But your claim was that the Bible forbade democracy. Now you are claiming that it was “dense” to make that assertion. I concur, because the assertion is false.
What about the passages in the Old Testament that warn of all the drawbacks of having kings?
Regards,
Shodan
And it is this “logic” that brings forth the posts about airplanes and computers.
There were no democracies in the world when the early biblical passages were written and by the later passages Athens was considered a failure, (condemned by both Plato and Aristotle, so it was not some minority view). Claiming that the bible opposes democracy because it does not speak of it is as silly as claiming that the bible opposes buttons because they are not mentioned.
I go with what are human rights? Religion offers a basic framework, so does government, but is that something that can really define human rights at all? IMHO the only human right we have is to cry to God, and God help those people who cry to God.
That is the basic and only human right, to cry for help, and as I observed help you shall receive.
Hopefully YMMNV (your mileage may not vary)
…and of course, you can observe that democracy is a quintessentially Christian idea by the fact that as an institution, it is totally governed by the people, and not by some all-powerful autocrat (with some minor denominational variation), and of course by noting that the Vatican City is second only to Athens in terms of the governing body being merely a representative of the will of the people.
A good jest in a tense thread,
although it should, in the spirit of the Straight Dope, be pointed out that what is perceived by outsiders to be an opposition to technology among the Amish is actually not.
The Amish look to other passages in scripture that encourage Christians to not be involved in the world to guide their decisions. Electricity and phone lines are directly dependent on a “connection” to the rest of society that they avoid. The individual ownership of automobiles is perceived as associating in the world. Amish, when they run out of room to farm and begin working in construction, are quite comfortable using power equipment or paying for transportation that others own. They are delighted that their children can benefit from the services of high tech medical procedures.
Their theology does not really oppose technology, only the involvement of their community in the secular world.
Oh, sure. Forget the beacons of light illuminating an otherwise dark world thanks to Christians — burning each other alive and uncountable others who were witches, those possessed by the devil and both, and those uppity apostates who dared pull a handle on a printing press.
I’m not actually of the point of view that the Bible forbids democracy. But that passage, Romans 13, does seem to direct people to obey their governments (without qualification), because those with authority only have it by God’s will. So in the case when the governmental authority does not allow voting, it would be going against Romans 13 to disobey.
So it seems to me that a strict interpretation of Romans 13 would have resulted in opposition to the American Revolution- because they were revolting against the King of England, who was certainly in charge of their government at the time.
I’m not playing gotcha here- I was simply trying to find a verse from the Bible similar to that which you asked here. The Bible is huge- it’s not really that hard to find a verse that supports a wide variety of views, many of which seem to conflict with each other. So I wouldn’t really disagree with you, probably, in our view of the Founding Fathers- if they were Christians (and some of them were), their Christianity was not at risk or in conflict with the decision to Declare Independence (and fight for it), even though there are Bible verses that one could find that do conflict.
I’m not familiar with those. Can you point them out to me?
Incidentally, it was unnecessary for me to use the term “dense”, and I apologize for that. Your question was fair.
Would you care to explain this to people who oppose abortion on “biblical” grounds?
Neither part of this is true. The Book of Genesis takes place mainly in a society without any apparent government, up to the point when the action shifts to Egypt. And the Book of Judges takes place in an anarchic state. When the Kings of Israel take over, the great majority of them are bluntly described in negative terms.
The Prophet Samuel has a famous rant against kings in 1 Sam 8:10-18.
It’s certainly not any harder to interpret Romans 13 as anti-democracy (“the power to govern comes from god, not from man”, or something like that) than it is to interpret Leviticus 18 as being anti gay marriage.
Historically speaking I think that’s simply not true. The early Presbyterian/Puritan churches were founded with a strong, religiously based dedication to human equality. In some places in Europe, they made movements towards proto-democratic forms of government, but they rarely had the opportunity to actually govern independently, since monarchs were already in control and not looking to give it up. When Puritan dissenters fled England to found New England, they were able to establish actual democratic governments. So the beginnings of democracy arose from a positive push by a Christian group, not in opposition to it.
Thank you. It’s been rather a long time since I did any bible study.
Fair enough; the Bill of Rights is not anti-Christian. It is, however, still unrelated to Christian thought.
Not to mention that the whole abolition movement started with the Great Awakening, which was entirely Christian in nature.
Regards,
Shodan
Right before the beloved David. I think it is fair to say that kings get judged based on their love of God and nothing else. Certainly not based on their success and certainly not based on the good of the people. Kings in general are fine, kings who do not listen to the priests and prophets are not.
I’d suspect the writers of the OT were unaware of even Athenian democracy, and in any case they advocated close to a theocracy, with a lot of power vested in the Temple. The writers of the NT should have been aware of voting in the Roman Republic, at least. But support for kings implies lack of support for voting (constitutional monarchies not having been invented yet.)
I don’t think the Bible specifically prohibits SSM either though it would be simple enough to derive an anti-SSM argument from it. (Insert joke about no sex after marriage here, just to head off the smart alecks.) You could make a pretty good argument against voting in the same fashion.
Not, e.g., according to Rev. Benjamin Palmer of the First Presbyterian Church, who said in 1860:
I don’t think that counts. Palmer was attempting to demonize his opposition.
One of the leading thinkers on rights was John Locke. He was strong believer in Christianity and a case can be made that his philosophy was highly informed by his religion. He was one of the biggest boosters of religious freedom (well, except for atheists).
No group did more for the abolition of slavery than Christians. While it is true that plenty of Christians defended slavery that is true for all groups.
His opposition being abolitionists, and he himself being Christian. So I don’t see why this isn’t a good datapoint against the idea that abolitionism was a Christian movement.
But OK, if that’s not enough, then take these words from somebody who was born a slave:
[QUOTE=Frederick Douglass]
The church and the slave prison stand next to each other; the groans and cries of the heartbroken slave are often drowned in the pious devotions of his religious master. The church-going bell and the auctioneer’s bell chime in with each other; the pulpit and the auctioneer’s lock stand in the same neighbourhood; while the blood-stained gold goes to support the pulpit covers the infernal business with the garb of Christianity. We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support missionaries, and babies sold to buy Bibles and communion services for the churches.
[/QUOTE]
This, to me, doesn’t exactly sound as if he held Christianity to be responsible for the abolition of slavery.
Considering that virtually everyone in America at the time was Christian, that’s inevitable. That doesn’t mean that Christianity was the reason for it. Nor does it eliminate the centuries of support from Christianity for slavery.