Posted on 05/10/2006 6:28:01 AM PDT by bondjamesbond
A believer spells out the difference between faith and a political agenda
Are you a Christian who doesn't feel represented by the religious right? I know the feeling. When the discourse about faith is dominated by political fundamentalists and social conservatives, many others begin to feel as if their religion has been taken away from them.
The number of Christians misrepresented by the Christian right is many. There are evangelical Protestants who believe strongly that Christianity should not get too close to the corrupting allure of government power. There are lay Catholics who, while personally devout, are socially liberal on issues like contraception, gay rights, women's equality and a multi-faith society. There are very orthodox believers who nonetheless respect the freedom and conscience of others as part of their core understanding of what being a Christian is. They have no problem living next to an atheist or a gay couple or a single mother or people whose views on the meaning of life are utterly alien to them--and respecting their neighbors' choices. That doesn't threaten their faith. Sometimes the contrast helps them understand their own faith better.
And there are those who simply believe that, by definition, God is unknowable to our limited, fallible human minds and souls. If God is ultimately unknowable, then how can we be so certain of what God's real position is on, say, the fate of Terri Schiavo? Or the morality of contraception? Or the role of women? Or the love of a gay couple? Also, faith for many of us is interwoven with doubt, a doubt that can strengthen faith and give it perspective and shadow. That doubt means having great humility in the face of God and an enormous reluctance to impose one's beliefs, through civil law, on anyone else.
I would say a clear majority of Christians in the U.S. fall into one or many of those camps. Yet the term "people of faith" has been co-opted almost entirely in our discourse by those who see Christianity as compatible with only one political party, the Republicans, and believe that their religious doctrines should determine public policy for everyone. "Sides are being chosen," Tom DeLay recently told his supporters, "and the future of man hangs in the balance! The enemies of virtue may be on the march, but they have not won, and if we put our trust in Christ, they never will." So Christ is a conservative Republican?
Rush Limbaugh recently called the Democrats the "party of death" because of many Democrats' view that some moral decisions, like the choice to have a first-trimester abortion, should be left to the individual, not the cops. Ann Coulter, with her usual subtlety, simply calls her political opponents "godless," the title of her new book. And the largely nonreligious media have taken the bait. The "Christian" vote has become shorthand in journalism for the Republican base.
What to do about it? The worst response, I think, would be to construct something called the religious left. Many of us who are Christians and not supportive of the religious right are not on the left either. In fact, we are opposed to any politicization of the Gospels by any party, Democratic or Republican, by partisan black churches or partisan white ones. "My kingdom is not of this world," Jesus insisted. What part of that do we not understand?
So let me suggest that we take back the word Christian while giving the religious right a new adjective: Christianist. Christianity, in this view, is simply a faith. Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism. The distinction between Christian and Christianist echoes the distinction we make between Muslim and Islamist. Muslims are those who follow Islam. Islamists are those who want to wield Islam as a political force and conflate state and mosque. Not all Islamists are violent. Only a tiny few are terrorists. And I should underline that the term Christianist is in no way designed to label people on the religious right as favoring any violence at all. I mean merely by the term Christianist the view that religious faith is so important that it must also have a precise political agenda. It is the belief that religion dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike.
That's what I dissent from, and I dissent from it as a Christian. I dissent from the political pollution of sincere, personal faith. I dissent most strongly from the attempt to argue that one party represents God and that the other doesn't. I dissent from having my faith co-opted and wielded by people whose politics I do not share and whose intolerance I abhor. The word Christian belongs to no political party. It's time the quiet majority of believers took it back.
Never happened. Atheists rarely attain any sort of power whatsoever. Perhaps you are thinkign of the Communists, who were about as atheist as *you* are. They simply replaced a supernatural God with a "historical dialectic" god and a State-god.
Your delusion continues...from wikipedia...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians
An intense ideological anti-Christian and anti-religious campaign was carried out throughout the history of the Soviet Union. An extensive education and propaganda campaign was undertaken to convince people, especially the children and youth, not to become believers. The role of the Christian religion and the Church was painted in black colors in school textbooks. For instance, much emphasis was placed on the role of the Church in such historical horror stories as the Inquisition, persecution of Galileo, Giordano Bruno, and other heretical scientists, and the Crusades. School students were encouraged to taunt and use peer pressure against classmates wearing crosses or otherwise professing their faith. In the 1920s there were many "anti-God" publications and social clubs sponsored by the government, most notably the scathingly satirical "Godless at the Workbench" ("Bezbozhnik u Stanka" in Russian). Later on, these disappeared because a new generation has grown up essentially atheist.
A "scientific" perspective was used to attack religion extensively. The Church was portrayed as obscurantist and opposed to the findings of science. Much was made of alleged Christian belief in the literal Creation account in the book of Genesis which the pro-Darwinian textbooks ridiculed. Interestingly, as part of the anti-foreign and anti-capitalist propaganda, an effort was made, especially in the 1920s and 1930s, to imprint in the minds of the people an image of the West as dominated by the anti-scientific ignorance of the Church, as opposed to the scientifically "progressive" atheist Soviet state.
In general, Christianity was portrayed as corrupt, hypocritical, a loyal servant of the reactionary czar, obscurantist, "opium for the people" according to Karl Marx, and otherwise evil. This Communist persecution of the Church proved enormously successful. Within the span of one generation, the traditionally highly devout Russian people became overwhelmingly atheist. This transformation was, for the most part, complete by the 1950's. As such, it counted as one of the greatest and the most successful persecutions Christianity had ever experienced, on par only with the destruction of Christianity in the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia Minor by the Islamic and Turkish conquests.
I've been calling them the Party of Death for a long time -- probably years. I've even called them Pod people. Also ghouls -- people with no conscience. Why does it take some people so long to see reality?
> All beliefs and religions are not of equal veracity or value.
Well, on that we agree. Beliefs that hold that the world was created about 6,000 years ago, for example, are basically worthless.
To some atheists, it's called mentioning the word "God", gasp!
> If this is not a personal attack then what is it?
It was a safe bet is what it was. How thrilled are *you* when the Jehova's Witness coems to tell you that your beliefs are wrogn and cultish, and that you're skipping merrily to hell?
> Where are these people who are "incessantly evangelized?"
All over the place. I was one myself growing up.
> Your delusion continues
I'm sorry, but you went off on a tangent. You never did counter the fact that the Commies weren't actually atheists.
I have welcomed them into my house and I've sat down with them and read the Bible with a few. In all honesty, they have never told me my beliefs were wrong and I was going to Hell so I don't know where you got that from. If someone wants to talk to me about God why would I shut the door in their face. I'm willing to have a conversation about it.
But don't let my experience change your generalizations and prejudices toward Christians, like what you said about believing the Earth to be 6,000 years old or something like that...
3. It has been interpreted throughout history that the Bible is an entity as a whole and is to be viewed that way (not added to nor deleted from). Which is what I originally said.
"there is no evidence Jesus was tolerant of sinners"
>>Except for the fact he was surrounded by sinners. But yeah, other than that there is no evidence....
Man, you are just ignint. Are you saying Jesus would have been "tolerant" of a child rapist? After all, you are saying Jesus was tolerant of sinners. No, it was heartfelt repentance that did the trick, unless you understand that there is a difference between Christ offering redemption, versus offering a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card you will not understand why the culture war is being fought.
They setup an Atheist tyrannical government yet they were not *Atheists*.
Try to understand, then, why I found your comment so odd. I get around as much as anyone, and practically nobody EVER evangelizes me.
We do get some of those sweet Mormon lads from time to time. Though I'm a Catholic, I always invite them in for some lemonade and tell them I disagree with them, but find their dedication admirable.
I appreciate it when somebody cares about my soul. Or when they assume that important matters MATTER to me. It's a kind of a compliment, actually.
I sit down with them and open my bible to one of the Gospels (I think it's St. John) and compare the verses in my bible with theirs
Mine: The Word was with God and The Word was God
Theirs: The Word was with God and the Word was a God. (emphasis mine).
And then let them try to explain it.
Amen.
I sit down with them and open my bible to one of the Gospels (I think it's St. John) and compare the verses in my bible with theirs
Mine: The Word was with God and The Word was God
Theirs: The Word was with God and the Word was a God. (emphasis mine).
And then let them try to explain it.
I had the exact same discussion and I haven't seen the Witnesses in a while.
>>In Revelations, it clearly states that nothing can be added nor taken away to the Bible. <<
When Revelations was written there wasn't a bible yet. The books of the New Testement were not decided until about 400AD.
You know, that whole creationist-evolutionist thing is a red herring.
It doesn't really matter when the Earth was created (6000 years ago or 4.5 billion years ago).
I have collected fossils and minerals for more than 40 years now and see an earth that appears to be very old (at least as humans measure time).
What matters is who is God and who is Jesus and what are you going to do about it?
Whether the Earth is a few thousand years old or billions of years old will not change my faith in God nor my admiration and use of the scientific method. 'Pod.
Fair enough.
Question for you: why have not the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Judas been added then?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.