<< 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; >>
Well, all Christians believe that Jesus rose from the dead. (Don't believe it? Then you're not a Christian.) That "common thread" should be enough to give pause to any thinking person; most cultures treat the idea of the risen dead as an object of horror. Most Christians do, too, but seem to give a pass to Jesus. Believers of my acquaintance (and this included me for many years) tend to address the Resurrection in abstract and metaphorical terms, almost reflexively avoiding the idea of the actual risen body. Paradoxically, the people I've found who are most comfortable with it are left-leaning clergy who understand that a literal belief in the Resurrection is necessary. They can question some of the other stuff but forefront this core of their faith and their Christian identity.
<< 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. >>
And I agree. It's too much like other abuses of authority to be singled out as particularly "Christian."
Anything more on the ties to Ashcroft? That's what got my attention in the original article.
----Original Message Follows---- From: Kelley Walker <kwalker2 at gte.net> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com, lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Subject: Re: Christian love Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 12:03:19 -0400
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
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