I want to know; Should I worry that the most powerful nation on earth is almost the sole source of seemingly daily pit threads of christian-fundementalism gone insane, or should I dismiss it as mere resourcefulness of our esteemed non-fundamental (perhaps even atheist) fellow dopers in finding these specifics, and therefore conclude that what I am experiencing is the phenomenon whereby the most outspoken (in this case - fundamentalists) are not necessarily the most influential, and that there is fairly little to worry about.
Worry.
The fundies have the ear of the White House.
Not to mention the house.
Personally, I’m more concerned about the rising frequency of redundant threads with semi-coherent OPs created by Lobsang.
Nawww, not yet.
But if you start seeing Pit threads with titles like “Dobson for POTUS???”, I suggest you build yourself a 1950’s-Style Fallout Shelter.
POTUS?!?! Naaawwww!
I always had him figured for HHS. Heh heh heh.
Ashcroft for POTUS!
Nope, they’re just more vocal sometimes. And the hardcore ones do NOT have the ear of the White House, they just get paid lip service. Bush is not a fundamentalist. He is a Methodist. Most of us Christian Americans simply and courteously ignore the fringe elements of our faith–our strong traditions of freedom of speech and religion are paramount. The only fundamentalists I see and hear at all in New York are all African-American and none are in a position of power.
I am not sure what is like up your way, but down here in the South Methodist=Fundie. They are damned near identical with the Southern Baptists, and they sure as hell are fundies.
Huh. I did not know that. Here they’re just another mainstream Protestant sect, like Episcopalians and Lutherans. Totally under the radar and not making waves or preaching in the streets or anything.
I guess it’s different down there, but actually aren’t the Clintons Southern Methodists? They’re not fundmentalists.
Probably varies region to region. I grew up in Tennessee, about 200 miles north of him, and Methodists are run-of-the-mill there. Of course, my hometown is the international headquarters of the Church of God – a Baptist and Pentecostal hybrid – so the other denominations might’ve been crowded out a bit.
That should be “the other fundamental flavored denominations”.
Don’t worry. The Straight Dope is all about fighting ignorance. Unfortunatley, a message board devoted to figting ignorance attracts a lot of people who really, and I mean really, enjoy proving others wrong. Some dopers enjoy it so much that they start what I think of as “straw man threads”. You’ve probably seen these. A doper will take some fringe guy with a web site, Jack Chick is a good example, and refute him. No matter that nobody around here is saying anything remotely like that, but it lets them hear themselves talk. It’s less indicative of our country as a whole, but more this message board. Some dopers thrive on this because creationist and far right fundamentalist arguments are just so damn easy to shoot down that they don’t even have to try all that hard.
On preview, what the fuck are you talking about, UnwrittenNocturne? I live in south Georgia, and I was raised a Methodist! Everybody I know in my church believed in evolution, we had a woman pastor, and my gay uncle sang in the choir! Fundamentalist, my ass. Don’t ever compare us to Southern Baptists again. Hmmph. Ug. Grumble.
[Hedley Lemarr]
I want rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers and Methodists.
[/Hedley Lemarr]
President Clinton is a Southern Baptist, Senator Clinton is a Methodist.
“Methodists: Baptists who can read.” - A River Runs Through It
Brother Justin Crowe, the 1930’s-style-Creature of Darkness on HBO’s Carnivale, is a Methodist. :eek:
[SIZE=1]to be fair, though, his ranting are in defiance of his bishops and his adoptive father, also a minister, is heroically fighting him too, so he’s a Bad Methodist[/SIZE=1]
For some reason, Methodist preachers were also high on the list of H.L. Mencken’s pet peeves, so they had some kind of rep for backwardbess at least with him (then again, who didn’t). But again I’ve never heard any of the ones around here saying anything particularly associated, politically or spiritually, with what someone like Lobsang would consider fundamentalist.
It’s a huuuuge country. I consider my Blue State self as good as Amurrican as any Texan. And to their credit, most of the Texans I’ve met don’t dispute that either.
Damn, me try type good. Me sorry.
What did I do wrong with the size? I wanted small text. And that’s “backwardness”. And Justin’s rantings are in defiance of his bishops.
The Methodist church was a big advocate of prohibition, which Mencken disagreed with. Also, Dayton, Tenn., where the Scopes trial took place, was largely Methodist, and a lot of the Dayton Methodists were pretty strong creationists.
You included the “=1” in the closing bracket.
And, as far as Methodists today, go, the United Methodists tend to be kind of liberal, Evangelical Methodists tend to be fundamentalist.
:smack: Thanks. I was so sure I was doing to right I didn’t even preview.
That’s right, I hadn’t noticed the Methodists influence on Prohibition and the Scopes Trial. Mencken’s writings on Scopes are some of the best reporting I’ve ever seen. Hey, this year’s the 80th anniversary too.
Anyway, I’d like to hear from some actual evangelicals or fundamentalists how they see the Bush White House. I have the sense he’s more the former than the latter. But I just don’t see enough of this kind of thinking in my daily life to really recognize it when I see it.