Christian love

[Kelley Walker]

At 11:41 AM 7/6/01 -0400, Doug Henwood wrote:
>Kelley Walker wrote:
>
>>that's not what was said. what was said that it wasn't surprising that X 
>>happened and that's because christianity is sado-masochistic. that's 
>>making one big grand stereotyping explanatory statment that has little 
>>evidence to support the assertion.
>>
>>i call that bigoted thinking. worse, it's bigoted because it authorized 
>>itself by appeal to a discourse that is supposed to be taken seriously 
>>because it calls itself scholarship.
>
>So there's no consistency to the various doctrines that have called 
>themselves Christian over the centuries? There are only many plural 
>Christianities?
>
>Doug

this from the man who likes to pull quotes from scripture to contradict the 
quotes offered up by true believers and other sorts.

christianity, like anything, is quite varied. one might be able to find 
some common thread that weaves throughout the various manifestations of it 
in various times and places. i don't know; it's not my area of 
specialization. i know enough about it to know that to claim it's 
inherently sadomascohistic would be ignoring a lot of other evidence.

i do think that the claim that it is sado-masochistic is lame for the very 
reasons chip maintains. the psychoanalytic thesis re: history and culture, 
like the psychoanalytic thesis about the human psyche and our ability to 
make claims about the operation of the pysche on extreme cases, lacks 
explanatory power.

i find it a fascinating and compelling set of tools to talk about how 
humans behave and why. and i maintain that even the neuropsychologist end 
up using psychoanalysis to explain individual level behavior. or rather, to 
conceptualize it.

but, in this case, to claim that what happened in this incident can be 
chalked up to the s-m tendencies of christianity just doesn't stand up to 
scrutiny.

kelley