[lbo-talk] Re: Christians from Hell

Dwayne Monroe idoru345 at yahoo.com
Thu Dec 16 13:29:59 PST 2004


Chuck Grimes wrote:

As Kurtz said, Exterminate the Brutes.

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Uh oh, this is going to generate recriminations.

...

From time to time I tease my Christian friends with a little joke (yes indeed, I do have old friends who regularly attend church and puzzle over the state of their souls -- they lean towards the more liberal, I-believe-in-guided-evolution end of the spectrum but the God concept is on their minds).

Someone will bring up a news item -- perhaps something like that American judge who insisted on wearing the Ten Commandments on his robe -- I'll sigh and wonder why the Romans "failed to deal decisively with this issue in its infancy."

Petty cruelness I know but I'm not a perfect bloke.

...

For perfectly understandable reasons many folks are now focused on understanding American religious expression and its political consequences. The Black Commentator article Kelley posted is a good example of the more thoughtful efforts being made.

It's important to dive into this stuff -- the mechanics of evangelical political activism must be understood -- but I think there's a danger of excessive analysis that accurately lists all the trees but fails to see the forest.

Anyone who's familiar with evangelical Christianity from the inside - as I am - knows that the idea of faith, "the evidence of things unseen" as the over-used phrase has it, lies at the core. You are to believe, that is all.

From this simple command can flow an ocean of trouble as we're now seeing. Of course, racism is mixed in and a host of other unproductive habits of thought but the key thing to remember when trying to understand this pulsating mass of contradictions is the admonition to believe, simply believe, that all Christians -- and especially evangelicals -- take to heart as their prime directive.

This reduces Christianity, which, like all faiths, can at the best of times be a contemplation of infinite concerns, to a tribal war god cult.

Gone is the mystery of Job who debated God on the nature of existence. Gone too (and this is the irony of ironies) is the message of Christ who, the stories tell us, encouraged his followers to love their neighbors as themselves (a very clever formulation that simultaneously promotes a healthy regard for oneself and everyone else).

All swept aside -- though lip service is still paid -- in service to faith.

...

This is opposed -- eternally I think -- to what we can call the scientific view: hypothesis, observation, experimentation, correction of assumptions, etc. Yes I know, there are evangelical Christian scientists and engineers - people compartmentalize their critical reasoning abilities. Science on the job, pure faith everywhere else.

At this moment, it's difficult to imagine how what I'll loosely describe as the modern project can proceed too far in America so long as the pure faith bloc remains as a large, mobilizable force.

.d.



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