Ashcroft's prayer circle

Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema crdbronx at erols.com
Wed May 16 19:01:15 PDT 2001


I had in mind the SotM's quick appeal to those who want to see Christianity as an ideology of sympathy, kindness, and love, in particular, of the poor and oppressed. And who like to think of people like Ashcroft as people who just got the sublime message wrong. As I tried to suggest, Christianity expresses a chronic, unresolved ambivalence about domination and submission. Hence the liberative potential of Christian faith, which has had many manifestations, carries its own limitations. Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema

Gordon Fitch wrote:


> Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema:
> > Don't hold your breath. What you cite is the feminine masochist side of
> > Christianity. One of the more elementary clinical insights is that when you
> > see M, all you have to do is dig a little deeper and S is there somewhere,
> > maybe a bit hidden, maybe not so much. It's helpful to recognize Christian
> > faith as an ideologized manifestation of sado-masochistic character
> > structure, organized along lines of gender. It'll be a while before these
> > guys' sadistic impulses give out. The sermon on the mount is one of the more
> > meretricious biblical texts.
>
> I've never figured out what a lot of it means, so if you know
> it's meretricious you're way ahead of me. For instance, I've
> meditated on Matt 5:3 off and on for about forty years; looked
> up _ptokhoi_ and the uses of the dative case; asked people
> who should have known -- but it's still obscure. Of course,
> as the guy said elsewhere, "You don't belong to the kingdom
> of heaven, so you can't see the kingdom of heaven" -- maybe
> that's what cuts me out.



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