Agree to disagree on that one. Your faith IS a cancer, in its impact on people who don't believe as you do, but whose lives are being impacted by the restrictive mean-spiritedness of YOUR beliefs. You named a number of them, from castigating the LGBTQ+ community to immigrants coming to the US, whether to escape REAL persecution to trying to find a better life for themselves. You've decided that empathy is anathema to Christianity, when Jesus clearly thought of it as a necessity (at least part of the time).
Essentially, you and those like you have turned Christianity into a weapon to attack anyone who isn't you, who doesn't agree with you, who has the temerity to live a life different from you. I would heartily suggest that you deal with the lumber in your own eye before you attempt to handle the speck in someone else's.
They have become convinced that their narrow interpretation of tha bible describes the only way people should live, and they see no problem with forcing compliance with that interpretation.
The evangelical excesses may be the work of a few, but I don’t see the many doing anything to rein them in. At the end of the day the thing I detest most about the evangelicals is their conviction they have the right to force their religion on others. They have no such right, and they have little to no respect for the religious right of others. Once people become convinced they’re operating under divine sanction, they’re capable of justifying just about any behavior.
Indeed, it's the iceberg effect again. We see those making the noise. What is less visible are those who support the noisemakers with their silence. They need to be called out as much as those who are actively doing harm.
I worked on a sheep farm as a teen. A joke the farmer made when things weren't going well was "We lose money on every sheep but we make up for it in volume."
Sure, a lot of white evangelicals suck -- but they make up for it in volume.
More generally, I like how Hemant focused on the all too typically poor logic. These folk arent even wrong.
I'm sorry, is the "nice" white Evangelical lady asking us to have compassion and understanding for the group that:
Calls LGBTQ people groomers?
Says trans people are mentally ill?
Actively persecutes trans children attempting to live and play sports?
Calls Democrats "Demoncrats"
Denies progressive Christians are people of faith?
Demonizes all Muslims as terrorists and illiberal authoritarian fundamentalists?
Calls progressive protestors communists and anti-American and passes laws allowing motorists to run them down?
Viewed BLM as a violent movement that burned cities to the ground and celebrates Kyle Rittenhouse?
Calls women who choose abortion "sluts"?
Calls people who are pro-choice "baby killers"?
Says that doctors and nurses are killing people with vaccines for big pharma profits?
Accuses people they hate of being cannibalistic child pedophiles?
Said that AIDS was God's punishment for homosexuals?
Says that every natural disaster was God's punishment on the rest of us for not cracking down and persecuting gay people?
Hates churches that have women pastors?
Demonizes and persecutes immigrants and refugees and cheers draconian policies that actively hurt innocent people AND slanders and hates the charities that try to help immigrants and refugees?
Cheers a man and votes for men who are credibly accused of sexual violence or domestic violence?
Oh, I'm sorry, it hurts your feelings when people get angry about your group that overwhelmingly and actively harms actual innocent people every chance it gets? How horrid for you.
All of that she files under the headings "some evangelicals do some bad things" and "not all evangelicals". Because she, personally, doesn't like Trump, she thinks that any criticism of evangelical Christianity should be limited to vague assertion ls that a small number of them are bad but all the rest are wonderful. She is either lying or the biases of her bubble won't let her see reality, or maybe both.
Add to that the fact that Christianity as a whole deserves (and indeed has gotten) considerable analysis and criticism for its tendency to argue both sides of the argument, never mind the introduction of the concept of hell, AND a heaven which would be equally repugnant to anyone who can be bothered to THINK.
Religion in general deserves all the brickbats it gets, but none quite so much as Christianity.
And (I have to mention this again) treat empathy as anathema, a negative trait to be avoided at all costs. These are scared little snots who, whether consciously or unconsciously, know that they are not only in the vast minority, but that their numbers are dwindling at what to them must be an alarming rate. Their reaction? To lash out and attack anything that isn't them.
What to do about them? Above all else, keep them from influencing others.
Moderate evangelicals almost feels like a contradiction in terms. It IS a fact, though, that those same moderates supply cover for the more boisterous and radical of their number, either because they're scared or, the classic line, "I don't want to get involved."
What they don't know is that THEY ARE ALREADY INVOLVED ... and inaction here is, indeed, action.
Xtianity is indeed a cancer. Basing life decisions on fiction leads to bad outcomes. Imagine basing your decisions on what Harry Potter or Gandalf did or said and then demanding that others do the same. This is the madness that xtianity inflicts on society as a whole.
"And they want it both ways, because in the religion, that duplicity is taught. You can be morally duplicitous. You thrive in cognitive dissonance. And so this is just a massive, massive problem."
Living one's life based on a FICTION. If it were a well-thought-out fiction, that might be one thing. It ISN'T, and the fallout has shown itself entirely too much over the last two millennia.
That brings another point: the society of 2000 years ago bears only a fractional resemblance to life and people of the 21st century. Oh, some basics are still there, but the dynamics over two millennia have become a LOT more complex and convoluted.
Expecting the bible to be able to cover and have relevance after all that time is a fool's errand.
Yes, cupcake, your faith is indeed a cancer. You're selfish beyond all but the oligarchs, you're delusional beyond all but the court-imposed institutionalized, and the harm you've already caused is beyond the pale. Go feed worms.
Everyone should understand that essays like this one are preparing the ground for "domestic terror" charges for "anti-Christian bias" under NSPM-7. We must connect those dots.
Some evangelicals are nice, and Christian Nationalism is right up there among the very worst ideologies ever. Both those statements can be true. Yes, the guy who set my house on fire has nice parents. They're lovely people. But can we talk about how he set my house on fire?
“But legitimate criticism of their political choices has shaded into something darker: contempt for an entire group of Americans.”
Pot, kettle, black.
Jesus Christ. White evangelicals are gleefully posing next to “Alligator Alcatraz” signs, saying that the alligators will be well fed (a clear callback to slavery and Jim Crow, feeding black babies to alligators) because they have decided all Latinos and Hispanics and people of darker skin are inherently criminal. They are the ones at Trump rallies talking about how “illegal immigrants” deserve what they’re getting just because they don’t have the right paperwork, or they do but ICE doesn’t care. They’re painting with the big brush, but now they’re upset that their political opponents have their own brushes.
If evangelicals didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have standards at all. Being nice to your white Christian neighbor isn’t a flex, being humane to the people that are different from you or who don’t do anything for you, is a better indicator of your goodness, though it’s still the bare minimum. And they fail at that.
"No doubt evangelicals bring casseroles to sick neighbors."
I went through three episodes of losing an immediate family member (with the help of hospice each time), and we never received the first knock on the door here in rural SC, surrounded by family for miles around.
But I do love the concept that white evangelicals, even in the deep south, give a fark about ANYTHING but themselves. That's really nice....
Unfortunately, my predictions about US Christian Nationalism are turning out to be right. Here are some articles on long-term outcomes of these sort of policies on broader USA:
Also, if you are confused about rise of White Christian Nationalism and/or have relatives that converted to Christianity because of politics, here are some articles on their reasoning. I'd say happy reading but, what they are talking about in the articles and their reasoning should scare you! :
I think we could use more people like Jennifer Welch freely criticizing fundamentalists (especially Christian fundamentalists in the USA). I will openly criticize any Christianity on any given day, but especially now as they have overthrown our government. It’s a line too far some might say. No one cares if their feelings are hurt any longer and perhaps we should all have been paying closer attention to their very clear intentions decades ago.
𝐼'𝑚 𝑎𝑛 𝑒𝑣𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙. 𝑀𝑦 𝑓𝑎𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑖𝑠𝑛'𝑡 𝑎 𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑟.
Agree to disagree on that one. Your faith IS a cancer, in its impact on people who don't believe as you do, but whose lives are being impacted by the restrictive mean-spiritedness of YOUR beliefs. You named a number of them, from castigating the LGBTQ+ community to immigrants coming to the US, whether to escape REAL persecution to trying to find a better life for themselves. You've decided that empathy is anathema to Christianity, when Jesus clearly thought of it as a necessity (at least part of the time).
Essentially, you and those like you have turned Christianity into a weapon to attack anyone who isn't you, who doesn't agree with you, who has the temerity to live a life different from you. I would heartily suggest that you deal with the lumber in your own eye before you attempt to handle the speck in someone else's.
They have become convinced that their narrow interpretation of tha bible describes the only way people should live, and they see no problem with forcing compliance with that interpretation.
Being in a bubble, they revel in their own self-perceived rectitude and care not about the hard their BS does to others.
I've said it before and will repeat: a reckoning is needed.
The evangelical excesses may be the work of a few, but I don’t see the many doing anything to rein them in. At the end of the day the thing I detest most about the evangelicals is their conviction they have the right to force their religion on others. They have no such right, and they have little to no respect for the religious right of others. Once people become convinced they’re operating under divine sanction, they’re capable of justifying just about any behavior.
Indeed, it's the iceberg effect again. We see those making the noise. What is less visible are those who support the noisemakers with their silence. They need to be called out as much as those who are actively doing harm.
And the sooner, the better.
It is the fact that the rank and file do not rein in the few leaders committing the excesses that warrants the criticism.
They're the worst kind of herd animals. The kind that simply cannot or will not think for themselves.
That's why they call them, "sheep."
I worked on a sheep farm as a teen. A joke the farmer made when things weren't going well was "We lose money on every sheep but we make up for it in volume."
Sure, a lot of white evangelicals suck -- but they make up for it in volume.
More generally, I like how Hemant focused on the all too typically poor logic. These folk arent even wrong.
PS: I'm feeling human again!
Someone is pulling the wool over the farmer's eyes. 🐑
Welcome back to humanity.
I'm sorry, is the "nice" white Evangelical lady asking us to have compassion and understanding for the group that:
Calls LGBTQ people groomers?
Says trans people are mentally ill?
Actively persecutes trans children attempting to live and play sports?
Calls Democrats "Demoncrats"
Denies progressive Christians are people of faith?
Demonizes all Muslims as terrorists and illiberal authoritarian fundamentalists?
Calls progressive protestors communists and anti-American and passes laws allowing motorists to run them down?
Viewed BLM as a violent movement that burned cities to the ground and celebrates Kyle Rittenhouse?
Calls women who choose abortion "sluts"?
Calls people who are pro-choice "baby killers"?
Says that doctors and nurses are killing people with vaccines for big pharma profits?
Accuses people they hate of being cannibalistic child pedophiles?
Said that AIDS was God's punishment for homosexuals?
Says that every natural disaster was God's punishment on the rest of us for not cracking down and persecuting gay people?
Hates churches that have women pastors?
Demonizes and persecutes immigrants and refugees and cheers draconian policies that actively hurt innocent people AND slanders and hates the charities that try to help immigrants and refugees?
Cheers a man and votes for men who are credibly accused of sexual violence or domestic violence?
Oh, I'm sorry, it hurts your feelings when people get angry about your group that overwhelmingly and actively harms actual innocent people every chance it gets? How horrid for you.
All of that she files under the headings "some evangelicals do some bad things" and "not all evangelicals". Because she, personally, doesn't like Trump, she thinks that any criticism of evangelical Christianity should be limited to vague assertion ls that a small number of them are bad but all the rest are wonderful. She is either lying or the biases of her bubble won't let her see reality, or maybe both.
Add to that the fact that Christianity as a whole deserves (and indeed has gotten) considerable analysis and criticism for its tendency to argue both sides of the argument, never mind the introduction of the concept of hell, AND a heaven which would be equally repugnant to anyone who can be bothered to THINK.
Religion in general deserves all the brickbats it gets, but none quite so much as Christianity.
And (I have to mention this again) treat empathy as anathema, a negative trait to be avoided at all costs. These are scared little snots who, whether consciously or unconsciously, know that they are not only in the vast minority, but that their numbers are dwindling at what to them must be an alarming rate. Their reaction? To lash out and attack anything that isn't them.
What to do about them? Above all else, keep them from influencing others.
Nothing left for me to say.
Nothing is something.
Words would just get in the way (couldn't resist the rhyme *smiles*).
I don't disagree with the sentiment, but if we're relying on moderates to police the fundamentalists, pretty sure we're all f---ed
Moderate evangelicals almost feels like a contradiction in terms. It IS a fact, though, that those same moderates supply cover for the more boisterous and radical of their number, either because they're scared or, the classic line, "I don't want to get involved."
What they don't know is that THEY ARE ALREADY INVOLVED ... and inaction here is, indeed, action.
A certain regular here who seems to be in denial comes to mind...
Silence=complicity
Xtianity is indeed a cancer. Basing life decisions on fiction leads to bad outcomes. Imagine basing your decisions on what Harry Potter or Gandalf did or said and then demanding that others do the same. This is the madness that xtianity inflicts on society as a whole.
"And they want it both ways, because in the religion, that duplicity is taught. You can be morally duplicitous. You thrive in cognitive dissonance. And so this is just a massive, massive problem."
Spot on
Living one's life based on a FICTION. If it were a well-thought-out fiction, that might be one thing. It ISN'T, and the fallout has shown itself entirely too much over the last two millennia.
"A Canticle for Leibowitz."
One of the best required readings I had in Junior High.
Heard of it. Never actually read it. Noted for futures, with thanks!
It's a good read and entertaining and also shows the ridiculousness of basing life upon writings from long dead characters.
That brings another point: the society of 2000 years ago bears only a fractional resemblance to life and people of the 21st century. Oh, some basics are still there, but the dynamics over two millennia have become a LOT more complex and convoluted.
Expecting the bible to be able to cover and have relevance after all that time is a fool's errand.
Yes, cupcake, your faith is indeed a cancer. You're selfish beyond all but the oligarchs, you're delusional beyond all but the court-imposed institutionalized, and the harm you've already caused is beyond the pale. Go feed worms.
Everyone should understand that essays like this one are preparing the ground for "domestic terror" charges for "anti-Christian bias" under NSPM-7. We must connect those dots.
"Not all evangelicals" is the religious version of "not all men", and it has been given the power of the state to oppress anyone who pushes back.
A 𝑻𝒓𝒖𝒆 𝑺𝒄𝒐𝒕𝒔𝒎𝒂𝒏 has entered the chat.
😉
Some evangelicals are nice, and Christian Nationalism is right up there among the very worst ideologies ever. Both those statements can be true. Yes, the guy who set my house on fire has nice parents. They're lovely people. But can we talk about how he set my house on fire?
He was a lovely guest at the dinner party.....right up until he set the house on fire to cleanse we sinners.
Hard not to think of Dylan Roof in that same context.
Apparently the cops thought so too, taking him for fast food on the way to booking him the murders of so many innocent people.
Goldfish are “nice”
Crunchy, too!
𝐾𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑛 ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑓 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑑 𝑇𝑎𝑙𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑜’𝑠 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑦 “𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑖𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑦 ℎ𝑒𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑜𝑑𝑜𝑥, 𝑖𝑓 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑜𝑢𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙.”
Failing to see her own hypocrisy.
“But legitimate criticism of their political choices has shaded into something darker: contempt for an entire group of Americans.”
Pot, kettle, black.
Jesus Christ. White evangelicals are gleefully posing next to “Alligator Alcatraz” signs, saying that the alligators will be well fed (a clear callback to slavery and Jim Crow, feeding black babies to alligators) because they have decided all Latinos and Hispanics and people of darker skin are inherently criminal. They are the ones at Trump rallies talking about how “illegal immigrants” deserve what they’re getting just because they don’t have the right paperwork, or they do but ICE doesn’t care. They’re painting with the big brush, but now they’re upset that their political opponents have their own brushes.
If evangelicals didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have standards at all. Being nice to your white Christian neighbor isn’t a flex, being humane to the people that are different from you or who don’t do anything for you, is a better indicator of your goodness, though it’s still the bare minimum. And they fail at that.
Saying that there are fine evengelical leaders is like saying some of the Nazis were good people.
"Good people on both sides."
"No doubt evangelicals bring casseroles to sick neighbors."
I went through three episodes of losing an immediate family member (with the help of hospice each time), and we never received the first knock on the door here in rural SC, surrounded by family for miles around.
But I do love the concept that white evangelicals, even in the deep south, give a fark about ANYTHING but themselves. That's really nice....
Unfortunately, my predictions about US Christian Nationalism are turning out to be right. Here are some articles on long-term outcomes of these sort of policies on broader USA:
https://wendy664.substack.com/p/the-christian-nationalist-state-is
https://suchwow.substack.com/p/theocracy-is-hell-at-home-1-things
https://andrawatkins.substack.com/p/the-white-christian-nationalist-end
--------------------
Also, if you are confused about rise of White Christian Nationalism and/or have relatives that converted to Christianity because of politics, here are some articles on their reasoning. I'd say happy reading but, what they are talking about in the articles and their reasoning should scare you! :
https://matteroftheology.substack.com/p/a-christian-nation-through-the-great
https://www.mitchellmiles.com/p/america-has-identity-dysphoria
I think we could use more people like Jennifer Welch freely criticizing fundamentalists (especially Christian fundamentalists in the USA). I will openly criticize any Christianity on any given day, but especially now as they have overthrown our government. It’s a line too far some might say. No one cares if their feelings are hurt any longer and perhaps we should all have been paying closer attention to their very clear intentions decades ago.
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/18vFDciAn2/?mibextid=wwXIfr
I’m going to use the phrase “death cult doctrine” from now on 😎