Somebody reminded me of this yesterday, and it's related to some of the discussions we've had before. Jeffrey Fisher articulated it when he said that the issue wasn't about quoting the bible or even having an intimate familiarity with it.
Carl's "good Christians" tend to be denominational xtians. The New Testament figures prominently. The life of Jesus matters to them.
But, you've probably heard that evangelicals want to live as "First Century Christians". Thus, they focus on a _personal relationship with jesus_. I think most of us familiar with mainline xtianity, liberal xtianity, etc. are not at all used to thinking of it that way. Jesus may be the way, but I honestly can't remember anything about any of the Sunday school or sermons I attended talking about a _personal_ relationship with Jesus.
Anyway, they aren't interested in how Jesus lived or what Jesus said--unless, I suppose, if it suits their purposes. They want to live like 1st century xtians--hence the rejection of denominational xtianity. Denominations get in the way of your personal relationship to Jesus. She also reminded me of what we've talked about before, the phases that are important to evangelicals: Old testament phase, Jesus' life phase, and post-ressurection, Paul, and born-again Christianity phase.
Consequently, she wrote, "when people say things like feed the hungry or render unto Caesar, the conservative Christians listen politely but don't find it terribly relevant. They are waiting until you finish to find out whether you are born again - or not worth listening to."
If any groups need to get a grip on that, it's the liberal xtians.
Personally, what I think is more insidious is the rhetoric of witnessing or testifying. You can get all het up and excited about the bizarre comments made on rightwing/xtian radio, sure. But don't forget to pay attention to the ordinary practice of testifying where, as I pointed out yesterday, the goal is twofold:
1. preface your comment with something like, "I don't want to upset the non-religious..."
translation help: religious = evangelical xtianity. everything else is non-religious translation help2: the non-religious are the intolerant minority that controls public discourse.
2. In the 'specimen' I sent yesterday, the woman--for no apparent reason--decided that something someone said was obviously biblical. Never mind that the connection she drew made no sense. Her biblical quote was so generic as to be meaningless. There was nothing special about it that you couldn't find the same damn thing in another religious tradition, cultural, or secular moral tradition.
translation help: a value that most of us could probably find in just about any culture we've ever examined, is turned into a special value unique to this particular version of xtianity.
What went unsaid in that convo, though I had to sit on my hands not to bring it up, was the fact that, had I challenged her either by pointing out that other religions and moral traditions say the same or had I asked about whether that quote applied to, say, the war in Iraq and how we should have dealt with Saddam, the response would have been to paint my question as hostile to "religious people" or attempting to silence "religious people."
Kelley
"We live under the Confederacy. We're a podunk bunch of swaggering pious hicks."
--Bruce Sterling