Steve Gotzler
----- Original Message ----- From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>; <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> Sent: Friday, June 10, 2005 5:48 PM Subject: [lbo-talk] Christianity vs. Christianism/Political Christianity
> >[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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>
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>