Christian Fundamentalism and American Politics, Part 2

More "Fun with the fundies."Pat Robertson says god wants Bush to win.

This is called dispensationalism. It is also called idiotic. Gee, maybe if Bush loses god will call both Bush and Roberson "home..."

hobit

Note the lovely shift in case there.

It's truly amazing how nutty America can be, such an incredible mix of good, bad, and over-the-edge screaming lunacy. I happened on Mississippi Burning last evening and hadn't seen it in some years, so plunked myself down. How wonderful the reflection back on such a horrifying culture, but what a horrifying culture it was...the certainty, the flag waving, the xenophobia. All of this just about the same time that the word 'nipple' couldn't be spoken aloud and about the same time that Strom Thurmond was sweating on top of the black family maid.

The same culture this group would love to have return.

hobit

Those days are, I think, gone. But the cultural factors in play then are pretty easy to evidence in the present.

I don't know. The holidays with my family make me think they may have never gone away. They are already complaining about celebrating the "Birthday of some n####r pinko" later this month.

Yes, keep this up, right-wing.

It's gonna work well:



I suppose we can look forward to Dean's "Jewish wife and children" being brought up with increasing regularity...

Probably less often than the rants here about 'fanatic right wing Christians'.

george,

I think we should agree that what I consider to be important is not important to you. It's not so much that I'm ranting.........but rather that we have different experiences and therefore different understandings about what is needed for security and freedom. We will probably never agree. You don't know what I'm talking about and I can't make you understand. I know you are content this way. We'll just have to see what happens. Your comfort with your faith and the practice of your religion is fine with me. I know you're not a fanatic. Or I don't think you are. But I think you are less accepting of my expertise and experience than I am of yours. In any case, we'll have to settle for not seeing this thing in the same way.

lola

Waaaaayyyyy too polite. I like you blood-aboil.

george, an old friend of mine from pond-hockey days (my team, the Coote Street Boys, usually whupped his, the Flaming Tugboats) is concerned that the Christian faith is under seige. He's right, it is...if one perceives that faith as a valid, consistent or complete epistemoligical system, or if one perceives it as a voice of unique moral authority.

If one perceives the faith differently, as a community of believers who practice traditional rituals and who forward certain social values (charity, humility) it isn't under seige at all.

But george wants the authoritarian edge for his faith because, I think, he believes the world will go to hell in a handbasket without it. It is a kind-hearted and merciful intent. If a tad presumtuous.

I've told george previously that I consider certain traditional Christian ideas to be nutty. I do. A literal reading of the ark story or the Jonah story or the ressurection story is fruitcake-land, no less than many old oral stories from any other group of folk in the world (if I'm wrong, god and I will duke it out, but that's between her and I).

But I do NOT hold Christianity to be nutty where it is understood as metaphor. Then, I think it one of the most beautiful, rich, empathetic, and wise understandings of the human condition which I have come across. I think also that the Western world could likely not have achieved what it has without that tradition (with the clear proviso that it's a mixed bag of 'good' and 'evil' which has resulted).

george will keep plugging away to have Christian ideas and values get a favored leg up in the polity, and I'll keep yanking the stool out. I don't much like authoritarian arrangements.

I think part of the problem is that the view George and many of the fundies have of Christianity (and I am not implying George is a fundy) is inconsistent with the view more progressive individuals have. To a progressive, Christianity is a spiritual and individual search for enlightenment. For those with a strong affinity for authority the legalistic model of religion is more favoured. For these individuals, order and form are very important. A fixed set of dogmas, with associated penalties for transgression and rewards for proper behaviour must be in place, or their ability to function is impaired. In the case of the progressive, the framework is less important than the overall message. For the legalistic Christian the framework is the message. This seems to be consistent with comemnts he has made about religion and other matters. How sad for him.

hobit

George, like you or I or lola, is far too fiesty to feel sorry for. And he's clearly our equal intellectually (actually, he has a pile of knowledge areas I envy). But your argument is an inspired one, I think.

Religious expressions and behaviors in the world are terribly varied and complex, and the breadth of function which religious membership provides goes some great distance to helping us understand why such a thing exists and persists. I could spend many lifetimes muddling around trying to understand all this wonderful stuff.

And I think you point to a very important differentiation - religion/spirituality as an individual enterprise towards equanimity, growth, and revelation as contrasted with religioun as a means to social cohesion.

Interesting to see one's self examined, perhaps like a pear in a market, for blemishes. Interesting too to see that, though defective, I am not considered utterly without merit by the "objective" observers who appear to agree with my presumed need for authoritarian structures in my intellectual and spiritual life. Even more interesting is the tacit presumption on the part of the several commentators that they are themselves truly free of their own, albeit different, authoritarian structures.

"Progressive" intellectuals during the 20th century gave the world socialism and totalitarian communism, and the resultant unmeasurable human suffering. In the damage it inflicted on mankind, it eclipsed anything that had gone before it. I can think of no grouping of "intellectuals" who have been more thoroughly discredited by history than such 'progressive' secular intellectuals. Why, in view of all that, anyone would wish to assume that mantle of shame is quite beyond me.

I'm not at all sure where I would fit in Blatham's elaborate taxonomy. I do revere the "certain social values", though as individual values (charity, humility, etc.) I would call them moral, not social. Literal readings of the bible are for Protestants - not for my kind or me. Of course it is metaphorical - any other possibility is truly nutty. (Bohr's description of the atom is likewise metaphorical, as is Schrodinger's wave model.) I truly don't much care what others may think of the origins of the universe or of the moral foundations for our social interactions - except as it directly affects me. I feel no need whatever to proselytize - indeed much less than many of my rather more secular interlocutors here.

I don't seek a "favored" place for Christian values in our "polity" except as it is a result of historical fact. My only disagreement with Blatham and Lola has to do with their implied (and occasionally explicit) willingness to exclude religious or religiously motivated people (usually Christians in their examples) from political activity and action. All have the same political rights. The ideas and goals of all people, as they may influence the social and political contracts that prevail, should be considered and evaluated, based on their intrinsic merits, regardless of the motivation (religious or secular) of their advocates. Social precepts advocated by religiously motivated people should be considered, based on their objective social merits, just as should the ideas of people without religious motivation. The contemporary impulse to condemn a group of people to political silence merely because of their religious views is no different from the various tyrannies of the past which contemporary secularists so eloquently and forcefully condemn.

A wonderful meal at Postrio. A fine Merlot and a Cohiba to finish it off. A very good day.

George, I don't know if you realize it, but your postscripts, like this one:

Make it very difficult to take anything you write seriously. Regardless of the qualities of the preceeeding arguments, they render your words into a patronizing monologue. They seem to imply that you aren't really interested in what anyone else has to say,and that you are merely humouring the natives, as it were. Picture the portly Enlishman in the panama suit and hat in "Injah" letting the "locals" tell him about the subtleties of the Hindu pantheon. When they finish, he hands them a shiny half crown, pats them on the head with a "jolly good!" then walks away, muttering "blasted wogs think they actually have anything of value to tell me! Hah!"
I'm sure you don't really think this way, but it is how the tone of your posts presents you.

I try to be direct and compact in my descriptions and argument. Perhaps that offends you. I'll leave you to find the source of fault there.

I am on vacation in San Francisco after escaping Baltimore for a spell. It WAS a good meal and a very good day. I believe the postscript was meaningful to the people I was addressing, though you were not among them. It was meant as that and nothing more. I am certainly no portly Englishman. If you feel threatened, that is your problem, not mine.

Threatened, no. Offended by your patronising tone, yes.
PS: I consider escaping Bawl'mer to be a very good thing. Why anyone would wish to live there is beyond me. I consider my three years there basic training for purgatory!

LOL! For a couple of years in high school, I worked in the produce department of my home town Safeway. One of the interesting things I learned was that many of the commonly held truths of fruit-ripeness-testing are commonly held because they are commonly held, and not for any other reason at all. And once someone gets the notion that the inner state of any watermellon is determinable through holding it with the axis pointing to the north star, shaking vigorously, then placing it to one's ear and listening for the sound of an approaching locomotive, any contrary data from a pimply-faced produce clerk will often be discarded. The funniest, if most destructive, ripeness testers were itty-bitty elderly ladies whose arthritic hands would take on a tomato or peach as if the thing had just tried to murder their grandchildren.

hobit...
george, a Michigan pear, bred for tough winters and long roundabout shipping routes, is telling us of daily joys and adventures for no untoward reason other than to share them with folks for whom he has developed some affinity. But though Michigan pears are widely valued for their good center, the thick and inedible outer scruff takes a close-range shot from any but the most powerful BB gun to make any mark at all. So let's try again...
Hog poop, I say at volume. There's really a lot wrong with this one. Hitler, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Kim and Stalin have no causal or philosophical connection whatsoever to progressive political movements or even to Marx. Progressive intellectuals did produce, however, the Bill of Rights, and a western world greatly free from the tyranny of dictators and aristocracies. Norway, Finland, Sweden, Belgium, Canada...hell holes of secular human suffering!
The paragraph this sentence concludes is why I can talk with you. You aren't too nuts and don't have to be locked away in the east tower, like our Aunt Nettie. Though your thing on secularism has the family sharing quick covert glances with each other across the beef stew.

BUT (note the size of that 'but') we are talking about another crowd of folks here who ain't like you, though wearing the same team jersey. So your philosophical sophistication doesn't mean some of your teammates shouldn't get a game suspension.

On the 'blatham and lola want them silenced' thing...what we are actually saying is not, I conclude, ever going to arrive in your noggin. You win some, you lose some.

And you're probably going to be wrong... again.

From Cal Thomas:

george,

One could easily put together a similarly long list, substituting "conservative" in the place of "progressive" and identifying the atrocities committed in that name. Let's not get caught up in semantics. We all know what we're talking about.

And..........(you are still placing your "perhaps" in brackets)