Me specifically? Because I don’t believe you know much about my political or my religious beliefs, other than I’ve self-identified as a liberal Christian.
I don’t believe, in any case, that the “meaning” of Jesus is hidden at all – he told us what the greatest commandments are and they have nothing to do with who’s the bigger sinner or who has the right political beliefs.
Nor do I believe Jesus would give two shits about the Democratic party.
I do believe that Jesus was primarily concerned about how we reconcile ourselves to God and how we treat the people around us, especially the marginalized - the poor, the widowed, the aliens. I usually wind up voting for Democrats because of these priorities but it’s my religion that has informed my politics, not the other way around. I was an almost straight Republican voter for many years, until I could no longer reconcile too many of their policies to what I believed Jesus taught.
As far as not following a religion except to eat donuts on Sunday morning, I’m not going to get into the religious equivalent of a dick-waving contest, but name any measure you care to use and I think I will rank pretty highly in terms of religiosity. Daily prayer and bible reading? Check. Tithe income to the church? Check. Leadership at the local parish level? Check. Diocesan level? Check. National level? Check. Sunday school teacher? Check. Short term missions? Check. Volunteer work? Check.
So, in conclusion, you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.
Exactly–it’s as if you, having called someone else stupid for saying “They’re doing Christianity wrong,” turned around and said almost precisely the same thing about some other Christians, something like, oh, I dunno,
I mean, that’d be some REAL irony, wouldn’t it?
This is a very stupid viewpoint that shows you’ve never bothered to talk with liberal Christians. Back when I was in college I was curious about the same thing you are, so you know what I did? I asked some liberal Christians. What they (the ones I talked to, not some sort of liberal Christian hive-mind) told me was that they viewed the Bible as allegorical and metaphorical in many parts, that it acted as a spiritual guide that needed to be read with a side of historical context. Who the hell are you to tell them they’re doing it wrong?
And your praise for that johnny-come-lately movement of Biblical inerrancy is misplaced. First, there’s no virtue in a stupid view held honestly; the world is sick with the evils perpetrated by honest villains. Second, if you really want to look at a viewpoint sinking under the weight of internal contradictions, you needn’t look further than Biblical inerrancy itself: the Bible is chockablock with self-contradictory passages.
An intelligent person who doesn’t desperately try to find ways to square a book written by semi-retarded ancient shepherds to explain why the sky was angry at them with all of the knowledge of modern science & values that made religion irrelevant centuries ago.
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Second, if you really want to look at a viewpoint sinking under the weight of internal contradictions, you needn’t look further than Biblical inerrancy itself: the Bible is chockablock with self-contradictory passages.
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I’m aware of this, so I do the smart thing and reject the Bible. Right-wing Christians steamroll over the contradictions or proclaim that science is wrong; left-wing Christians invent novel meanings for words and passages out of whole cloth (“days” now means “billions of years”, “homosexuality” now means “rape”, etc) so that they can pretend there are no contradictions. Neither of them is willing to face facts about God not existing and religion being an archaic means of explaining the world that should be discarded.
I always find it funny when posters like Condescending Robot post about how foolish religious believers are.
Their complete faith that they know what is right, and that religious believers are stupid, shows they have as much faith in something that’s “unprovable” as those they are deriding. CR would make a fine theologian if s/he was in the other camp.
I went to school with a girl whose family took turns staying up all night reading the bible aloud while everyone else slept so that they could not be tempted by evil dreams from satan or his minions. She kept falling asleep in class (this was like 5th grade maybe) on certain days because it had been her reading turn the night before.
sleep dep is against the geneva convention for fucks sake, why was CPS not called?
This is just more evidence that you don’t have any idea what liberal Christians believe. Hint: it doesn’t involve trying to pretend the Bible doesn’t say what it says, or pretending there are no contradictions. In fact, just the opposite; they are more likely to acknowledge the contradictions and difficult passages.
The bible was written over the course of centuries by real, fallible people with various perspectives and agendas. It would be quite remarkable if there were no contradictions or errors. In general liberal Christians see the bible as inspired, but not inerrant; a valuable record of how first the nation of Israel, and later the nascent church, understood its relationship with God and the evolution of that understanding over time. An evolution wich continues into the present day.
So I don’t care if you dismiss religion in general or liberal Christianity specifically. But try not to flaunt your ignorance of what you’re dismissing by proclaiming some kind of cheap characture of liberal theology.
I bet you think you’re the first person to ever put down his Prairie Home Companion T-shirt and drool out the “atheism is just another religion” canard, too. No one is more convinced of their own cleverness than middle-way liberal religious milquetoasts.
I was born and raised in a conservative Lutheran environment. No-one I ever met, conversed with, or interacted with in person, by phone, or via any type of internet access (or in any other manner) has ever heard of Jack Chick.
Jack Chick is (as far as I know) a complete religious non-entity that messageboard-liberals have claimed as someone who speaks for conservative Christianity.
I call BULLSHIT!
The only place I have ever heard Jack Chick mentioned is this messageboard.
Ummmmm, there seems to be a lot of hemming and hawing in your post.
May I ask a question, please:
Have you ever met an actual practicing conservative Christian?
Or are you just making comments based on what you have heard or read in the media?
Also: If you have met someone who has caused you to feel this way, please describe their religious affiliation.
Your question was “I’m very curious as to why many posters think that Christians (or anyone else, for that matter) aren’t allowed to allow innocent non-religious social habits into child rearing?” and I said possibly from Chick Tracts. I didn’t say that Chick Tracts are representative of the beliefs of conservative Lutherans. You’ll note that I mentioned a couple other possible sources of the idea, like those terrible “Harvest Festivals” and oddball religious rants that are so easy to find now, thanks to the internet. Used to be you’d have to go to a Christian book shop to find that sort of thing.
It’s a point worth making that conservative Christians aren’t all fundamentalists and even that the great majority of Christian fundamentalists aren’t anything like the jackasses like that “church” that pickets funerals. In my experience, a lot of them are current or former drug abusers, and super poor, actually. More like Barney Gumble than Ned Flanders.
If you’ll allow me to digress with you, I don’t think that “messageboard liberals” is really all that much of a thing. This message board doesn’t strike me as particularly liberal, which probably has to do with the middle-aged, white, male, North American demographic that predominates. That’s my demographic. I think I’ve become a self-hating WASP.
I really enjoyed the part of your post where you said “I call STRAWMAN”.
Dude, one of my best friends is an ex Jack Chick fundie. They do exist, probably more so in the south than elsewhere, but if you think they are a complete fiction, you need to get out more.
I find it interesting that you quoted my statement: “I am very curious as to why many posters think that Christians (or anyone else, for that matter) aren’t allowed to allow innocent non-religious social habits into child rearing?” and proceeded to veer off into a meme defending your use of Jack Chick and Harvest Festivals as a casual stereotype of conservative Christianity, but never actually addressed the statement about the casual stereotyping of religion by claiming that social habits are religious habits.
The statements: “Used to be you’d have to go to a Christian book shop to find that sort of thing.” and “a lot of them are current or former drug abusers, and super poor, actually. More like Barney Gumble than Ned Flanders.” is nothing short of hate speech.
Your claim that this messageboard is not particularly liberal is laughable, to say the least, and shows a bias that claims a balance that does not plausably exist in any casual non-posting observer.
Good grief, man, if you have a problem with whatever version of Christianity you grew up with, address that specifically, but don’t crap on everyone because you had a personally bad experience.
You asked where the idea may have came from. I pointed out an example of where the children of Christians are not allowed to participate in innocent non-religious social habits and people who urge Christian parents to not allow their children to participate.
I notice in the next post you admit that there are Christians who take Chick Tracts seriously, despite claiming earlier that such people were an internet myth invented by liberals.
On review, I think I may have answered your question too narrowly or misunderstood it. I thought you were asking where people get the idea that some Christian parents have a problem with secular customs like Santa Claus and Halloween. If you’re really wondering about the answer to your question, you might want to ask it elsewhere.
They were friends. I like Barneys better than Neds. Do you see what I’m getting at, though, how there’s a problem with relying too much on personal experience? Your personal experience is that your parents and people at your church when you were growing up had no problem with the Easter Bunny. My personal experience is that most of the fundamentalist believers (people who thought that God had a personal plan for them and that the Bible was the literal word of God) were poor and liked street drugs. I never asked them about the Easter Bunny, so it’s admittedly a tangential anecdote.
I mentioned Christian book shops, incidentally, because I’m pretty sure that they used to be, and probably still are, a vector for Chick Tracts. I can’t check for myself because I don’t live near one anymore.
A “casual non-posting observer” who lives in the US, you mean? One who had a conservative Lutheran upbringing? I suppose that if by “liberal” you mean “someone who would pick Obama over Romney if those were the only choices,” yes, you’re probably right. That’s not my definition of the word, though.
Really didn’t mean to crap on anything, sorry you took it that way. I didn’t call you names or swear at you, nothing of the sort. I’m trying to be civil, honest.
My personal experience in encountering Chickies is that they’re more prevalent in Northern California, especially around Davis, Winters, Woodland, and Sacramento, than they were where I grew up in Dixie.
I was going to say this. I grew up as a church-goer in New England (Baptist), spent 13 years in Chicago (evangelical/non-denominational) and 13 in the South (Episcopal), and despite having visited many churches and Christian bookstores over the years I can only recall encountering a Chick track once “in the wild” and even then it was regarded with a mixture of amusement and horror.
