- cross-posted to:
- atheism@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- atheism@lemmy.world
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/3377375
I read an essay by a christian a while ago that pointed out that the separation of church and state wasn’t about protecting the state from religion - it was about protecting religion from the state.
The gist of the argument was that religion should be concentrating on the eternal, and politics, by necessity, concentrates on the immediate. The author was concerned that welding religion and politics together would make religion itself political, meaning it would have to conform to the secular moment rather than looking to saving souls or whatever.
The mind meld of evangelical christianity and right wing politics happened in the mid to late 70s when the US was trying to racially integrate christian universities, which had been severely limiting or excluding black students. Since then, republicans and christians have been in bed together. The southern baptist convention, in fact, originally endorsed the Roe decision because it helped the cause of women. It was only after they decided to go all in on social conservatism that it became a sin.
Christians today are growing concerned about a falloff in attendance and membership. This article concentrates on how conservatism has become a call for people to publicly identify as evangelical while not actually being religious, because it’s an our team thing.
Evangelicals made an ironically Faustian bargain and are starting to realize it.
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can we start calling these “evangelicals” for what they are? cultist recruiters
Nationalist-christians, or “Nat-Cs” for short.
Hmmm, let’s see…
- Denigration of homosexuals
- Disregard for democracy or anything resembling the will of the majority
- The desire to install a dictator-for-life
- The worshipful adulation of that dictator
- Willingness to commit acts of violence for both political and social reasons
- The absolute certainty that God is with them (it sounds better in German)
Yeah, that checks out.
Can’t really be a Christian if you reject Christ.
Tell it to the majority of historical Popes.
So kind of like the national socialists rejecting socialism…
In name only.
Like the DPRK or the CCP.
Christian Taliban would do.
I like the term: Y’all Qaeda.
In an interview with NPR, Russell Moore, who is editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, said that he hears from pastors who tell him about congregants who take umbrage at Jesus telling his followers to turn the other cheek. Moore said that someone invariably comes up to the pastor afterwards and says, “Where did you get those liberal talking points?”
This is real? This isn’t the Onion?
Figures after taking 50 years to finally realize that conservatism is incompatible with the teachings of Jesus, they’d pick conservatism. Should have seen that coming, honestly.
This is real? This isn’t the Onion?
This is “conservative” USA, yes.
This is real? This isn’t the Onion?
Striving for peace and equality is reserved for liberal, commie pinkos.
Evangelicals have been a lost cause since the mid-80s. They store everything on earth, not in heaven.
They were already lost by the late 60s, early 70s. The proliferation of evangelical schools was in direct response to integration. They didn’t want their precious little children to have to go to school with black kids so they pulled them out of public schools and put them in segregation academies. Now they want to pull all the
federalmoney from the public schools they abandoned out of racism and divert it into their segregation academy system.They also shut down a lot of public pools because they didn’t want to swim with black people.
Once I heard about this I looked at the founding dates of all the private schools in my area. Everything was founded in the mid 70’s.
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If I am remembering correctly the only thing needed to get into heaven is to accept Jesus as your saviour and truely believe. Most of these people believe they are saved because they said some words and attend church regularly. They dont know the scripture outside the big ones, John 3:16 and probably the one in Leviticus about not sleeping with another man. Everything else is new to them every time they hear it.
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If I am remembering correctly the only thing needed to get into heaven is to accept Jesus as your saviour and truely believe.
Bible isn’t clear. Lots of debate about this. They could just admit that there is no afterlife and save themselves the trouble of debating it.
It would be really funny if they started paying more attention to the context surrounding the different books in the bible. Like how all Leviticus is canonically the laws of the tribe of Levi and give context for Jewish laws and how Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon were all written by an asshole who already enjoyed telling people what to do who never met Jesus - just hit his head on a rock and said he hallucinated him but went on to become his own cult leader.
Well the author doesn’t say that any of them said that, he’s just assuming some people think like that.
In an interview with NPR, Russell Moore, who is editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, said that he hears from pastors who tell him about congregants who take umbrage at Jesus telling his followers to turn the other cheek. Moore said that someone invariably comes up to the pastor afterwards and says, “Where did you get those liberal talking points?”
“And what was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, ‘I’m literally quoting Jesus Christ,’ the response would not be, ‘I apologize,‘” Moore recounted. “The response would be, ‘Yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. That’s weak.’” For him, that shows that Christianity is in a state of crisis.
Literally from the article. Not sure how much closer to the horse’s mouth you need it to be. I’m in a pretty conservative area and this also rings true to sentiments I’ve heard from supposed Christians.
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I like your Christ, you Christians are nothing like your Christ
The closer I got to Christ, the less republican I became. I had to actually stop going to church because my views changed so drastically, the other church members were attacking me. It’s certainly crazy to discover that mainstream Christianity today is anything but.
Christianity today is anything but.
It has pretty much always been that way. This isn’t new. Your eyes have just been opened to it. Conservatives especially, but most Christians cherry pick passages from the Bible to justify their actions, which is easy to do, since every passage has a contradicting one. Conservatives have now focused on only the old testament, which is mostly Judaism, and they ignore the new testament, you know, the part of Jesus. They like the fire, retribution, punishment, ect. Screw all that hippy bullshit love thy neighbor. Feed the hungry and poor.
I remember in jr high relgion class and learning about how jesus was fighting against corupt religious authority. In a Catholic school
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It is because, like pretty much all religions, it is used as a tool to get people to act a certain way. It is why we had the crusades hundreds and hundreds of years ago, and why we have the jihad situation now.
If you have to be a good person from the threat of eternal damnation, you’re not a good person, you’re just evil on a leash.
Christians talk about “thought crimes”. My grandfather who was a minister for 30 years legitimately believes that if he sees written profanity, he will go to hell. He even believes that partaking in alcohol consumption will send you straight to hell (completely ignoring the fact that Jesus provided wine for a party).
Christianity was a grassroots religion for roughly 300 years, but then emperor Constantine “helped” to “standartize” it. Ever since then Christianity is more about making you more manageable by the state than it is about saving your soul.
Just imagine Christ coming back, a middle east person with a beard and a darker skin tone, no machine gun, no MAGA hat, not “Vote Trump Or Die” pin on his tunic, and a message of peace and understanding. Most US “Christians” would be seriously disappointed. Or at least confused.
They would be putting him back on the cross
There’s an old Margaret Cho joke about how if Jesus were to return today, he’d be screaming, “THAT’S NOT WHAT I MEANT!”
“I read an essay by a christian a while ago that pointed out that the separation of church and state wasn’t about protecting the state from religion - it was about protecting religion from the state.”
Without knowing the author or their reasons for saying that, I would say that they have it wrong entirely. The majority of governments before the US almost always had some level of theocracy attached to it. We took our independence from a man who quite literally was pretending to be God’s representative on earth.
Within that context, its very hard to see the constitution as intending anything other than a full divorce between politics and religion.
It’s more that it was about protecting both from each other. If you read Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, most of it is about how it’s wrong to use state power to enforce religion, but he does throw in this section as well:
“[Mixing religion and politics] tends to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing, with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments.”
That single sentence in a body of work you acknowledge agrees with me isn’t a very good smoking gun.
Jefferson was the ideological head of a conspiracy to steal land and autonomy from a theocratic state. I also believe some of the first laws enacted by the warring colonies was that Anglican churches were no longer allowed to swear allegiance to the king.
I don’t know why its 2023 and there is still this active fight to reframe the creation of the US itself as a Christian act.
As a European, even though I know of the separation of church and state in the US, I feel that religion in politics still is very important in the states.
I mean that most candidates are very publicly religious and I have the idea that religious affiliation is still very important in the electoral vote, more so than where I live.
Correct me if I’m wrong, by the way, but I don’t know what religion most of our politicians abide by, except those in a religious party. Where I would think that in America, if a candidate were non religious it would affect electability.
You are 100% right, here is a study from 2016 which shows being atheist hurts worse than being muslim.
Yes, but in the US we don’t make our leader the head of a state religion when they take office.
That is what the Brits do. And, quite frankly, when Henry VIII made that move to get out from under papal control, I’d say it was a pretty progressive act.
But my comment was about how important the religiosity of political candidates is in an electoral correct. I have little insight into the importance of religious status of candidates in Britain, but I don’t think the British electorate really cares is someone is Catholic.
I don’t know if a king starting his own religion to avoid following the rules of a different religion is that progressive.
Much debate can be had. It is obviously self-serving and not ideological.
However for the time denouncing the pope was kind of radical. I kind of forgot that the refomation was going on in the mean time, so that he was probably using that as example and excuse. So that makes it a bit less progressive still…
Well I’ll retract my statement, though a bold move it was.
I’d say that the separation is a little bit of both. It protects government from religion, but it can also protect religion from government. Back in England, the head of the church was the king of England. If the king decided that everyone needed to pray while balancing on their right foot, that’s what would be done. So how you prayed was dependent on the government (the king).
Now, the people pushing Christian theocracy are fine with tearing down the wall between Church and State because they all assume that THEIR religion will be the one in charge. But imagine how much they’d howl if a Select Congressional Committee On Prayer determined that all prayer books needed to be rewritten to add in some new prayers and remove old ones.
They’d go berserk over the government interfering in their religious practices. The separation prevents the government from mucking about in religion unless there’s a major issue. (Sorry, no human sacrifices.)
The Christian right doesn’t consider this at all and they could seriously regret it if they ever reach their goal. (We’d definitely regret it more, of course.)
At the time of the Constitution there were several states with official state religions (Pennslyvania, Maryland, RI etc…) Separation of Church and state was more of making sure that the Federal Governent didn’t impose a religion upon the states themselves.
Odd because Madison who wrote the establishment clause formed it specifically to stop his state from having government funded religious schools.
The founding fathers had a significantly more progressive, more secular view of what the American society and government could and should be than the general population or even the general upper class.
Additionally I believe Madison ended up using a Virginia state religious freedom law to oppose religious school in the state.
While the language of the first Amendment should have banned state religion based solely on it’s text. It didn’t based on it’s interpretation.
Your argument is changing.
Separation of Church and state was more of making sure that the Federal Governent didn’t impose a religion upon the states themselves
I pointed out that it was specifically designed on the state level.
That’s not a changing argument. The 1st Amendment didn’t outlaw religion in state government. It’s goal was to prevent a Federal government from being able to impose a religious mandate upon a state that didn’t want it.
Citation needed about it’s goal. Because I gave you a proof from the man who wrote it.
Pennsylvania and Rhode Island never had established churches; both were founded in part as havens for religious dissenters.
Were any of those States allowed to keep their state religions after the ratification of the constution or did they immediately start following the law and separated their recognition of a church being the state religion?
But yes, the constitution outright was outlawing the formation of theocratic arms of the state.
All of them kept them. For example Mass had a state religion until 1833. Most kept them until the mid to late 1800s when the amount of Irish Catholic and German/Lutheran immigrants made it clear that if they kept a state religion that it wasn’t going to remain theirs.
Most of the state churches were disestablished before the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791; Connecticut and Massachusetts being the exceptions.
It appears 1833 is when Massachusetts formally adopted their state constitution, so that is likely the reason in.that case, hut I will look more into it.
These are the same people who are protesting at libraries while their children are literally raped by clergy.
They’re the kind of evil that is unaware of the fact that they are evil.
Wow! This is literally a case of Poe’s Law in action!
I was ready to discount this as satire, especially when they ran the quote from Russell Moore speaking to NPR, but failing to quote the source…
So I ran it down, sure enough!
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/08/1192663920/southern-baptist-convention-donald-trump-christianity
"On why he thinks Christianity is in crisis:
It was the result of having multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount, parenthetically, in their preaching — “turn the other cheek” — [and] to have someone come up after to say, “Where did you get those liberal talking points?” And what was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, “I’m literally quoting Jesus Christ,” the response would not be, “I apologize.” The response would be, “Yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. That’s weak.” And when we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we’re in a crisis."
Mans was a brown-skinned socialist Jew. They’d lynch him if they could.
“They hated Jesus, because he told them the truth”
There is nobody more pretentious and judgemental than an evangelical.
protip: evangelicalizing was always smokescreen for racists, baptists same, catholics same. christianity is racism, always has been, always will be.
Sorry but no, that’s way too broad of a brush. There definitely ARE sects of christianity that are good, kind, and loving. They might be the minority (or at least seem to be the minority) but they do exist, and there are millions of those congregants.
While no one is perfect, Jesuits are a good example.
Jesuits formally declared that a commitment to justice was essential to their order’s work. This development brought many Jesuits to take progressive stances in religion and politics alike. Jesuits in Latin America, for example, adopted aspects of liberation theology, which emphasized concern for the poor and oppressed: providing for people not only spiritually, but materially. Today, in the minds of many, Jesuits continue to be associated with more progressive and liberal viewpoints.
Quakers, Episcopalians, UUs generally seemed on the decent side, at least with what they claim to believe and based on my personal anecdata.
And what’s their reward? A dying denomination.
The only growing Christian populations are the hateful ones. I have to deal with the Christians that actually exist.
Not once have they spoke out of denounced their radical brethren.
By the logic of ACAB, it’s not just bad apples it’s the whole damn bunch.
You’re not cynical enough yet. Humanity itself is the bunch.
actually I am but I am open to being wrong and therefore Pleasantly surprised.
🤔 You know, extraterrestrials could be too. If they naturally evolved, it’s almost guaranteed. Life selects for evil behavior.
Look at me, the naive optimist again.
Don’t say that. It’s good to be optimistic. We just have to be willing to accept reality if it violates our expectations.
Like say aliens turn out to be benevolent (or at least very good at pretending they are). That would violate my expectations, and I would honestly welcome it. It’s good to be wrong sometimes.
I always try to keep in mind that when talking about groups to which I am not a member, they are likely more diverse than their representation would suggest. Examples like this really help clear things up. These are people to whom I would be proud to be an ally.
Now look at what the Jesuits were up to 3/400 years ago and see whether you still want to be associated with them.
Only 40 years ago, my best friend was pissing and shitting his pants. He’s an alright bloke, these days.
I don’t care what they did hundreds of years ago. I judge people on who they are, not on who their grand parents were.
Joining a club is different from who your parents were, one is a deliberate choice.
But yay child-abuse-enabling religion I guess.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend. That means Jesus and I are now cool with each other, even though his whole story is sus AF.
Did you ever watch Black Jesus? Everybody thought he was loony as fuck but they appreciated the spirit in which he went about things, so instead of revering him they just help him out like they would any other friend. I’d chill with Jesus.
The enemy of your enemy is by no means necessarily your friend. They may be useful to you, but don’t take your eyes off your valuables or your kids around a preacher.
Did they want to only hear the part about the fig tree? Jesus has wrath unimaginable. He whipped people for selling merchandise in a church.
“It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves” (verse 22, KJV). Jesus was a bad ass, and he would have whipped the entire GOP and ran them from his house had he been alive now.
I hate evangerlicals becuase they sound like con artists and grifters
I hate them because they’re committing genocide against me and people like me.
What genocide are christians commiting?
I don’t know if I’d call it a genocide but they are pushing trans hate and that has gotten people killed in the past.
They’re ramping up to it. The U.S. is at a hard Stage 7 on the genocide scale.
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis
https://newrepublic.com/post/172444/florida-passes-bill-allowing-trans-kids-taken-families
this meets the UN definition of genocide
No it doesn’t. From the Wikipedia article:
In 1948, the United Nations Genocide Convention defined genocide as any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.
Trans people are none of these. They probably should be included, but as of now, they aren’t.
Wait til you find out they are con artists and grifters.
Technically, it is turn the ‘left’ cheek. The way I remember it being explained to me is that Jewish law was clear: you strike your slave, you have to let them go. Now many slave owners still wanted to beat up their slaves, so they found a loophole. If you backhanded a slave, it wasn’t considered striking. How could someone tell it was backhanding? If the mark was on the ‘right’ cheek, since everyone was right-handed. Bunch of slaves asked Jesus what to do about it and he said
“When he goes to hit you, hold out your left cheek. If he hits you, you are free, and if he doesn’t, well, problem solved.”
This is not where this comes from. It comes from Christianity being a pacifist religion, not some weird pretend loophole about hitting your slave properly.
It’s a really simple concept - absolute nonviolence. There’s nothing “secret” about it at all. Whoever “explained” this to you was just perverting the religion, which is exactly what this article is about.
In general, if an explanation sounds like “slave masters hate this one neat trick” or an email forward from 1996, you should probably not buy into it.
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I’m sure Quakers believe all sorts of interesting things, but that doesn’t make them or this ahistorical explanation correct biblical scholarship.
What’s ahistorical about it?
The entire left-handed thing is made up after the fact. Riches, for instance, were seen as being borne by the left hand, far from the left hand being taboo.
There was no “slapping culture” among equals/non-equals.
More to the point, the line directly processing the “turn the other cheek” bit is literally a command to not resist evil people, and the whole being slapped thing is a metaphor.
Thanks, I appreciate your perspective.
How would one put their left cheek on their right side? I feel like you’d need to be upside down.
Edit: I figured it out
That’s just how it’s interpreted nowadays. In no way is Christianity absolutely pacificist. Jesus himself whipped the lenders at the temple.
Christianity is absolutely a pacifist religion. Christians are required to forgive those who do anything up to and including torture them to death.
Some of the absolute nonviolence stuff got put in to the King James version of the Bible because King James wanted a passive population.
One of my favorite bits from the Gandhi speechs on the sermon on the mount is about the “impossible” question Jesus got asked. The Roman army would randomly kidnap people and force them to hall there stuff. Israel was under occupation at the time and people wanted to resist that occupation. Also, hauling stuff on the sabbath was against the religious law. So Jesus got asked if he would hall stuff for the Roman army on a sabbath. If he said no, they were going to turn him in as a rebel. If he said yes, well, what religious leader says ignore the sabbath?
However, Jesus knew the rules on hauling for the Roman’s. They would only force you to haul until the next marker. If a Roman soldier forced you to do more than that, they would be whipped for disobeying the rules. So he simply stated: “If someone asked you to haul for one mile, haul for two. Then call out ’ I have hauled for two miles, how many more do I have to do?’ Then the solder who asked you to do this will be whipped. If all Jews did this, the army would stop asking jews to haul - thus preserving the sabbath.”
It’s bizarre to me the things people will make up to rationalize to themselves that Christianity is not non-violent.
No one was seeking to “trick” romans into getting in trouble by hauling shit extra distances. That doesn’t even make sense as a concept. It’s again, email-forward level of “just trick the system!” It’s nonsense.
The entire point of that passage is that the Gospel is to be spread through meekness and humility. Which is why, you know, every single teaching of Jesus’s revolves around these concepts.
In what way was helping the Romans by lifting there stuff violent? The whole concept of Gandhi’s speeches was that pacifism wasn’t just rolling over and taking abuse. Jesus’s non-violent teaching went on to inspire many movements from Gandhi’s, Martin Luther and Martin Luther King. Trying it back the article, it seems people think non-violent = weak these days. I’m just pointing out that there is a nuance that has seemingly been lost, and sometimes the non-violent approach is one of the strongest approchs you can take to a situation.
I didn’t say carrying things for a roman was violent. I said the radical misinterpretations of Christianity are done to make room for violence. The “carry it 2 miles and get them in trouble” thing is just false, and the story about Ghandi referencing it probably apocryphal.
Jesus commands all Christians, very explicitly, to be non-violent regardless of circumstances, up to and including their own torture and death
Yes, but just because you are non-violent does not mean you have no way of fighting injustice, or are weak, as the Trumper say.
Sure! not arguing against that at all.
Someone said that to you and you believed them?
This was a methodist pastor summarizing a speech given by Gandhi on Jesus’s sermon on the mount which in of itself was a reinterpretation ancient Jewish law - so someone down the line might have got something wrong.
Slave in the back: Umm… Jesus? Isn’t…isn’t God against slavery? Can’t you just tell these assholes slavery is immoral and free us, instead of this gotchya cheek slapping shit?
Jesus: 🤣 stfu and obey your masters, even the cruel ones!
God compared his relationship to humanity to that of a master and a slave. It was also compared to a husband and a wife, so the nature of both human institutions have changed a bunch over the years. Back then it seems like both were ‘strong protect weak’ institutions and not ‘I own you so you mater not’ institutions.
🤣 Are we defending slavery now? Jesus Christ… How hard would it be for God to simply say thou shall not own another human being as property? Is that really so hard? Was he pressed for time? Because he spends shit loads of time talking about cattle and graven images, yet slavery he just can’t get right…
Almost like all this shit was written by humans 🤔…
Yugoslavia didn’t even exist during the time of Jesus, and that is the origin of the word ‘Slav(e)’. Human institutions change over time, see all the Christians freaking out over gay marriage. Condeming whatever people called slavery back then would be like condemning marriage, as they were considered similar institutions.
Correct me if im wrong here, but im pretty sure Yugoslavia has nothing to do with the etymology of ‘slave’. I thought it derives from the ethnonym of slavic people that were spread around south/east of europe
Oh, I knew it came from the Slavic people. I just thought it had something to do with Yugoslavia, as that was the only county I knew that had Slav in it name. I guess the Slavs as people might have been around 2000 years ago, so you are probably right.
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So what the hell would stop them from simply punching you in the face? Or nutshotting you?
