Posted on 01/19/2006 3:56:16 AM PST by ComtedeMaistre
Most conservatives are religious. But there is a small minority of non-religious individuals, who were attracted to the conservative movement because they were influenced by secular movements such as Ayn Rand's objectivism.
Should atheists be welcomed into the conservative movement? Do atheists make good conservatives?
There's a lot of common ground and of course there is tension but, in the end, a lot more common ground than tension.
No one said that the system should not be moral and accord with values. But religion should be out of it.
People who share conservative values often won't vote Republican because of the Pat Robertsons and the Jerry Falwells of the world.
>>in the end the positive recognition is made that those outside the circle of belief can hold morals in a manner consistant with conservatism and seperate from the rationalists of the left.<<
That may be true. But many atheists in Christian societies learnt their values from the dominant Christian culture, even though they may no longer believe in the existence of a deity.
I'm asking your opinion, not Ann's.
( :-D
Most of that sort have their respective egos firmly in hand.
Wouldn't the place to start be Paul's letters or Acts?
First of all, most Americans (`95%) say they believe in God. Does that make them religious? Something above 60% regularly attend religious services. Since the political split in this country is nearly 50-50, you could also say that most liberals are religious as well.
If you think most conservatives are fundamentalists or Evangelicals, you would be very wrong. Most conservatives are not fundamentalist Christians. While it may be true that a majority of people who describe themselves as Evangelicals or fundamentalists would also identify as politically conservative, there are exceptions where these same individuals fall on the far left of the political spectrum. (See the Quakers)
I'd add that I can think of nothing in conservative political philosophy that could prevent an atheist from identifying with that philosophy, and you already noted that many have.
The Democrat party has with some success over the last several decades attempted to paint the Republican party as being completely controlled by fire breathing religious fanatics. But the fact is there are not enough fire breathing fanatics to control anything, let alone an organization as large as the Republican party.
"I personally would never vote for someone who considers himself an atheist."
You're not every likely to face that situation. Few atheists believe that they could successfully run for any office while professing their atheism.
That is not to say that atheists have not won elective office, but they did do without saying that they were atheists.
Remember, just because you see someone coming out of a church, you cannot be sure of that person's beliefs. You might even see me coming out of a church. I visit churches of different denominations on a pretty regular basis. These days, I go to a Russian Orthodox church about once a month. I enjoy the liturgy and music there.
The funniest thing about this entire question is the definition of who is a Christian. In my time on Free Republic, I've seen declarations of the non-Christianity of a number of denominations fo Christianity.
What appears to be the common ground in these declarations that a particular denomination isn't really Christian is that it disagrees with the particular dogma of the poster.
Indeed, the most common target of these claims is the largest denomination of Christianity. If I've seen one post claiming that the Roman Catholic Church isn't really a Christian church, I've seen a hundred.
Go...believe as you choose.
Libertarianism was (and is) dominated by atheists, agnostics, and deists. The one exception that I am aware of is Edmund Opitz, and I believe he was a theologically liberal Congregationalist. Some Reconstructionists, such as Gary "Y2K" North, have claimed affiliation with libertarianism, but while they are free market advocates and supporters of minimal government, their goal is ultimately to restore Old Testament civil law (with Reconstructionists substituting for Jews). This position would conflict with either the Randian or logical positivist viewpoints that deny anything like divine sources for law, much less the existence of the supernatural. In recent years, there has been a number of Catholic libertarians, many of whom write for LewRockwell.com and even a Calvinist or two, notably Representative Ron Paul.
The conspiratorialist/"blood and soil" Right was also rather short of evangelicals or fundamentalists in their leadership. Robert Welch was a Unitarian, and Willis Carto is probably some sort of neo-pagan. Sam Francis and Revilo Oliver, intellectual leaders in this camp, were atheists. A majority of the rank and file of the John Birch Society were Catholic or Mormon, although they probably had a large number of evangelicals and fundamentalists in their 1960s strongholds of Southern California and Texas. There were, of course, pseudo-fundmentalists, such as the Christian Identity or Anglo-Israelite followers, who belonged to the conspiratorialist wing.
The rise of the Christian Right in the 1970s was largely motivated by the cultural decay that were exemplified in the sexual revolution, increased crime, the so-called counterculture, and so forth. The leaders of the post-1975 Christian Right had previously been either apolitical (Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye, D. James Kennedy, James Dobson) or even liberal Democrats like Pat Robertson, who had worked for Adlai Stevenson's presidential campaign. With the exception of Dobson, most of these leaders are premillenial in eschatology and many, including Falwell and LaHaye, believe in the pre-tribulation Rapture of believers.
There is an inherent contradiction between believing that "the earth is not my home" and turning the local Southern Baptist, Nazarene, Bible, PCA, or Assemblies of God church into a center of political activism. If you read biographies of the leaders of the Christian Right, it becomes apparent that they were reacting to the cultural revolution of the secular Left.
Most of the Christian Right's leadership is now in their 70s, and, for that matter, most of the prominent ministries, even apolitical ones like those of Chuck Swindoll, R.C. Sproul, and Charles Stanley, are led by men eligible for Social Security. There will be a generational shift in the evangelical and fundamentalist world in the next five to ten years. What will be interesting will be what direction the new leadership will take those people who are the largest segment of the American population.
Thanks, I will gladly and sincerely accept any and all prayers said for me and mine. :) I have always gotten along quite well with religious people and I know I have many of them praying for me. While I do not share their belief system, I at least feel happy that they view me as worth saving.
Finished your smoke, have you?
I read Ayn Rand's works almost 40 years ago. Now why don't you read Pope John Paul's encylica Centisumus Annus.
Here's a preview:
"Socialism considers the individual person simply as an element, a molecule within the social organism, so that the good of the individual is completely subordinated to the functioning of the socioeconomic mechanism. Socialism likewise maintains that the good of the individual can be realized without reference to his free choice, to the unique and exclusive responsibility which he exercises in the face of good and evil." Pope John Paul II
BTW, isn't "godless atheist" redundant?
I could.
If I believed God brought this person fwd and will use him to accomplish whatever.
Even if the person doesnt believe in God, God can use them to do his work.
Life is tough without a nose.
What if a person only believes that issues of morality are decided by what is biblical. How do they leave religion out of it?
Your statement proves my point that atheists may support Christian leaders but Christians will not support atheists.
Darkness is the absence of light, but when all is said and done, darkness will prevail.
"BTW, isn't "godless atheist" redundant?"
Indeed it is. I adopted that tagline when some Free Republic poster, who disagreed with something I wrote, called me "nothing but a godless atheist." I thought it was amusing, so that has been my tagline ever since.
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