[lbo-talk] Christianity vs. Christianism/Political Christianity

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Fri Jun 10 14:48:50 PDT 2005



>[lbo-talk] "Damn, did God piss in your cheerios?"
>Steven Gotzler Steve at Gotzler.org
>Fri Jun 10 12:01:27 PDT 2005
<snip>
>One nice bright side is that once a church does finally take over
>and become THE state church it begins its fade. Almost all of the
>countries I can think of with established religions nowadays have
>little religious influence in real life. The down side is that
>this takes a long time. The process of one Godly house becoming
>the THE Godly house entails a lot of destruction and strife. First
>all the other Godly houses have to be defeated. After that it also
>seems that THE newly sanctified state church then has to reach out
>and attempt to save the rest of the world and show them the errors
>of their ways. After the ensuing wars and disasters and ultimate
>defeat, THEN the public finally starts to ignore its State Godly
>house.

The Right's strategy has been to paper over schisms within Christianity and incorporate Jews into a new virtual corporation called "the Judeo-Christian Tradition," whether Jews like it or not, making it seem as if they were the majority.

Our strategy is to reverse it: divide and conquer. Jewish activists and intellectuals on the left, whenever they hear anyone say "our Judeo-Christian values" or some such nonsense, ought to raise their eyebrows as archly as possible and loudly inquire about the fate of Jews upon the Rapture and other matters that put the first person plural into question. Mainline Protestants, Catholics, and Blacks should begin to adopt and propagate new usage: proudly reserve the terms "Christians" and "Christianity" for themselves, and consistently and insistently use the terms "Christianists," "Political Christians," "Christianism," and "Political Christianity" to refer to their enemies who claim to believe in the same religion as theirs. At the same time, expand the existing interfaith associations (e.g., <http://www.nain.org/>) linking ecumenical liberals and leftists from all faith traditions.

This is a winning strategy, if Christians on the left, who have hitherto been too nice to excommunicate theocrats, manage to stand firm and stay on message, no matter what. -- Yoshie

* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Monthly Review: <http://monthlyreview.org/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>



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