Nowadays, I’m one of those self-centered people who doesn’t give back, but when I was in college I did some tutoring of kids from poor areas through the Catholic Church. I liked it better than the other volunteer work I did, partly because the other people who were doing it seemed genuinely interested in helping others, not just in padding their resumes. So I believe this Chunky Bobo summary of a new book about churches in America:
The first is “American Grace,” co-written by Harvard’s Robert Putnam (of “Bowling Alone” fame) and Notre Dame’s David Campbell, which examines the role that religion plays in binding up the nation’s social fabric. Over all, they argue, our society reaps enormous benefits from religious engagement, while suffering from few of the potential downsides. Widespread churchgoing seems to make Americans more altruistic and more engaged with their communities, more likely to volunteer and more inclined to give to secular and religious charities. Yet at the same time, thanks to Americans’ ever-increasing tolerance, we’ve been spared the kind of sectarian conflict that often accompanies religious zeal.
Despite all this altruistic community work American churches do, the United States has among the highest rates of crime and child poverty and among the worst access to health care of any western countries. Don’t get me wrong, I immensely admire the work religious people doin soup kitchens, hospitals, and with the incarcerated (I chose these measures of societal well-being because from my experience with the Catholic Church, feeding people, working with children, tending to the sick, and prison literacy work were things I saw a lot of), and I’m sure this work does something to ameliorate some of these problems we have as a society.
Of course, the reason that the United States has so much child poverty and such crappy access to health care is that our government, almost alone among western countries, makes little effort to deal with these problems (I suspect the same is true with crime, that if we had better safety nets and better general conditions for the poor, that we would have less crime).
My question is this: to what extent can the dysfunction of American government — in terms of dealing specifically with poverty and health care — be related to the power of churches in American life? I’m not saying that all churches functions as proxies for the Republican party — although I think that many do — but it’s a simple fact that church-goers are much more likely to vote conservative than non-church-goers. And I suspect that government can carry out the anti-poverty mission of Christianity (to the extent that it still has one in this country) much more effectively than churches can.
I don’t mean this as a put-down of all Christian religion, obviously. I think at this point in the post I’ve done enough pre-empting about this, so I’ll stop.
Mark
I don’t see it.
Single-payer health care in Canada came via a fiery baptist preacher who went to graduate school at the University of Chicago and enlisted in the army.
He also did the 1930s version of hippie-punching, with the target being Marxists and Leninists: “That experience soured me with absolutists. I’ve no patience with people who want to sit back and talk about a blueprint for society and do nothing about it.”
Wonderful guy, my personal hero, and voted the greatest Canadian by his fellow citizens. But makes it hard to think that religion per se is the issue.
Phil Perspective
Yet at the same time, thanks to Americans’ ever-increasing tolerance, we’ve been spared the kind of sectarian conflict that often accompanies religious zeal.
Chunky Bobo:
Tell that to Dr. Tiller you fuckwad!!
The Dangerman
Not sure I buy the premise; it goes to defining the true causal relationship as opposed to secondary factors. I believe the causal factor is Urban vs. Rural; Rural tends to be more conservative and rural tends to be more “loud” about their Religion. More important than Religion is that Rurals believe, for reasons that escape me, that Liberals will take away their guns (take their Bibles, that’s a big problem, but take their guns, those are fighting words).
DougJ
@Mark:
I certainly have a much more benign view of churches than I do of the University of Chicago. The affect of churches on poverty and such can be debated, but it’s hard not to argue that neoconservatism and the economic philosophies that led to the crash are largely products of the University of Chicago.
Yutsano
@Mark: Father to Donald Sutherland and grandfather to Kiefer as well. But yeah, Tommy Douglas kicked serious butt when it counted. It all started in Saskatchewan too, that’s the part that really blows my mind about the development of the Canada Health Act.
Amanda in the South Bay
I think a lot of more or less conservative Christians believe that a vigorous welfare state will mean (somehow, not really sure) that the state will grow all powerful and want to liquidate Christianity. Like, that’s what Communism is: the state becomes so powerful (haha, only as far as social welfare is concerned, who cares about the military or law enforcement) that through some bizarro handwringing, somehow that means…the end of Christianity?
I mean, I can think of some sorta remote examples, like with the Living Chruch schism in Russia, or the tendency of Orthodox bishops to be collaborators with the state, but I think there’s definitely something to the paranoid American religious view that tends to think in terms of a social democratic government wiping out religion.
burnspbesq
I can only speak as a Catholic.
The starting point is Matthew 25:40: “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
Those of us who have been blessed are called to aid the less fortunate. If I had more time, I would do volunteer work, but my circumstances are such that I can do the most good for the most number by writing checks. So I do. The trick is to give locally, so that the Vatican hierarchy and the National Conference of Bishops don’t benefit from your giving. And let them know why you are doing what you are doing. I thought this year’s Peter’s Pence protest was brilliant.
There are so many little things that you can do that have a huge impact. Whenever we upgrade a computer at our house, we give the old one to our parish school.
DougJ
@burnspbesq:
Tell me more about the Peter’s Pence protest, I’m curious.
Brachiator
I am not remotely religious, have never belonged to any church or other body of worship in any religion, but I think this is a particularly dumbass line of inquiry.
It reminds me of the sick joke that the former Soviet Union had proven that their “scientific, atheistic” approach had eliminated crime because they had made it illegal to report it. And there was no longer any poverty because everyone (with the exception of the ruling elite) had been made equally poor.
Meanwhile, we have this shining example of government bureaucrats slowly, methodically, deliberately overseeing the destruction of the lives and spirits of the helpless children they are supposed to be saving:
Blindly unrepentant until the very end, Ploehn left this as her parting shot:
Thirty one freakin’ years. And Ploehn unfortunately can’t hide behind religion to excuse her idiocy.
Bubba Dave
I’d also point out that a loud-mouthed Baptist preacher seemed to have a significant impact on civil rights here in America.
I think a much bigger point is the divide between rural and urban voters, and our bicameral system that over-represents the rural vote in national affairs, even without ridiculous supermajority requirements.
Mark
@Yutsano: Manitoba and SK are odd places – the first spot that the labor party took hold in Canada, and the only places that have consistently been willing to vote left in their own interest (SK less now than before.) It would be like Kansas being a bastion of modern s-ism. (redacted to avoid moderation…)
Yutsano
@burnspbesq: You’re actually hitting on the point DougJ makes here nicely:
We can all, in some small way, make a difference for those less fortunate than ourselves. But a government has a size of scale that allows it to reach to places that even the largest churches can’t. I’m sure there’s a Catholic parish in Pend O’Reille county here in Washington, but are they capable of reaching out to every little town and doing the work necessary to address the needs of those people? Flip that around and you get to the church’s role: even the most muscular well-funded government program cannot reach everyone in a densely populated community, but the churches can fill those holes. Instead of seeing church and state as dichotomous in this, they should be working in tandem to makes sure that the least of us is done in a compassionate and understanding manner.
@Mark: I thought SK went solidly Conservative last election. Maybe I’m just not remembering things right.
DougJ
@Brachiator:
I think if you had belonged to a church at some point, you might see more where I’m coming from. People do pick up political views from their churches. I realize there is self-selection too, but I don’t think that’s all of it, and I don’t think anyone who’s spent much time in a church would think that’s all of it, either.
Ana Gama
It is? Hmmmm. Let’s not tell the Hispanics who tend to overwhelming vote Democratic.
Also, young evangelicals are supposedly more open to supporting Democrats because of the dismal record of the GOP on the environment, the poor, etc. No stats to share, though.
ChrisB
Well, a thousand points of light is the supposed Republican answer to government involvement. And nowadays of course there is a close connection between the religious right and Republicans who hate government help for the underprivileged. But let’s not forget those attempts by the Bush administration to direct federal funds to religious institutions.
Historically, though, I don’t think the dysfunction of American government is related to the power of churches in American life. If you look back at the Progressive Era, many of those who called for greater governmental involvement in the plight of the immigrant poor were quite religious.
Phil Perspective
@Mark: You know that Oklahoma was once a Socialism hotbed, right?
kdaug
It’s been my experience that those who proclaim most loudly their Christianity/piety are those furthest away from the works of the faith. And they do tend also to be Republicans – again, in my experience.
I acknowledge the notable exceptions, and note that they are notable for their exceptionalism.
Pharasies, closet-praying, and all that.
The Dangerman
@DougJ:
Perhaps, but from my experiences, the views being promoted almost universally reinforce left of center principles (largest odd one out being Choice, which has never been a huge issue in the Churches I’ve attended), though I suspect that the views one has going into Church are the ones that are reinforced through attendance, i.e. different people hear different things that reinforce the views they had once they went in the door.
Brachiator
@DougJ:
I grew up in Texas. I have been around deeply religious people all my life. I have attended church services, even though I have never been a member of any church. I have attended long sessions of Bible readings in the homes of friends (but made a clean escape every time).
With all due respect, there is little that you can tell me about how people pick up political views from their churches. From Baptist ministers to Hindu nationalists, I’ve seen it all, often first hand.
@Yutsano:
And a government has a size of scale that allows it to destroy many more lives than the largest churches (Innocents Betrayed: A Times Investigation).
Many of these cases came to light not because of bold investigative reporting, but because new disclosure laws made it harder for social welfare officials to cover up the details of their worst lapses. But the problem was hiding in plain sight, and as usual, few people had the time to worry about what was happening to poor people.
handy
Doug I don’t know if this is ancillary to your question or not, but I’ll just throw it out.
I have friends who are self-identified Christians and vote Republican consistently. Now of course the main pull for them are the socio-religious issues Goopers love to suck up on, like gay marriage, abortion, prayer in school, etc. But on fiscal matters, i.e. “big gubmint,” it’s a rather easy alignment for them as well, because, well people should give out of their own personal convictions and not out of compulsion, and frankly the church does a better job of outreach programs than big bureaucratic government can directly. I think this last part in particular fits in with the whole “compassionate conservatism” stuff W was slinging when he was president, at least early on.
People upthread have already given some of examples of where agents of change started in the pews, so to speak, and these self-identified conservative Christians I have in mind would be quick to affirm those.
But the truth is, revolutions may begin at the pulpit (or not, depending on your point of view), but any realization of the ideals of those revolutions don’t. I realize I’m preaching to the choir making this point, and to many here it’s an obvious one, but private organizations can’t meet a democratic society’s most basic needs. Soup kitchens, clothes drives, and the like are good–they’re great, even, and people should be encouraged to get involved. But they’re not nearly enough, and only the state has the kind of resources to bridge the gaps, so to speak.
I think the younger generation of evangelicals is going to change the dualistic thinking that’s been so dominant in their congregations the last 30 years. No, you probably won’t confuse them for progressive activists, but I also don’t think they have a real beef with government the way the Reagan worshippers have and on the contrary understand that on a host of issues, from the environment to international relations to poverty, governments have to be involved or any hope for change will be fleeting and hollow.
Barb (formerly gex)
The charity aspect appeals to the religious right precisely because the way they do charity is *not* the way the government would do it. Catholic Charities, using 75% public funds refuses to help the poor and the orphans in D.C. simply because D.C. allows SSM and they may have to tolerate helping those poor and orphans along side someone who is gay married.
This isn’t a social safety net – it is a religious conformity project, and increasingly a government sponsored one at that.
Barb (formerly gex)
@Amanda in the South Bay: Charity is how they evangelize and convert. A secular safety net doesn’t leave them enough people desperate enough for help that they would change their religion for it.
handy
@Barb (formerly gex):
Yeah and then there’s that, too. Outreach (or the veneer of such) for the sake of proselytization (maybe not literally in the case of a group like Catholic Charities, but I think you get the idea).
Comrade Luke
DougJ, did you do your tutoring through JVC? That’s where everyone went after college, at least Jesuit college :)
AT
“Yet at the same time, thanks to Americans’ ever-increasing tolerance, we’ve been spared the kind of sectarian conflict that often accompanies religious zeal.”
Really? We have religion and tolerance in Australia, we don’t have much in the way of gay bashing, terrorist over abortion, islamapohbia, and i would guess that would be the case in a lot of Western countries (and what there is isn’t based on religious oposition like in the US). It doesn’t take bloodshed on the level of Northern Ireland (“christian”) or Iraq (‘Muslim) to have sectarian conflict.
Barb (formerly gex)
@kdaug: No no no. They are Christians because they say they are. If we eliminate from Christianity those that some other Christian says is wrong, there would be none left.
I’m not interested in sitting through any kind of Christianity test/debate process by which competing Bible quotes are hurled around to prove who is right and who is wrong.
A Christian is someone who considers themselves a Christian. That’s probably the most specific statement on that definition that could be agreed upon to any significant extent. After that Biblical interpretations take the forefront. I’m just sick of any issue that touches on religion boiling down to having to first agree upon a definition of Christianity. Can’t you take it as read that we realize that Christian belief isn’t completely unified?
Comrade Luke
My parents have gone to the same Catholic church for 45yrs; it’s the church and school I went to growing up.
When I was little it was full of white, middle class people and it was as far as I remember apolitical.
By the time I’d returned home after college, the church had changed dramatically. It had been “taken over” by immigrants, largely from SE Asia, but a small group of the white folks remained. They were trying to get the church to go back to pre-Vatican II days, and were obsessed with abortion. To this day the church actually “recommends” who their congregants should vote for in the weekly bulletin, and it’s strictly along abortion & gay marriage lines.
I think this is a decent microcosm of the Catholic church today. The white, middle class folks have for the most part left, replaced by poorer people, often immigrants, who never question what the church is telling them.
I was in college in the late 80s btw, right in the Reagan/Bush era. I don’t think the change in the church during this time was a coincidence.
My parents still vote Democrat, even though they’re against abortion. To them it’s a matter of personal principle though, not something to foist upon other people. I doubt they’re in the majority there, though.
IMO, abortion is the only issue where (Catholic) church and politics overlap. Remove this and you’d get many more people voting Democrat. I know plenty of people who are against gay marriage, but I’ve never met one that votes based on that.
Unfortunately, it’s not an issue you can just remove, so we need to live with them voting Republican.
Barb (formerly gex)
@The Dangerman: One of the most universal principles advocated by American Christianity after abortion is anti gay stuff, not left of center stuff. And their political/campaign efforts have been focused on supporting candidates that are anti-abortion and anti-gay. It’s nice that they talk up the other stuff. After learning that CC was using 75% public funds for their charity work, and then consider that what they get is tax free in the first place, and the people who donate that get a write off, I’d argue that a significant amount of Christian charity is taxpayer charity.
What kind of argument is “in my experience”. How many churches have you belonged to. And do you know how much time and effort was spent on anti-abortion anti-gay stuff versus that left of center stuff?
asiangrrlMN
@Brachiator: So, I’m confused. Do you think the church would do a better job of helping these children?
Joe Buck
I think that many Americans justify having a government that helps the poor far less than the governments of other rich companies do by deciding that it should be up to private parties (mainly religious) to do the helping, and churches and charities just don’t have the capacity to get it done.
Andre
I think you’ve got several different factors at work, most of which are mentioned above.
A couple more key issues are:
1) A significant proportion of politically active Christians are single-issue voters. They associate (D) with pro-choice and (R) with pro-life positions, so it’ll be a cold day in hell before they change their votes. Same with prayer in schools, the funding of faith-based initiatives, etc These are bright lines drawn that will not be crossed, not for any reason (and you can bet the next election will see more than one example of a Republican nominee claiming that HCR authorised government money for abortions. Patently untrue of course, but that wont’ stop them.)
2) Many charity organisations funded by religious groups exist primarily to serve what they perceive to be their own communities-not necessarily active church goers, but people who could potentially, with a bit of prodding, be made to come along to Mass, etc. They don’t usually go out of their way to serve groups outside that catchment, even if there are others who might benefit more from their services.
I grew up Catholic (although admittedly Catholicism in NZ is very different to Catholicism in the US-for a start it’s extremely socially liberal here) and when I worked with social service groups from the church, they seemed like the most lovely people on the planet-until you got them talking about politics. They saw no conflict between stating that poor people needed to take responsibility for their own situations and reject any form of government social welfare while they used the tax-free dollars of the Church to fill food baskets for families who couldn’t afford to feed their children.
Mnemosyne
@Comrade Luke:
That’s why I think DougJ is asking the wrong question. The conservative power of churches in American life is a result of the Republicans’ takeover of religion as a political tool.
Churches can be a good way to focus people’s giving, which is valuable. I’m trying to figure out which animal rescue or no-kill shelter I want to donate to in the Phoenix area for my mom’s Christmas present, but I have to choose between a dozen of them with very little information beyond their websites. That’s where places like churches can be valuable — it helps you decide where to give instead of being overwhelmed by the need and choices available.
And that’s why the Republicans took them over: they used that ability to focus for their own ends, which is why the Catholic Church is now the No Abortions church and not much else. The Republicans saw how powerful the black churches were in the Civil Rights Movement, and they decided to harness that kind of power for themselves.
The Dangerman
@Barb (formerly gex):
As it always has been and always will be.
Now, even though Unification isn’t possible, the similarities are really quite striking. Obviously, the Abrahamic Faiths all believe in the same God (there are problems with the Prophets, of course), but there are other beliefs that are common amongst different cultures. Many have stories about a “Great Flood”, for example. Buddhism and Christianity share many fundamental tenets. Amongst all the “complexity”, there are many simple commonalities.
DPirate
Fundamentalism is axiomatic.
A great deal of what is in the bible is about fighting. One big theme in fundamentalist preaching is regarding the armor and the idea that we are soldiers of god. I couldn’t remember what it’s called and found this in a one-second google. This sort of stuff is all through the old testament, though there are war allusions in the new as well, iirc. Couple that with the revelation and it isn’t hard to see what fundamentalists think they ought to be doing.
As soldiers, they will be aligning with or identifying with those whom they see as carrying the righteous fight to the enemy. I think this is where much of the liberal-cowardice, french-surrender-monkey type rhetoric comes from.
It has been the case from the moment John wrote his book that people expected the apocalypse to happen at any moment and surely soon. Today, people are much more informed of what goes on in a much wider world. Especially given the media’s bent of hyping foul news and generally encouraging a state of fear and loathing, people see what goes on and cannot believe that it isn’t happening without some sort of guidance, because who would do such things, really? They see this time as different, and in fact it is, if only insofar as we would not have known about anything not relatively local or quite as recent in times past.
That I think is the sundae, with sprinkles on top of the propaganda thrown on them from the time they entered the school system that we are special, righteous, and chosen. Our fight is the good fight, and anyone not on our side, which is prima facie God’s side, is evil. As well, anyone who wishes to negotiate with evil must be themselves evil, because soldiers fight; they don’t make nice and negotiate. The tale of Satan’s being forgiven is beside the point, as that happens after the battle is won.
As to class and wealth, much is made of the parable of the talents and the idea that he who increases God’s wealth is more righteous than he who pisses it away. You can argue that God’s wealth is not worldly, but the basic result is that the rich matter more than the poor. We are taught that as soon as we can understand language, in fairy tales, books, schooling, advertising, television. So there is that thread, too, though I do think it subordinate to the warfare meme, and anyway it is present with both parties. Most of the people we elect are pretty well-off even before they take office.
Religious groups vary, of course. Catholicism seems to focus much more upon the new testament and the teachings and works of Jesus, whereas protestantism seems to me more old testament. I think that’s one reason we hear of catholic priests deriding capitalism and having a large number of catholic democrats, whereas protestants are more apt to be republican. I rarely hear of any protestant preacher extolling socialist ideas, but it may be fairly common for revivalists. Another thought is that the protestant religion is not beholden to a single entity like catholicism, and any preacher can say anything he might like to – I should think that might work overall to play toward the prejudices of his congregation. That could help to explain why so many black protestants vote democrat, whereas whites vote republican.
Anyhow, I could be wrong; that’s just what I think about it (right now).
Janet Strange
@Comrade Luke:
I have a good friend who is Catholic who said to me on voting day last November, “I need to go sin.” When I looked confused, she said that the previous Sunday, the sermon was the priest going on about how if any Catholic voted for a politician who supported abortion rights (though I’m sure he didn’t call it “abortion rights”), they would be committing a mortal sin.
For any of you non-Catholics who don’t already know this, a mortal sin is one so serious that if you die without sincere repentance of it, you will burn in hell forever.
My friend actually argued with the priest after mass. What if, she asked, one politician’s positions reflected all of Jesus’s teachings but was pro-choice, and his/her opponent was pro-life, but did not follow Jesus’s teachings in any other respect. The priest insisted that the abortion issue was the only one that mattered and reiterated that she would be committing a mortal sin to vote for a pro-choice candidate.
I don’t think my friend is going to last much longer as a church-going Catholic.
Kath
Look, you have to understand that “the church” today is very different than it has been. In the Northeast and Northwest, and some of the larger Northern cities, the attrition rate of Protestant churches has been so great that many have closed, and what is left of congregations is average age 75 and dying off fast.
In the last twenty years the “unchurched” movement has been largely moderate and liberal Christians to the point where today, what you see as churched are the most structured and doctrinaire remnants. Seminaries in the North are hiring evangelical professors they wouldn’t have touched twenty years ago because there is no one else to hire. Some seminaries have cut ties with their denominations because they refuse to teach by the rules that the religious right insist on. And that is the North.
The Catholic church was devastated after the promise of Vatican II (and particularly the failed Birth Control Commission) was largely repealed. The religious left orders, priests left, and the laity either left or, typical of Catholics, stayed in the pews waiting for the church to catch up to them. But the complete decay of the magisterium as a moral authority has now seen a large movement away — into Mormonism or general agnosticism.
The statistics are roughly: 95 percent of Americans have some belief in a spiritual dimension of their lives. 5% poll out as atheist. Of the 95% nearly 40% are unchurched or never churched. And most of that is in the North. In the south, evangelical churches are growing. But the interesting thing about evangelicals is that they possess a much stronger sense of self-autonomy over spirituality.
So what was once “the church” as moral authority, as agent for social change for the greater good, has also fallen into what you see on the political right; a fundamentalist fight of the “ingroup” against the “others.” And social funding now hangs not on justice but rigid dogma. Yes, there is still dissent among catholics; the nuns’ organizations have come out strongly for health care, and marriage equality, and female priests — and the vatican has tried hard to suppress them.
But — the church has long been an authority in the world, an institution to which the many gave up their identity and personal authority to, to be kept safe. And the movement away from authoritarian structures affects equally both the church and the government. The sixties broke the hold of the paternalistic forms of authority, and there may have been only a few million people actively involved in the process; but it was the first effective destruction of vertical forms of authority and the investment of authority and identity into the individual.
Karl Rahner, German Jesuit of the mid-twentieth century, warned the magisterium of the “church from below”, when every Christian would take up the mantle of apostolic authority, that this time had come. That it would evolve away from religion itself — I am not sure if he saw that. But the question is not whether or not government or religion can best serve the social justice needs of people. Neither can, not anymore. Only people can help other people.
And in the South, where evangelicals are strongest, the potential is hard to read. Some of the evangelical movement begins to have a mystical bent. Some of it is rabidly right. But it was a little church in Florida that was first responder to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. So maybe.
The Dangerman
@Barb (formerly gex):
I’m not sure what you mean by “belong”; as a member, I suppose that is only one (Presbyterian). As a congregant, in a formal Church, I have been to Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, and Unitarian Universalist (I may be messing up the name, which is too bad as it was one of my most positive Church experiences). Outside of a formal Church setting, I’ve been to many interfaith services (principally, the Abrahamic religions, but also including Buddhists). Some of the most beautiful Prayers I have ever heard I didn’t understand a word of as they were done in Arabic. I’m also a big believer in the Celtic concept of “thin places” (I’d much rather be in Yosemite Valley, in the Canadian Rockies, or on a favorite beach than be in a Church).
I suspect you won’t believe this statement, but it is true; in all of my Christian experiences, I have never had one single incident, in the Church or any informal Church activity, of any “anti gay stuff”. Now, I’ve known homophobes, in personal conversations separate from Churches, but, in any kind of formal or informal setting, it has never happened.
Again, from my experiences, in my Churches, not very much at all on the former and zero on the latter. Sorry.
burnspbesq
@DougJ:
As I assume you know, Peter’s Pence is an annual special collection, taken up once a year at every Catholic church in the United States and a number of other countries. The proceeds go straight to the Vatican. In 2009, the worldwide total was approximately $82 million, slightly less than a third of which came from the US.
This year, a pretty substantial number of American Catholics (no one will ever know the precise number) decided to use Peter’s Pence as a way of sending a message to the Vatican about a number of issues, including but not limited to the appalling handling of the clerical sex abuse scandals, the rightward turn in doctrine under Benny the Rat, etc. Instead of putting money in the Peter’s Pence envelope, they put in a note explaining why they weren’t giving. Don’t know whether it will have any effect, but it sure felt good.
Comrade Luke
@Janet Strange:
Raping little boys excepted, of course.
Restrung
I would totally be a church goer if they didn’t get all “God says” on me. Just gotta find the right house. I love the aesthetics.
Villago Delenda Est
Bobo remains, and forever shall be, a shithead.
America’s true religion, and it’s practiced most fervently by “Christian” fundamentalists, is the adoration and worship of Mammon.
Which is not conducive to altruism in any way, shape or form.
jl
Douthat is truly a new Bobo among us. Have the three wisemen from the East arrived yet? And what presents to they bring?
I cannot figure out from what perspective he is writing. Look at this passage (which my comments in parens)
“In a sense, of course, there’s no better time to be a Christian than the first 25 days of December.”
(For an overlay on a pagan holiday that didn’t seem to be completely Christianized until the mid 300s?)
“But this is also the season when American Christians can feel most embattled. Their piety is overshadowed by materialist ticky-tack.”
(So, he goes by the Gospels? An ‘Original Christian, then?)
“Their great feast is compromised by Christmukkwanzaa multiculturalism.”
(isn’t Easter the ‘great feast’? Whyembattled? He should read Paul’s advice on how Christians should deal with Pagan festivals and food from sacrifices, I forget with epistle it’s in. But Paul did not feel embattled, he just told Christians his opinions on what kind of association and participation was OK and what was not.)
And the once-a-year churchgoers crowding the pews beside them are a reminder of how many Americans regard religion as just another form of midwinter entertainment, wedged in between “The Nutcracker” and “Miracle on 34th Street.”
(Judgmental much, Douthat?. Now he is a sniffing supercilious judgmental conventional Christian pharisee.)
As for Christianity as root of US troubles with inequality and inequity, I can’t see it.
Consider Jefferson, the patron saint claimed by several diametrically opposed political factions. In Notes on the State of Virginia, and in his letters, Jefferson reported and endorsed LOCAL government efforts to correct inequality that would offend our sense of individual rights and liberties today. (Edit: in Notes, for example, sheriff can come by and put a vagrant on unused shelter on your property. Jefferson reports this with no objection.) Jefferson was no libertarian. But he stoutly defends the principle that these efforts should ideally be LOCAL. He questioned long distance anti-poverty efforts, both national and international (which were mostly Christian evangelical efforts back then) in his letters.
So the preference for (or maybe prejudice for) decentralized and local anti-poverty and social improvement efforts has many roots in the U.S.
Hamilton, despite some views that are offensive to us today (like sometimes seeming to prefer child labor over education, as a social policy), liked national welfare benefits just fine. For example his approval of the English Poor Laws of the late 18th century, which seem nasty to us, but were generous compared to other countries at the time. Franklin thought they were too generous, and remarked that England had so many poor because England treated them so well. The administration of the18th century Poor Law was local, but it was governed by national policies and acts of Parliament.
My opinion is that the controversies about the level of government that should be responsible for design, funding and administration, and the interaction with race, ethnicity and racial prejudice, explain much of the bad situation in the U.S.
I think the cause is a lot more than the attitudes of U.S. Christians (or maybe better U.S. style of popular individualistic Calvinism, which was only starting in the late 18th century).
It is also about competing social visions of people like Hamilton and Jefferson and their factions, that have never been settled.
burnspbesq
@Janet Strange:
Your friend is exactly the kind of person that we desperately need to keep in the Church.
If a priest ever gave me that line of crap, I would most likely haul off and give him … a 20-minute lecture on the First Amendment. It would probably start out, “I’m a Catholic, but I’m also an American.”
Yutsano
@burnspbesq:
Should this come to pass, and you do not record it and then plaster it on YouTube for the world to enjoy, I shall be entirely non-plussed.
Brachiator
@asiangrrlMN:
Life is more complicated than either DougJ’s musings or the bland faith in secular institutions.
And the plain fact is that here government run social service organizations failed children. Children died and “well meaning” bureaucrats will never be held responsible, will never be punished.
It’s not about separating the liberal from the conservative, the religious from the secular. Human beings are fucked up. You gotta watch ’em, provide oversight, transparency, and even that won’t always be enough.
Thirty one years, and the best that Trish Ploehn could say was that it was “just too hard” to keep all the children entrusted to her alive.
I got no confidence in faith based organizations, and see the whole notion as weak constitutionally. On the other hand, I’ve seen hospitals in Southern California fail the poor, and social service agencies fail the poor. And the remedies are slow in coming. And the same administrators and politicians who oversaw the failure are in charge of implementing the new solutions.
I don’t have the answer. But I got a better set of questions.
You tell me it’s the institution,
Well, you know
You better free your mind instead.
Martin
Well, I don’t think the churches have anything to do with it, actually.
Government can be a very efficient and fair mechanism for social change (assuming you don’t fuck with it for political gain). Churches – not so much. But thats the same with any volunteer structure. The main problem is that no matter how well intentioned people are, they can only see what they can see, or want to see, so support gets clumped up in some places and neglected in others. Breast cancer is a good example. It’s no more common nor deadly as prostate cancer, yet it gets shitloads (10x) more money to support research. And colon cancer is far deadlier (as is lung).
We’ve embraced a highly inefficient system of which churches are only a part. We built this system mainly so we could discriminate with where our dollars go. We try a lot of things to justify the system, but that’s the real reason why it exists as such.
MTiffany
Well yes, of course, silly man. And if we had less crime, there would be less need for police. If we had less need of police, government would have less need of police powers. If the government had less need of police powers, the government wouldn’t need to be as big. If government didn’t need to be big, we wouldn’t need so many politicians.
And politicians, being human, aren’t too keen on putting themselves out of a job just for the sake of doing right by society. “One death is a tragedy, a million a statistic,” as the politicians do say…
asiangrrlMN
@Brachiator: Thank you for the honest and thoughtful answer. I appreciate it.
Comrade Luke
@Brachiator:
Might as well move on to another topic; Brachiator pretty much tied this one up and put a bow on it.
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
I think charity work that church groups do is terrific, but my problem with the constant emphasis on it in political terms is because it’s presented as some kind of alternative to a social safety net, a way of saying that big gubmint is not only ineffective but unnecessary, because Jeebus has yer back. That’s its use to the conservative position, aside from whatever use the recruiting element of the charity work might have (depending on the church in question). The poor don’t need Welfare! Give tax money to the Salvation Army instead!
How this passes for a policy position amongst any collection of people above the age of twelve is one of many examples of the cartoon that is American political discourse. I don’t know how the Onion can continue to create new material anymore. Reality lapped satire years ago.
Karmakin
For the last 30 years or so, there’s been a movement away from religion based upon social justice towards one based upon class and social ordering. It is sometimes referred to as neo-Calvinism and is the idea that success and failure are divinely ordained and as such the “losers” need to be actively punished.
It’s been growing in Protestant circles and more and more in the catholic church, where the idea is basically blasphemy.
It seems to
patrick II
The overriding myth of this country is that of the individual — the lone cowboy — who stands on his own. The economic idea of the invisible hand — that if we just do what is right for us, that everything will work out not for just ourselves but for the larger economy and thus the country, plays right into the lone cowboy myth and reinforces it. Those two ideas synergize into an idea of natural order that should not be interfered with. Government programs distort the natural order. So, it is not only useless to for the government to try and change the order, it is harmful to the greater good.
In addition many Christians conflate Adam Smith’s invisible hand of the marketplace, and the invisible hand of God. Now government interference becomes not only destructive natural economic order, but god’s moral order. That only leaves the church as the purveryor of “charity” because only in God’s name can we make an exception to the un-understandble order imposed by the hand of God.
silentbeep
This is the thing: in countries that have a bigger safety net than we do, such as Sweden and Denmark, their populations tend to be more culturally homogenous than ours. If the American people, as a whole, wanted to spend more money on the poor, we would by now. The thing is, we have a culture that is still caught up in Horatio Alger myths, and sees people needing government assistance as those “other” people.
I don’t think it’s really about the Church or any religion. In fact, despite the U.S. being really religious compared to other Western countries, secularization is still on the upswing here.
We don’t want to spend on a safety net en masse, so we have these churches attempting to fill in the gap. It’s not about religion per se. You’ve got it backwards Doug J.
As Martin said above “We built this system mainly so we could discriminate with where our dollars go.” Exactly. It’s not about religion primarily.
wengler
Churches are fundamentally anti-democratic organizations in which knowledge is not discovered through scientific inquiry but by one person’s interpretation of God’s will. No evidence necessary.
The Bush government was entirely faith-based. There was no decision-making process based on careful weighing of facts, just the application of rigid ideology. We have seen this again on maintaining the unsustainable tax cuts for the rich. And on Global Warming. And on energy independence. The Republican Party’s belief system revolves around the richest two percent devouring more and more of the economy’s wealth.
In terms of religious violence, perhaps you should only look at what our very religious country did under that very religious President. Two wars, countless dead and displaced. These wars defended as a righteous cause by America’s pastors from sea to shining sea. Jesus carried a sword doncha know. And of course the rightwing religious leaders always like to stoke some anti-Muslim paranoia to gain a little fame.
Oh and the religion-based charities. The company line on those is that in terms of social services we need a more patriarchal system in which the providers of charity are recognized and praised. In government there is no bowing and thanking when you get your food stamps or your unemployment check. You must thank your benefactors, usually the elders of the Church. With government programs, churches lose this power and prestige. All in all, it is just a conservative lament about an era in which they could tell everyone what to do.
DBrown
Face the truth – the so called christian religion in this country has almost zero to do with the word of Christ. At best, there are a few thousand (if that many) real Christian in this country (who give most of what they earn to the poor and would gladly die rather than harm their attacker) – the rest are a complete joke.
Christ would give almost all this money to the poor and never tolerate hunger or want by the poor in any country he lived. If you robbed him, he’d try to give you more. If you beat him, he’d ask you to strike him again and he’d still offer his love as your brother.
Do any so called christians in this so callled christian country practice even a part of this total devotion to Christ’s beliefs? Yeah, right; if Christ ever came back he’d denounce the US of Amerika and call it Satanic and evil. We are far worse than non-christian countries because we NEVER practice what we (falsely) claim are our true beliefs – just look at the joke of christians that have huge SUV’s, are fat from over eating, have more money than they know what to do with but have support the troops stickers on these cars and don’t mind that fellow amerikans go hungry, have no real health care much less that BILLIONS of fellow humans also are in these straights.
This country is NOT christian.
mclaren
Evidence suggests that religion is criminogenic.
Atheists make up 5% of the general American population, but 0.01% of the prison population.
Religion also correlates strongly with higher divorce rates, higher rates of spousal abuse, increased STD rates, and higher rates of teen pregnancy. In short, if you look at any kind of social pathology, from violent crime to promiscuity, religion is disproportionately implicated.
When you look at various Western countries, the countries with the lowest percentage of churchgoing population have the best health, the highest reported quality of life, the lowest suicide rates, and the lowest divorce rates. See “Societies without God are the most benevolent,” Nick Cohen, The Observer, September 27 2010.
The converse also applies, with the countries most religious leading in suicide, divorce, wife-beating, and so on. This applies within individual countries, and within individual religions, so that the most fundamentalist baptists have the highest divorce rates, the most religious states in the American south have the highest murder and divorce rates, and so on. See the New York Times column “Religion’s Link to Teen Pregnancy,” Lisa Belkin, September 17 2009.
Also see The London Times article “Societies worse off when they `have God on their side’,” examining studies that show that religion correlates with higher rates of homicide, mortality, STDs, etc.
IQ and religion are also negatively correlated, but since IQ remains a pseudoscientific number with little discernible meaning beyond indicating the degree of socialization into the dominant culture, this doesn’t tell us much. See Lynn, Richard; John Harvey and Helmuth Nyborg. “Average intelligence predicts atheism rates across 137 nations”. Elsevier Inc. doi:10.1016/j.intell.2008.03.004.
See also “The intelligence–religiosity nexus: A representative study of white adolescent Americans,”
Helmuth Nyborg, University of Aarhus, Denmark, 2007.
geg6
I have done volunteer work in the state prisons here for years, often along with religious organizations. In my experience, the religious volunteers spend their time evangelizing and “saving” and preaching while people like me (not there on religious impulse only and not there to discuss religion) do the work of literacy and hooking them up with social services and providing psychiatric services. In other words, the heavy lifting. The god botherers leave feeling all righteous while the rest of us leave despairing but keep coming back and working away regardless.
MaryQ
I’m inclined to believe that churches have the potential for great social good, and that this potential is often realized in ways that seculars may not notice. But I’ve often wondered about the destructive power of “justification by faith” on civic life. Interestingly, Catholics have traditionally been the furthest away from falling back on that, amongst Christians. But now that Catholics have embraced the folks that were burning crosses on my Catholic great-grandparents’ lawn in the 1920’s, in pursuit of US/world power, we’re seeing more “faith” and fewer “good works”.
kay
@Brachiator:
Brachiator, it’s more complicated than that. The right to raise your own children is a fundamental constitutional right. It’s given extraordinary due process protection, rightly, I think you would agree.
There’s been a 30 year battle to properly balance children’s “best interests” with parent’s rights. It IS hard.
Beginning in the 1970’s, the abuses ran the other way. The state was pulling children and permanently ending parental rights too aggressively. Poor and minority parents were losing parental rights in much greater numbers than middle class or ethnic or racial majority parents. There was bias. It was out of control.
There was a movement the other way (justified in my view) towards “good enough” homes and away from “best interests”, and we ended up here, where “reunification” became the goal.
Did we go too far the other way, towards protecting parental rights and away from “best interests”? Maybe.
But I’m telling you it’s difficult to balance those two interests.
You have to give up something with each approach. Either you’re putting children at risk with a “good enough” approach, or you’re infringing on a parents fundamental constitutional rights with a strict “best interests” standard.
Nobody wants them to die in an unfit parent’s care, but nobody wants children removed to foster care without a hell of a lot to base that on, either. It takes a long time and there are sometimes tragic results, but which part of the hearing process do you want to truncate?
Do you see the conundrum? The risks attendant with each approach? Do you see the potential for real damage inherent within each decision, no matter which way courts go?
joe from Lowell
I’d say, very little. If you look at Europe, the development of robust social safety nets happened neither earlier nor later in countries with high levels of church-going, and there were plenty of Christian-soc-uh-list politics involved in the development of those systems.
I’d say it’s best to leave the churches aside, and look at economic-history reasons why the U.S. had a weaker labor movement, near-absent so-shul-ist movement, and weaker safety net.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
The EDK approach is not your best look, Doug.
We are people of facts, and science. What’s the data say, what does the evidence say, what does the history say? The answers are in there.
This is another one of those chicken and egg ponders. Do churches have this “power” you speak of? Do people who are idiots go to church more? Or do the churches make them more idiotic? What about the non-idiots who go to church? What about the idiots who don’t go to church?
So many questions, Ed could have a field day for a year with these. Not here, I hope, but somewhere. Anyway, are today’s American churches leaders or followers of their flocks? How do we know? For that matter, do they themselves know?
What are we doing lumping all religious activity into one big steaming pile of generalities, anyway? Are we really going to compare solid Lutherans and earnest Episcopalians with geeky Unitarians or fag-hating Baptists? Churches are not department stores all selling the same crap from China. They are all different.
And the crime? Are we leading in crime because we jail so many people for victimless behavior that we don’t like, or is there really all that much serious crime? Isn’t violent crime on a steady decline? I think we are in over Ed’s head now.
Let’s all put our hands down our pants and take a deep breath. Can’t we all just get a long (one)?
agrippa
It may have something to do with ‘personal salvation’. There is no ‘social salvation’. It is about saving souls; it is not about saving society, it is not about the here and now.
The churches largely focus on the individual and that individual’s relationship with God. There is very little said or done about ‘social justice’ or social/political issues. I think that is true most of the time.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
@agrippa:
I’m interest in your latter remarks. Where does altruism fit in? Feeding the poor, tending to the defenseless, the ill, the disadvantaged … not in terms of justice, but just in terms of making sure they are okay. When I hear language like “social issues” I think of things like social engineering, causes and effects, blah blah blah. I don’t think in terms of people who just need a meal and a place to sleep for any of a thousand reasons.
Again, I yearn for the wisdom of Ed.
matoko_chan
meh.
america originated as a wholly anglosaxon protestant nation.
white xianity is only good for white xians as a general rule.
the nasty bits about the protestant tradition, is that it IS political, it is rabidly anti-intellectual, and its ferociously evangelical.
martin luther was no enlightenment scholar– he was all about separating the other guys church from the state, and not having having snotty scholars, elites and jesuits tell the rubes what the bible actually means.
this is a pretty good summary
the reason our political system is fucked today is because the religious right took power.
America is simply not a secular nation. it is a judeoxian nation. sure the Founders and Framers were (some of them) enlightenment scholars. but the electorate is majority religious.
consent of the governed.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
@matoko_chan:
Your latter paragraph is right on the money. The religious right didn’t just casually take power … it set out to do so, mapped out a long term strategy, organized, developed leadership, studied and practiced advocacy and political science, sought out sources of funding, developed candidates, did the grass roots door to door person to person work, accepted early failure as being part of the learning process … it’s a textbook study in grassroots politics. They set out to capture the government as a measurable objective in achieving larger goals. Not power for its own purpose, but for a (supposedly) higher purpose. They have been at this for somewhere around 30 years more or less and they have run circles around us in most cases.
matoko_chan
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective: Americas churches were the engines of civil welfare distribution until blacks and women got the vote.
that is why Hayek was WRONG. The growth of the welfare state doesnt necessarily to leads soshulism– it leads to secularism.
the federal government was forced to intervene to deliver citizen rights and citizen welfare in the slaveholding south. Federal welfare was vastly cheaper than church welfare; church attendance, conforming to behavioral standards, and social capital. And even blacks and scarlet women could get it.
Competion for the social compact is killing the churches….and its happening faster in GB. Because the british social compact is farther away from the White Patriarchy Social cohesion model than the US is…their social democracy social cohesion model is more evolved.
we will get there eventually.
a country cannot survive with a social compact between the governed and the governing.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
My apologies, Doug, I have probably knocked you on the head with talk of Edisms. What I meant by that is, trolls. It’s fine when Ed trolls the blog, that’s his job. But when others do it. it is unseemly, often. It is difficult to keep up with the whipsaw effect of worrying about dog fecal output one minute, and then religious/political intersections and theories the next. What are we, mental supermen? Sorry for the gender laziness there. You know what I mean, though, right?
Isn’t there a way to combine the dog shit topics with the religous ones? Something tells me that there is a connection there just beneath the freshly dug surface.
Okay, that’s just me. You know how difficult I am.
matoko_chan
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective: Americas churches were the engines of civil welfare distribution until blacks and women got the vote.
that is why Hayek was WRONG. The growth of the welfare state doesnt necessarily lead to soshulism– it leads to secularism.
the federal government was forced to intervene to deliver citizen rights and citizen welfare in the slaveholding south. Federal welfare was vastly cheaper than church welfare; church attendance, conforming to behavioral standards, and social capital. And even blacks and scarlet women could get it.
Competion for the social compact is killing the churches….and its happening faster in GB. Because the british social compact is farther away from the White Patriarchy Social cohesion model than the US is…their social democracy social cohesion model is more evolved.
we will get there eventually.
a country cannot survive with a social compact between the governed and the governing.
matoko_chan
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective: very true. but it is the consent of the governed, its how it has to work.
we need to admit that America is simply NOT a secular nation.
it is a judeoxian nation with a unelected judicial branch of elites that is supposed to keep the judeoxian majority from kicking the shit out of the rest of us.
that is why id like to see Obama increase the number of supremes to 11 and appoint two new liberal justices….otherwise its going to be a looooong time to work the Roberts poison out of the system.
the Founders were genius in human nature, and they built the best they could at the time……but nothing can be perfect.
the religious right is a dying organism, and the death throes are not pretty. it will try to hold power as long as it can.
agrippa
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective:
I am thinking of the church, as an organization, working toward improving such conditions. The Church does not, usually, do that sort of thing.
Helping others is largely seen as an individual or congregational/parish activity; as a part of a person’s duty to God.
There are congregations, commonly called the religious right, who mobilize on certain issues, such as abortion, prayer in schools, etc. But, those congregations are largely silent on other issues.
As long as they are silent on those issues, segments of the political class will make use of the religious right’s concerns.
For them, too, it goes back to personal salvation and relationship with God.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
@agrippa:
I agree with you, I think. I just find it fascinating that these organizations focus on the stuff that is at the center of their power to manipulate people, while they could be using all that energy to do something really constructive.
For instance, when I think of all those people sitting in church on Sunday mornings, it makes me ponder in Edlike fashion: What the fuck are they doing? Watching a show, being entertained, getting some feelgood music and mindfucking, without really seeming to use that energy for a good purpose.
I suppose they think it is a good purpose. But you know, the Salvation Army guy only shows up at the Safeway for a couple weeks every December. What is he doing the rest of the year? There are a lot of people in need out there. I don’t give a flying rat’s ass about the desire of the “religious” to advance some moralistic agenda, when the world needs a lot of basic help.
Alwhite
@Barb (formerly gex):
DBrown
To call Amerika a christian nation is to insult Christ – we are not a religious country but selfless and soulless anti-Christ liars. If Revelation wasn’t a total piece of bat shit stupid insanity, worth only the used toliet paper that section of the bible really is, the number of the beast would be spelled U.S. of A.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
@matoko_chan:
Roosevelt tried to create a court expansion plan (it was called Court Packing) and got his nuts handed to him.
Only congress can change the size of the court. And congress is not going to do that unless the righties figure out a way to do it in such a way as to advance their interests.
By nuts I mean his hat. Sorry.
someofparts
Those of us who live in the South have always thought that churches here have been used to keep unions out of the region.
John Bird
My guess is that work is done disproportionately by churches such as the Roman Catholic Church and the Latter Day Saints: highly organized bodies with strong theological beliefs in organized charity work.
Smurfhole
@DougJ:
I’m a practicing Catholic who goes to Mass weekly in an uber-conservative parish where the priest makes railing against gay marriage a weekly feature of his sermon. I’ve never voted for a Republican in my life, and I’m never planning on doing so.
Meanwhile, the local parish also provides emergency rent/utilities/food funding for the burgeoning ranks of the poor, as the state slashes its budget and its social services.
I can take the good with the bad. And while I very much agree that government provides a social safety net superior to that provided by private or religious charity, I’ll support private charity over nothing at all.
As for history, you’re putting the cart before the horse. The Church was, historically, one of the more left-leaning organizations in American civic life. Remember all those ethnic white urban Catholic voters? Where do you think they went to church? It didn’t change until fairly recently. Within this generation, I’d say. And even then, it varies widely. Still plenty of liberal parishes out there (that I don’t attend services at due to logistical inconvenience more than anything else.)
@Comrade Luke:
We just need to get them to understand that Republicans will never do anything about abortion. Republicans will pay lip service to outlawing abortion, but they will never do it. That would kill the goose that lays the golden egg of votes. It’s always necessary to have some strawman bogeyman that prevents them from outlawing abortion. If every elected official in America were a Republican, abortion would still be legal and Angelina Jolie would be the one they’d blame for keeping it legal. That’s what people need to understand in order to get them to disregard it as a political issue. It’s not a political issue, it’s a fixture of American life at this point. It’s not going anywhere no matter which way Catholics vote. And it shouldn’t, in my opinion; it should be up to the conscience of the individual what to do with their bodily autonomy.
John Bird
@someofparts:
Not necessarily true: the Catholic Church has been actively worker-friendly in the South, albeit as Red-scared as the Vatican in past decades.
For a summary of one such recent case, the Mt. Olive boycott, check the last paragraph here.
Of note is that the Council of Churches supported the boycott, while all member denominations did not. However, the Catholic Church was a very strong supporter.
John Bird
@mclaren:
Are these studies controlled for education level? Because atheists are more likely to be highly educated, and the highly educated are wealthier, less likely to be incarcerated, etc.
John Bird
And finally, to DougJ:
I don’t think that Christian charity has done much to distort the American welfare state. It’s more that Christian charity wasn’t displaced because we never achieved a proper, civilized welfare state, for complex reasons that I think only incidentally involve religion (the large amount of overzealous anti-Communism in our country, for instance, probably had an impact).
agrippa
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective:
One does wonder, at times, why the people are there in church. Some of it is ‘go along to get along’; some of it is social; some of it is for the kids. There are not very many who are devout.
The church does teach acceptance of authority; it does not teach question authority. So, the church is a conservative organization.
It is not about the here and the now; it is about personal salvation. I, personally, do not expect a church to do very much.
gnomedad
@matoko_chan:
I’m down with this except for this last sentence. Nowadays it seems like an act of rebellion to take this proposition more seriously than “We’re Number One!” jingoism.
John Bird
@agrippa:
Which church are you talking about?
apocalipstick
I volunteer for a Christian (in that it works through churches) child development organization and one of the things the president always stresses is that we must work deeper and with more commitment, because if all we’re about is basic poverty relief, then governments can do that much more effectively. Seems to make Doug’s point, to me.
toujoursdan
I’d say in most of the world, and through most of industrial history, at least, churches were left of centre, not conservative. Modern baby boomer evangelical Christianity is the exception to the rule, not the rule itself.
As far as this Episcopalian is concerned, of course orthodox Christianity leads to political left! We worship, as God, a man who was born into a stable and identified with the poor. Who came to preach good news to the outcast, liberty to the captives, sight for the blind, and freedom for the oppressed; where the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear. Who said that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
He said the poor will inherit the Kingdom of God, and that the rich will be sent empty away. That the Kingdom belongs to those who feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the prisoners. That the last would be first, and the first last. He tells us to love and serve our enemies; giving them food and water if they need it and to turn the other cheek when hit. We are to forgive those who do harm to us not once, but seventy times seven times.
Churches (and synagogues, and mosques and temples) can, and often do strive, to meet these moral commands, but I believe that the only way a compassionate society can do so effectively is through government initiatives as government is the only institution that is ubiquitous enough to meet the need. I know my denomination and other mainline Protestant churches support an expansion of the social safety net and investments in education. Many of the European welfare states were established with the support of the state churches – Anglican in the UK and in Scandinavia, Lutheran. We don’t see it as an either-or thing, but a both-and.
Smurfhole
@DBrown:
Sorry, I didn’t realize that Christ only claimed people who were perfect as followers. Where was that stated in the New Testament?
Smurfhole
@John Bird:
Good point. I was also thinking that prison would be a difficult place to survive on a spiritual diet of atheism. The stereotypical stories of people “finding God” behind bars, etc.
ed
Just so we’re clear, we’re all in agreement that a potential downside from religious engagement might be–theoretically–widespread child rape and systematic covering up of said rape by the church in question, right? Right? ‘Cause I think that child rape is bad and should be punished.
rickstersherpa
I think this is an example where “correlation” is not “causation.” First, when western Europeans established their social democratic states and institutions in the 1950s and 60s, those societies were far more religious then they are now. Even the British Labor Party was had a very influential section of evangelical and dissenting (a British term meaning that they were not in communion with the Church of England) Christians in its ranks. These societies were also far more homogenous (90% of the people considering themselves “British” or “French” or “German” or “Dutch” or “Dane” etc.). And the war had a great leveling effect so that even the wealthy and aristocrats had felt the need to seek out Government assistance during the WWII and the post-war recovery. Also, it is one of the ironies of history that the welfare state in Japan was established by that great hero to many conservatives, General McArthur, while the “conservative,” Christian Democratic parties in Germany and Italy created the Welfare state in those countries, while the “Conservative” Gaulleists created the welfare state in France.
40 years ago, most people would have viewed the Church, then still predominately Mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic, as pro-liberal institutions. These churches had contributed a lot of volunteers and leaders to both the Civil Rights movement and the anti- Vietnam war movement. Abortion had not become the key symoblic issue between right and left (in fact, Reagan proposed and signed a “liberal” abortion bill in California in 1967), a bill that was not possible while the liberal, but Roman Catholic, Pat Brown was governor.
So what has changed, the last 40 years? The mainline Protestant churches have declined, while the white Evangelical and fundamentalist churches have waxed. And those churches come from an unfortunately dark place when it comes to U.S. racial history, are historically anti-intellectual and inoculate their adherents with anti-intellectualism (see Palin, Sarah), and have been the home for many charlatans and mountebanks for 200 years (see Huckleberry Finn and the “Dauphin” and “Duke of Bildgewater”). Also, unfortuneately, churches remain one of the most segregated parts of yor society. Finally, the Catholic Church has also swung much farther to the right, in part because of increasing primacy of the abortion issue and in part because of the influence some very wealthy, right wing donors, have had on the Vatican when it comes to selecting U.S. bishops.
A decline in other institutions that would unify and and educate the working class and unite them across racial divides such as unions has been another factor. I also blame the influence of Duttonism on the Democratic party. What I call Duttonism, named after Fred Dutton who was George McGovern’s chief strategist in 1972, was a belief that a new Democratic coalition of “Minorities, progressive elites, and “young people” would be the vehicle for electoral triumph and that the white working class, both north and south, had been revealed during the civil rights movement and anti-war movement to be too racist and nationalistic to be reasoned with or concerned about. Duttonism would also evolve, as Fred Dutton did, to become accommodationist with (as well as frequent lobbyist for) the economic interests of the very wealthy. Hence for the last 40 years liberals have not really even tried to make the argument on the ground anymore for how an activist Government protects most people from the wolves who prowl in a captialistic econonmy and the risks and shocks of the market which only the very, very, wealthy and/or lucky can insure themselves against. Many leading Democrats, including the President, have pretty much bought into the zombie economic ideas of neo-classical, rational expectations, economics (see Paul Krugman’s column of today).
A clue to our present predicament is to ask your friends and family members about their objections to what they call “Obamacare” or a guarantee health plan in general. After repeating a few memes about “freedom” and “standing lin line,” they will then usually mention the term “reparations” and paying for other “people’s care” who “don’t work” or who are here “illegally” and how they resent their taxes going to pay for those “people.” So race, and the group think they have fallen into about race, is the likely source of are problem.
DougJ
@Mnemosyne:
I agree. But they were there to be taken over.
toujoursdan
I’d go farther than this. 75% of America’s universities, from the Ivy Leagues to regional liberal arts colleges were established by religious institutions. 80% of its hospitals were also established by religious institutions. The words “Presbyterian”, “Jewish” or “St. ___” or “Sinai” on the side of the local hospital isn’t just a name. It represents the financial outlay and efforts local religious people who chose to do good. The U.S. would be a far far poorer country without these contributions.
That still goes on in the 3rd World.
matoko_chan
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective: it probably cant happen until after the demographic timer goes off in 2020.
…..but the court will still have Roberts poisoning I expect…only 10 years off. perhaps Kennedy can outlast Obama’s second term though….he will be 80 in 2016. then it would make sense for a democratic president elected with a super majority to change the number of justices, if Kennedy gets replaced by a conservative.
DougJ
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective:
I don’t think the answers are easy to find via data on this one.
matoko_chan
@toujoursdan: quit lying.
all that fake altruism is in service of two things– within tribe membership benefits and proselytization and conversion.
there is no out-group altruism in evangelical xianity.
heres a test for you– do you believe christians have a RIGHT and a BIBLICAL MANDATE to proselytize?
75% of America’s universities, from the Ivy Leagues to regional liberal arts colleges were established by religious institutions. 80% of its hospitals were also established by religious institutions.
ALL OF Americas unis were ORIGINALLY religious because America was a WHOLLY anglo-saxon protestant nation at incept.
you dumb cudlip, its political xianity that is the problem.
ppcli
@silentbeep:
I’ve heard this sometimes, but I don’t see it. That is, I don’t see the cultural uniformity in most places with larger safety nets. Sweden (if we ignore the Lapps in the north) and Denmark (once the Germans in south Jylland were assimilated, and ignoring Greenland and the Faroe Islands) sure, but Canada is an immigrant country with two official languages. Even without taking residents from former colonies into account, France has always been a country with wide regional variation in language and culture. The cultural differences between the different language groups in Switzerland and Belgium are surprisingly deep…
@Yutsano:
TD was Sutherland’s father-in-law (father of Shirley Douglas), not father.
toujoursdan
@matoko_chan:
Lying? You may disagree with me, but I take offence at being called a liar. You don’t anything about me.
How often has Harvard, Columbia, Georgetown, Northwestern, Occidental College or Beth Sinai Hospital tried to convert you or anyone else?
DougJ
@burnspbesq:
Thanks.
Smurfhole
@DougJ:
The same could be said for government bureaucracy. W. Bush made a pretty strong effort to take over as much of that as he possibly could by stacking it full of lunatic wingnuts as far down into the hiring ranks as he could possibly extend his political tendrils.
Any institution can be taken over by ideology. Secular institutions are far from immune.
toujoursdan
@matoko_chan:
Aren’t you abusive.
I believe anyone has a right to convince others of their worldview. That includes both religious and non-religious people. If Christians believe it is their duty to convert, fine. If anti-theists believe it’s their duty to convert, fine. If a religion or philosophical belief can’t take disagreement or debate, then it isn’t worth holding.
That’s part of living in a free society. Deal with it.
matoko_chan
@toujoursdan: and how many hospitals are named after catholic saints?
gawd i hate religious retardism sooooooooooo much.
its those other ppls religions that are flawed, not mine.
Jane2
@Mark: The weakness of the NDP Opposition (and particularly its leader) combined with a not horribly right of center Saskatchewan party are informing elections these days.
lllphd
@Barb (formerly gex):
barb, i agree with both points. church charities can – and do – provide cover for those who wish to um, discriminate amongst the beneficiaries of their giving, whereas the government can be more egalitarian. the church also provides cover for the intention to convert, forcing the beneficiaries into obligation and diminishing their free will, not to mention disrespecting who these people actually are.
what i find so repugnant is the lack of understanding that there is no need for charity where there is justice, and the government is our way of seeing that there is justice for all, no matter your religion or financial status.
were we functioning in smaller situations, more intimate communities where the fact that we’re all in this together were more obvious, we would collectively establish the same kinds of rules about sharing and tending to the least among us.
but instead, because we’re all so disparate and distanced, the greedy among us can exploit all the fear with is so easy to apply to the unknown. ironic that those greedy forces can so thoroughly infiltrate the messages of the faithful who should be turning on them as the most egregious sinners.
toujoursdan
I don’t know where to tackle the stupidity:
Where did the concept of the university come from in the first place? It came from monastic orders and convents. They were the only educated and literate people in the Middle Ages and were the guardians of Roman and Greek philosophy and technology after the Empire fell. If it wasn’t for religious orders, the Enlightenment wouldn’t have happened at all and we’d probably still be in the Dark Ages.
So naturally universities came out of religious institutions. They did in Europe and here. Religious institutions still established hospitals and universities even after the land grant universities were created. It happens even to this day.
toujoursdan
@matoko_chan:
This doesn’t even make sense. Where did I say that the followers of other religions are flawed? In most of the world (particularly in East Asia) and through most of history people thought nothing of belonging to more than one religion. Take your strawmen elsewhere.
Smurfhole
@toujoursdan:
Hospitals, too. Hospitals were also invented by monastic orders.
matoko_chan
@toujoursdan: its intellectual molestation, its rude, and worse it is saying mine is better than yours FOR NO OTHER REASON THAN THE BIBLE SAYS ITS SO. it’s why republican political christianity can just say “because we say its BETTER” rather than having to offer proof something works.
its why judeoxians believe they have a right to impose religious doctrine like homophobia and fetal personhood ON THE REST OF US.
and yah, its part of a free society, but dont be surprised when people get offended.
Saying BECAUSE THE BIBLE SAYS SO is not debate.
its retardism.
and that is why people percieve xians as stupid.
well………that and Salam-Douthat stratification, and the correlation of high religiosity with low cognitive ability.
:)
toujoursdan
@matoko_chan:
Again with the strawmen. Everyone uses a source to frame their worldview. Some use a book, some use a philosophical construct like rationalism. Of course everyone believes their source is the best. In a free society people should be able to do that and debate openly.
Not all Christians are fundamentalists.
I’m gay, pro-choice and Christian. My priest is gay and in a long term relationship and also pro-choice. My straight married bishop told gay clergy in my diocese to get married/civil unioned so people would take their relationships as seriously as the straight married clergy. My national church has openly advocated for gay marriage and called on the government not to pass laws that restrict abortion.
And my denomination isn’t alone in doing so.
matoko_chan
@toujoursdan:
right there.
“the bible says so” is not debate.
it is retardism.
wallah, why are we fightin’? all hospitals, unis, had religious origins when all there was was religion. Jesuits WERE the scientists of their day. the same thing in america….the old unis are anglosaxon protestant because that is all there were.
MODERN unis like MIT and state unis are new arrivals.
i resent your trying to squeeze some rationalization for anglosaxon political protestantism.
it is what has seriously fucked up our country over the last 50 years.
Smurfhole
@matoko_chan:
It’s a free country. Anyone can say whatever they want to say. You don’t have the right to be free from rudeness. If you find it rude that people proselytize, you just have to suck it up. If we did away with the First Amendment and went on majoritarian notions of what constituted “acceptable” speech or not, I think this country would be some sort of Christianist Taliban-style state in about two weeks flat.
@toujoursdan:
The person you’re arguing with seems to be more or less saying this, though:
“Do you have religious views? If so, you’re fucking stupid. This IQ test tells us so. QED.”
You can’t argue with that. That pretty much ends the debate, right there.
toujoursdan
@matoko_chan:
Christians don’t just say “The Bible says so”. The rest of your post still seems built on a bunch of strawmen. I don’t know what “Anglo Saxon political Protestantism” even is, given that many universities and hospitals were established by Catholics and Jews. Anglo Saxon Protestants don’t agree on much anyway. Pick an issue and you’ll find Anglo Saxon Protestants on both sides of it.
matoko_chan
@toujoursdan: oh, yah.
but a small pocket of enlightened xians doesnt make the 70% of the country that was against miscegnation, civil rights or the terror mosque.
you ducked my question, i dont care about your statistically insignificant denomination.
anecdotal data is meaningless in the court of mathematics.
do you believe OTHER xians have the biblically mandated RIGHT to proselytize?
toujoursdan
@Smurfhole:
Good point. And we’re supposed to be intolerant, closed minded people. Huh.
Phoebe
DougJ, since we’re responsibly speculating, I’d add that not only can govt. do lots of stuff better than churches [some of which could just be: not do the stupid things it’s doing already, such as laws which keep people in prison long enough to hobble them and their families, thoroughly, etc.] but much of it is the kind of stuff that would help prevent poverty/crime rather than react to it, such as this school lunch thing. School lunches apparently prevent teen pregnancy, some study somewhere said. I believe it.
That said, I share Brachiator’s distrust of all institutions [See: All 5 seasons of The Wire], and believe that racism has much more to do with the level of crime and poverty in this country than any other factor. And the fact that slavery wasn’t that long ago, as Louis CK so astutely pointed out on Jay Leno.
But all of that just means we have a harder row to hoe. We’re still doing a crap job hoeing it.
toujoursdan
@matoko_chan:
Of course I do. I believe ANYONE has the RIGHT to proselytize. Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, agnostic, atheist, anti-theist, conservative, liberal, capitalist, soçialist, communist, whatever. That’s part of living in a free society.
EVERYONE, even people I disagree with. Yes. Emphatically. Is it clear now, or do I have to repeat it again for a third time?
THE
A recent study on this is Gregory S Paul’s paper
The Chronic Dependence of Popular Religiosity upon Dysfunctional Psychosociological Conditions (pdf file) 3.3MB
Journal of Evolutionary Psychology
matoko_chan
@Smurfhole: this is true, i totally agree. But what i said is dont be surprised if proselitizing engenders loathing, and if people hate on xians and think they are stupid and rude and unenlightened for doing it.
you are confusing “religious views” with religiosity. religiosity is a composite variable including the degree of salience (strength of belief) people hold their religious views in, and the amount of social capitial they invest– like church attendence, dogmatic belief, rule following, tithing, etc. there is a significant negative correlation between high religiosity and low IQ.
agrippa
@John Bird:
I was referring to most main line protestant churches.
matoko_chan
@toujoursdan: fine. but what im saying is that PEOPLE WILL HATE ON THEM FOR PROSELYTIZING.
and it contributes to the general outgroup loathing of xians, and the widely held memecomplex that xians are stupid, unenlightened, and rude.
i am trying to get you to admit that xians dont think proselytizing is stupid or rude, because they believe they believe they are mandated to do it by god.
Aimai
@toujoursdan:
Jewish and hospitals specifically arose out of the refusal of Christian hospitals and med schools to educate or employ Jews as doctors and nurses. Land grant universities were instituted to break a monopoly by religious colleges on education.
Aimai
toujoursdan
There is also a correlation between IQ and race. The darker your skin, the lower your IQ, evidently. It was popularized in a book called “The Bell Curve”.
There is one so-called study that makes this claim between religion and IQ. Given that we can’t even determine whether IQ is an accurate measure of intelligence, correlations like this are quite questionable.
matoko_chan
@toujoursdan:
and statistically you are.
70% of America was against the “terror” mosque.
70% of America is nominally xian.
toujoursdan
@matoko_chan:
Christians don’t all believe any one thing, even about proselytizing. St. Francis of Assisi said “Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words if necessary”. In other words, your proselytize by setting a good example. Most Christians quietly follow that directive.
Your blanket statements don’t make any sense to me.
@Aimai:
None of this changes my point.
burnspbesq
@Smurfhole:
Catholic doctrine on social justice issues is still pretty far left. In some countries, the Church is an actor for positive social change. In the US, not so much.
toujoursdan
@matoko_chan:
How exactly have I done that here? You’ve shown that you are more closed minded and intolerant than I am.
toujoursdan
@matoko_chan:
That’s like saying that because Blacks commit a disproportionate number of crimes, all Blacks are violent.
It’s a silly assertion.
BTW, I was actually at Ground Zero with a bunch of other clergy and rabbis demonstrating support for that “terror mosque”.
matoko_chan
@toujoursdan: that has NOTHING to do with what we are discussing.
quit throwing radar chaff.
you fucking bioluddites bring up a damn book written 15 years ago by a FUCKING POLITICAL “SCIENTIST” every time someone says IQ.
IQ is a standardized psychometric measure of cognitive ability established and recognized by the scientific community.
it is only disputed by bioluddites.
burnspbesq
@matoko_chan:
Your ignorance is showing again.
This was never a monolithically Protestant country. Have you forgotten who founded the Maryland colony?
Facts are your friend. Even when they don’t support your twisted narrative.
matoko_chan
@toujoursdan: quit lying.
there is a body of work, including several BOOKS on the negative correlation between Iq and religiosity.
toujoursdan
@matoko_chan:
Of course it does. It has everything to do with it. No one challenged the statistics in that book. People said that it was due to cultural and economic bias and other factors.
It proves that you can “correlate” IQ with anything.
No. How IQ is measured and how it correlates to intelligence is an ongoing source of discussion within the scientific community.
toujoursdan
@matoko_chan:
List those books please.
matoko_chan
@burnspbesq: will you fucking read this?
America was founded as a protestant nation, and anglosaxon protestants were the electoral majority, and protestant thought still wholly informs one of two major political parties in the US, and white xians are now 72% of the electorate down from 90% 20 years ago and 100% when the nation was founded.
toujoursdan
@matoko_chan: You do understand that Mark Noll is a professor at Wheaton College, which is a fundamentalist college in Chicago. He’s hardly an unbiased source.
Smurfhole
@matoko_chan:
Historically speaking, it engenders tremendous numbers of conversions. If proselytizing didn’t convert people, the religious wouldn’t do it. The non-religious are beginning to do it as well, with the rise of militant atheism. So it goes.
matoko_chan
@toujoursdan: why? what you are exhibiting is backfire effect. its pointless to list Dr. Lynns and Dr. Nyborgs books, which you have obviously not read, because you just now told me that you havent read any source material and had only seen “one study.” which you dont link.
every source i cite will just increase the salience of your mistaken viewpoints.
useless.
burnspbesq
@matoko_chan:
No.
Some Christians believe they have a biblically mandated duty to reach out to others and talk about the benefits of faith.
In this country and many others, they have a legally protected right to do so. You have heard of the First Amendment? You know, the very same First Amendment that you erroneously believe protects Julian Assange from prosecution? There’s other stuff in it besides freedom of the press. Is your support for First Amendment values situational?
Smurfhole
@burnspbesq:
I know. It makes me sad. Thank JP II and Cardinal Ratzinger for squashing Liberation Theology before it had a chance to spread north.
Chicago dyke
i think the noteworthy point was made above about how the far right rose to power in this country. it was planned, it was a long term effort, and it began and remains rooted in protestant evangelical churches. but i can also argue that those evangelical churches themselves were changed, even as the republican party has changed, from what they were like 50 years ago.
as in any successful movement to change a society, it takes only the actions of a dedicated few. the far right movement in america definitely was begun by a dedicated few, who happened to have a few very wealthy people behind it, to help prop it up when the actions of the regular people in it faltered. i have no doubt the ideological church message helped it in its early stages, “persevere in the face of persecution” is a very christian message that also happens to make for better grassroots activism.
but i also think some who are honest far right social conservatives perceive: today, the far right leadership, despite a lot of lip service to social issues, is mostly interested and active towards a pro-corporate, pro-uberwealthy “movement” today. the teabaggers have discovered this, and will yet more as their heroes fail to do much that helps them as little people and individuals.
as an atheist i’m never happy to see church and state working together, and i always found “faith based” funding blatantly unconstitutional. the purpose of the state should be first and foremost to provide a social structure in which everyone’s basic needs are met. it should do so without regard to individual belief or lack thereof, and many religious charity organization can and do discriminate as they provide charity. again, the notion that “private charities are more efficient than government” is little more than a different way of saying “the rich don’t want to pay taxes ever and the smaller government is, the better it is for them.”
i would, however, be very happy if american religiosity had turned the corner, and was moving away from “prosperity gospel” neo-calvinism and back to “help the poor, make peace and care for the earth as jesus’ stand- ins on this world” which i have read is happening among younger evangelicals who are disgusted by the older generation’s blatant and obvious hypocrisy.
Smurfhole
@matoko_chan:
And there’s no demonstrable correlation there, at all, even if your two 70% statistics were both factually correct (I doubt either one is, frankly.) For all those statistics tell us, maybe 40% of Christians and 100% of non-Christians opposed that mosque. (Including all Muslims, amusingly enough.)
By way of anecdote, I can prove there’s less than a 100% correlation. I’m Christian, and I support the location of a mosque in downtown Manhattan.
toujoursdan
@matoko_chan:
So you won’t list them so I CAN read them and instead of producing evidence which supports your assertion, you demand that I produce evidence that dismisses the assertion you made in the first place. You got to love wingnut debate.
Both of the Bell Curve, and assertions of a correlation between religion and intelligence are built on a set of questionable assumptions about IQ itself, viz.:
1. Human Cognitive ability is a single general entity, depicted as a single number, an IQ score.
2. IQ is essentially immutable, fixed over the course of a life span.
3. IQ tests measure how “smart” or “intelligent” people are, and are capable of rank ordering people in a linear order.
4. IQ tests can measure this accurately.
5. IQ tests are not biased with regard to race, ethnic group, geographical, cultural or socioeconomic status.
There is still quite a bit of debate within the scientific community whether these assumptions are accurate.
aimai
@toujoursdan:
No–and I’m not trying to get into the usual hot matoko chan on burnpesque and toujoursdan bump and grind–but the point to which I am responding is one that you make, very tediously, in every thread on religion: religion good because it founded hospitals and schools.
There was a time when pretty much every european person was religious–or had to pretend they were. During that period the church founded both hospitals and schools for interested and disinterested reasons. In the US many, but not all, hospitals and schools had a some kind of religious tie at their founding primarily because other forms of funding, specifically government forms, were lacking. Those schools and hospitals were often *extremely discriminatory* and their exclusivity forced the founding of still others (sometimes with a religious tinge) to combat that exclusivity.
Religion = good because of hospitals and schools is a tired and pointless excercise in feel good think. Mysteriously other places have schools and hospitals–France’s are explicitly anti clerical *because the French Church refused to support the post revolutionary government and its egalitarian aims–. If you want to brag on your particular sect of religion be my guest. But neither hospitals nor schools are the best example of why Christianity is so cool.
aimai
burnspbesq
@matoko_chan:
Again, that is demonstrably false. There were Catholics in what became the United States as early as 1634. The Maryland colonly was formed specifically and explicitly as a refuge for Catholics.
http://americanhistory.about.com/cs/colonialamerica/p/marylandcolony.htm
Whatever thin shreds of credibility you ever had are gone.
matoko_chan
@Smurfhole: yes! but i already talked about that here.
that is why the Bush Doctrine failed epically in A-stan and Iraq.
Islam is EGT (Maynard-smith, evolution and the theory of games) immune to xian proselytization in situ.
that is why xians are upset about the terror mosque. because muslims can proselytize (ie build churches) in America, while xians cannot proselytize in islamic countries.
for example in KSA, holding an xian worship service can be judged an act of proselytizing, which is a jail offense.
300 philipino “guest workers” were recently jailed for holding a catholic service in a hotel.
every citizen of KSA must be muslim.
in situ, Islam has a lot of defenses against proselytization.
A-stan is 99% muslim, Iraq is 97% muslim.
COIN and the BD are simply impossible to implement.
recipes for expensive bloody failsauce.
toujoursdan
@aimai:
It’s not just a feel good thing. It’s historically accurate. Were some hospitals and schools founded because of discrimination from other religious institutions and because of monopolies? Sure. People were far more tribal back then. Even white Protestants didn’t associate with other white Protestants because they were the wrong white Protestants: Scottish, or German, or Scandinavian rather then English. That wasn’t necessarily caused by religion, it was because people were more threatened by differences, probably because they were fairly new immigrants from monolithic European cultures.
I live near Carroll Gardens Brooklyn where the Catholic northern Italians won’t associate with the Catholic Calabrians from Southern Italy. They have different institutions and won’t associate with each other at all.
But it doesn’t change the fact that many religious people sacrificed large amounts of time and money to create these institutions because they believed their religion commanded it. It’s not all black or white. All people do things out of mixed motives. That’s the human condition.
matoko_chan
@Smurfhole: how many times do i have to tell you?
anecdote is meaningless.
@aimai: i totally agree with this. @burnspbesq: catholicism is statistically insignificant in shaping the collective american psyche.
matoko_chan
@toujoursdan: are you relly such a demented cudlip that you dont understand how to use search engines?
why do you continue to cite a 15 year old book by a political scientist as EVIDENCE OF FUCKING ANYTHING?
im not going to carry you.
do your own fucking research you stupid christian cow.
toujoursdan
@matoko_chan:
YOU made the assertion. YOU provide the evidence. That’s how it works.
And stop with the name calling. I disagree with you. I’m not your enemy. Neither one of us deserve abuse. I have been respectful to you. I expect respect in return.
Smurfhole
@Chicago dyke:
It didn’t begin anywhere near churches. It began where it had always been, in the pocketbooks of the plutocrats. The rise of the modern right had its origins in the bosom of oligarchy, the same place the pre-modern right was found. Churches were just another convenient institution to warp for the political agenda of the upper classes.
Many of the early agents of the modern right were atheists, in fact. There was a strong Randian streak at work, and a number of ex-Communists who never converted to theism after they rejected Marxism.
There’s plenty to blame the religious right for, but they really don’t deserve the onus for instigating the modern wingnut movement. That started well before most of them joined the club.
matoko_chan
@toujoursdan: amai is right.
you are trying to rationalize and craft apologia.
you are boring and tedious.
go read something outside of your xian cudlip information cocoon.
if you can read, that is.
toujoursdan
@matoko_chan:
So all you’re left with are insults.
Ok.
Smurfhole
@matoko_chan:
That’s the first time you’ve ever said that to me.
My point wasn’t that my anecdote was meaningful, it was that that statistic is meaningless- even if it’s accurate, which I very much doubt.
matoko_chan
@Smurfhole: no.
the rise of the religious right….from the wiki.
yale case studies has some great stuff, but i can’t excerpt it, you have to read it there.
Smurfhole
@aimai:
Religion invented the very concept of “hospitals.” Just because the early hospitals weren’t as wonderful as the modern variants are doesn’t detract from the significance or boast-worthiness of that achievement.
Smurfhole
@matoko_chan:
What does this have to do with the concept of proselytizing working most of the time? How do you think the original Christian church spread?
Smurfhole
@matoko_chan:
Yes, I’ve read “Nixonland” and “Before the Storm.” The footsoldiery came from churchgoing people (which, since pretty much everyone was churchgoing back then, isn’t saying much). The impetus- the drive to create the modern conservative movement- came from the plutocrats and a fringe, largely atheistic, intelligentsia.
Nothing in that wikipedia article contradicts me. Most of it also seems to be addressing developments from the 1970s onwards, which is about 2 decades after what I’m referring to.
matoko_chan
America is NOT a secular nation.
tourjoursdan repititiously tries to craft apologia for his xian faith with schools and hospitals, smurfhole tries to redirect onto the bankstahs, but the truth is America was founded as a protestant nation, and some of the more nasty traditions of protestant thought are currently informing one major political party: anti-intellectualism, anti-science, religious doctrine coded as law (like DOMA), mob (majority) rule of consensus religions.
the things dan raves about like founding schools and hospitals are things all religions do, and dont relly excuse the current instantiation of political xianity that has nearly destroyed this country.
does anyone dispute this?
not all xians are republicans, but nearly all republicans are nominally xians.
arguingwithsignposts
That wiki article is all over the map. AEI and Heritage as christianist organizations? Maybe in service to the almighty god of mammon.
Smurfhole
@matoko_chan:
The religious right would agree with you. I don’t.
Maryland was an avowedly Catholic colony. And varying Protestant denominations in the 13 colonies outlawed the practice of one anothers’ beliefs within colony limits. This is why America was secular at the federal level, in addition to the fact that several of the more prominent Founders were Deists or (probably) atheists.
Well, if you’re saying it’s a Christian nation, then why complain about Christianity destroying it? Sounds like non-Christians wouldn’t have much of a stake in the matter one way or another except by accidental virtue of being stuck here, right? So, if the Protestants want to make it Christianist Taliban, I guess you’re stuck with that, right?
Well, since nearly all Americans are nominally Christians, that doesn’t count for much.
toujoursdan
@matoko_chan:
Many of the original colonies were founded by Protestant sects, Maryland being the exception. But the country was founded by deists who believed that God was not involved in the universe, which is hardly an orthodox Protestant position. Since then, people of many faiths have founded colleges and hospitals in this country. The Roman Catholics have probably more universities and hospitals than any other religious group. They aren’t Protestants.
There are very different kinds of Protestants. Episcopalians, Lutherans and United Church of Christ members have almost nothing in common with Southern Baptists and Pentecostals. To lump all Protestants together, accusing them all of being anti-science and anti-intellectual makes no sense.
And I said that all religions founded schools and hospitals. I even mentioned Jewish ones by name. Good grief.
There seems to be an expectation that religious people should be pure in motive and not be afflicted by all the evils and prejudices all human beings carry. But the Gospels themselves should disavow anyone of that notion. The disciples Jesus picked; who lived with him for 3 years, heard his ministry and witnessed his miracles, turned against him, betrayed and denied him at first opportunity. Religion ideally can create a community where people come together to do good things, but it has never shielded people from doing bad things.
Smurfhole
@toujoursdan:
They’re all stupid. Believe in any religion of any sort? You’re stupid.
There. I just made lumping them all together make sense, although I neglected to link to Dinesh D’Souza-inspired IQ tests corroborating my assertion.
matoko_chan
@Smurfhole: proselytization is a successful strategy that increases reps.
xianity evolved from judaism….one had to be born a jew to have membership, and there was some bride capture. to become a xian one only had to accept the christ. proselytizing (means preaching) was a very successful strat to increase reps. xianity then became the most successful ESS in the environment. Dawkins actually calls religions CSS, culturally stable strats, but its the same concept.
then islam evolved from xianity, and developed defenses against proselytization, shariah law forbidding proselytization, forbidding muslimah outmarriage while allowing bride capture, the doctrine of the People of the Book and coopting all the older prophets (adam to issa) and incorporating the torah/bible into the qur’an.
but yah, proselytization is a very successful stat to increase reps through conversion.
especially if the target has no defenses.
but that is why “implanting” westernstyle(judeoxian) democracy was such a fail strat for the US in Iraq and A-stan.
it simply cant be done.
when muslims are democratically empowered to vote, they dont vote for judeoxian democracy– they vote for more Islam, not less.
matoko_chan
@toujoursdan:
no. the perception is that IN AMERICA religious people should not be political. the jeffersonian separation of church and state?
the republican party is now the party of the religious right.
wholly bought and paid for.
and they only believe in martin luthers version of separation of church and state– separating the Other Guys church from the state, not theirs.
what amai said is true.
you have no argument of substance– you are just crafting reflexive apologia.
toujoursdan
@Smurfhole:
Yeah. Militant atheism certainly seems to have all the attributes of a fundamentalism, one of which, being that those who disagree with it are intellectually and morally inferior and a threat.
matoko_chan
@Smurfhole:
quit pulling stuff out of your ass and pretending that is what i said. i said RELIGIOSITY. i took the time to EXPLAIN it.
and you apparently cannot fucking read.
you are stupid.
toujoursdan
@matoko_chan:
I made a general statement about human nature and you’re responding with something that doesn’t respond to my point at all. Bizarre.
Religious people ARE going to be political because we live in a country with a government that we all have a stake in. We all vote based on our sense of right and wrong, which for some is shaped by religion. The Jeffersonian separation of church and state means that this country shouldn’t be governed based on religious doctrine. That isn’t quite the same thing.
I’m religious, I’m political (as a left-wing Democrat) and I agree with the separation of church and state. I don’t see a conflict between any of those things.
toujoursdan
@matoko_chan:
Stop the name calling. You’re not a 6 year old. You’re an adult. This is an adult conversation. It’s this kind of name calling that shuts down debate. It’s abusive. It also is what’s wrong with the country.
matoko_chan
@toujoursdan: dawkins and the New Atheists are evangelicals of atheism. they preach atheism, they believe they own the only truth, and that everyone should convert to their brand.
this is what sufis believe.
yours is better for you, mine is better for me.
and all paths are one path.
Smurfhole
@matoko_chan:
Probably true. Historically, Muslims and Christians have mostly converted one another at sword-point or over the course of centuries of domination (effectively, sword-point).
Still, proselytization works pretty well. If it didn’t, Muslim socieities wouldn’t ban it.
toujoursdan
I don’t have a problem with this at all. Ask my secular Jewish boyfriend who I encourage to go to synagogue and live out his traditions. The Senior Warden at my church has a Jewish wife. I just went to their Christmahanakwanzikasolstice Party last weekend which had people from all kinds of backgrounds.
Most mainline Protestants live in this kind of reality. We like diversity. We find it stimulating. I moved to Brooklyn to live in this kind of environment. It helps shape my faith. It’s a good thing.
If people of any faith background express interest in mine, or come to church, they will be welcomed with open arms. But as I see it, God is loving and just and wills reconciliation with everyone. I trust that God has it figured out.
matoko_chan
@toujoursdan: the religious right wants a judeoxian state. it doesnt matter what you think.
your fellow religionists have wholly coopted one of the two major parties. are you a christian?
like amai says, you are spouting useless chaff about religion doing good.
so fucking what.
your argument about schools and hospitals is like saying hitler made the trains run on time.
Smurfhole
@matoko_chan:
You smell funny. And your nose oozes boogers.
toujoursdan
@matoko_chan:
I’m not part of the religious right. So they aren’t my follow religionists. They wouldn’t recognize me as their fellow religionist either.
The religious right is collapsing anyway. Young people are dropping out of their churches at a faster rate than the mainline and their birthrates are below replacement level. Most immigrants to this country are not fundamentalist Protestants, either, so they don’t have a future. So this is a lot of hysteria about nothing.
The hospitals and universities of this country weren’t founded by the religious right. Hitler wasn’t responsible for German trains or services either, nor their efficiency. He was only in power for a decade.
Nice try though.
matoko_chan
@Smurfhole:
. but it doesnt work well in MENA, does it?
IPOF it doesnt work at all…….. that fucking retard Bush and the religious right/republican christian party of the confederacy just spent 10 years, a trillion dollars, 7000 soldier lives to snuff a quarter million muslims, destroy our economy and our souls, and make more islamic states where even more muslims hate americans.
Smurfhole
@matoko_chan:
What stake do you have in it, if you think this is a religious Christian country? What right do you have to whine about that if you’re agreeing with the religious right from the get-go? Why not piss off and go find a nice atheist country for yourself, if you think America’s a religious Christian country and has been from the start? If you stay and bitch about it, aren’t you just proselytizing?
matoko_chan
@toujoursdan: pardon i thought you were a christian.
arent you defending chistianity with your endless tedious apologia for the “good things” xianity has done here?
my bad. :)
Smurfhole
@matoko_chan:
Well, if Bush was elected President by a Protestant religious nation representing Protestant religious interests, he did what his constituents wanted done. If that doesn’t work out, that’s not your problem.
Really, why you even bother voting is beyond me completely. Or why anyone does, if your views are correct. We should only get to choose which WASP we like best. They should be the only ones even allowed to run for President, if your ideas are the correct ones.
toujoursdan
@matoko_chan:
I am a Christian and I have stated that Christianity is diverse and done both good and bad things (which is hardly apologia). Not all Christians are the same, just like not all liberals, conservatives, Muslims, Jews, Australians or Africans are the same.
I can’t be responsible for what others do. I can only be responsible for what I do. I’m not going to renounce my faith, nationality or anything else because others have done bad things. It’s not like atheists, anti-theists and agnostics have done better. I can only try to do what I can to make it better. It’s not a perfect world.
matoko_chan
@Smurfhole: im a sufi.
and im just telling it like it is.
im sick of the fucking god-and-country secular-state delusionists like you an’ toujours. great name btw….since hes always making excuses.
the religious right has controlled this country for 50 years, and it will continue to control the country until the demographic timer goes off.
matoko_chan
@toujoursdan: just stop with the boring apologia then.
no one cares.
what we care about currently is how fucked up the country is BECAUSE OF XIANITY.
instead of your stupid litany about the good things xianity has done here take some responsibility and denouce you co-religionists as asshats.
toujoursdan
@matoko_chan:
More name calling. Not a very good witness for a Sufi. Fortunately I have had encounters some very peaceful and wise Sufis on my trips to west Africa. So I won’t blame Sufism for your abuse.
toujoursdan
@matoko_chan:
If no one cares and it’s so boring, why do you keep responding?
This country is screwed up because of a corporate kleptocracy and the religious right. Most Christians aren’t part of the religious right, or the kleptocracy. So this country isn’t screwed up because of Christianity.
matoko_chan
@Smurfhole: actually we live in a jeffersonian meritocracy where we elect a populist version of a philosopher king.
that is why separation of church and state is important.
matoko_chan
@toujoursdan: yes it is. christian ideology is non-seperable from republican ideology.
it cant be done.
America is a judeoxian nation, or as razib says white protestant xianity….
but this is simply not possible.
conservatism is at this point wholly convolved with judeoxianity.
they are non-seperable.
and until people like toujours and smurf can accept the fact America is simply not a secular nation, we will all continue to suffer.
matoko_chan
@toujoursdan: wow, did you just make a blanket assumption about all sufis while ragging on me for lumping all xians together?
you are an assclown.
DBrown
Smurfhole
Like when Christ told the Rich Man to “F” off and mocked him to his followers as he said “A Camel can pass through the eye of a needle more easily than a rich man can get into Heaven.”
Of course, a typical christian would overlook that. Christ put the poor first and would never allow a wealthy person to join his flock – try reading the new testament before you comment on the Bible. Do not confuse later people’s words with what Christ himself said.
Also, Christ denouced public praying (so much for church services … .)
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@toujoursdan:
Now, see, the dogshit posts don’t devolve into this sort of thing.
I think we are on a track to a place where the dogshit posts are taken more seriously than the “Religion — How Does It Work?” posts.
Which probably is as it should be.
Can’t we all just get
alonga gun?matoko_chan
@DBrown: yeah, its that prancing and braying in the public square, aka , proselytizing and preaching and toujours sayin how great xianity is because it gave us unis and hospitals along with that fucking WEC retard Bush and missionaries with guns diplomacy…..
@ likeable we could all get along if toujours and the judeoxians would just keep it in their pants.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@matoko_chan:
Well, hold on. Some of us wouldn’t even be here if people in general could keep it in their pants.
If God loves anything, it’s procreation.
matoko_chan
@LikeableInMyOwnWay: glad you think this is funnie.
look at Levensons post .
Fetal Personhood aka ensoulment is a white conservative CHRISTIAN doctrine that the republican/xian party is trying to force on the WHOLE WORLD.
matoko_chan
oh bullshytt.
why do you link that creeper.
americans against the “terror” mosque.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@matoko_chan:
Okay, I know I will hate myself in the morning for this, but … where is that post referenced? Thread archaeology is not my cup of tea.
matoko_chan
@LikeableInMyOwnWay:
look up
you know what relly frosts my chaps?
fake-reasonable fucktards like Kain and Douchebag that insist on xian right to believe in idiotic, stupid, WRONG xian doctrine like creationism, fetal personhood, climate change denial and homophobia and racism, and then want redstate intellectually challenged kids to get IQ bussing to Harvard and MIT, inspite of a complete lack of ability to grasp such elementary concepts as meiosis, climatology, evolution, genetic diversity and citizen rights.
ino shinola
I was raised in a family of committed evangelicals in a rural, highly fundamentalist community. As an adult, I embraced Buddhism because I felt it reflected Christ’s teachings better than mainstream Christianity. I have a history of challenging online atheist comment.
I’ve realized gradually, and it pains me deeply to say it, that the dysfunction of our government social services is a direct result of our religion.
I won’t criticize anyone for believing that intellect and rationality is insufficient for dealing with the mysteries and sorrows of everyday living, even if that means you believe that a human being conquered death and will return to earth someday. But I’ve concluded, reluctantly and painfully, that there’s a direct relationship between that suspension of connection with observed reality and our current epidemic of willful ignorance, and the slide from willful ignorance into proud, willful ignorance.
The Daddy worship that too often accompanies Christian faith is a big part of it too. Wholehearted acceptance of the teachings of St. Ronald is the main reason for our insane self fulfilling prophesy of incompetent government.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@matoko_chan:
Oh, that post. Sorry. Yeah, well that whole fetal personhood thing is just a con, we all know that.
I like to point out that it’s right there in the Constitution, that a person exists as a person at birth:
The great document does not say what status is held by unborn fetuses. As far as I know. So I just laugh at those idiots who claim otherwise.
HAHAHAHAHAHA. Like that.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
Hey, the guy thinks he really is reasonable. Mistaking talking in circles for reasonableness is a common mistake.
It’s a little like a guy like Tucker Carlson, who thinks that frowning is the equivalent of thinking.
matoko_chan
@ino shinola:
yup. the white protestant martin-luther evangelical nation.
we are fucked by the consent of the governed until the demographic timer goes off. like i said, Hayek was wrong. the growth of the welfare state doesnt cause Soshulism as much as it causes Secularism, ie the separation of church and state.
the churces were the welfare providers until blacks and women got the vote….like Barb said…that is how religion maintained control you had to convert and go to church to get civil welfare and civil rights.
that destroyed the old social compact and now we are evolving to social democracy model.
matoko_chan
@ino shinola:
yup. the white protestant martin-luther evangelical nation.
we are fucked by the consent of the governed until the demographic timer goes off. like i said, Hayek was wrong. the growth of the welfare state doesnt cause Soshulism as much as it causes Secularism, ie the separation of church and state.
the churches were the welfare providers until blacks and women got the vote….like Barb said…that is how religion maintained control you had to convert and go to church to get civil welfare and civil rights.
that destroyed the old social compact and now we are evolving to social democracy model.
american exceptionalism is just proselytizing and evangelizing judeoxian america.
america is not and has never been a secular nation.
matoko_chan
@LikeableInMyOwnWay: yet, every 2 years, Fetal Personhood gets on the ballot in colorado and gets rejected by 70% of the electorate.
stupid christian tricks.
its Salam-Douthat stratification in action. we mostly dont care if xians want to believe in creationism and ensoulment.
but they shouldn’t expect to get into harvard or MIT or get to force the the rest of the population to believe in their dumb bullshytt or teach it in schools.
matoko_chan
its like this toujours.
not all christians believe in creationism and fetal personhood.
but ALL the people that believe in creationism and fetal personhood ARE christians. AND they are ALL republicans.
how can anyone pretend America is a secular nation when one of the two major parties IS ALL RELIGIOUS, and can only field candidates that conform to RELIGIOUS DOCTRINE?
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@matoko_chan:
In most states, a relatively small number of crazies (between 5 and 6 percent of voters who turned out in the most recent election seems to be typical) can get any nonsense onto a ballot.
So if 50% of voters turn out, and the requirement for petitions is 5% of turnout, then 2.5% of your voters can get something on your ballot.
It’s a good reason, all by itself, to never stay home on election day. Just going out and voting against one crazy initiative can make a huge difference.
Politics belongs to the people who show up.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@matoko_chan:
Blasphemer!
Heh.
Barb (formerly gex)
@toujoursdan: Did you know that Catholic hospitals have been agitating for the right to not treat gays? That freaks me out as a gay person. The ambulance just barely gets you to the nearest hospital. Oh no! It is a Catholic hospital! You’re dead, fag.
This all comes down to the same thing. Some people benefit more from religion and some people pay more. The raped children who become homophobes and the gays they go on to oppress are the ones who lose. The people who get tax free revenue and tax write offs for their donations to their churches anti-gay political actions.
I do not believe that humans would lack the goodness that is found in good religious people if there was no religion. I’m pretty convinced there are some levels of evil that require religion. And I think that is because it takes a disagreement between people and turns it into a disagreement between a bad person and a person who knows the universal truths of God.
Barb (formerly gex)
@Chicago dyke: That is true, but the fact of religion is part of the equation.
I don’t think you’d be able to convince anyone that women shouldn’t be allowed to have a procedure that removed a cyst that would otherwise kill them without some kind of religious edict that makes an otherwise incredulous idea seem sensible.
Abortion was the engine that drove the rise of the Christian right. And it is entirely because of Christianity’s hangups about sex and women. The craziness behind all that belongs to religion, not science.
Smurfhole
@DBrown:
Sure. Point is, though, that Christ didn’t come to save the saved. He came for the sinners, which’d be pretty much all of us. Christians are sinners, too. None are perfect- none.
That’s the theology, anyway.
Smurfhole
@matoko_chan:
Well, according to you the religious right has always controlled the country. So again: why do you care? It’s like living in Saudi Arabia and bitching about the corrupt monarchy. That pretty much defines the nature and purpose of the Saudi state. If you think America’s nothing more than WASP religious theocracy, why stay here? Why care? Why bitch about it at all?
Smurfhole
@matoko_chan:
Your positions don’t even make sense. Either we’re a Protestant theocracy, or we’re some sort of a secular state. Which is it? You can’t argue both in different posts.
toujoursdan
@matoko_chan:
Of course Christian ideology can be separated from Republican ideology. To repeat what I wrote before:
Explain how any of that is like Republican ideology.
You make me laugh. It’s so crazy. Did you even read what I wrote? I guess not. I’m asking you to act like a mature adult and stop the name calling. Why is that so difficult?
Your assertion isn’t true, but even if it was, this is logical fallacy anyway. You’ll find believers of creationism and fetal personhood amongst Democrats, and in non-Christian religions as well. Many black churches hold this opinion and blacks are about 90% Democrat. Orthodox Jews believe in creationism. Some Muslim groups may embrace a form of it as well (many in the Middle East don’t embrace evolution.) There are even gay and lesbian groups against abortion.
Secondly, what difference does it make? All I have said, repeatedly, is that Christianity is diverse. Not all Christians are creationists, homophobes or anti abortion. So why judge us by what others do?
Your level of hostility and name calling is quite odd.
toujoursdan
@Barb (formerly gex):
Source?
Well, churches are treated the same as any other non-profit groups.
And even if you took religion out of the equation, this evil would exist because it’s part of human nature. The great wars and genocides of the 20th Century weren’t based on points of religious doctrine. They were based on blood, ethnicity and economic ideology.
Between the Cultural Revolution, Stalinist purges, Cambodian killing fields, the Congolese genocide under King Leopold and Rwandan genocide about 150 million people died, about 150 times more than in all of Europe’s religious wars combined, which were more political than religious anyway. Religion didn’t give us Kim Il Sung, General Pinochet, Ceauşescu, Hoxha or Idi Amin either.
The most secular countries in the world are those responsible for most of the environmental destruction in the name of economic consumption and growth. We’re on the brink of an ecological collapse which everyone knows is coming but no one talks about. Where is the morality of us enlightened people there? Isn’t what we’re about to do to the next generations evil?
Smurfhole
@matoko_chan:
You’re wrong on all points. I’ve met Muslims who believe in YEC and fetal personhood. They’re not Republicans.
Protestant Christians aren’t the only ones out there who believe this sort of thing.
DBrown
@Smurfhole: OK (relative to your point; also, I was directing the ‘read the Bible before commenting’ to those who talk about it yet haven’t – which I think does not apply to you.) I just am so sick of people in this rathole country claiming to be christian – they aren’t and it isn’t. They vote/root for mass murder of countless people throughout its history for profit (and sick as this is) under bushwhack the puppet lord, just for ‘f’ing FUN! Amerika isn’t christian and the vast majority of christians are not followers of Christ if they vote this way and continue to do this. As Christ said “Go forth and sin no more.” Christ forgives but expects people to change and not hurt others – and I believe from my readings, least of all for profit.
matoko_chan
@Smurfhole: political xianity is JUST THE FUCKING SAME as political Islam.
STOP PRETENDING ASSCLOWN.
when one of the two major political parties IS ENTIRELY WHITE CONSERVATIVE XIANS, we dont live in a secular democracy.
quit being a retard or STFU, you dumbass cow.
THE
@matoko_chan:
You really need to read Harun Yahya (Adnan Oktar), if you think that all creationists are Christians.
His Atlas of Creation has been distributed in many countries.
matoko_chan
@toujoursdan: it is true. and you know it.
all republicans nominally are xian, or judeoxian.
They SAY they are xians.
no republican candidate can be nominated unless they profess to believe in creationism, fetal personhood, gay is a choice that deserves no citizen rights, and climatology denialism at a minimum.
you know that.
you spout a buncha lovely sentiments, but xianity in PRACTICE in America is nothing like the wishful thinking you just spewed.
when one of the two major political parties IS ENTIRELY WHITE CONSERVATIVE XIANS, we dont live in a secular democracy.
political xianity is the major republican doctrine.
if you think those people are not xians, fucking call them out instead of nattering on about how great xianity is because it made unis and hospitals.
im willing to take them at their word, that they are CHRISTIANS.
just like islamic terrorists that say they are muslims get taken at their word by most americans, no matter much actual muslims point out that terrorists cant be muslims if they kill innocents.
matoko_chan
@THE: IN AMERICA!
WE ARE TALKING ABOUT POLITICAL XIANITY IN AMERICA!
THE
@matoko_chan:
Yes I am talking about America as well.
Atlas of Creation has been distributed free in USA too.
matoko_chan
@THE: @THE: SO FUCKING WHAT?
since when is the other guy does it too MEAN ANYTHING when muslims are NOT CONSIDERED TO BE EITHER WHITE OR XIAN?
amg the stupid it burns.
fucking intelligence, how does it work?
THE
@matoko_chan:
You wrote @198:
Smurfhole responded to you @208:
I am saying Smurfhole is right.
There are indeed YEC Muslims who are attempting to influence public opinion in America.
I am providing you with links to support that contention.
THE
Let me just correct what I said above. (too late to edit)
Yahya is an Old Earth Creationist.
As far as I can make out, his argument is that created species don’t change.
silentbeep
@ppcli: doesn’t mean they are not diverse at all, just less so than here, as a whole. it’s a relative comparison.
Smurfhole
@DBrown:
On this, we agree. Many hypocrites in the ranks of American Christians. When Jesus rails against the Pharisees, it’s quite easy to insert a name like “Jerry Falwell” in there.
@matoko_chan:
I think you need some sort of anger management or therapy. I’m not joking; you really do seem to fly off the handle for no reason.
matoko_chan
@Smurfhole: Oh fuck off you unrepenent sub-sapients.
I say, AMERICA IS NOT A SECULAR NATION. ONE PARTY IS WHOLLY WHITE CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIAN. THE GOP CANNOT FIELD A CANDIDATE THAT DOESNT PROFESS COUNTERFACTUAL XIAN DOCTRINE LIKE CREATIONISM AND FETAL PERSONHOOD.
and you say…..some muslims do it too?
WTF?
Spock you are EXACTLY the same as the rest of the cudlips.
i never expected it of you.
matoko_chan
@THE: you are an IQ traitor.
quit throwing chaff.
matoko_chan
Pretend all you want cudlips.
Assange just junk-punched America in cyberspace EXACTLY like OBL junk-punched America in meatspace.
What do you think the outcome will be?
OBL punched America in the economic junk– leading directly to the Econopalpse that Ate Americas Jobs, the longest shooting war in American history and the hideously expensive bloody failsauce of A-stan and Iraq, the total loss of Americas courage and prestige as the land of the free and home of the brave. we are the land of serfs and cowards.
Assange just punched America in the information junk.
How do YOU think this is going to turn out Spock?
Will we sting ourselves to death like the poisoned scorpion in the faerytale?
We have a choice.
But as long you fucking dumbass cattle pretend, we are all doomed.
matoko_chan
fight, godammit, you stupid fucking cows!
the republicans/political-xians are loading you into a cattle car and you want to play moral equivalence.
im going to fight. i see Cole fighting, pushing back on torturing Manning to get him to flip Assange. Is that who we are as a people?
that is who burns and toujours and smurf and eemom and sooner are willing to let us be. keep on walking America.
and the fact is we are not a secular nation when one party is wholly religious.
and the other fact is, whether those self-described xians meet your personal xian criteria or not, they are willing to rape the rest of us to death, patch their clothes with our skin, and cook and eat our flesh if we dont convert to their belief system.
and im going to fight.
fuck you all.
except Cole.
THE
@matoko_chan:
I don’t think we are seeing the same thing here matoko.
All forms of Abrahamic religion have problems with evolution in their literalistic versions.
Hence all the Abrahamic religions have creationist movements.
It’s because evolution is a naturalistic origin-of-species theory.
Strictly speaking it doesn’t need God at all.
In order to fit evolution into an Abrahamic framework,
you have to invent a non-scriptural, two-step creation, where God creates the laws of nature,
and then nature evolves life under divine supervision or something.
So creation becomes reinterpreted as a meta-creation.
There is really no scriptural foundation for this idea.
It is a cheat. At best it poeticises the creation story.
Scriptural literalists refuse to play this game.
They insist on taking the pre-evolutionary divine creation tradition at face value.
Hence they are forced to reject evolution.
In a sense I actually do respect the integrity of the literalists.
Even though I believe they are scientifically wrong.
From my perspective, the simplest explanation is that Abrahamic religions are simply false religions.
Of course I have no problem with this.
Since I don’t believe in Abrahamic religions anyway.
It’s strange that as an atheist,
I have always felt that the literal creationists are a more honest form of scripture-based, Abrahamic religion.
THE
@matoko_chan:
There are really two problems.
What to do to prevent future leaks?
I think there will be minor adjustments to the security procedures, both software and hardware.
As I have described to you before.
Also they will have to go back to separating the State Dept data from the rest of the data stream.
At least they will have to filter it to excise the politically most-sensitive stuff.
The stuff that has already leaked they are going to have to live with.
I think the damage to the diplomatic environment is worrying.
So far not critical, but there are still thousands of diplomatic cables to publish.
I am concerned about the long-term damage to international relations that have taken 50 years to build.
I hope it can be fixed but I don’t know yet.
Some damage may be permanent.
I fear the world will be a more dangerous place.
Smurfhole
@matoko_chan:
I can’t even get offended by what you’re saying. I feel too bad about it. I’m serious. It’s like I’m dealing with someone in the grips of a mental attack of some kind.
I don’t even care about the merits of argument anymore- mine, or yours. I think you need some help.