SaH0047 The following essay, originally written in 2016, comments on a book by a Lutheran Pastor about heretical influences in contemporary American society.  The author is Peter Burfeind. The title of the work is Gnostic America: A Reading of Contemporary American Culture according to Christianity’s Oldest Heresy (Pax Domini Press, 2014).  Please have this book at hand for the full story.

These comments are not a close reading.  They situate Burfeind’s text with category-based models.  These models were proposed and developed in How to Define the Word “Religion”, plus Primers 1 through 10.  They were refined in the Course on Implicit and Explicit Abstraction.  They portray relational and logical structures.

Also, my discussion presumes the first singularity.  Gnosticism was cultivated in an early ancient civilization.  As such, I expect its origin myth to be a fairy tale about the first singularity.  The first singularity is discussed in the Crystallizations of the Fall series plus An Archaeology of the Fall, available at www.smashwords.com and other e-book venues.

In short, these comments apply a suite of postmodern scholastic hypotheses to Burfeind’s excellent text.  They are different from, yet complementary to, Burfeind’s passionate argument.

SaH0048 This exposition constitutes a strand in the Razie Mah’s online course: Semiotics and History.

The various strands are listed in Razie Mah’s blog for February 3, 2026 

‘Words that belong together’ are denoted by single quotes or italics.

Student instructions are colored in purple.