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Guavanaut posted:Figures... Eastern Washington and Oregon are very conservative places, for the most part.
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Jul 9, 2015 02:54
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I want to ask the OP how he/she broke up with the fundies (can't spell "fun dies" without "fundies") and how did that previous experience impacted OPs religious views, ties with family and stuff like that. Also, is prosperity gospel outlined in some document, a body of works, or is it just some wobbly balls of ideas how Jesus actually hates the poor/didn't understand that it is really easy for a camel to go through the eye of a needle?
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Jul 9, 2015 07:54
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Great Metal Jesus posted:Do you have any reading recommendations on this? This is one of the things I find most fascinating about religion. I originally started looking into it largely through a thread on these forums in Ask/Tell (Ask me about biblical history iirc). If you've got Plat or archives you should be able to get it, not sure if it's archived yet or not. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo-YL-lv3RY This is the Yale lecture series, which is pretty cool. In Our Time (BBC Podcast) has an archive on religion, they've covered some cool stuff as well like Paul's life including a bit I wasn't aware of that his disagreements about non-Jews being able to become Christians were actually with the other leading figure in the early church, Jesus' brother James. Which raises interesting questions about how much Pauline Christianity is something Christ would actually recognise when it's clear his brother had some real problems with aspects of it. They also have an episode on Revelations (I think it was here I heard it). The History of Byzantium podcast has featured a lot of cool stuff on the development of the Orthodox church and some of the major doctrinal debates going on in the East. There's also the History of the Papacy podcast if you want to know more about the early history of the Church. It's interesting because there are a lot of aspects of Christianity which we accept today as fundamental beliefs you need to share in order to be a Christian but they're heavily disputed early on. Tom Holland has some good Pop History books, In the Shadow of the Sword is really more about the early years of Islam but he puts forward an argument that religion as we know it today (an unified and exclusive body of beliefs and practices) was really an 'invention' of the 6th-8th century. Prior to that it was not unusual for communities to mix and match parts of what we'd regard as exclusive faiths. So people wouldn't just be Christian heretics but could be faithful Jews who also believed Christ was the Messiah. Or they could be Christians who believed that it required they follow the Old Laws and made them part of the the Chosen People, etc., etc. No book recommendations I'm afraid but I'm sure there's some stuff in there, especially the Yale thing should be able to list some recommended reading.
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Jul 9, 2015 08:27
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JcDent posted:I want to ask the OP how he/she broke up with the fundies (can't spell "fun dies" without "fundies") and how did that previous experience impacted OPs religious views, ties with family and stuff like that. It still shocks me when people ask about this, because Baptist fundamentalism was so pervasive when I was growing up. I'm glad to see threads like this but the ignorance of the church influence in America is astonishing. No offence. I can't speak for the OP, but I think he mentioned the breaking point was actually reading the Bible itself. In Sunday school you're fed specific passages and their interpretation. However, reading before and after those passages (you know, the context) threw doubt on every lesson they fed us. If you aren't held captive to the culture, you begin to question everything. When I was in middle school, the church people got tired of speaking to my parents about me and I was allowed to stop going. My father was really only in the church (a fairly liberal on at that) for the community and networking. My mother was the real fan of the baprist tradition but even she didn't force me to stay. I was lucky.
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Jul 9, 2015 13:19
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JcDent posted:I want to ask the OP how he/she broke up with the fundies (can't spell "fun dies" without "fundies") and how did that previous experience impacted OPs religious views, ties with family and stuff like that. I'm a he, by the way. Anyway, I can't really say a lot about it without discussing my upbringing in detail which I just flat out don't want to do. My childhood was kind of awful. But anyway, oddly enough it wasn't my family specifically but I had dealt with some deliberate isolation from my extended family that didn't expose me to a lot of their views until somewhat later in life. I have little contact now with much of my gene pool for completely separate reasons. Some of it was just the crowd I happened to fall into and some of it was the babysitter I had as a child that I think did most of my raising. Once again the details are complicated and I don't care to discuss them but this guy was the most rabid fundie I have ever met. I have no idea what denomination he was exactly. Methodist, I think. There are a lot of Methodists where I come from and they tend to be shitheads. The other side of it was that some of the children I hung around with at school were from fundie families and it's kind of easy for groups to form among children who are being taught these things. One thing you get taught is that you absolutely must not trust anybody that doesn't believe what you do. So of course some children looking for friends and a social group would fall in line with that crowd and start becoming awful so they could fit in. We liked Nintendo and Jesus and not much else. I actually don't remember exactly when I quit attending church but I was not forced to go after a certain point. Part of it was poverty; there were long periods of time I'd live in a household with no car. We moved around a lot so it wasn't like we could become part of a church community and I was often staying at my grandparent's house and they didn't go to church. The thing of it is though I remember being deliberately isolated from the outside world and not having much contact at home with anybody other than my sister (who I did not get along with) and the fundie guy a lot of the time. With a few exceptions nobody else really went out of their way to dispel these beliefs but at the same time practicing in secret when I was around people that didn't approve was also encouraged. That guy quit watching us when we got old enough, I changed school and didn't land in the fundie crowd after that, and just kind of drifted out of it. When I finally actually sat down and read the whole Bible I ended up becoming a rabid atheist. Now I'm a Buddhist. Fancy that. I was also extremely withdrawn through some parts of my childhood socially. Not only had I endured deliberate isolation but was told to not trust people (more than just standard stranger danger crap) and only associate with people I knew believed the right things. That kind of sticks with you over time and it's also harder to forge social bonds if you don't know anybody to start with, also don't have well-developed social skills, and just out of habit don't talk. Granted it didn't help that I also started suffering from depression very young and later turned out to have borderline disorder. Yeah poo poo was...kind of crazy and so was I. It's not an easy question to answer because that gets into things I don't want to discuss publicly. Or at all, to be honest.
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Jul 9, 2015 14:23
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JcDent posted:I want to ask the OP how he/she broke up with the fundies (can't spell "fun dies" without "fundies") and how did that previous experience impacted OPs religious views, ties with family and stuff like that. Sort of the latter. Prosperity gospel isn't really "theology" in the sense that there's no real system and it's based around a loose series of cherrypicked verses (not even really passages) in that time-honored Pentecostal tradition. Consider the ever popular The Prayer of Jabez. It's a multimedia series based around the following passage. I Chronicles 4:9-10 posted:[9]Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, and his mother named him Jabez saying, "Because I bore him with pain." [10] Now Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, "Oh that You would bless me indeed and enlarge my border, and that Your hand might be with me, and that You would keep me from harm that it may not pain me!" And God granted him what he requested. That's the whole thing. The other justifications are on similar footing (ask and you shall receive, e.g.). Televangelists are fond of the "give and it will be given you" line (ignoring its context, naturally, which is basically a call for generosity in your daily life). That said, it's not so much negative messaging about the poor (prosperity people shy away from anything resembling negativity) as it is a slightly more religious The Secret. There's a sense in which it blames the poor for not believing enough, but folks tend to fall back on either "God works in mysterious ways" or something about a trial and THEN you're going to get wealth and happiness dumped all over you. Maybe you need to send Creflo Dollar some more money to get the floodgates to open. Who knows!? Incidentally, you've probably heard this before, but it's pretty common for evangelicals to say the Eye of the Needle was actually a gate in Jerusalem (literally no scholarly evidence for this) that camels had to get on their knees to crawl through, so actually the rich just need to work hard to get into heaven!
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Jul 9, 2015 14:55
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Oh derp I forgot to cover prosperity gospel. Actually Malmesbury gets the basic idea down. It really is just a lot of twisting and mangling done to justify terrible beliefs. Some of it also goes back to Job. He keeps his faith in God through all of his trials and tribulations so God gives him more than he had before. That's used as proof that God will reward faith (Job was a faithful guy before the whole thing went down). The other argument I've heard (and I forget if this has any actual Biblical or scholarly basis or not) was that the disciples were all wealthy, prosperous guys so obviously God was rewarding them for their faith. There is also reference to that passage about all authority on Earth being there because God put it there. They extend that into "rich people are rich because God let them be." So obviously if somebody is rich it's because they pleased God somehow. Except Ted Turner. He's an atheist so obviously he made a deal with the devil to acquire his wealth.
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Jul 9, 2015 15:02
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Prosperity Gospel is Just World Fallacy with a religious and capitalist flavour, as far as I know. The idea that the universe is like a big balance sheet and will automatically try to balance itself. If you suffer in some way you have to be rewarded in some way, either with an afterlife or, sometimes, with actual money IRL. In case the afterlife is too metaphysical and far away and you're a bit more materialist but still want to believe. The idea of course is daft. Most people just suffer and get nothing out of it. Many do so while still believing they will be rewarded right up until they die. It's weird that kids growing up Christian wouldn't read the bible, I mean, I had a children's bible when I was young and I wasn't even Christian. Would have thought that you'd be expected to read it as a matter of course?
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Jul 9, 2015 15:43
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OwlFancier posted:It's weird that kids growing up Christian wouldn't read the bible, I mean, I had a children's bible when I was young and I wasn't even Christian. Would have thought that you'd be expected to read it as a matter of course? First off the Bible is a massive book. Thing is huge and takes forever to read. Relatively few Christians actually put forth the effort to actually read it all. Second off you're discouraged from reading and interpreting the Bible for yourself. If your religious leaders are telling you to believe [thing] then you believe [thing] and don't question it. And don't you dare ever quote a verse that directly contradicts [thing] or point out that Jesus very specifically said [thing] is bad.
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Jul 9, 2015 15:46
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I've not been an active Christian but my aunt is Catholic, and most of my school contact with it was C of E. So it's very odd to me, the overwhelming impression I get from it in the UK is that your faith is primarily a personal matter and your religious leaders are there to perform services, dispense a bit of the Godly magic in the case of Catholics, and help you feel better if you're worried about something. A vicar is basically a counsellor for the local community more than they are there to convert you and ensure you're adherent to their particular doctrine. It might not be the case for all reverends but it seems to be the case for most of the ones I've ever interacted with. Vicars tend to be some of the most down to earth people you'll meet. The idea of a faith primarily centered around the pastor is really strange, it's more what I'd associate with a suicide cult than a major religion.
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Jul 9, 2015 15:53
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ToxicSlurpee posted:I have no idea what denomination he was exactly. Methodist, I think. There are a lot of Methodists where I come from and they tend to be shitheads. The Methodists are one of those denominations that are heavily divided, from what I understand-- my aunt is a Methodist minister, and every Methodist church I've ever visited as a result has been quite welcoming and not at all fire and brimstone, but those have been fairly urban congregations, and once you get out into the boonies things change. She was at their conference a while back and they were discussing changing their doctrine to bless gay marriages, and there were a lot of people for it, but the crazies really started foaming at the mouth, so I'm not sure which way they'll go. ToxicSlurpee posted:Second off you're discouraged from reading and interpreting the Bible for yourself. If your religious leaders are telling you to believe [thing] then you believe [thing] and don't question it. And don't you dare ever quote a verse that directly contradicts [thing] or point out that Jesus very specifically said [thing] is bad. This is deeply ironic/hilarious to me, since one of the original motivators of the Protestant movement was a belief that everyone should be able and encouraged to read and interpret the Bible for themselves. That's still a huge emphasis in mainline Protestantism-- the church I attended growing up had organized everyone-read-through-the-Bible things where you got prizes for making milestones. In their fervor, fundamentalism has become as insulated from popular analysis as the medieval Catholic hierarchy!
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Jul 9, 2015 15:54
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Quorum posted:This is deeply ironic/hilarious to me, since one of the original motivators of the Protestant movement was a belief that everyone should be able and encouraged to read and interpret the Bible for themselves. That's still a huge emphasis in mainline Protestantism-- the church I attended growing up had organized everyone-read-through-the-Bible things where you got prizes for making milestones. In their fervor, fundamentalism has become as insulated from popular analysis as the medieval Catholic hierarchy! It isn't ironic when you consider where America's Christian traditions ultimately started. I touched on it before but one of the complaints of people leaving Europe was specifically that the churches were becoming too nice and letting people interpret things for themselves. That's why Biblical literalism is so incredibly toxic. The belief is that you must get it exactly right or it's off to Hell with you. It's also why the arguments between literalists and against those that do not believe in literalism are so nasty. It isn't just matters of meaning on the line it's eternal damnation. I don't want to go to Hell so I have to make sure I'm the one that's right. Which gets twisted into forcing everybody else to repeat that you're right and also forcing everybody else to believe what you do because it's for their own good. Hey, I'm just looking out for you, man. Your interpretation is wrong and that means you're going to Hell. In Europe even the Catholic church at the time was shifting away from heavy dogma and outright political theocracy. Heresy quit being punished. The ironic part is that the people that wanted to keep punishing heresy were the ones violating the church's doctrine at the time. Now we have this weird situation in America where even nominally connected churches of the same denomination don't agree and are screaming at each other that the other side is going to Hell. OwlFancier posted:The idea of a faith primarily centered around the pastor is really strange, it's more what I'd associate with a suicide cult than a major religion. A lot of Christian churches in America act exactly like dangerous cults. They practice shunning and create these extremely insular little groups that actively avoid contact with the outside world until the individuals stick around only because they have nobody else.
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Jul 9, 2015 16:09
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Thank you, TS, for your explanation. I apologize for probing too deep. It does help to understand the US a little bit more. Also, having recently read the "Reasons Not To Read Atlas Shrugged" thread, one can't help but draw comparisons, like objectivism is prosperity gospel for atheists, and how there can be people who claim to be both Christians and randroids. Yes, the funny thing is that as far as I understand from Liturgical Christianity Thread is that hardcore Protestants think that Catholics don't read the Bible.
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Jul 9, 2015 18:58
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JcDent posted:Yes, the funny thing is that as far as I understand from Liturgical Christianity Thread is that hardcore Protestants think that Catholics don't read the Bible. Catholicism's relationship to reading the Bible is...odd. For a very long time on priests actually read the Bible because, well, only priests could read. Royalty and nobility kind of sort of could but the only people who were actually properly educated were the clergy and the rich were too busy worrying about succession, creating bastard children, and murdering each other to care much about stupid things like "reading" and "science." Clergy on the other hand had a lot of spare time and no families or lineage to worry about. Even so most people were illiterate subsistence farmers and so would not be expected to read anything at all, ever, and mostly just believed what their priests told them. Some priests of course were outright liars but that's a different story. There isn't much inertia behind the idea of reading the Bible until very recently historically. One of the major, major changes of Protestantism was the idea that there could be communication with God without intermediaries. The Catholic church taught that you had to go through Jesus to get to God but the Pope was effectively the current Jesus. Sort of. The theory (no idea if this has been checked out historically) is that Peter was in charge of the church and the first Pope. Because of that personal interpretations of things mean less and what the Church believes mean more. It isn't that reading the Bible is a general requirement but it isn't discouraged either. The big difference is that the Bible doesn't have the same gravity in Catholicism as it does to Biblical literalists and I think that's the major sticking point. Far as I can tell Catholics take a very similar view to Jews. The important thing isn't the specific, literal meaning of the words but rather what the story means. This is especially true of stories that were literally made up and that the characters in the Bible said they made up. Which is why Biblical literalism is kind of dumb. Jesus makes up a whole lot of stories and the story isn't the thing that matters but what he is teaching through it. That really is where a lot of the arguments over how important the Bible is come from and why I think a great many hardcore Protestants think Catholics don't read the Bible. It's unlikely that a random Catholic has read the whole thing but it's also likely that a random Catholic doesn't put that much of an emphasis on the book itself. One thing I've heard from both Catholics and Jews is that the central message is basically the golden rule. Generally speaking if you're actively trying to not be a jerk then God thinks you're alright. Of course literalists read all the fire and brimstone stuff and say "so this means it's OK to murder the gays?"
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Jul 9, 2015 20:32
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ToxicSlurpee posted:The theory (no idea if this has been checked out historically) is that Peter was in charge of the church and the first Pope. It's pretty likely that Peter was in charge of at least the Roman "church," in the sense of the group of Christians who lived in the city of Rome, but we can't 100% prove it, for lots of reasons including that Christians were not a terribly well-liked cult for a while and records from the time aren't great anyway. If you'd asked him what he thought about being the first Pope, though, he'd probably have looked at you like you were crazy, because our concept of "the Pope" didn't exist until sometime in the early to mid-Middle Ages. Before then, the Bishop of Rome was a first among equals sort of deal.
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Jul 9, 2015 21:00
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RE: reading the Bible, most people don't think about their faith very much, and lack the requisite intellectual curiosity to look for an answer in a huge, dry, boring as gently caress book. It's a group identity thing, people don't think they're Christian because they've closely examined its belief system and agree with it, they're Christian because they just are, and because their community and family is
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Jul 9, 2015 22:31
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Quorum posted:It's pretty likely that Peter was in charge of at least the Roman "church," in the sense of the group of Christians who lived in the city of Rome, but we can't 100% prove it, for lots of reasons including that Christians were not a terribly well-liked cult for a while and records from the time aren't great anyway. If you'd asked him what he thought about being the first Pope, though, he'd probably have looked at you like you were crazy, because our concept of "the Pope" didn't exist until sometime in the early to mid-Middle Ages. Before then, the Bishop of Rome was a first among equals sort of deal. This is, in fact, by far the biggest point of contention between the Roman Catholic Church (and those in communion with it) and the Eastern Orthodox Church(es), and probably the largest theological obstacle to reunification.
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Jul 9, 2015 22:41
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Why do Evangelical Christians seem to have such an influence here in the United States when they make up such a small percentage of the population? The adoption of certain pro-wealthy beliefs by members of the monied classes? Is it just because the fundamentalist evangelicald scream loudest? Also, how conservative is the typical "non-denominational" church?
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Jul 10, 2015 02:55
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Sucrose posted:Why do Evangelical Christians seem to have such an influence here in the United States when they make up such a small percentage of the population? They vote. No, seriously. That's all there is to it. Their voter turnout is higher than other demographics. They also have done a very good job of pulling conservatism in America pretty far to the right by harping very hard on the more palatable sides of their platform. Not all people that vote R are evangelicals or fundies obviously but can be easily convinced to vote R by somebody harping on family values and abortion. They just want to save babies, man. Why do you hate babies so much? So yeah it's really about the screaming and the voting. As a demographic they vote pretty hard.
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Jul 10, 2015 03:00
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ToxicSlurpee posted:They vote. Well that's disappointing. By my calculations even if every last Evangelical is a Republican, half or more of all Republicans would still not be Evangelicals, yet it seems like they're always front and center within the party. And when you only have two parties, it just drags the Overton Window further to the right. Ugh. At least that's how I see it. Reading explanations like this does make me feel more than a little angry at the segment of the left and the disaffected who are always telling people that voting is useless, blah blah blah, there's no difference between the parties, and that they shouldn't bother with it.
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Jul 10, 2015 03:23
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Sucrose posted:Why do Evangelical Christians seem to have such an influence here in the United States when they make up such a small percentage of the population? The adoption of certain pro-wealthy beliefs by members of the monied classes? Is it just because the fundamentalist evangelicald scream loudest? Sucrose posted:Well that's disappointing. By my calculations even if every last Evangelical is a Republican, half or more of all Republicans would still not be Evangelicals, yet it seems like they're always front and center within the party. And when you only have two parties, it just drags the Overton Window further to the right. Ugh. At least that's how I see it. There aren't that many of the complete nutjobs, but there is a much larger population of people who sort of lean in that direction and are willing to back up the people who are complete nutjobs even if they don't care enough to push for the same things heavily themselves. The canonical Reagan voter, the white upper/middle class suburbanite, will support the crazies over liberals partly because they agree with them and partly just out of the same spite that drives all of their other politics And the average nondenominational church is probably no different from any other American Protestant church. Maybe less so than the Southern Baptists, but like people have said denomination in itself really doesn't have any connection to this stuff, it's the mainline/evangelical split that is the problem icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 03:53 on Jul 10, 2015 |
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Jul 10, 2015 03:41
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icantfindaname posted:And the average nondenominational church is probably no different from any other American Protestant church. Maybe less so than the Southern Baptists, but like people have said denomination really doesn't have any connection to this stuff You mean Mainline Protestant, or a sort of average between them and the hardcore evangelicals? Because "American Protestant" alone doesn't really tell me much, it's too wide of a spectrum.
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Jul 10, 2015 03:46
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Average. I imagine nondenominationals are split into mainline/evangelical but since there's no overarching organization it would be on an individual basis. Also mainline denominations are a lot smaller than evangelical ones. According to this evangelicals are close to twice as big as the mainlines, with 25% of the population vs 15% http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/ icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 03:55 on Jul 10, 2015 |
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Jul 10, 2015 03:47
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ToxicSlurpee posted:They vote. It's much more than that. They have a deeply entrenched, insidious, and powerful group of lobbyists operating, favor-trading, and power-broking in Washington D.C. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120746516 They have disproportionate influence in access to politicians and are very well funded and well connected.
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Jul 10, 2015 03:50
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ToxicSlurpee posted:First off the Bible is a massive book. Thing is huge and takes forever to read. Relatively few Christians actually put forth the effort to actually read it all. Second off you're discouraged from reading and interpreting the Bible for yourself. If your religious leaders are telling you to believe [thing] then you believe [thing] and don't question it. And don't you dare ever quote a verse that directly contradicts [thing] or point out that Jesus very specifically said [thing] is bad. At least in my circles, it was a point of pride to read the Whole Entire Bible every year or so. Not to suggest that these people had any uncommon grasp on Scripture because of it, mind you. Having made the attempt myself as a child, the Bible is really long and not easily read, particularly not in sittings where you cover a large set of passages. People have a tendency to come at it with a certain framework in mind (typically, as you say, the one set forth by their religious community) and then force it, consciously or not, into that framework as they're reading. Anything that contradicts that is just kinda skipped over (the parallel and mildly contradictory creation accounts, for example) or you make up a reason why it doesn't count. There's a reason books like Hard Sayings of the Bible are popular among particularly devout evangelical Christians. It's also worth noting that, at least among the Christians I grew up with, this belief in the laity of scriptural interpretation led to some crazy crackpot theories as folks would pull out their Strong's Concordance and gleefully gently caress up their eschatology. I knew one guy who was absolutely convinced the Parable of the Sheep and Goats applied only to relationships between Christians (and thus Christians have no obligation to help non-Christians lest they keep them from salvation somehow??). Dude also insisted on drawing a line between demon possession and being "demonized" based on a bad understanding of Greek. There's a reason doctrinal interpretation was traditionally left to the better educated.
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Jul 10, 2015 18:22
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Malmesbury Monster posted:There's a reason doctrinal interpretation was traditionally left to the better educated. This is really the crux of the whole thing. American evangelical Christianity is born from and sustained by a complete lack of contextual understanding of scripture. It's as phenomenal as it is sad.
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Jul 10, 2015 19:12
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Mr. Wiggles posted:This is really the crux of the whole thing. American evangelical Christianity is born from and sustained by a complete lack of contextual understanding of scripture. It's as phenomenal as it is sad. Really that can't be stressed enough. Even those that have read the Bible and studied what Jesus actually taught go into it with what they already believe in their head and ride confirmation bias all the way to the bottom.
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Jul 10, 2015 19:19
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I'm not well versed in theology, but it's kind of fascinating to me how many Evangelical Christians just seem unwilling to budge on a lot of things. I do listen to a station out of Cleveland on occasion (mainly for entertainment and for content for the RWM thread), and I've noticed an unwillingness to acknowledge another person's viewpoint or another interpretation of one's faith. I'm also confused about the use of the term "secular" to describe politics or to describe one's artistic vision. It seems that even if you're someone who believes in Christ as your own personal savior, and you're someone that attempts to go by his teachings? You're still characterized as being on the side of "evil" because you're not in their small little bubble world. It also feels that it's consistently used to label people on the left to just sort of imply that their faith isn't guiding their decisions, or that they're -gasp- ATHEISTS. I also don't view the "West" or North America itself as being very "secular". Sure we're rather "commercialized", but it feels like true "Secularism" would be some place like North Korea, China or the former Soviet Union. Also what is wrong with having a "government" be "secular" to these people? I'm not saying that major religious holidays for example shouldn't be recognized by the government, nor should any sort of religious activities be banned. But what is wrong with a separation of church and state when it comes to governing the people?
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Jul 11, 2015 09:02
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FuzzySkinner posted:I'm not well versed in theology, but it's kind of fascinating to me how many Evangelical Christians just seem unwilling to budge on a lot of things. I do listen to a station out of Cleveland on occasion (mainly for entertainment and for content for the RWM thread), and I've noticed an unwillingness to acknowledge another person's viewpoint or another interpretation of one's faith. The spiritual/secular divide probably made more sense before Pat Robertson et al. hosed it up. The evangelical movement traditionally took to heart Abraham's maxim of being a stranger in a strange land combined with the general NT concept of being "in the world but not of the world." This was at the heart of weird stuff like the "no dancing" or "no playing cards" stuff, although obviously they had really stupid pseudo-scriptural rationales as well. For the better part of the early 20th century, evangelicals were detached as a voting bloc. In the Pentecostal holiness context (my background), secular would originally mean "worldly thing you should stay away from." There was a concerted effort beginning in the 1930s and really taking hold of the conversation in the '50s to tie Christianity to the right and give the Republican Party a new base in the wake of FDR. The message pushed from the pulpits was decidedly anti-Communist, which is probably a big part of why secularism has such nasty undertones in modern Christian language. Combined with desegregation and civil rights riling up ancient prejudices in the South that had always been bolstered by religion, evangelicals started getting involved with politics again. Secular now means "bad thing we should fight" more than "bad thing you should stay away from" (and neither approaches the actual definition of "non-religious thing"). Long story short, my gut suggests that it's mostly Cold War angst about Communism that's been so drowned in religious language that it merged with holiness tradition and took on its own life. Someone who's more familiar with modern church history may have a more nuanced understanding and explanation for this, though.
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Jul 11, 2015 15:19
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FuzzySkinner posted:I'm not well versed in theology, but it's kind of fascinating to me how many Evangelical Christians just seem unwilling to budge on a lot of things. I do listen to a station out of Cleveland on occasion (mainly for entertainment and for content for the RWM thread), and I've noticed an unwillingness to acknowledge another person's viewpoint or another interpretation of one's faith. Go back to the first post I wrote and read the battleground part. Any possibility that being not Christian is OK is to many viewed as the work of the devil tempting you away from the faith. Fundies genuinely believe that forcing their beliefs on everybody else is doing them a favor. Really to get an idea of the mindset just look at Chick tracts more closely and what they're saying. Look at things like fundies often leaving those "disappointed? Well, here is some eternal salvation! Just come to church and get it!" things instead of tips at restaurants. They believe that they're not being brutal totalitarians they believe they're giving you the gift of an eternity with Jesus and man that is like, priceless. They also believe that the right thing to do is to make America into a Christian nation once again for its own good. Christianity in America is actually on a decline and they know it. They believe that that is proof that America is falling to the devil's influence or is becoming less righteous and that's why we're having the problems we are. They just want us to be a prosperous God-fearing nation again, you know? God is just punishing us by letting us slide downward because we lost our faith. There are also "God's law > man's law" arguments going on. They believe that if God dictated a rule you must follow that rule and force everybody else to so you don't piss off the big guy. There are a lot of facets to the argument really but the main reason that "secular" became a dirty word is because "secular" tells people that God's law is optional. edit: Actually another thing that comes up is stuff like Sodom and Gomorrah. Another common belief is that God will punish nations that are not righteous. They believe in the fire and brimstone God that will call judgement down from heaven if we don't behave. This is why gay rights are such a contentious issue. They believe that gays, merely by existing, are destroying our great nation. If we'd just cast them out/exterminate them then God would be pleased and we'd be prosperous again. If we don't then God is going to punish us severely. So not only is it arguments based on "please God -> get paid" but also ties into power. Remember that verse about Earthly authority existing because God said that it should. Whoever is in charge is put there by God. They often believe that if they please God enough He'll put them in charge. ToxicSlurpee fucked around with this message at 15:37 on Jul 11, 2015 |
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Jul 11, 2015 15:27
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Optional safety net comic relief for those feeling overwhelmed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-HgBrVLv5I
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Jul 11, 2015 17:24
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It does feel that the "Red Scare" seems to have caused a lot of problems in this country in that regard. I would imagine that the "Baby Boomers" generation is really the last group of people touched by the Cold War and the threat of the whole concept of communism. Generation X'ers saw the decline and fall of the Soviet Union. Millenials grew up with no "Threat" for about 10 years or so after the Berlin Wall came down. If I can recall back in the 1950's for example, there were ads on the radio urging people to go to church during this entire time period, and seemed to imply the fear of nuclear war/communism in each of them. Almost an extra middle finger to the "Godless Commies" over in the USSR at the time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2OuJdNfJr4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R12k_GfAV_o Now? The entire idea is pretty laughable in a lot of ways. But it feels like there's still people (mainly boomers, mainly evangelicals) that hang onto that weird fear of us becoming some sort of Soviet Union-style state. The reaction that we saw after Obama's election and the use of the Hammer/Sickle by people like Glenn Beck sort of kind of shows what their mindset is in regards to every thing.
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Jul 11, 2015 20:03
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FuzzySkinner posted:Now? The entire idea is pretty laughable in a lot of ways. But it feels like there's still people (mainly boomers, mainly evangelicals) that hang onto that weird fear of us becoming some sort of Soviet Union-style state. The reaction that we saw after Obama's election and the use of the Hammer/Sickle by people like Glenn Beck sort of kind of shows what their mindset is in regards to every thing. Yeah one of the things the right very badly struggled with was finding a new Great Enemy after the USSR fell apart. Really I think this why Islam started being drummed up and why they started picking fights in the middle east. You couldn't scream about the insidious threat of spreading communism so now it's Sharia law. If you look at it the propaganda is really the same.  SECRET MUSLIMS IN GOVERMENT! SLEEPER CELLS! ANY TOLERANCE OF ISLAM WILL LEAD TO FULL MUSLIM LAW!!!!
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Jul 11, 2015 20:12
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Yeah one of the things the right very badly struggled with was finding a new Great Enemy after the USSR fell apart. Really I think this why Islam started being drummed up and why they started picking fights in the middle east. You couldn't scream about the insidious threat of spreading communism so now it's Sharia law. Even that has kind of backfired in a lot of ways. Millenials aren't buying it because they just see that as being something that their racist uncle posts on facebook.  -Patriotism is viewed as satire and parody.9/11 happened for example. A lot of people in that age group saw what happened, and we also got caught up ..only to find that it was really dumb/embarrassing in hindsight. When you remove fear from the whole message? It really doesn't stand up all that well. It just becomes noise. FuzzySkinner fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Jul 11, 2015 |
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Jul 11, 2015 20:28
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FuzzySkinner posted:Even that has kind of backfired in a lot of ways. Yeah the other side of it is that America has been basically in a constant state of war since WW2 and Americans are kind of tired of it. Most Americans also see that there just aren't any legitimate, major threats to America in the world right now. We're the top. The only other major powers that might possibly pose a threat some day are China and Russia and yeah...we're kind of friendly with them. The USSR worked because it was this huge, powerful nation that had a big hand in why WW2 was won. Islam doesn't work well because we're on pretty good terms with some Islamic nations, there are Muslims here, and religious tolerance is becoming increasingly popular. Most Americans are also not idiots and understand that Islam is not some monolithic entity that is 5% terrorists and 90% people that support terrorists. Of course people are looking back and realizing that "fighting communism" was also a nebulous and stupid thing. People screaming SOCIALIST!!!! are viewed as idiots. I think the religious right really dropped the ball on that one because it just shows their hypocrisy. Jesus was pretty specific about helping the needy but the religious right is all "lol nope, that's communism!"It's almost like...they've been screaming wolf for a wolf that didn't even bother to show up in the end.
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Jul 11, 2015 20:35
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Something that facinates, and also terrifies me, about Evangelicals is their ability to read Satanism and occultism into everything. This runs from being silly in stuff like Deception of a Generation and Turmoil in the Toybox, to the Satanic Ritual Abuse cases of the 80s. The first of those is just them going SATAN and pointing at toys like He-Man and my little pony. Or freaking out at ghosts and magic in cartoons. The second though would essentially hijack the justice system in many places with claims of vast Satanic cults and their activity, which included child abuse and murder. All over the US, so called Experts would offer their services, for a fee, to local police to help uncover the Satanic goings on in their communities when there was a murder, especially if it was of someone young. "Oh look, we found the dead girl in this abandoned school, where a pentagram was found on the wall, clearly evidence of SATANIC CULTS! Arrest the kids who listen to Heavy Metal!". The idea that there is a huge active cult still exists in Evangelical circles. They see a Cannibal Corpse album cover, or anything to do with LeVey Satanism (which is pretty much objectivitism with some mysticism and goatees added in) as proof of it. Innocent people went to prison and lives ruined based of this kind of stuff, like the West Memphis Three and the McMartin Preschool are probably the best known cases. In some cases, the police tried to investigate properly, but the local Evangelical community demanded that they just arrest this weird guy because he is clearly a Satanist. I remember reading about a case where it was abundantly clear that a child was killed accidentally by his father while he was drunk, who panicked and buried him in the woods, but the locals insisted that Satanists were involved, because the poor kid was buried near a place teenagers go to drink and smoke and gently caress, so its covered by graffiti, which of course includes "slayer rules!" and normal dumb kid stuff. Or another case where a runaway was found dead after an OD in again an abandoned location where dumb kid graffiti was found. Even though it was obvious she had died from injecting to much heroin, the locals insisted it was Satanists. Oh yea, and calling anything that has to do with non-christian religions as occult. Yes, Occult and Satanic symbols such as the Star of David, the Ying Yang or Hindu Mandalas.
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Jul 15, 2015 02:59
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Occult just means "hidden" though, there's no universal concept of occultism so occult is basically anything and everything that is mystical and you don't understand. That people are sufficiently uneducated and/or blinkered to not see the similarities between other religions and their own is certainly silly, but something can entirely be a normal thing in one place and occultism in another. Which can also, arguably, include things that other people don't even consider religious. So a weird house full of bizzare words and images on the walls because some people graffiti'd all over it is basically just as occult as people setting up the doom chamber of infinite pain and sacrifice with candles on every point of every pentacle. Occultism really is just things you don't understand, possibly because someone else made it all up. See: The Lesser Key of Solomon, aka the monster manual for the 17th century LARPer.  Demon Prince Stolas? Yeah just because you tried drawing an owlbear and failed doesn't mean you can draw a crown on it and call it a demon prince nerd. Yeah I'm sure he teaches astronomy and botany and commands twenty six legions of helll pffahaha whatever. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 03:30 on Jul 15, 2015 |
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Jul 15, 2015 03:25
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I'm pretty sure when they say Occult, they mean evil, because that's how they use it. They're not concerned with the actual meanings of words.
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Jul 15, 2015 03:30
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Well that's sort of consistent if they believe that God tells them everything important, if God didn't tell you about it it's probably evil, so by definition anything occult is evil.
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Jul 15, 2015 03:39
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When they say something is occult, they mean it comes from a cult of people who worship satan.
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Jul 15, 2015 03:53
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