Didn’t forget at all. Just pointing out that mswas’s post was a perfect example of the type of response given by some “Christians” when this topic pops up.
This paragraph would be at home on most conservative Christian message boards. Claims that there isn’t any real oppression of atheists anymore, and that it isn’t real oppression unless we are being burned at the stake or spend a few months on the rack. Hell, I guess nobody is being oppressed anymore using those standards. On the one hand we are getting too strident by daring to put out books defending our point of view, and on the other we are “weak and facile”.
There are genuine, sincere Christians around, but certainly the people who have made themselves the public face of Christianity in the U.S. these days are engaged in nothing more than a modern form of tribalism.
While I fully realize that fundamentalist Christians are not in the majority, I also realize that they are the ones influencing the conservatives in Congress, this current Administration, and the opinions of the rest of the world through their almost total control of religious media. If they “hog the spotlight” and ruin the name of Christianity, it’s only because mainstream Christianity lets them. If someone stole my identity, ran up a shitload of bills and proceeded to ruin my good name, I wouldn’t sit on my ass and whine about how it wasn’t me doing all that crap-I’d be out there doing my best to grab that spotlight and clear my good name. You want to be treated like the majority?
Act like the majority.
It was perfectly okay to say that sort of thing to badchad, in fact it became a bit of a running joke in his last days here. Why is it not okay to say it to Der Trihs?
Uh-huh. So something a non-Christian says suggesting an atheist grow a skin exemplifies that which is said by scare-quote Christians end-scare-quote. Gotcha. But can’t you find enough examples by, y’know, actual Christians?
Kalhoun, think for a moment, will you? On a day when people are asked to “give thanks, each according to his or her own faith,” why wouldn’t Christians use that opportunity to give thanks to, say, Christ?
Was it perfectly ok? Could be, I missed that memo.
My point was the I believe **Polycarp ** is usually above such pettiness, and apparently he was and his joke just misfired with some of us, especially me.
It’s being promoted by the president and the governor of my state. That’s not their job. Their job is to be outwardly neutral about religion. If they want to partake, that’s their business.
The National Day of Prayer is not for each, according to his or her own faith. It’s decidedly christian.
and
Sorry…belief is fine, whatever gets you through the night. Endorsement of this kind of crap by the president and the governor is exclusive and offensive. Why, *oh why * must christians drag out the bandwagon and associate their superhero with our secular government (and indirectly, with patriotism)? Sometimes it’s a personal relationship with god (fine, as far as secular members of society are concerned) and other times, they feel the overwhelming need to thumbtack a tattered version of the stars and stripes to their cross so they look *extra * patriotic. Have they no shame? Can you see how that puts the rest of us on the outside looking in?
There was a letter to the editor today (in an Indiana paper) that suggested the motto should be replaced by the one the owner of the plate actually believes:
Are you asking that I start a thread containing all the examples I can find of Christians giving those kinds of quotes? I can just see all the drive-bys accusing me of “Christian-bashing” that would result, thank you very much. I was upset at mswas specifically for doing their job for them, though he constantly professes not to be one of them.
No, I’m asking that you not cite a grow-a-skin comment by a non-“Christian” as an instance of the kind of love Christians demonstrate.
Perhaps mswas, with whom I find myself in agreement roughly once every other Pancake Tuesday when there’s a penguin in my garden, was not so much doing anyone’s job as calling things the way he saw them.
Well, no, there isn’t. But you will notice that it is a .org website and not a .gov one, and that Shirley Dobson, the task force head, is the wife of Focus on the Family head muckety-muck James Dobson.
This may be the “official” site for Christians of some stripe or other, but it has no affiliation to the government that I can see, except that they choose to coordinate certain of their own events with the date of a presidential proclamation.
