It seems that Mike Pence does actually speak from time to time. HERE is a piece from the execrable Fox News describing how the Vice President (does he get embarrassed hearing the word ‘Vice’?) responded to recent news stories about how the ‘Christian school’ his wife works at discriminates against various minorities.
Yes, I get it. They can discriminate. It’s their prerogative.
But what Mike can’t do is whine about how “Christian education” is being attacked. Indeed, genuine Christian education is something that would help us all - love of the other, charity, all the selfless values espoused by Christ, are sorely needed.
Christian education is not under attack. Bigotry is.
OK, I get that a Christian school that has a “no gays” hiring policy is going to be a target of anti-discrimination advocates, but do any of the protesters *want *their kids going to that school?
If a public company had such a policy, I could understand the outrage, but this is an institution founded for a “select” clientele, Christians. As such, they’re going to teach things that won’t resonate with non-Christians and non-heteros. Plus, even if they were required to change their admissions policy, the students and administrators aren’t going to change their nature just because they’re not allowed to discriminate. Just let separation of church and state apply here and stop allowing FOX to turn the Pences into martyrs.
It’s distressing that the hate-driven evangelicals are able to claim the mantle of “Christian” with so little argument, even from those who do try to follow Christ’s *actual *teachings.
Knowed Out, your post would be inarguable if you used “evangelical” instead.
Nah, there are progressive evangelicals also (although hard to find, they are quiet - but a straightforward reading of the Bible should make all evangelicals progressive about most things)). They might still discriminate against employees, but I certainly would expect that they would take any students.
That’s incorrect. If someone thinks someone else is lesser than they are, even if they regard it as a bare fact with no emotional content, that thought is still hateful. It will still lead to discrimination and, very likely, violence when the people who are seen as lesser begin to demand their proper place in society. It’s impossible to separate the cause and the effect.
I’d argue that a true orthodox Christian adheres to the “all have sinned” passages and does not see themselves as “better” than anyone else. But I suppose this is all treading into proselytization, which really isn’t my intent. I just want to offer the perspective that one can be an orthodox Christian for religious reasons, yet harbor no hate towards anyone. Indeed, the latter would be a hallmark trait of what one could consider a good Christian.
However you choose to label it, the impact is the same. There were slave owners (and later, after emancipation, mere bigots) who saw their role as paternalistic, and black people as infantile. It didn’t make their disrespect and degradation any less insidious.
Moreover, if Pence is going to be all pious about how it’s loving to forbid unrepentant LGBTs or their children from attending his wife’s school, then how the hell can he justify supporting an unrepentant serial adulterer, compulsive liar, and well-known crook (wrt Trump’s established record of stiffing contractors)? It’s all well and good to assert that there’s some theoretical principled position of “orthodox Christianity” that resembles American evangelical views (though I’m not certain that it’s really very orthodox at all) and that rejects the LGBT community but not out of hate - love the sinner but hate the sin and all that - but you cannot at the same time support the leadership of the least moral man to hold the office of POTUS in the history of the country. Pence is indeed a hypocritical cry-baby.
When I was growing up, Christian schools (including Catholic schools) in the area had a reputation for having higher academic standards than certain public schools. Considering how many Christian schools have latched on to creationism and other anti-science crap, such as sex-ed that compares non-virgin women to pieces of used chewing gum, I don’t think that reputation holds up anymore. I certainly don’t remember being taught negative things about LGBT people, abortions, or other hot button topics in Catholic school; heck, there were even some atheists in attendance, and I don’t recall anyone in the administration being upset about that at all. What Christian education has turned into in many cases deserves to be called out; it’s not doing a very good job of preparing kids for the real world, and it’s not exhibiting very Christian behavior, at least in the way I was taught to understand it.
Serious question – the people I’m related to who are in the same branch of Christianity as the Pences think it’s absolutely horrible for a woman to work outside the home, especially if her supervisor is a male (in other words, she’s “submitting” to a man who isn’t her father or husband). So why is Pence ‘allowing’ Mother to work outside the home?