ago, Jussi said:

Here in Finland, we were allied with the Nazis against the Soviets after the Winter War in 1941-44. Because of our geographical position, the Soviet Union was much greater threat to Finland's independence (or remaining as a nation) than Nazi Germany. I'm sure that most Finns today would back the Nazis against the Soviets. Here Stalin is considered to be "a greater evil". Not a single Finn was killed in the Holocaust, but tens of thousands Finns died in the Soviet camps.

During the Winter War (1939-40), the Nazis and the Soviets were allied. Hitler and Stalin agreed that Finland will be a part of the Soviet Union, just like the three Baltic countries. After Finland's peace treaty with the Soviet Union, there was Lapland War between Finland and Germany in 1944-45.

Rest assured, had Hitler defeated the Soviet Union, you'd be having Finns dying in German camps. We know what happened with a Stalinist victory, but a German victory would have been objectively worse for everyone. Including Finland. 

Frankly, I don't blame Finland for the Continuation War - it was an extremely complicated situation - but in contrast to the black-and-white Winter War, it was much,much murkier morally. 

[The Marquis de Leech]

16 hours ago, Werthead said:

Finland did play Hitler like a fiddle though. It very carefully executed a war plan with limited, realistic and achievable goals (the recovery of territory lost to the USSR), did not overreach (unlike Germany) and made peace with the Soviets and the Allies when it was sensible to do so. Also Finland pointblank refused to hurt, restrict or imprison its Jewish population, and told Hitler to fuck off when it was suggested to them. Mannerheim seems to be one of the few people that Hitler genuinely respected, so he didn't press the issue, and Finland switching sides (before it actually did) would have made life very difficult for the Germans.

Finland was never a formal member of the axis, was a democracy and executed a path of realpolitik in WWII which is quite remarkable, all the moreso because it retained its post-war independence when the USSR could have invaded it quite easily and with probably a limited willingness of the Allies to stop them.

That's whitewashing things a bit. While recovering territory was the stated war-aim, Finnish forces did go beyond 1939 borders (which damaged relationships with the hitherto sympathetic US and UK), and there was - in some right-wing quarters - the dream of a Greater Finland, which would take in previously Russian territory ('Finnish Lebensraum' was a thing). Plus there were the bog-standard rightists who just wanted to crack a few commie skulls, and thought 1918 was unfinished business (IIRC, there was a recent Finnish historical study into the motivations behind the Finnish SS volunteers). Against this, you had the "reclaim 1939 borders and stop" wing, who ended up going along with things in the name of national unity. So it's complicated.

Also, as far as realpolitik goes, Finland expected Germany to win. Yes, they pulled out, but it was only once they realised "shit. We backed the losing side here. How can we get out of this mess?"

[Edit - as a completely useless trivia point... the only time New Zealand has ever seized an enemy vessel in a war situation was when it commandeered a Finnish merchant ship in Wellington Harbour in 1941, after the UK and allies declared war on Finland. Don't worry. We returned the ship after the war].

[SeanF]

18 hours ago, Werthead said:

Finland did play Hitler like a fiddle though. It very carefully executed a war plan with limited, realistic and achievable goals (the recovery of territory lost to the USSR), did not overreach (unlike Germany) and made peace with the Soviets and the Allies when it was sensible to do so. Also Finland pointblank refused to hurt, restrict or imprison its Jewish population, and told Hitler to fuck off when it was suggested to them. Mannerheim seems to be one of the few people that Hitler genuinely respected, so he didn't press the issue, and Finland switching sides (before it actually did) would have made life very difficult for the Germans.

Finland was never a formal member of the axis, was a democracy and executed a path of realpolitik in WWII which is quite remarkable, all the moreso because it retained its post-war independence when the USSR could have invaded it quite easily and with probably a limited willingness of the Allies to stop them.

The other oddity was Bulgaria, a member of the Axis, but never at war with Russia.

[SeanF]

1 hour ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Rest assured, had Hitler defeated the Soviet Union, you'd be having Finns dying in German camps. We know what happened with a Stalinist victory, but a German victory would have been objectively worse for everyone. Including Finland. 

Frankly, I don't blame Finland for the Continuation War - it was an extremely complicated situation - but in contrast to the black-and-white Winter War, it was much,much murkier morally. 

Had I been a Finn, a Balt, a Ukraninian at the time, I might well have seen the Germans as a lesser evil, at least to begin with.

[The Marquis de Leech]

36 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Had I been a Finn, a Balt, a Ukraninian at the time, I might well have seen the Germans as a lesser evil, at least to begin with.

Agreed. Hence my agreement that Finland can't really be blamed for the Continuation War. Viewing the situation from 2019 is a bit different though, which was my initial point. 

[The Marquis de Leech]

22 hours ago, SeanF said:

Tolkien would have opposed the Spanish Republicans because of efforts to suppress Catholic worship, and the killing of priests.

To take the thread back on topic, Tolkien's stance was the norm for 1930s Catholics (there were a few who came out for the Republic, but most backed Franco). This wasn't simply a response to the killing of priests either - it was because, at that point, the Church was still inherently hostile to the legacy of 1789, and Franco loved conflating 1789 with 1917. As historian Eric Hobsbawm (himself a veteran of the War) put it, in the era when liberalism fell, the Church rejoiced at its fall.

[Werthead]

8 hours ago, SeanF said:

The other oddity was Bulgaria, a member of the Axis, but never at war with Russia.

The Bulgarian ambassador to Moscow told Molotov that Bulgaria did not believe Germany could win a war with Russia, even when the Germans were steam-rolling over the entire eastern front in the summer of 1941, and they never changed their mind on that, so Bulgaria never took offensive action against Russia during the entire war.

Not that really helped them much in the end, as they were occupied by the Soviet Union in 1944 regardless.

[Lord Varys]

On 10/6/2019 at 1:31 AM, Werthead said:

Tolkien was also pro-Catholic in most of his dealings; the reason for the cooling of his relationship with Lewis is that he effectively made converting Lewis to Christianity his own personal project for over a decade, and when Lewis finally acquiesced, he chose Protestantism, which Tolkien took as a slap in the face. He also hated the Narnia books and did feel, however spuriously, that Lewis would never had written them without listening to Tolkien's own lectures on fairy stories, and having read The Hobbit, parts of The Silmarillion and the early chapters of LotR. Lewis did use "Numinor" as a place name in another book as a nod to Tolkien, so he had some rational basis for that. Finally, Tolkien felt that Lewis marrying a divorcee was amoral, although it was actually Edith who befriended Joy and made her feel welcome when a bunch of other Oxford wives took against her (Edith may have felt some kinship there, as apparently some of the Catholic community felt sniffy about Edith because of her Protestant upbringing, never mind that she converted to Catholicism a good twenty years beforehand).

I'm really not knowing what to make of this 'conversion story'. Lewis grew up as an Irish Protestant. He gave up religion due to the influence of his tutor, and he later rediscovered 'the truth' of Christianity, in part due to his conversations with Tolkien. But that wasn't 'a conversion', just a rediscovery of stuff he always knew.

I'm a baptized and confirmed Catholic who also 'lapsed into atheism'. If somebody were to help me to rediscover the religion of my childhood this would also not be 'a conversion' in any meaningful sense.

On 10/6/2019 at 1:31 AM, Werthead said:

As for Tolkien's relationship with his wife, it is abundantly clear they did share love and affection throughout their lives. They had several sharp disagreements in their life, and it is clear that Edith was irritated by being forced to convert, and in later life she basically gave up on Catholic mass and attended Anglican services instead, and Tolkien wasn't happy at moving but AFAWK he kept that to private correspondence and private conversations with Christopher and a few close friends. He wasn't throwing it in her face every five minutes, and he seemed genuinely delighted when the move to the seaside seemed to rally her health for a time. They also clearly shared a great deal of affection in other areas, especially their family dealings. Calling their marriage "a failure" without being party to their day-to-day life is grossly unfair and inappropriate.

Well, I guess that depends what your standard for a successful marriage is. My standard entails that you (1) make decisions together, (2) don't force your partner to do something he or she doesn't want to do, (3) share your life together in a meaningful way that goes beyond the domestic sphere.

On 10/6/2019 at 5:33 AM, The Marquis de Leech said:

On Franco, I would note that Tolkien was backing him in the context of the Spanish Civil War. In short, Tolkien (as was common for most Catholics of the time) backed the Nationalists over the Republicans. That is rather different from him advocating the replacement of his own country's political structure with a Francoist Regime.

It shows where your priorities lay. Last time I looked Franco staged a coup against an elected government.

What Tolkien's preferences regarding a Catholic-run UK would have been is unclear as far as I know.

I know that it is a very common view to have different standards for foreign countries than your own - but that doesn't change who you are supporting in foreign policies, no?

On 10/6/2019 at 5:33 AM, The Marquis de Leech said:

(To put it another way... most of us would back the Soviets against the Nazis. That doesn't mean that we're all advocating for Stalinism. Not that the Spanish Republic was analogous to the Nazis, or that Tolkien didn't see things he liked about Franco in a more general sense, but favouring a side in a war doesn't automatically mean complete endorsement of their agenda. I think most of us today would favour the Republicans over the Nationalists, but that says comparatively little about our own ideology, and certainly doesn't imply that we are all on the same page). 

You can compare it to modern-day politics easily enough. If you want to work with, say, Saddam or Assad or the Saudis then you are, of course, effectively in favor of their domestic policies by tolerating that they continue to implement them - especially if your support is crucial to keep them in power. This doesn't mean you have to want them to implement those policies in your own country - but that's the double standard we are talking about.

That Hitler moved himself into a position where the UK and the US stood against him in the end was stupidity on his part. If he had played his cards differently he could have been a part of an anti-Communist 'Aryan bloc' - they so desperately wanted to get on the same page with the British (and if Edward VIII had not abdicated ... who knows?). Nobody would or did declare war on Germany because of the Jews - and last time I looked the Allies did little and less to prevent Eichmann's trains from reaching the gas chambers from all over German-occupied Europe. This was not exactly a priority.

I mean - Germany declared war on the US in response to Pearl Harbor because we were allies of the Japanese. It is not that the US were falling over themselves to come to the defense of the Europeans.

7 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

To take the thread back on topic, Tolkien's stance was the norm for 1930s Catholics (there were a few who came out for the Republic, but most backed Franco). This wasn't simply a response to the killing of priests either - it was because, at that point, the Church was still inherently hostile to the legacy of 1789, and Franco loved conflating 1789 with 1917. As historian Eric Hobsbawm (himself a veteran of the War) put it, in the era when liberalism fell, the Church rejoiced at its fall.

They were more honest and had less cognitive dissonance back in the day. Catholicism (and Christianity in general) is neither liberal nor democratic nor egalitarian. The Catholic Church is still an absolutist elective monarchy, and Jesus Christ is the King of the World who is supposed to come back at the end of the world and rule supreme over everybody. There won't be any elections held after judgment day, will they?

I don't understand how people can reconcile Christianity and democracy in their minds. They are, in essence, mutually exclusive - unless you don't take Christianity seriously (i.e. don't believe Jesus Christ still exists and will come back one day to actually rule as king).

[SeanF]

22 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

 

I don't understand how people can reconcile Christianity and democracy in their minds. They are, in essence, mutually exclusive - unless you don't take Christianity seriously (i.e. don't believe Jesus Christ still exists and will come back one day to actually rule as king).

Quite easily.  Democracy is a political, not a religious, system.  It's like saying there ought to be a Christian position on Brexit or Scottish independence, when there is no religious angle to these political debates.

[A wilding]

There is also a difference between Catholicism and Protestantism. Catholicism has historically been very comfortable working with various types of autocratic government. Protestantism not so much, even if it has occasionally drifted towards theocracy.

[Nabarg]

On 11/8/2018 at 4:52 PM, Lord Varys said:

to

The word  ”conversion” does not always refer to the changing of the formal membership of a religion, but the change from a “worldly” to a religious life. This may be used more often among evangelical protestants, but catholics sometimes does it to; I have seen biographies of StFrancis and Ignatius of Loyola refer to their religious awakenings as “conversion”.

“Democracy” may mean a lot of things. If it means that humanity is the source of ultimate authority, it is irreconcilable with the abrahamite religions (and also hinduism, cofusianism etc). If it just means that free elections is the best way to appoint public officials of various kinds there is no problem at all. If there is something in between, it may vary with religion and individual. 

[Lord Varys]

5 hours ago, SeanF said:

Quite easily.  Democracy is a political, not a religious, system.  It's like saying there ought to be a Christian position on Brexit or Scottish independence, when there is no religious angle to these political debates.

That's what I mean by cognitive dissonance. Originally, Christianity didn't differentiate between the religious and the political sphere. Doing that means you diminish the role and importance of religious rules for private and public life. That you can only do when you do not (or no longer) believe religious rules are to be interpreted as they were written.

The Catholic Church of the late 19th and early 20th century still knew and accepted that - and subsequently condemned modern nonsense like liberalism, democracy, etc.

4 hours ago, A wilding said:

There is also a difference between Catholicism and Protestantism. Catholicism has historically been very comfortable working with various types of autocratic government. Protestantism not so much, even if it has occasionally drifted towards theocracy.

That's too simple. Protestantism is essentially the Wahhabism of Christianity - back to the roots, back to the sacred text(s). And those sacred texts are not exactly helping you to build a better or modern society. Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, etc. helped to break the power of Rome - but they replaced it with repressive systems of their own. In a proper Protestant state state and church are one - as they should be - not separate (as the Enlightenment thought they should be). 1789 and 1776 have basically nothing to do with Christianity or Christian ideas. The US got lucky that their founders were, for the most part, deists or people who didn't give a damn about religion. That way it could evolve into a state where various Protestant sects could co-exist

The Reformation also rejuvenated the Catholic Church - it gave us the Jesuits, the Council of Trent, etc. Without the zealotry on both sides the Enlightenment could have started in the 16th century rather than 200 years later - the printing press was there since around 1450. They could have started to print texts that made sense instead of bibles for centuries.

31 minutes ago, Nabarg said:

The word  ”conversion” does not always refer to the changing of the formal membership of a religion, but the change from a “worldly” to a religious life. This may be used more often among evangelical protestants, but catholics sometimes does it to; I have seen biographies of StFrancis and Ignatius of Loyola refer to their religious awakenings as “conversion”.

I know that - the point was more that this was not exactly a great change. Lewis was raised as an Anglican, he lived in a Christian country, his peers always were Christians, and his academic work included Christian texts to no small degree.

Him changing his views there doesn't strike me as all that noteworthy - and this kind of 'conversion narrative' is a recurring theme in Christian hagiography since the days of Paul. Just check how many 'die-hard atheists' routinely find Christ on the average evangelical newsite. Most of them either were never atheists in the first place or at best not particularly religious/pious Christians.

31 minutes ago, Nabarg said:

“Democracy” may mean a lot of things. If it means that humanity is the source of ultimate authority, it is irreconcilable with the abrahamite religions (and also hinduism, cofusianism etc). If it just means that free elections is the best way to appoint public officials of various kinds there is no problem at all. If there is something in between, it may vary with religion and individual. 

The Bible doesn't advocate for elections or democracy - it doesn't even know that kind of government. The only forms of government the bible are theocracy and monarchy (kings appointed and deposed by Jahwe starting with Saul).

And if the place we are all going to (i.e. either heaven or hell) is run by a king, then it is clear what the ideal form of government is. There are no elections in heaven, and King Jesus is not going to be deposed.