How very convenient. I refer to a general class of people ( those who hate and oppress homosexuals ) as “bigots” - which is not a personal insult and within the rules; and you demand that I call specific people bigots - which would be against the rules.
And despite what you say, plenty of people have said that, for example, opposing SSM is bigotry. And on a fairly regular basis we get someone expounding the “unbelievers are all evil” theory, which is also an insult aimed a large class of posters. Your attitude that I have some sort of hold on or privilege with the mods is silly.
So your “bigots” would include atheists like Stalin, who sent homosexuals to prison camps in Siberia for up to eight years, and would not apply to any Christian who does not hate and oppress homosexuals? Did you post to the wrong thread?
The thread is "How did Christianity get hijacked by bozos? "; pointing out that the anti-homosexual movement is dominated and driven by Christianity is part of that.
Just before the Iraq invasion, I was at an interfaith event in Dallas, TX. Several of the speakers (Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, etc.) gave a speech about how their religion had influenced their life, or how their religion and American ideals intersected. One woman spoke about how she was proud to be a Hindu and an American. Her speech got lots of applause.
And then came the Christian speaker. And he made a Biblical argument against the upcoming invasion. He cited scripture and he was quite convincing to me (but I was already against the invasion, so maybe he was preaching to the choir).
And I was struck by the fact that I had never seen or heard anything like it in our political debate. Granted, I don’t watch a lot of the news networks, so maybe it was out there, but I hadn’t heard anything like it before.
He got tepid applause from the audience when he was finished.
Carter was a Baptist and a good practical man who tried to bring basic principles from his own Christian background into Washington. Unfortunately Washington, including his own party didn’t want it and he wasn’t politically savvy enough to bring them around. That and historic events did him in.
Reagan was scum, who did major damage to this country and the world. His attempts to let AIDS spread as far and wide as possible, his war on the environment, his war on the poor, his support for death squads and torture, his promotion of apocalyptic religious fundamentalism all put him firmly into the “evil” category.
Apparently, “we” are speaking about whatever is on your mind. Perhaps you could instruct one or two of yourself to deal with the OP’s question rather than Der Trihs’s agenda.
> There is no such assumption. Many Christian churches are quite Liberal. You are
> wrong.
InterestedObserver wasn’t claiming that few Christians are liberal. He was claiming that if you looked at which Christian leaders were quoted in the media from about 1980 on, you could get the impression that few Christians were liberal. He was claiming that if you tried to get a feeling from mainstream American media during the period of the ascendancy of the Religious Right (which started about 1980, peaked in about 2000, and now is well on the way downhill), you would mistakenly think that nearly all Christians were conservative. The dominance of the Religious Right was a matter of their control of who was quoted in American media, not in their actual control of churches.
Literature professors do just that, albeit with Shakespeare rather than Star Trek, and usually agree with each other on the basics.
A parable (It’s worked before): Suppose I have a vision.
I change my name to Pasta Fari and devote the rest of my life to preaching, through word and example, (1)offer food to the hungry, just as the bounteous pasta stretches to feed all guests, and (2)be al dente with others, neither hard and cruel, nor soft and wimpy. Years later, a very vocal group of Pastafarians advocates starving people and boiling them in oil (crude, not olive.) You might well say, “Where the hell did that come from?” regardless of whether the Flying Spaghetti Monster really exists.
Having read the whole Bible, I think I can recognize ignorance of it. Not being able to read minds, deciding if it’s willful is hard.
Maybe, but the pieces they chose are so arbitrary.
You mean like this guy?
I think identifying main themes is a useful way to look at Christianity, since something that seemed to drive Jesus absolutely bonkers was people who were so hung up on the letter of the law that they completely missed its spirit–couldn’t see the forest for the trees.
Other offended Christians: If you believe Christ wants you to be kind to others, and struggle to live up to that–good! I respect and honor you. But there are some people with big-ass soapboxes out there taking the name of your Lord in vain, and I can’t figure out where the hell they’re coming from.
This may be a clue. Ideas can evolve over time in truly weird directions. This is a serious question: What made them think that Reagan was the voice of Christianity, anyway?
Now why am I not surprised that a self described fundamentalist supports Reagan’s “attempts to let AIDS spread as far and wide as possible, his war on the environment, his war on the poor, his support for death squads and torture, his promotion of apocalyptic religious fundamentalism” ?
Actually, I think Reagan was pretty much a figurehead-keep in mind, by the end of his first term, he was already showing the first signs of Alzheimers. I don’t want to say he was stupid, more like willfully ignorant.
I don’t think he was running the show. (His people, however, were a bunch of dicks, I’ll definitely agree with you there.)
