Indeed it is, but take your time.
Its a subject I’m genuinely interested in and I like reading different perspectives. Also, because I’m so deeply interested in the subject, I may give certain factors too much weight in my analysis, that kind of interest can create its own bias. When you study hammers, you start seeing nails everywhere.
A friend sent me this article this morning (or last evening). It seems to be academic in nature and a perfect compliment to this thread.
What much of this all boils down to is that - as said before - many Christians cannot recognize the difference between someone voluntarily doing something (i.e., following a religion’s rules) and someone being coerced into doing that thing.
Granted, I don’t think there is a single Christian in the world who, if asked, would say they prefer people being forced to follow Christian practices rather than genuinely wanting to do it. But for many, forcing is a perfectly acceptable No. 2 option, a backup to fall on, in case No. 1 (voluntarily) doesn’t work.
Put simply, for some Christians, having a nation in which 10% of people are genuine believers and the other 90% are forced to follow Christian customs or rules despite not wanting to, is preferable to a nation in which 20% of people are genuine believers but the other 80% are perfectly free to live as atheistically or LGBT-ish or however they please.
You and I agree one hundred percent. The second article my old college roommate sent me took longer for me to fully read- but also addresses this subject. I do not know of either of the suppliers (author and forwarder) of this material, but I assume my friend sent it to me because it makes a fleeting reference to an author I mention a lot (and did above in this thread).
I had to look the word up in the Urban Dictionary, but it seems to be a professional wrestling term that means “stay in character and never reveal this is an affectation”. It makes perfect sense in the following article:
Note: Upon making a Google search of David Dark before posting the above, I learned he wrote a book that I read some time ago, The Sacredness of Questioning Everything. It is very likely that book was recommended to me by the same college friend who sent me this article (or I recommended it to him- I know we both read it and discussed it in the past).
I was sent a ‘trinity’ of articles this morning and after starting to read the first one I was immediately reminded of this thread. It has been too long I fear since I have read through the comments of my fellow Dopers and soaked in their wit and wisdom.
I will link the article I have read below while I read the other two in case anyone besides me is still interested in the subject. Dominionism seems to be alive and well despite me not thinking much about it recently.
I realize I’m responding to a post that’s a few months old, but my old pastor said that during election season, he couldn’t go out in public with his collar on and not have someone ask, “So, who does God want us to vote for?” He would always reply, “Examine the candidate’s issues, and vote for the one you most agree with.” Oddly, he had never been asked this by a parishioner or a family member.
I came here to post this. It MUST be heard and seen to be believed. The host is a former Jehovah’s Witness. Warning: It does contain profanity.
Yeah, scary.
Just putting in, the host is an ex-Jehovah’s Witness, but the Trump worshiping pastors are not involved with the Witnesses. Witnesses are apolitical on pain of disfellowshipping.
Wow! I mean, well- just wow.
This Johnny Enlow is so very far away from a Christian Theologian, or an apologist, or even a believer. He is a comic book creator. He even sees the world in pictures of Trump riding motorcycles wearing patriotic head scarfs. Of tall (apparently penis shaped) mountains with you guessed it, Trump at the summit. He makes L. Ron Hubbard and Jack Chick seem . . . almost quaint. He fits into their type, but he would be their king at the annual banquet.
I hope for her sake, his wife realizes what utter bullshit he is spewing. She sits beside him with her plastered on grin, nodding and looking at him adoringly. I have no doubt HE believes all the nonsense he says, but she might be doing it for the money, or because she believes that is what a good wife does, or some other human reason. In cases like this, I would admire a scam artist before I would admire a true believer. I can sort of see someone like her wiping the grin off of her face as soon as the cameras are off, pouring herself several large glasses of wine, and repeating to herself over and over again “At least he doesn’t beat the children, at least he doesn’t . . .”
On a different topic:
Below I will paste in a link to a very comprehensive article from The Atlantic. It touches on almost everything mentioned in this thread. After every two paragraphs I kept thinking ‘okay, this is the point’ and then it would go deeper into more detail and more examples. I found it very thought provoking"
Some excerpts:
The root of the discord lies in the fact that many Christians have embraced the worst aspects of our culture and our politics. When the Christian faith is politicized, churches become repositories not of grace but of grievances, places where tribal identities are reinforced, where fears are nurtured, and where aggression and nastiness are sacralized. The result is not only wounding the nation; it’s having a devastating impact on the Christian faith.
Through the 2000s, even though the religious right drew its energy from the culture wars—as it had for decades—it abided by some civil restraints. Then came Donald Trump.
“When Trump was able to add open hatred and resentments to the political-religious stance of ‘true believers,’ it crossed a line,” Marsden said. “Tribal instincts seem to have become overwhelming.” The dominance of political religion over professed religion is seen in how, for many, the loyalty to Trump became a blind allegiance. The result is that many Christian followers of Trump “have come to see a gospel of hatreds, resentments, vilifications, put-downs, and insults as expressions of their Christianity, for which they too should be willing to fight.”
“What we’re seeing is massive discipleship failure caused by massive catechesis failure,” James Ernest … told me. Ernest was one of several figures I spoke with who pointed to catechism … as the source of the problem. “The evangelical Church in the U.S. over the last five decades has failed to form its adherents into disciples. So there is a great hollowness…
“Culture catechizes,” Alan Jacobs, a distinguished professor of humanities in the honors program at Baylor University, told me. Culture teaches us what matters and what views we should take about what matters.
“People come to believe what they are most thoroughly and intensively catechized to believe, and that catechesis comes not from the churches but from the media they consume, or rather the media that consume them. The churches have barely better than a snowball’s chance in hell of shaping most people’s lives.”
But when people’s values are shaped by the media they consume, rather than by their religious leaders and communities, that has consequences. “What all those media want is engagement, and engagement is most reliably driven by anger and hatred,” Jacobs argued. “They make bank when we hate each other."
Those are in the top third of the article, it goes on from there to other aspects of the dilemma.
And on still another topic:
Here is the review of a movie I believe it would be fun to view together as a Dopefest. I think it would be a hoot to watch with posters from this board. I am not sure however, that I would be able to resist the temptation to mock certain aspects of the movie.
I’m guessing this. As the wife it is not her role to have opinions about things, that is the husband’s job. Her job is to take care of him, the children and the house, so that he is free can do the things that really matter. So when he’s talking about Trump on a motor cycle is going to save the country she can safely turn off her brain, and trust that her husband knows best what to do about it.
You forgot to capitialize the beginning letters of some of those words.
The Enlows are the parents of 5 children: son Eric, and daughters Promise, Justice, Grace, and Glory.
Boy, Grace dodged a bullet there. She is the only one who can walk away and pretend she never knew them without changing her name (excepting the son of course).
Assuming you listed them in birth order, would it be a sin to hope the eldest marries a man with the sir name of Yu, the next daughter marries a man named League, and the last one marries a Hole (or even a Whole)? As for Grace, I hope she marries a nice Lutheran boy named Alone. (Too bad they didn’t have a Faith to marry his brother!)
Anatomy.
This is the part that I identified with the most:
For many of us who have made Christianity central to our lives, the pain of this moment is watching those who claim to follow Jesus do so much to distort who he really was. Those who deform his image may be doing so unwittingly—this isn’t an intentionally malicious enterprise they’re engaging in; they believe they’re being faithful—but it is nonetheless destructive and unsettling.
Exactly.
I have even told a few of the faithful that not only did their actions cause me me to realize that I (EYE) was an atheist, their actions caused me to realize that THEY are also atheists. Who knows, maybe if they behaved like morality mattered, like following the book was important - - I might still be a believer.
I just cannot take this new Dominionist belief seriously. (For me or for anyone else.)
I’ve heard evangelicals compare Trump to Cyrus. For those that don’t know, Cyrus the Great holds a special place in Judaism for his role in helping the Jews. After the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar II, the Jews were exiled to Babylon. When Cyrus then came in a conquered Babylon, he sent the Jews back to Jerusalem and providing funding to have their temples rebuilt. Others have noted a key difference in that evangelicals picked Trump whereas the Jews exiled to Babylon didn’t have a choice.
But you’re right, they view Trump as a weapon. His character doesn’t really matter to them.
As did/does a portion of the GOP power-brokers. They should read some of the stories in the sci-fi Berserker series (AI designed to destroy one enemy, morphs to destroying all life).
It’s the classic golem turning against its creators story, right?
Which however has always been kind of odd to me – from the NT, taken literally, the End Time tribulation (a) happens on God’s own schedule that humans can’t know or alter and (b) not only is inevitable (even if some denominations think it’s escapable) but is predestined to end with the triumph of Jesus no matter what.
So to paraphrase Captain Kirk, what does God need with a President?
The OT Israelites, sure, their kingdom WAS of THIS world, but Jesus’ is not, by his own assertion, and involves bringing about a whole New Earth. These folks seem to think the Millennium is going to consist of the United States of America, transformed into a monarchy under Jesus, ruling the world as is.
There, I corrected your sentence for you. (Purely for humorous purposes.)
Even when I was a true blue believer I never put much stock into eschatology. At the most I was able to believe that something might happen and whatever it might be, the forces of good would prevail and the forces of evil would be destroyed. Yea, team!
The concept of the “Rapture” only dates back to the 1800’s and started as a notation in some scholar’s Bible translation or study notes (pretty sure it was Scofield) by my understanding. In any case that seems to be the birth of dispensationalism and a focus on the end times.
All of that to say this- despite many evil men being equated with the Anti-Christ (like Hitler, and Stalin, and Mussolini for example), no one seems as Anti-Christish to me as Donald J Trump. For one thing, he literally IS the opposite of the character of Christ: vindictive rather than forgiving, selfish rather than charitable, etc., etc., etc. For another “the great deceiver” is almost Trump’s primary descriptor. Not only that he lies constantly-- but that he does it so poorly yet still convinces people to believe him. Also, like the supposed Anti-Christ Trump performed signs and wonders. (Those of us who have not fallen for Trump’s shtick are hard pressed to see any accomplishments at all- and all of those accomplishments are negative in nature. But his faithful believe him and believe in his wonders and in his signs.) That is A Great Deceiver, someone who does little or nothing, all of it being evil to the core, yet convinces others HE has done great things.
To watch sincere and devoted believers, those who attend church functions several times a week and teach Sunday School, falling for Trump’s bullshit almost makes me believe he has supernatural powers of deception. Of course a more logical conclusion would be that those people are just remarkably gullible victims.