Competing worldviews of fundamentalists and religious liberals (moral, tradition, homosexual)

[Green Gaia]

Awesome article here in case you haven't read it.

A snippet:

Who's afraid of freedom and tolerance?

Why are fundamentalists so frightened by liberal family values? A look at competing worldviews.
By Doug Muder
Fall 2005 8.15.05

Like most religious liberals, we Unitarian Universalists imagine ourselves to be nice people. It is those in the Christian Right, we believe, who want to force their moral code on everyone else and use public resources to proselytize for their faith. We, on the other hand, believe in tolerance, free choice, and letting people be what they have to be. What’s so scary about that? If the rank-and-file of organizations like Focus on the Family or the Christian Coalition feel threatened by us, we think, it can only be because they have been duped by their unscrupulous leaders.

Not necessarily.

True, preachers of the Christian Right have said a lot of unfair things about liberals, both religious and political. But conservative Christian fears have not been created ex nihilo. As overstated as those fears may at times become, they have a basis, and we would do well to understand it.

[Jayhawker Soule]

Thanks.

[robtex]

I liked the point about "wives in traditional marriages where the husband is dominant are three times as likely to be beaten than wives in egalitarian marriages." I am baffled as to why woman or men, if they really care about their wives of christianity and also islam think this that male dominated marraiges are a good thing. I think that philosophy may be one of the reasons for the higher divorce rate. With a definition like that in place they might as well change the word of wife to indentured servent.

I would like to point out that in the USA there is a wide interpretation of christianity as evidenced by the hundred's of different dominaitons including the unnamed ones called gererically, "nondenominational". As such I would say that The Christians who push for universal or absolute morality, male ownership of their wives and celebancy are a repensatation of specific christian institutions and but not the spectrum as a whole.

I meet Christians on a weekly basis that think like many of the UU's I know and sometimes I tell them they are "closet UU's but they just don't know it yet".

Because of the broad range of interpretation of chrisitianty by the christians themselves, defining the relgion becomes an intricate task. Interesting article could produce a lot of threads down the line.

[Bennettresearch]

Hi Maize,

As a conservative I don't sign on with right wing fundmentalists. Does that sound like it doesn't make sense? Fundamentalism is the "literal" reading of scripture. Very perilous as this would keep us from evolving into a better society. This is also where I don't sign on with liberalism. At what point don't we put the brakes on and say hold it right there, you are going in the wrong direction.

Maybe I can make it clear like this. Because our society has become fragmented, the concept of extended family has arisen. In concept, it can be a good thing in providing someone with something they lack. However, do we throw away the concept of a nuclear family? No we don't. This is why homosexual marriage is voted down so much. People want to put the brakes on and say that it would be going too far.

Therfore, it is wrong to be in bitter opposition to the concept of the "natural" way of things, ergo, the man, woman, and child as the roots of our society. Just because some hold on to outdated and misguided concepts like the Man being the unquestioned authority doesn't make the concept of the natural family unit invalid. Indeed, it is said nowadays that if a man just does everything his wife tells him to do, then he will have a happy marriage.

[Davidium]

Fundamentalism is not simply a "literal reading of scripture".... Because fundamentalism is not a kind of religion, but a type of belief. An "environmental Fundamentalist" has no connection with scripture at all, but can still be a fundamentalist.

There are UU fundamentalists....

The best definition of a Fundamentalist that I have yet encountered is one who "hates the negative more than they love the positive".

I have to get to a social action service on the Death Penalty, I will write more later.

YoUUrs in faith,

David

[Davidium]

In fact, I wrote a sermon on the topic of fundamentalism, and why it is not simply limited to Christianity about a year ago... Here is the link...

http://dynamicdeism.org/tpst/viewtopic.php?p=32#32

I went back and read it.... and realized it was still valid with my current position.

YoUUrs in Faith,

David

[lilithu]

Originally Posted by Bennettresearch

Hi Maize,

As a conservative I don't sign on with right wing fundmentalists. Does that sound like it doesn't make sense? Fundamentalism is the "literal" reading of scripture. Very perilous as this would keep us from evolving into a better society. This is also where I don't sign on with liberalism. At what point don't we put the brakes on and say hold it right there, you are going in the wrong direction.

Hi Bennettresearch, namaste.

Regarding liberalism, perhaps you would be interested in reading this thread:
Liberalism is dead. Long live liberalism!!

Originally Posted by Bennettresearch

Maybe I can make it clear like this. Because our society has become fragmented, the concept of extended family has arisen. In concept, it can be a good thing in providing someone with something they lack. However, do we throw away the concept of a nuclear family? No we don't. This is why homosexual marriage is voted down so much. People want to put the brakes on and say that it would be going too far.

Therfore, it is wrong to be in bitter opposition to the concept of the "natural" way of things, ergo, the man, woman, and child as the roots of our society. Just because some hold on to outdated and misguided concepts like the Man being the unquestioned authority doesn't make the concept of the natural family unit invalid. Indeed, it is said nowadays that if a man just does everything his wife tells him to do, then he will have a happy marriage.

I agree with you that the fragmentation of society has resulted in the concept of the extended family. What I mean by that is "family" has traditionally refered to "extended family." Grandparents and grandkids lived in the same household. Because children generally did not move far from their parents when they got married and started new families, their children grew up surrounded by aunts and uncles and cousins. There was always someone to help with the kids, and with elderly parents, without the need to hire a stranger. This was so well accepted, so "natural," that there was no need to add the qualifier "extended" or "nuclear." The "roots" of our society was not the man, woman, and child. It was the clan. The nuclear family itself is the result of societal fragmentation, our movement away from community towards smaller units and greater individualization.

That said, I do not believe that there is any hostility by liberals against the nuclear family. No one that I know who supports gay marriage is against the idea of heterosexual marriage. No one that I know wants to do away with the man, woman, and child model of family. They simply want it recognized that there are also other valid models. As UUs we celebrate love where ever it is found. And if two people want to make a solemn commitment to each other in front of society and/or their God, we consider that to be a positive, pro-family thing. No one I know is in "bitter opposition" to the "natural" way of things. But we are pointing out that what people consider to be "natural" is often no more than what they are used to.

[lilithu]

For the the reasons that Davidium gave, and because the term "Fundamentalist" traditionally had a much more specific meaning (including an adherance to biblical literalism), I think it more accurate to contrast "religious conservatives" with religious liberals, instead of "fundamentalists."

So why would religious conservatives feel threatened by religious liberals? Why can't we live and let live, to each his/her own? The article focuses on our different attitudes towards "choice" (one of my favorite theological words) and "obligation," but I believe our differences are even more fundamental than that. Afterall, why is choice threatening to the religious conservative? I think that its because we have different views of the nature of humanity and that in turn colors our approach to everything in the world. To put it simply, liberals think that humans are innately good while conservatives believe humans are innately bad. Since I've been railing against simple dichotomies in other threads lately, I feel the need to say here that I realize this is an oversimplification - that most people are a complex and contradictory mixture. But I still feel that it is a useful distinction by which to understand the situation.

Let me elaborate: Liberals are hopeful about the nature of humanity; we want to believe that people are essentially good, even when we know they don't always live up to it. Conservatives have a suspicious view of humanity; they fear that people are essentially not to be trusted unless they have a reason to be trustworthy (ie - obligation).

Hence, for liberals choice is a good thing. We liberals believe/hope that when given a choice, people will do the right thing most of the time. We believe that this essential goodness, if given the opportunity to express itself, will do so in ways more wonderful than if we were to force people into a pre-ordained idea of "goodness." It is for this reason that we are open to continual change. Conservatives, otoh, fear that when given a choice, people will do the wrong thing most of the time. They believe that, if humans are not carefully and guided and molded by unchanging (ie - conservative) structure and mutual obligations, they will degenerate into selfish and destructive behavior. Looking at it this way, it is clear why the article is right when it states that our liberal tolerance is a direct threat to the conservative worldview.

When we preach/practice tolerance, we are respecting something in people that the conservative doesn't believe is there - that inherent goodness that we UUs keep talking about. When we preach/practice tolerance, according to the conservative, we're allow (encouraging, even) people to express their innate selfish and destructive drives.

Hence, for conservatives the traditional "nuclear family" of father, wife and child(ren) is a necessary model by which to guide and mold humans, so that we conform to an external standard of "goodness." For conservatives, the call for same-sex marriages is obvious "proof" of the decay into selfishness and destructiveness that inevitably occurs from liberal tolerance. It does not matter how much evidence there is that homosexuality is genetically determined; that only proves that our innate tendencies are "bad." What matters is that homosexuals are not conforming to the accepted standard of "goodness." And for conservatives, since "goodness" is externally imposed, providing alternative models of family will lead people "astray" who otherwise would have stayed straight. For liberals, there is no need for an external standard by which to be molded. If some humans are innately homosexual (and homosexuality does not harm anyone else), then homosexuality cannot be "bad." Rather, it is an alternative expression of our innate goodness (our capacity to love). Thus, while we may have at one time shared the conservative's concept of family, we are open to revising that concept in the face of new information. For liberals, because the basis of our potential goodness is internal, we can't imagine anything worse than denying that potential by forcing someone to conform to an arbitrary external standard.

So religious conservatives are not being unreasonable when they view us as a threat. Based on their fundamental premise, their view of humanity, it's perfectly rational for them to conclude that we are allowing society to self-destruct. On the flip side, based on our fundamental premise, our view of humanity, it's perfectly rational for us to conclude that conservatism stifles society's full potential and unnecessarily (and hence cruelly) oppresses those who don't conform.