And he said that the Southern Baptist Church, one of the three politically influential churches i mentioned above, has become anti-jesus, because Jesus is too liberal. They are technically known as The Southern Baptist Convention and they were literally formed to support slavery.
While they are certainly politically important, they do not represent all evangelical Christianity in the US.
They might not have the numerical majority, but they are the biggest cultural force in Christianity in America. Ideas from powerful evangelical leaders exert tremendous pressure across all denominations of Christianity. These ideas get absorbed and propagated. They are the memetic driver for all American Christians.
They’re the reverse of the silent majority; the noisy minority.
Most churches stay out of politics as they should. The ones that do get into politics are the kind whose priorities are political, naturally. And they aren’t good for the country.
Ditto. Responses to my posts are decidedly mixed. I certainly am not embraced and swaddled in conviviality. I think right winger ideas can’t stand up to the snarky needles ever at the ready here, no matter what floe you choose to drift around on. Whee, get 'em you metaphors!
Speaking as a member of a very liberal United Methodist Church congregation, which has an openly gay pastor…the issue is that the conservative, anti-LGBTQ, racist “Christians” have sucked all of the air out of the room, in the news and in social media.
A major factor in why younger people (and even not-so-young people) have rejected Christianity, as a whole, is that they have come to equate “Christianity” as “people who openly hate anyone who does not share their bigoted beliefs, and want to force those beliefs on America as a whole.”
At the risk of derailing the thread, there’s more to it than that. It’s not just that conservatives and anti-LGBT folks have come to represent the majority of Christianity, it’s that the Bible itself is also pretty…well, un-liberal.
The Old Testament says gays should be executed, says rebellious children should be stoned to death by their parents and community, says taking enemy women captives as your wife is okay, condones some types of slavery, calls for genocide (King Saul was even punished for not taking the slaughter far enough,) and endorses a thousand un-progressive things. Even in the New Testament - supposedly the more liberal book - Jesus said the vast majority of humans will roast in fiery torture forever and all kinds of un-progressive things can be found as well.
So, it’s not just that conservatives and anti-LGBT people have the loudest voice in Christianity, it’s also that they have a pretty firm leg to stand on, in terms of doctrine. To be sure, yes, they skip out on a lot of the love parts, but I don’t think young folks are just rejecting Christianity because of bigots - the young folks read Scripture enough to dislike it. If anything, a lot of young folks consider liberal Christians to be hypocrites for endorsing a book that they’d vehemently reject in any other context.
This whole post is excellent, and worth revisiting. I didn’t want it to get lost amidst the religion theme (interesting as that was).
This is especially vivid:
‘Funny story, but a long time ago before I knew better, my dad was on one of his rants about “I just want a neutral source of news.” I didn’t realize what he meant was “I wish every news outlet except Fox would disappear.” I had a stack of issues of The Atlantic and The Economist (both of which are centrish, but right-tilted in different ways) and I handed him a few. Next time I saw him, I asked how he liked unbiased news, and he said he didn’t really understand it.’
They are however tied together; it’s a religious way of thinking, faith applied to politics and current events. These people “know” what is happening in the world, what happened in history and what the correct policies are because the answers were handed to them by the approved sources, and even considering that they might be wrong or listening to any unapproved sources is unacceptable. A sin. Denying the facts in front of your face is not only acceptable but a virtue, as it demonstrates faith.
Somebody like, for example a COVID denier who dies of COVID while refusing to admit it is demonstrating virtue, because they kept the faith even in the face of death. A martyr. Which is why nothing convinces them they are wrong; even considering that their beliefs might be wrong is faithless is sinful and evil. While denying obvious facts is an act of moral courage in the face of temptation, and the more obvious they are the more virtuous denying them is.
Which is…pretty much exactly what various anti-religion people predicted treating religion as a virtue would lead to for decades.
I don’t think this captures the general thrust of the Bible. I mean sure, if you believe in biblical ultra-literalism (or as advocates prefer to call it, inerrancy - something with little or no scriptural basis) then you will have to somehow reconcile yourself to Iron Age morality, then go beyond that to say it’s a good thing. But honestly, this is Protestant fan-wank, very much a product of Guttenberg. The cure for that is here or heck reading an annotated Bible such as the one by Oxford University Press, but the fact that there are few takers suggests to me that there are broader forces at work.
I view the Bible as a primary source document, but then again I haven’t attended Sunday services for decades.
…and yet there are Jesuits.
What Der describes is pervasive in American Christianity, but not universal. Which is why there’s such a disconnect between some people’s experiences in their church and Der’s depiction - one which is very much in sync with public conservative Christianity and in this case a broader Christian set.
Look at the Pew data, and American Christianity has evolved a lot over the past 30+ years. Circa 1900, some Christians feared that Darwin would kill the church. Perhaps he may. But what wasn’t adequately anticipated was that certain personality types would disproportionately leave the church, while others would stay, and that a sense of what is sometimes called spirituality doesn’t come close to capturing the drivers of the inflows and outflows. And that’s just human temperament - the greater variety of entertainment now available surely played a larger role.
Unsure if this is a liberal board, I just signed up today. I was going to share some of the cadences that we used in the Marines from the 80’s and 90’s. I will say up front that I voted for President Trump in each election and I do believe that there was a lot of hanky-panky that took place to make Joe Biden our 46th president. My hope is that our country will get back to having the pride that we once had. If you were around in the 50’s the 80’s you know what it was like to be proud of our country. We were taught History, Civics-Government, Reading, Writing - (language arts), Mathematics, and we had Physical Education / Health classes. We didn’t pass students just to pass them, they had to earn it. No critical race theory, DEI, men were men, women were women, boys boys and girls girls. Boys were raised and challenged physically. Girls were challenged as well and raised to be modest. All of the foul mouthed talk was reserved for locker room / private talk. DOGE has been needed for a long time, glad it’s happening.
As for DEI, by their fruits you shall know them, Trump and goons declared an effort about funding for a sewage treatment plant, in a majority-Black county, as “DEI” and cancel it. It is very gross and racist, but the administration is getting away with it by using Orwellian language to justify prejudiced acts simply by declaring that it is the reverse of what they are doing.
No previous accounts. Trump is an angel compared to the Democrat party. Given, he is no Ronald Reagan. He was never a politician and that’s why most of the common people liked him. President Obama was a very good orator, but talk is cheap, show the American people action. You can’t lead from behind. President Trump told the American people what he was going to do before he was elected and has set out to accomplish those tasks. Most politicians promise the world and don’t deliver even a village. I didn’t vote for President Obama either time but I still wanted him to be successful because he represented us to the rest of the world. People saying Trump is terrible with the majority House and Senate but that’s exactly how Obamacare got forced down so many Americans throat. Dems were whole heartedly behind that. I couldn’t believe the American people voted in President Obama with his ties to Bill Ayers and weather underground but it happened and we all survived.
