I listened to a web cast of Politichicks with Victoria Jackson and three other conservative ladies. It was painful. One lady mentioned the old meme I’ve heard for years
“This country was founded on Christian principles”
For the purpose of this thread I’m not discussing the founding of this nation but simply on the existence of Christian principles.
IMO, there’s no such thing. There is Christian doctrine and dogma but there are no principles that are uniquely Christian. My position is that any of the principles of living that Christ taught about our general behavior in society are also taught in other religions and the principles were around and being taught long before Jesus supposedly taught them.
Am I correct or incorrect? Am I missing something?
I guess if you take the phrase “Christian principles” to mean “principles held only and exclusively by Christians” as opposed to “principles which Christians uphold” then yes, you’re right.
I don’t think the phrase “Christian principles” implies exclusivity, though; any more than the “American Way” implies exclusivity. To me, at least, it simply means “principles which Christians uphold, some or all of which may or may not be shared by other belief systems”.
That’s a good thought. Maybe it’s the way it’s said that implies either exclusivity or superiority to me. IMO, it’s important for Christians to realize that the same principles Jesus taught were taught by others and we can appreciate those principles under the label of many religions or no religion at all.
There is a nuanced but significant difference to me between
A principle Christians believe in and teach {which can imply an “also” and does not imply ownership, and the term
A Christian principle.
Thanks for that thought. It helps.
The Christian principles would be those things that are the central ideas of Christianity, right? Things like being mindful of the poor and downtrodden, a lack of focus on wealth accumulation (even to the point of selling off any wealth you’ve accumulated in the past), and dropping any family ties in order to follow Jesus.
Those things are just so obviously what our country was founded upon - how can anybody question it?
Prior to Christ, “good” meant mumbling the correct prayers and performing the requisite animal sacrifices to win the favor of God/the gods. Christ’s innovation (and it was certainly in discussion among the Essenes earlier) was that you can’t treat other people–including ones from other tribes and religions–badly and still win God’s favor. (His detractors, the scribes and Pharisees, were essentially locked into the position of “Yes, you can.”) Other faiths have come to this position as well, but Christ was its first major proponent.
In the context of the OP, I think the conservatives in question are talking about “prosperity theology,” the notion that God wants you to be wealthy and that the poor are responsible for their own problems. A selective interpretation of scripture, IMO.
And post Christ, “good” meant mumbling the correct prayers and performing the requisite ritualized cannibalism celebrating human sacrifice to win the favor of God/the gods.
The golden rule existed in many cultures and philosophy long before the claimed time of Christ.
Code of Hammurabi had one almost 2000 years prior as did ancient Egypt, Greece and China.
This is more or less what I came in here to say, so I’m glad to see that it was the first result. I do think, though, that what “Christian principles” means depends upon the person that says it. In a vague enough sense, in terms of what is good and bad, it could more or less be refering to a moral code which has significant overlap with just about any world religion and many secular moral codes as well. If one means it in a more specific sense, then it could very well refer to aspects that are typically or exclusively associated with Christianity.
Unfortunately, it seems that a lot of the uses I’ve seen of the term tend to use the former definition to justify a statement relating to it, but then use the latter definition when applying it.
Did the Code of Hammurabi link being nice to others with gaining the favor of God/the gods? Did the Greeks, Egyptians and Chinese attach religious significance to it?
I agree. If someone says they follow “Christian principles” or have “Christian values”, what does that tell you about them? Little to nothing. That can mean anything from feeding the poor, to subjugating women, to pacifism, to thinking the unbelievers should be exterminated, to “love your neighbor”, to “monitor your neighbor for Sin”.
Another possibility: People who came of age before the Beatles went on Ed Sullivan have fond memories of prayer in public schools and science lessons that skimped on the theory of Evolution. Invokers of “America’s Christian principles” might just be really nostalgic for those days.
If Victoria Jackson and the Politichicks are the epitome of “christian principles” I’d take them to be:
-ignorance of your opponent’s actual beliefs and values
-judgmental attitudes
-hate towards everyone who is different than you
-selfishness, and really, everything opposite of charity and goodwill
-bitterness
-and being flippant and disrespectful of anyone who doesn’t believe the same things you do
Those don’t line up with my grandma’s Quaker, xtian values, but then neither does anything I hear from the loudmouths who claim to be xtian in this country. I’m an atheist, but I’ve always admired the xtians like my grandma who I knew as a kid. They were nothing like these idiots.
the statement “this country was founded on christian principles” is not concerned with principles of any sort but is rather code for “white western european protestant culture holding all the power.” a close reading of the new testament leaves me convinced the main christian principle is “something for nothing.”
The average conservative Christian reminds more of a Pharisee than anything Christ stood for. The way I understand it is the primary tenet of Christianity is that its not your works that get you into heaven, its your faith. That being said, your actions portray your true belief. The difference would be reciting prayers in the belief the prayers get you into heaven versus praying because you believe in a God that wants to listen to you, as one example.
But claiming the this country was founded on Christian principles is a stretch in any . While it is true the Jewish people rebelled over taxation issues under Rehaboam, Christ advocated paying your taxes in my interpretation of the bible. (mat. 22:21)
It is so common that it is of little consequence as to if it was a enforced through a negative religious incentive or a contemporary societal moral codes.
Reciprocal altruism is most likely an evolved behavioral, I would not say that Jesus taught the world to eat bread or drink wine.
To quote Pierre-Simon Laplace when Neplolean asked him ‘But where is God in all this?’ after he described the orbits of Saturn and Jupiter.
Well, in Leviticus, the Jews were already down with the “Love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD … The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself” bit, which – combined with the whole Thou Shalt Not Steal/Murder/Commit Adultery/Bear False Witness thing – had already sparked Talmudic summarization of the Torah in golden-rule form before Jesus burst onto the scene.
I like to look at the Old Testament as an evolution, over time, of what people (well, a narrow slice of them anyway) considered virtuous. The heroes of Genesis were, to modern sensibilities, quite dickish, as they were rough men in a rough era. But Noah, Abraham, Jacob and Lot weren’t just clever protagonists; they were singled out as exemplars of what God likes and finds favorable. With Exodus and Leviticus, we get more comprehensible guidelines of how to live a virtuous life. Later, David gets special dispensation to kill the gentile men and steal their virgin daughters en masse, so these rules are in a state of flux. “The Golden Rule” is in scant evidence for most of the Old Testament, and it generally doesn’t apply to outsiders.
In the rest of the world, pagan gods were pretty uninvolved in mortal affairs. Zeus and Ahura Mazda didn’t do a lot to reward the virtuous or punish the wicked; they had bigger fish to fry. It would be a rare Egyptian yammering about his “personal relationship” with Osiris. Whatever the ancients did to promote social order, people’s status in the afterlife was pretty unconnected to how kind they were to strangers.
And then come the Christians, and it’s all Crusade Against The Outsiders this and Inquisition Against The Outsiders that – and Burn The Witches At The Stake, and Don’t Even Get Me Started About Forcing The Jews Into Ghettos In The Wake Of Oh So Many Persecutions – have I got that right?