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.
You need the Church.
Anybody who's seen HETEROSEXUAL internet sites KNOW that ANAL SEX is common among straights as well.
You need a better argument than this.
Even if heterosexuals do it, it's still sick.
Precisely my point.
LOL.
Does Sullivan always babble incoherently? It's amazing to see how many words he strings together in a meaningless rant.
It doesn't seem to me that anyone is saying that your spiritual journey is in error. They are simply pointing out that you are not a Christian. You have set up an idol, a god of your own making, and you are vigorously defending him/her/it. This is your right, but please, please don't pretend you're a Christian.
LOL! "Pretend" to be a Christian? Why the hell would I pretend to be a member of a despicable religion???
Nah, Sauropod, you're a knucklehead pretending to great knowledge but displaying your ignorance with every post. The closing verses of the Bible clearly state that nothing is to be added or taken away from "this book." Book, in this sense, refers only to the "The Revelation of Jesus Christ," not to the Bible as a whole. The Bible is made up of many "books." Go get an education, then come back and argue.
Orionblamblam, you are completely in error in your definition of cult. A cult, as used in the context of Christianity, is any belief system which differs significantly from the beliefs or practices which are regarded as normative expressions of a particular religion. Let's take the two examples you cite, Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses. Mormons teach that God was once a mortal man; further, they teach that good Mormons will one day be the "gods" of their own worlds. This is a considerable departure from the Christian concept of God, and that makes them a cult. Jehovah's Witnesses use, essentially, the same Bible as Christians, but the "word changes" you disparage count a lot. For one, they deny the triune aspect of God, a foundational principle in Christianity, and make Christ "a god." Note John 1:1 as an example. In Christian bibles (Protestant or Catholic), it reads, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was god." The JW version reads, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was a god." This translation, BTW, is not supported textually in the Greek. And that makes them a cult.
> A cult, as used in the context of Christianity, is any belief system which differs significantly from the beliefs or practices which are regarded as normative expressions of a particular religion.
Then Protestantism is a cult if you're a Catholic. And vice-versa. Christianity is a cult if you're a Jew.
"Cult" is a loaded word.
Now the really scary part for Sullivan: Guess what? Virtually all of the good public policy application of Christianity is persuasive to fair minded secular folks too, when the 'natural law' reasoning is explained. So, that just leaves Sullivan and the pro-degeneracy crowd shrieking among themselves, if Christians will clearly make the case in public.
Ah! That's just the point, brother. St. Paul addresses you directly when he says: "The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don't need you!" (1 Corinth 12:21)
As members of the Body, we are members of a heirarchically organized physiological system. (Heiros = holy, sacred arche = order, rule) Just as St. Paul says, all the members of the body do not have the same role or function. The foot, the eye, the heart, the head, the lungs, do not all do the same thing.
St. Paul also says, "It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ." (Eph. 4)
Excuse me, but you seem to be operating as if eveybody's a "head." You suggest a fellowship where everybody has his own isolated, individual connection and has his own take on the truth depending on what he individually understands. It looks to me like a hydra-headed thing-- all heads. And, looking at the 10,000 denominations of Christians, all heads talking at once and all saying different things.
I have to shake my head. The Holy Spirit is not the author of confusion.
In 1 Corinthians, a passage very similar to Ephesians, St. Paul explains again about the Body having different organs with different functions, all of them needing each other. Then he says, "And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues."
That's verse 28. In verse 29 he immediately asks, "Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles?"
Obviously he's talking about a "Heiros arche", a divinely ordered body set up with different parts playing different roles, all of them joined to Christ by being joined to each other.
Think of the difference between 200 tons of plankton (a mass of tiny single-cell plants and animals floating in the sea) and ONE 200-ton blue whale. The 200-ton whale is a true unity of different tissues, ogans and systems. It's not just a fellowship of independent cells.
A Christian needs to be part of a true Body, not just a fellowship of independent plankton.
An analogy that swims. OK, I'm through.
God bless you.
To be saved, do God's work, spread His word and law does not require a group. Never has, never will. The prior being true, this must be true as well, arrived at by using God's gift of a brain with intelligence.
That said, it is good to belong to a club of like minded people. Some works are best done in a group. Many like to draw strength from a group. A group is good for PAC.
All of this is the God connected individual's choice. None of this is required to go to Heaven. If it is advertised as required to be saved, that is fraud and and against God's law.
May God light your way through Christ Jesus.
Apparently you still don't understand simple concepts. Protestants and Catholics agree completely on the fundamental belief of Christianity. They disagree on forms of worship and church government. Please, go get educated.
> Apparently you still don't understand simple concepts.
Incorrect. I do understand that it is your intention to display any religion not-yours as beign a "cult."
Christianity is a cult by your definition. Just ask the Jews.
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