Many tens of millions have died believing that by performing this little ritual, they have saved their souls from damnation. A very large percentage of those who did so will find themselves burning in Hell for all eternity, and completely baffled as to why. Why? Because they were lied to.Is the author being ironic here, or obtuse? I don't think this is a statement that any educated Christian can make.
In the course of one of the sessions, Weyrich tried to make a point to his Religious Right brethren (no women attended the conference, as I recall). Let's remember, he said animatedly, that the Religious Right did not come together in response to the Roe decision. No, Weyrich insisted, what got us going as a political movement was the attempt on the part of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to rescind the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University because of its racially discriminatory policies.The Weyrich in that excerpt is Paul Weyrich, founder of the Heritage Foundation.
On the other hand, Youth Ministers across the country are bridging that gap. They know how to turn teen's sexual anxiety into holy fear. They know how to turn the need for identity into the need for a mantra. They know how to use feelings of isolation to bring kids into groups. And they honestly believe they are doing God's work.I can't favorite this hard enough. I keep clicking, but it doesn't do anything more.
In my lifetime, I have seen the fundamentalist upbringing shift from the purview of a few, unfortunate, and bullied kids (think Carrie) to that of the bullies. That might be anecdotal, but I doubt it.
They know how to turn teen's sexual anxiety into holy fear. They know how to turn the need for identity into the need for a mantra. They know how to use feelings of isolation to bring kids into groups. And they honestly believe they are doing God's work.JHarris, I keep reading over that post and... I can't figure out how those statements can be resolved with reality. Church-as-a-social-hub is not related to the rise of malls or the shrinking of other social spaces. It's related to a deliberate attempt to position the church as a social hub, and to burn through lots of money in order to ensure that they spend their time in an environment where they will hear the message of Christianity repeatedly.
All of these things are possible because our society isn't providing them, the ministers in question are filling a need. Lack of sex education allows the first, and lack of alternatives that aren't school or directly commercial (malls) allows the second and third. These things are important, the fact that our society has abdicated responsibility in these areas has allowed churches to fill the gap, and they carry with them that agenda.
Why are churches able to use soup kitchens as outreach? Because no one else is feeding these people! That principle extends out and across the world.
To limit the pernicious influence of religion, it's less important to provide an alternative to it than it is to simply fill its niches of alleviating suffering and isolation.It's also critical to recognize that the combative fundamentalist culture-war crowd actively attacks any alternatives because they lack the influence of religion.
Referring to the biblical text in any sort of "proof-texting" way is a precarious, dare I say, misguided business. The Bible is not coherent in any "I've got proof!" kind of way. It's a kind of cultural anthology. It's an amazing artifact.In fact, one could argue that taking the "But my reading of it is correct!" approach with Fundamentalists isn't combating fundamentalism, just fighting for control of it.
Er, you phrase this in terms like you're disagreeing with me, but I agree with what you're saying? Am I missing something? Did I misstate something above? Whether the state or some private, non-religious concern helps the poor is immaterial to me, but there should be someone helping them that is not the church, or at least the horrible, fundamentalist concerns being primarily discussed here. I'm fine with the church helping them too, but only if it's not being used as a tool towards proselytism, which smacks of taking advantage of misery.Actually I think we are on the same page -- this is why I'm pretty sure that I misread what you were saying. I took it as, "Secular society has failed, and the Church fills those much-needed roles! Don't complain about it!" The sex education thing in particular may have just short-circuited my reading comprehension capabilities given how mind-boggling I find that reading of things.
i think the real motivation is that these people are more than happy to take care of "their own" under circumstances of their control - when they want to help the poor in their community, they mean THEIR community - and the poor in some other community can be helped by THAT communityI've known enough people who traveled from the safety of the suburbs to work with prisoners on death row, or to do day-in day-out community building work in inner city projects, or who actually moved to trashed urban grinds like the heart of Philly to know that this isn't the truth. It's true for some, certainly, but the argument can just as easily be made that liberals want to pay taxes so that they don't have to get their hands dirty like REAL TRUE CHRISTIANS do.
the thought that those other communities might not have the resources that they do - or that our country isn't going to thrive as a set of balkanized communities, doesn't occur to them
which is where the welfare state comes in, to take care of those they don't have any contact with and aren't willing to have contact with
Any restriction on religion in the public square looks a lot like how the Soviet Union started out, and as the Left has consistently ignored the persecution of Christians across the globe, the connection is really hard not to make.I hear you, valkyryn, but the Right has ignored it just as consistently. Other than basing their party's identity around ideological opposition to communism a generation ago, conservatism and Republicanism haven't done jack about persecution of Christians. The awakening of the Protestant Church in the late 70s and early 80s to abortion and euthenasia as "culture war" issues... And the Republican party's deliberate decision to court anti-abortion Protestants and Catholics, did much more, IMO, to broadly shape what we now see as religious/political conservatism than any anti-communism history.
I assume that I'm just not participating in the sort of social situations that you are, and that accounts for my never having been told that. Seriously, what sort of situations are you in where someone is telling you that you're going to "burn in Hell?" Are you trolling Evangelical Christian internet forums or something?Uuuuhhhhhmmmmmm.... Mayyyyybe?
Jesus tortured, killed, and imprisoned people for their religious beliefs?Knowing a nontrivial number of Christians who live and work in a religious commune, I think you're confusing an Instance with a Class.
In the opinion of the apostles, and of nearly every Christian scholar from that time until the Republican party takeover of the Church starting in the 1960s, the vast majority of the holiness code, all of the weird little nitpicky details, was not a set of universal laws for all people for all time but a very specific set of laws for a very specific group of people (Jews) in a very specific place (Palestine) during a very specific time (the transition from nomadic tribes to agricultural kingdom).His thesis is that homosexuality used to be something Christianity didn't care about at all, and the implication was that it was something Christianity was more or less okay with. In more detail, his thesis is that homosexual conduct was always classified in the same way as the dietary laws which were abrogated in Acts.
Uuuuhhhhhmmmmmm.... Mayyyyybe?Sorry, that was a little oblique. There's a smallish evangelical/independent Christian web board that I have been a part of for a little over a decade. As I left the church, I still maintained contacts with friends from that forum. Now there are semi-regular side arguments between some of the less friendly regulars about the fact that I'm going to hell, and whether or not I was ever Really A True Believer.
I must be missing something. I don't understand what you're linking to there.
Are you talking to me, or to some other "you?"Nah, I'm just talking to the generic "you" -- sorry if I came across differently. ;-)
Asserting that, for example, "the Democratic Party is no more Socialist than Jesus was" (though inaccurate given that the Democratic party is a political movement while Jesus was, for the most part, unconcerned with governmental structure) is a very different statement than "Jesus was a Communist." If you are the one making the assertion, it is preposterous to defend it as accurate by saying that it's just as accurate as the completely-inaccurate statements of your opponent.Well, that's the thing. I'm willing to roll with whichever definition the person I'm speaking to is more comfortable with. But what I insist on is that they apply it consistently. I know many Christians -- personally -- who insist that our President is a literal Communist. When I clarify that he is not, in any way shape or form, and that actual communists find him basically equivalent to the Republican party in terms of his politics, they explain that they weren't talking about the technical defintion but all sorts of fuzzy things like 'taking from the rich' and 'weakening the military.'
Saying that Jesus is a communist (small C) seems as accurate as claiming that Republicans are a bunch of satanists (small S - the Church of Satan actually has little to do with Satan - CoS doctrine is generally anti-secular-humanist atheism).You know, I grew up in a church where it was said, flat-out, that witches, Hindus, and New Agers were literally Satanists. Because their beliefs were "Satan-inspired."
Exactly - in fact, it's the glee that's wrong about it, I think. And this is an important point ¨C one that people seem to miss all the time. A lot of people nowadays seem to resent religion because it speaks of punishments on a grand scale like hell ¨C they resent it that Christians tell them that they might be going to hell, because they think that that's judgmental and condescending. And it can be ¨C in fact, the precise phrase "you're going to hell" is almost always said with condescension.I think I need to make extra sockpuppets to keep favoriting this.
Here's another way to tell that much of modern Christianity has nothing to do with Christ, and everything to do with money: I have yet to meet a Christian, in person, who knows of the only time Christ displayed his anger.Does cursing the fig tree count? I love this game!
Yeah, but you can say the same about the Bible.Indeed. It's why Jefferson wrote his own version of the Bible. I believed he called it "separating diamonds from a dung hill."
But to me, Hicks is fighting ignorance with ignorance. To the extent that his critiques have merits, they are borrowed from faithful Christians who have spent their lives in submission and dialogue with the Bible and in community with others who are doing the same.I agree with your first sentence -- it's the equivalent to saying, "You're lying... so I'll lie to prove how absurd you are!" it's interesting and amusing as an isolated rhetorical technique, the sort of thing that John Stewart's reporters can get away with because of the clearly delineated lines between 'saying this ironically' and 'saying this sincerely.' But unless you're very careful to erect some firewalls around the rhetorical technique, there's nothing to keep the plague from spreading and you're just as much a part of the problem.
This is true of any community or tradition of inquiry. Try to read modern physics without real physicists giving you context and you get Time Cube Guy. Try to read the Bible without the tradition of people who have been wrestling with it for 2000 years and some of what you get is the worst parts of fundamentalism that Hicks rails against, and some of what you get is the stuff Hicks is saying.Physics, though, does not claim that even a small child can understand, or that the foolish who believe in it will confound the wise who are blind to its truths. A physicist can explain to you -- pretty clearly -- what portions of the body of knowledge are working theories that everyone accepts to keep moving forward, what portions are laws that everyone agrees on, and what issues are simply different schools of thought fighting for evidence. In religion -- specifically Sola Scriptura Christianity -- there is no admission of those things. There cannot be, because admitting them would eat away at the premise.
I could point to references to the practice in Paul's letters (written decades before the gospels) as well as in Acts. But I'm not going to say, "Here's my Bible verse that proves I'm right." I'm not going to pretend that the details of Christian practice make sense to someone who has rejected their premises.straight, just a point of clarification -- just because someone has rejected the premises of Christianity doesn't mean that the details of Christian practice are a mystery to them, that they don't make sense, or that they are somehow beyond comprehension.
I reject the fundamentalist claim that anyone can understand the meaning and application of scripture by taking a paragraph and saying, "It seems clear to me from this paragraph that Jesus wants me in the 21st century to do X." Fundamentalists (and other Christians) don't actually use the Bible that way. In practice, their reading and application of the Bible is heavily filtered by Christian tradition. Dogma, as you call it.If traditions trump the Word of God, of what use is the Word of God? What man or group of men are entrusted with telling the others what traditions are true or false? Is that person a Catholic? Mormon? Lutheran? Baptist? Gnostic?
I could give you a small window into the two-thousand-year discussion which supports the Christian practice of praying in public. I could point to references to the practice in Paul's letters (written decades before the gospels) as well as in Acts. But I'm not going to say, "Here's my Bible verse that proves I'm right." I'm not going to pretend that the details of Christian practice make sense to someone who has rejected their premises.You have no scriptural legs to stand on, so your defense is that no can can understand that deep mystery of Christian tradition. Though I have studied it off and on for fifteen years, I have not pled fealty to "tradition" and volunteered to turn of my reasoning brain, though Jehovah directs us to "Come, let us reason together." But to the bawling young teenager still wiping the dampness from behind his ears, as long as he professes faith to believe what you say, you can tell him anything.
If traditions trump the Word of God, of what use is the Word of God? What man or group of men are entrusted with telling the others what traditions are true or false? Is that person a Catholic? Mormon? Lutheran? Baptist? Gnostic?notion, I'm never one to step between someone and a good Sola Scriptura takedown, but it needs to be noted that there are basically three major strains of the Christian Church (unless you accept Mormonism, and that boils down to trinitarian theology more than anything else, but we'll leave it aside for now).
See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ. -Colossians 2:8Christmas has nothing to do with Christ, it's a union of existing festivals that celebrate the return of spring. That's why you decorate an evergreen tree, and that's why it falls on the Winter Solstice. Easter has nothing to do with Christ, it's also a union of existing traditions that celebrate the spring. That's why you are surrounded by the fertility imagery of eggs and rabbits. You cannot tell me that they are important for God if he decided not to put them in the Bible. And as a follower of Christ, you can't tell me they were important to him if he didn't mention them either. (Keeping in mind remembrance does not equal bunnies and eggs.)
And here is what I say that it says: The gospel that is being taught in almost every evangelical and fundamentalist church in America is a false gospel, and it has condemned tens of millions of people to eternal damnation in the fires of Hell.That's not his argument, that is his conclusion. His argument is that if we look at the entire New Testament, all the teachings of Jesus as a consistent whole, they are entirely at odds with Conservative Christian practice, and if we take those teachings as divine truth, then we can only conclude that Conservative, Republican-allied Christian leaders are condemning themselves at the minimum, and their followers at worst, to Hell.
There is no really meaningful distinction to be made between the Scriptures and the Tradition. They are the same thing.So the tradition of pedophile priests getting away with rape without punishment under the Tradition of the Catholic church is the same as the Scriptures? Come now. No one is buying that schlock. While Christ would certainly still love those Priests as human beings, I'm fairly sure he would support Scriptural rebuke of such practices, again, because that's what he did:
"Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:It is absolutely staggering to me how you can talk for paragraphs, spouting mystical post-modern reinterpretations of Jesus' life, and decide that it's more important than what he did, what he said, and what he told others to do. In effect, you make Jesus' words meaningless and impotent, because you attach more meaning to your imagination and your human traditions than to the guy you supposedly follow. This whole Buddy Jesus message where everything is okay, and doing the absolute least you can do to get into heaven may be the current tradition, but if you appeal to the authority of what Jesus himself said, that argument doesn't even hold marbles.
'These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
their teachings are but rules taught by men.'"
You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men. And he said to them: "You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!" -Mark 7
So the tradition of pedophile priests getting away with rape without punishment under the Tradition of the Catholic church is the same as the Scriptures?No, but launching wars of agression against people is no longer Church Tradition either, and that's certainly in the Scriptures. The point is that tradition and Scripture can't realistically be treated as two separate entities the way Fundamentalists pretend. That's what a number of people have been pounding on throughout this thread, and what you seem to be taking offense at.
In that same vein, if you're trying to tell me that you are a follower of YHVH, but the things you believe can only be known to people who also believe exactly like you, I. Call. Shenanigans.I would agree: that's the heart of Gnosticism, really. But I don't see straight or anyone else in this thread claiming that. What I see them claiming is stuff that you could construe as being kind of like that, but no one has been claiming that "understanding Scripture" is a secret privilege of the initiated.
verb, that's fantastic. Now I can ignore all criticisms of any morality I have because of the other person's "inexperience." This Christianity thing is easier than I thought.This thread really feels like it needs a time-out. That is not what I said. If what I said can be misunderstood as meaning that, then please -- accept my heartfelt apologies because it is not what I meant.
But it's an approximation of what I hear when someone says that you can't understand something because of inexperience, when what they mean is they don't want to be subject to outside criticism.And that isn't what I said either. Let me explain what I've been saying and what I think several other people have been saying.
What do you mean by your reference to "the early Church belief in diabolical mimicry?"Many critics of Christian theology in the first few centuries noted that the story of Jesus did not offer anything different than existing pagan beliefs. There were a number of mysteries of dying and resurrected gods, some that predate Christianity by thousands of years like Horus, an Egyptian God. Just from the top of my head there was also Dionysus and Mithras and I think a few things from Zoroaster. Anyway, if you read the works of Celsus and Justin Martyr and Tertullian, you can get a decent view of the criticisms and apologies in the first few centuries of Christianity. The traditional Church view, since the criticisms could not be refuted outright, was that Satan had foreseen the coming of Christ and the story of his life, and had planted these Pagan beliefs to fool future believers. They called it diabolical mimicry.
So, when someone tells me I've got no experience, it tends to ruffle my feathers. I've been in the moment, when my best friend at the time saved me over the phone, sure as I was breathing that I felt Jesus in my heart. I've also felt the raw hatred for authority when my uncle was murdered and the JWs didn't want to associate with him, so they broke my grandmother's heart in ways I can't describe. And I've read arguments from Gnostics to Greek and Russian Orthodox to Unitarians, Quakers, Mormons, and even strains of Judaism. I suppose I'm open to criticism for lacking depth in that respect, but again, if you appeal to the authority of yourself or to your church's authority, that's not enough for me. It carries no weight unless there's some rational path you can show me about how it was arrived at.A perfectly legitimate statement, and I apologize for the off-handed comment about inexperience. Even as I wrote it I had a twinge of "Wait a minute..." but I felt the point I was making was general enough (as opposed to specifically directed towards you) that it didn't need clarification. I see how it could have been (and was) taken though, and that's not the message I wanted to convey.
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posted by Rhaomi at 1:51 PM on September 15, 2010