# American Christianity: taking control, or last gasp? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 18, 2018, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-christianity-taking-control-or-last-gasp/818131 "2018-07-18T08:04:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2018, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-christianity-taking-control-or-last-gasp/818131/121 "2018-08-01T23:45:51Z")
> [@senoy](#): > > Again, I’m not claiming that human rights could ONLY be brought about by Christianity. I’m sure I could conjecture 100 fictional belief systems that could possibly bring them about. What I am claiming though is that those 100 fictional belief systems did NOT bring them about. Christianity DID. We know this is so because I just explained why it was so. Locke was foundational to human rights and Christianity was fundamental to Locke’s conception of human rights. This is true. Without Christianity, maybe there would have been some sort of non-Christian, non-Locke who espoused some sort of human rights that caught on in fictional non-Christendom, but there wasn’t. It was Christianity that provided the basis for modern human rights, not some fictional conjectural belief system. Enumerate the ones that they didn’t bring about then…we can’t reach common ground unless you are willing to state what you think was uniquely Christian. But the only thing I can find in the Bible is Romans 2:14–15, but that was copied from Cicero who was most definitely not a Christian. In the case of the US, the natural rights propaganda like _Common Sense_, the most widely read pamphlet of the American Revolution, was produced by a non-Christian. I am not going to just accept that concepts like the peaceful nature of republics put forth by Thomas Paine are in any way Christian because we have direct evidence that he was not one. Can you provide proof that Christianity drove his ideas? While the specific collection of features may be fairly unique, your argument seems to be that a puddle forces the ground to change to conform to it’s shape. ---
**Author:** ![senoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@senoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/senoy)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2018, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-christianity-taking-control-or-last-gasp/818131/122 "2018-08-01T23:46:32Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > Funny how all recent history has that as more of an “in spite of”, then. > > Underneath the Christianity, all Christians are humans. And a lot of humans have good morals that are utterly independent of Christianity. (Which is to say they have _any_ morals - Christianity is quite consistent in saying that people should be obedient to commands and instruction rather than exercising independent moral judgement about what’s good and bad.) > > It’s my observation that the more strongly a person hews to their Christianity, the less concerned they are with things like human rights. This does not mean that all christians are assholes; there are quite a few very nice people who are very nice while they’re not acting on christian principles. > > The people who are nice while focusing on their christian principles are much, much rarer. > > I consider it very, very likely that persons who established human rights under the framework of christianity were doing so by taking personal philosophy and bending the dogma to match it. Kind of like how racists take their personal philosophy and bend the dogma to match _it_ - the dogma can be bent either way, and doesn’t force either outcome. (Though there _is_ an observable trend towards go dictatorial and oppressive - unsurprising since God’s kingdom isn’t a democracy of equals.) I don’t think this is a fair claim. What is really happening is that Christianity is not monolithic and really never has been. Christians have been on both sides of most social issues in modern history due to their religious beliefs. They were marching for Civil Rights and nuclear disarmament as well as against those causes and both were rooting their beliefs in various theologies that fall within the tent that is Christianity. What many non-Christians do is set up ‘straw man Christianity’ that creates a parody of Christianity relying upon its worst features and then saying that anyone that doesn’t follow that parody isn’t truly living out their faith and has somehow corrupted Christianity. It implies that everything that is positive about Christianity is people diverging from the faith and everything negative about it is ‘real’ Christianity and that simply isn’t true. Christianity has 2000 years of theological disagreements and branchings that come to many different conclusions. Hyper-liberal Episcopalians are just as Christian as these parody fundamentalists that you think represent ‘real’ Christianity. ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2018, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-christianity-taking-control-or-last-gasp/818131/123 "2018-08-01T23:48:45Z")
> [@senoy](#): > > I don’t think this is a fair claim. What is really happening is that Christianity is not monolithic and really never has been. Christians have been on both sides of most social issues in modern history due to their religious beliefs. They were marching for Civil Rights and nuclear disarmament as well as against those causes and both were rooting their beliefs in various theologies that fall within the tent that is Christianity. > > What many non-Christians do is set up ‘straw man Christianity’ that creates a parody of Christianity relying upon its worst features and then saying that anyone that doesn’t follow that parody isn’t truly living out their faith and has somehow corrupted Christianity. It implies that everything that is positive about Christianity is people diverging from the faith and everything negative about it is ‘real’ Christianity and that simply isn’t true. Christianity has 2000 years of theological disagreements and branchings that come to many different conclusions. Hyper-liberal Episcopalians are just as Christian as these parody fundamentalists that you think represent ‘real’ Christianity. So what you are saying is you can’t define these features, which apparently cannot be enumerated, but caused a result that you are unwilling to define but uniquely happened due to it? Why do you ascribe the results to it with zero evidence? ---
**Author:** ![senoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@senoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/senoy)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2018, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-christianity-taking-control-or-last-gasp/818131/124 "2018-08-01T23:51:16Z")
> [@rat\_avatar](#): > > Enumerate the ones that they didn’t bring about then…we can’t reach common ground unless you are willing to state what you think was uniquely Christian. > > But the only thing I can find in the Bible is Romans 2:14–15, but that was copied from Cicero who was most definitely not a Christian. > > In the case of the US, the natural rights propaganda like _Common Sense_, the most widely read pamphlet of the American Revolution, was produced by a non-Christian. I am not going to just accept that concepts like the peaceful nature of republics put forth by Thomas Paine are in any way Christian because we have direct evidence that he was not one. Can you provide proof that Christianity drove his ideas? > > While the specific collection of features may be fairly unique, your argument seems to be that a puddle forces the ground to change to conform to it’s shape. Socinianism was uniquely Christian. It never existed in any other religious or cultural context. Paine was not Christian, but his ideas came from Grotius and Locke who were firmly rooted in Christianity and because of their Christianity. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2018, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-christianity-taking-control-or-last-gasp/818131/125 "2018-08-01T23:51:17Z")
> [@senoy](#): > > Again, I’m not claiming that human rights could ONLY be brought about by Christianity. I’m sure I could conjecture 100 fictional belief systems that could possibly bring them about. What I am claiming though is that those 100 fictional belief systems did NOT bring them about. Christianity DID. We know this is so because I just explained why it was so. Locke was foundational to human rights and Christianity was fundamental to Locke’s conception of human rights. This is true. Without Christianity, maybe there would have been some sort of non-Christian, non-Locke who espoused some sort of human rights that caught on in fictional non-Christendom, but there wasn’t. It was Christianity that provided the basis for modern human rights, not some fictional conjectural belief system. Actually what you’ve argued is that Locke belonged to one subsect of Christianity that hewed to an interpretation of Christianity that was nonstandard at the time. (What immediately leapt to my mind was the Jacobians - the people who think Bella and Jacob were the true couple in the Twilight series.) This doesn’t tell me that Christianity spawned human rights. This tells me that Christianity at the time was, for a while, not entirely successful at crushing out humaneness from its members. And I will readily concede that Christianity doesn’t have a 100% success rate at turning all its members into monsters. It’s not 0% either though. And I don’t give them props for that failure nor credit for the decency that slips through the cracks. ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2018, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-christianity-taking-control-or-last-gasp/818131/126 "2018-08-01T23:54:38Z")
> [@senoy](#): > > Socinianism was uniquely Christian. It never existed in any other religious or cultural context. > > Paine was not Christian, but his ideas came from Grotius and Locke who were firmly rooted in Christianity and because of their Christianity. What portion of it was unique? And how does it relate to the rise of Democracy that makes it unique? I am pretty sure the world had skeptics as an example, and lots of people didn’t believe in the trinity. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2018, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-christianity-taking-control-or-last-gasp/818131/127 "2018-08-01T23:56:56Z")
> [@senoy](#): > > I don’t think this is a fair claim. What is really happening is that Christianity is not monolithic and really never has been. Christians have been on both sides of most social issues in modern history due to their religious beliefs. They were marching for Civil Rights and nuclear disarmament as well as against those causes and both were rooting their beliefs in various theologies that fall within the tent that is Christianity. > > What many non-Christians do is set up ‘straw man Christianity’ that creates a parody of Christianity relying upon its worst features and then saying that anyone that doesn’t follow that parody isn’t truly living out their faith and has somehow corrupted Christianity. It implies that everything that is positive about Christianity is people diverging from the faith and everything negative about it is ‘real’ Christianity and that simply isn’t true. Christianity has 2000 years of theological disagreements and branchings that come to many different conclusions. Hyper-liberal Episcopalians are just as Christian as these parody fundamentalists that you think represent ‘real’ Christianity. “Straw man Christianity” = No True Scotsman. There are elements of Christianity that can, when not overridden by _other_ elements of Christianity, result in good things. Charity for the poor, for example, was a good thing back when it used to happen and could be directly cited back to mainline christian doctrine without having to twist things too much. Mainline christian doctrine doesn’t support human rights, though. It just ain’t there, except in the sense that _literally anything and everything_ can be supported by the bible if you cherry pick hard enough. But if you’re cherry picking to get your conclusion then the conclusion is coming from you (or the like-minded members of your subsect), not from “Christianity”. ---
**Author:** ![senoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@senoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/senoy)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2018, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-christianity-taking-control-or-last-gasp/818131/128 "2018-08-01T23:58:09Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > Actually what you’ve argued is that Locke belonged to one subsect of Christianity that hewed to an interpretation of Christianity that was nonstandard at the time. (What immediately leapt to my mind was the Jacobians - the people who think Bella and Jacob were the true couple in the Twilight series.) > > This doesn’t tell me that Christianity spawned human rights. This tells me that Christianity at the time was, for a while, not entirely successful at crushing out humaneness from its members. > > And I will readily concede that Christianity doesn’t have a 100% success rate at turning all its members into monsters. It’s not 0% either though. And I don’t give them props for that failure nor credit for the decency that slips through the cracks. You’re going strawman again. You’re assuming that there is/was a ‘standard’ Christianity and that anything that is/was good can’t belong to that ‘standard’ Christianity. So, what exactly are you claiming is ‘standard’ Christianity and did anyone actually believe in this ‘standard’ and why was it ‘standard?’ The 17th century was a time of hundreds of Christian sects and every single one of them thought they were the ‘standard’ and the others lacking. Were the Puritans this mainline? The Catholics? The Anabaptists? The Arminians? Who exactly is this mainline upon which all other theologies must be measured and found wanting? ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2018, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-christianity-taking-control-or-last-gasp/818131/129 "2018-08-01T23:59:41Z")
> [@senoy](#): > > Socinianism was uniquely Christian. It never existed in any other religious or cultural context. > > Paine was not Christian, but his ideas came from Grotius and Locke who were firmly rooted in Christianity and because of their Christianity. On the second part: Locke’s ideas came from Coke, who had to go outside the canon to justify natural rights and referenced Greek and Roman concepts. These ideas were very much not unique to Christians. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2018, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-christianity-taking-control-or-last-gasp/818131/130 "2018-08-02T00:08:50Z")
> [@senoy](#): > > You’re going strawman again. You’re assuming that there is/was a ‘standard’ Christianity and that anything that is/was good can’t belong to that ‘standard’ Christianity. So, what exactly are you claiming is ‘standard’ Christianity and did anyone actually believe in this ‘standard’ and why was it ‘standard?’ The 17th century was a time of hundreds of Christian sects and every single one of them thought they were the ‘standard’ and the others lacking. Heh, if we’re supposed to take each and every one of those hundreds of Christian sects as being true Christianity then the one universal creed of Christianity is that _every single sect is lacking_. And thus there is no true Christianity! If we go down this road, then there’s three ways of characterizing Christianity - as a vague whole that includes everything at once, a myriad of miniscule individual splinters with no relation to one another, or as a collection of the individual splinters weighing details about them for commonality and lowering the weight and dismissing the influence of aberrations as being caused by other things. And then there’s the fourth approach where you do the weighted conglomeration but stratify it by time. I don’t like the first approach, particularly if you no-true-scotsman it and don’t give equal time to announcing that Christianity supported the nazis. I don’t like the second approach either because it’s too confusing - too much work to clarify which splinter you are or aren’t talking about at any given time. By the third and fourth approaches Christianity wasn’t and isn’t responsible for human rights. ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2018, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-christianity-taking-control-or-last-gasp/818131/131 "2018-08-02T00:34:15Z")
Aristotle and others discussed natural rights. [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0060%3Abook%3D1%3Achapter%3D13](http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0060%3Abook%3D1%3Achapter%3D13) > [@](#): > > In fact, there is a general idea of just and unjust in accordance with nature, as all men in a manner divine, even if there is neither communication nor agreement between them. IMHO social contract could be ascribed to a rebellion against the _divine_ right of kings, but I am not going to suggest that only Christians use claims to divinity to justify totalitarian behavior. I guess one could argue that the form of Feudalism practice allowed for these ideas to rise and adherents to gain power. But once again, that would be rebelling against parts of the canon like Matthew 22:21 and not a result of the religion itself. The rise of stable nation states mixed with enough free resources for those ideas to be conceptualized yet enough scarcity to drive dissent seems to be more likely. I don’t see evidence that Christians uniquely fated to tyranny. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2018, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-christianity-taking-control-or-last-gasp/818131/132 "2018-08-02T01:41:52Z")
> [@JB99](#): > > You’ve obviously never opened a history book, have you? My awareness of history is pretty fair. I was responding to your claim that you had met Christians and that they were all evil. Christians, as a group, are not as good as they would like to believe or that they are called to be, but on the whole, they do not seem to have been worse than any large group of people. ---
**Author:** ![CelticKnot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/celticknot/32/3392_2.png) [@CelticKnot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CelticKnot)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2018, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-christianity-taking-control-or-last-gasp/818131/133 "2018-08-02T04:36:23Z")
> [@JB99](#): > > You are so far removed from reality that I can’t comprehend it. The people you describe are EXACTLY the same people who vote for White Shariah lunatics like Pence. The people you describe are EXACTLY the kind of people who think gays are evil, Muslims are Satanists, and Trump is the most honest man on Earth. > > And guess what? CHRISTIANS ARE THE PEOPLE WHO TURNED ME AGAINST CHRIST. > > I HAVE met them, and what they taught me is that Christians **HATE** anyone who isn’t EXACTLY like them. Half the time, Christians hate other Christians just as much as they hate the “fags” and the “Muslims.” Their hatred, manipulation, and CONTEMPTIBLE STUPIDITY are nothing short of breathtaking. > > Christianity is a boot on humanity’s neck, and if you believe otherwise you are the disease, not the cure. And if you have any doubts whatsoever, all you have to do is take one look at the “evangelical-church-going Followers of Christ” and see how they line up to worship the most hateful, dishonest, perverted goddamned narcissist in America’s history, while COMPLETELY jettisoning their fake morality and their credibility along with it. > > I’ve met plenty of Christians, and they are the most evil, manipulative, and dishonest people on God’s green Earth. The faster Christianity ceases to exist, the better of we all will be. You haven’t met the thousands I have, so I don’t buy the hate you’re selling. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2018, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-christianity-taking-control-or-last-gasp/818131/134 "2018-08-02T05:02:42Z")
> [@JB99](#): > > Now it just sounds like a sick joke, because the subhuman goddamned filth who voted for this joker will let him get away with **ANYTHING.** > [@JB99](#): > > WHEN YOU TREAT PEOPLE LIKE SUBHUMANS, DON’T ACT SURPRISED WHEN THEY REACT ACCORDINGLY. The irony of this is too good to not call out. When you feel the need to call people subhuman, I think it’s time to step back. With this especially: > [@JB99](#): > > You are so far removed from reality that I can’t comprehend it. The people you describe are EXACTLY the same people who vote for White Shariah lunatics like Pence. The people you describe are EXACTLY the kind of people who think gays are evil, Muslims are Satanists, and Trump is the most honest man on Earth. > > And guess what? CHRISTIANS ARE THE PEOPLE WHO TURNED ME AGAINST CHRIST. > > I HAVE met them, and what they taught me is that Christians **HATE** anyone who isn’t EXACTLY like them. Half the time, Christians hate other Christians just as much as they hate the “fags” and the “Muslims.” Their hatred, manipulation, and CONTEMPTIBLE STUPIDITY are nothing short of breathtaking. > > Christianity is a boot on humanity’s neck, and if you believe otherwise you are the disease, not the cure. And if you have any doubts whatsoever, all you have to do is take one look at the “evangelical-church-going Followers of Christ” and see how they line up to worship the most hateful, dishonest, perverted goddamned narcissist in America’s history, while COMPLETELY jettisoning their fake morality and their credibility along with it. > > I’ve met plenty of Christians, and they are the most evil, manipulative, and dishonest people on God’s green Earth. The faster Christianity ceases to exist, the better of we all will be. This type of personalization and ranting belongs in the Pit. Dial it back. [/moderating] ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2018, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-christianity-taking-control-or-last-gasp/818131/135 "2018-08-02T06:30:40Z")
> [@senoy](#): > > You’re going strawman again. You’re assuming that there is/was a ‘standard’ Christianity and that anything that is/was good can’t belong to that ‘standard’ Christianity. So, what exactly are you claiming is ‘standard’ Christianity and did anyone actually believe in this ‘standard’ and why was it ‘standard?’ The 17th century was a time of hundreds of Christian sects and every single one of them thought they were the ‘standard’ and the others lacking. > > Were the Puritans this mainline? The Catholics? The Anabaptists? The Arminians? Who exactly is this mainline upon which all other theologies must be measured and found wanting? Perhaps the relative level of tolerance found in England after Cromwell came in part from being tired of the various Christian sects killing each other, and the CoE majority learning what it is like to be oppressed. Certainly Christianity did not do much in the way of human rights while there was a monolithic Christian religion in the West. If Christianity - any kind - produces human rights, what took it so long? ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2018, 10:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-christianity-taking-control-or-last-gasp/818131/136 "2018-08-02T10:01:32Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > The people who are nice while focusing on their christian principles are much, much rarer. Whether we’re talking religion, politics or taste in foods, it is easy to think that “less noisy” means “less common”. ---
**Author:** ![senoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@senoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/senoy)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2018, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-christianity-taking-control-or-last-gasp/818131/137 "2018-08-02T12:26:48Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > Heh, if we’re supposed to take each and every one of those hundreds of Christian sects as being true Christianity then the one universal creed of Christianity is that _every single sect is lacking_. And thus there is no true Christianity! > > If we go down this road, then there’s three ways of characterizing Christianity - as a vague whole that includes everything at once, a myriad of miniscule individual splinters with no relation to one another, or as a collection of the individual splinters weighing details about them for commonality and lowering the weight and dismissing the influence of aberrations as being caused by other things. > > And then there’s the fourth approach where you do the weighted conglomeration but stratify it by time. > > I don’t like the first approach, particularly if you no-true-scotsman it and don’t give equal time to announcing that Christianity supported the nazis. I don’t like the second approach either because it’s too confusing - too much work to clarify which splinter you are or aren’t talking about at any given time. > > By the third and fourth approaches Christianity wasn’t and isn’t responsible for human rights. Nonsense. The proper way to look at Christianity is an extremely diverse set of beliefs with some commonality that interact with one another and represent a distinct lineage of thought. What you’re attempting to do is invent a stereotype and then plug everything into it. An analogy would be a Baby Boomer ranting about Millennials. He says that they are bad and comes up with some sort of straw man Millennial. When I say that say ‘X group of Millennials is quite good for some reason or another’ or ‘Y group of Millennials accomplished some great task.’ He responds that they are simply not real Millennials and that mainstream Millennials are still quite bad without ever defining what mainstream means. Where the problem arises is that the ‘mainstream’ Millennial is a fiction. Groups X and Y are just as much a product of their generation as the ‘evil Millennial’ that our Boomer friend created. It’s like saying that the CoE believes X. What CoE? The Archbishop of Canterbury or Great Aunt Edna? Who is the mainstream here? It’s certainly not the leadership, because the leadership of most denominations, even the hyper conservative ones tends to lean liberal due to the leftward lean of most seminaries beginning in the 50s and we know that liberal leaning Christians in this fictional world that non-religionists have invented are ‘No True Christians’ and have somehow strayed from the faith. The laity? Which ones exactly and how do you know what the laity were thinking in the 17th century? There were no polls and their writing display a great diversity of thought and opinion - unsurprisingly since Christian writings today also display a great diversity of thought and opinion even within denominations and furthermore even among ‘movements.’ ---
**Author:** ![senoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@senoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/senoy)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2018, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-christianity-taking-control-or-last-gasp/818131/138 "2018-08-02T13:23:02Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Perhaps the relative level of tolerance found in England after Cromwell came in part from being tired of the various Christian sects killing each other, and the CoE majority learning what it is like to be oppressed. > Certainly Christianity did not do much in the way of human rights while there was a monolithic Christian religion in the West. > If Christianity - any kind - produces human rights, what took it so long? First, let’s put an end to the idea of a ‘monolithic’ Christianity. Such a thing has never existed after the first decade or so. The first schisms appeared within the lifetime of the disciples. The Council of Jerusalem was in 48 CE and it was called to answer diversity of beliefs. Half of the New Testament is about responding to diverse beliefs that had already begun to form within the decades following the death of Christ. This is completely and totally the norm within Christianity. Even in the Catholic church of Western Europe, diversity of thought was extremely common. Prior to the Reformation, there were at least 40 different ‘heretical’ movements or roughly one every 35 years or so. This doesn’t count all of the theological movements that weren’t considered heretical. At any given time there were dozens of competing ideas within Catholicism regarding the divine and how we should approach it. I think that our ‘dumb down’ approach to history where we create narratives has hurt us in regard to actually understanding how humans actually behave. Martin Luther wasn’t the first guy in 1500 years that didn’t agree with ‘the largely fictional monolithic church.’ It happened constantly. Secondly, there are whole hosts of reasons that human rights emerged when they did. The history of human thoughts is no different than the history of science (which is human thought) or the history of countries. Saying why didn’t they emerge sooner is like saying, “If science is so great, why didn’t they invent the airplane until the 20th century.” It’s thoughts forming upon thoughts and brewing in environments that are conducive to incubating and spreading those ideas. We can certainly look at Socinianism and trace exactly why it emerged when it did, but it’s much harder to look at movements that were aborted in the womb and say why they didn’t advance as much. I think a lot of it simply had to do with the fact that medieval Europe was a fairly chaotic place and people were more concerned about food on the table and war with their neighbor than they were with high philosophical concepts. Those that were concerned with philosophy tended to be cut off from the outside world, so their ideas didn’t spread as quickly, especially more academic ideas that didn’t rely on populism. Also, I think that the concept of the individual really took a long time to emerge and that has been typical across a lot of philosophies. The Reformation is what really introduced this concept to Christendom and once the idea of the individual emerged, it became boiled in a Christian broth and it wasn’t long before human rights emerged as well. Prior to the Reformation, people really were thought of as components of a group and rights typically were the rights of the group rather than the rights of the person within that group. If we look at medieval conceptions of grace, we can really see this philosophical thread. The rise of monastics is really an echo of this idea that people were ‘saved’ as a group. Monastics were seen as ‘grace batteries’ who would spend their days doing acts that would bring ‘grace’ into the world and then their supporters/family/community could draw off of that grace. It’s a concept that is very strange to post-Reformation thought and even confusing to us, but when you lack a true conception of the individual (which is itself a very strange thing to us) it makes sense. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2018, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-christianity-taking-control-or-last-gasp/818131/139 "2018-08-02T16:57:25Z")
> [@senoy](#): > > Nonsense. The proper way to look at Christianity is an extremely diverse set of beliefs with some commonality that interact with one another and represent a distinct lineage of thought. And which of my obviously-not-nonsense classification techniques does this mean? Because you can attempt to dismiss rational analysis with pat rejection all you like but it doesn’t mean I’m going to play along with that bullshit. In a discussion where you’re aggressively trying to claim that Christianity gets credit for the words of one isolated minor subsect, it’s _absolutely necessary_ for us to decide what method we’re using for deciding which acts of members the group gets credit for. So which approach are you using? The one that necessarily requires you to proudly demand that Christianity be credited for hatred, rape, and murder because members did those things? The one that requires you to say that this one tiny bit of Christianity did something good (by copying it from the Greeks and Romans) and the many other bits of Christianity, including modern Christianity, get no credit whatsoever? The one that requires you to note that Christianity doesn’t demonstrate any significant theological support for human rights, and never has? Or are you going to stick with the one where you cherry pick the living hell out of what various members throughout history has done, and stand there expecting us to be impressed or convinced of anything? ---
**Author:** ![senoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@senoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/senoy)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2018, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-christianity-taking-control-or-last-gasp/818131/140 "2018-08-02T17:23:47Z")
I don’t know that you should or shouldn’t be impressed. We’re talking about a School of Thought and what it has produced. By its nature it’s cherry-picked. Not every individual who ascribes to a School of Thought has contributed anything of substance, yet we don’t then dismiss the entire school as having no accomplishments. If I say ‘Enlightenment Thought brought about democracy.’ We generally see this as meaning that particular subsets of ideas of a much larger pool of ideas brought it about. This doesn’t mean that the Enlightenment didn’t do bad things as well, nor does it mean that the Enlightenment was monolithic or that it is even possible to write down exactly what we mean by ‘Enlightenment Thinking’ since there is a diversity of opinion. The point though is that democracy was the outcome of simmering in this pot of ideas we call the Enlightenment. (OK, maybe not really, but rather than shift the argument to what exactly the Enlightenment did or did not accomplish, let’s pretend that it brought about democracy.) I think that it’s completely fair to say that Christianity brought about some horrible atrocities, some really nasty stuff. I think it’s also fair to say that it brought about some pretty good things. Of course Christianity demonstrates significant theological support for human rights and it’s quite ignorant to say otherwise. The pope today just came out against the death penalty. The Abolitionist movement was largely Christian in character and supported theologically by many churches. The Pietists were anti-war before it was cool. I think that what you’re trying to do is create what you think is ‘true Christianity’ and then saying everyone that isn’t that ‘true’ form is not really part of that line of thought and it’s a ridiculous claim. The Socinians were certainly part of the body of Christian thought and they certainly had significant theological support for human rights. Just because you may pick another Christian group and call them ‘real’ Christians and say they disagreed with the Socinians doesn’t make the Socinians less Christian except in your own fictional universe. It’s the same thing that fundamentalists do. They invent ‘fundamentals’ and then accuse everyone else of not being ‘real’ Christians if those others disagree with those fundamentals. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-christianity-taking-control-or-last-gasp/818131.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-christianity-taking-control-or-last-gasp/818131.md?page=8)