Sunstone said:
Here's a post from another thread that it would be off topic to discuss in that thread, but which I wonder if anyone wants to discuss as a separate thread:
Great post, Jeffery!
I'm old enough that I can remember growing up when the word "Christian" almost never was used to mean a self-righteous, hateful, bigoted person. Instead, it was a term of praise which meant, among many other good things, a person who had taken Jesus's teachings on love to heart and humbly expressed love for their "neighbors". That is, for anyone who came their way. In my small town, we all knew who the real Christians were, and it was even a source of community pride that they were among us. Folks like Michel remind me of that earlier definition of "Christian", but overall, things have sure changed, eh?
A while ago, one of the local papers ran a quote from James Dobson, something he said close the start of his ministry in the 1970's. It went more or less like this, "We're going to take the kid gloves off. We're going to show the world that Christians aren't little old ladies who love everyone and can be run over by everyone. We're going to show them Christians have a fist of iron." That's the best I can remember what he said, and I wish I'd saved the quote, but I didn't. It completely struck me at the time, though, how contemptuous he was of that old definition of "Christian", and how thirsty he was to prove it wasn't true.
I think since the 1970's, folks like Dobson, Falwell, Robertson, and many, many others have done an excellent job foisting their view of what it means to be a Christian on Americans. But I think Christianity as a whole in America has suffered for it. Jesus's message of love has been replaced with the Ten Commandments and more emphasis on hellfire and heaven than love, and I'm not even sure Jesus himself would approve of that distortion. I've heard young people in Colorado Springs tell me that loving your neighbor means loving other Christians, and even then they don't mean everyone who professes to be Christian, but just the ones they deem to be true Christians. If that's the future of Christian love, then Christian love is becoming spiritually incestuous.
To me, the most vocal "Christian" leaders of today have made a strategic mistake. A religion based on an ideology of "showing the world it has an iron fist" is a religion that is deeply, profoundly spiritually bankrupt.
Comments?
I think a couple of things have happened in America, to cause this change. One, is that the republican party realized that they could not get themselves elected by being the party of the rich, which is essentially what they mostly were, and are. The rich are always going to be a smaller number of people even if they have most of the money. So the party went looking for those who could be lured away from voting for democrats, and they stumbled on a lot of very resentful, angry southern "super-Christians" who were feeling ignored by the democrats, by the north, by the media, and who were feeling disenfranchised and disrespected in general by the rest of America. Carl Rove, specifically, realized that he could "play" these people to his own advantage by exploiting their ignorance and prejudice and anger toward moderate Christians, northerners, the press, gays, and liberals of all kinds. One of the "dirty tricks" that Rove has used in every Bush Jr. election campaign has been to send people around to the most conservative churches in the area while they were in sunday services, and put flyers on all their cars telling outrageous lies about Bush's opponents - lies specifically intended to get these very conservative Christians enraged.
For example, when Bush ran for governor of Texas, the flyers that appeared on the cars at these very conservative churches accused his opponent of being a lesbian, and of promoting homosexuality. When the news media brought these flyers to light, Rove claimed he had no idea who made or distributed them (but he didn't disavow the lies in the, of course). When Bush was running in the primary against John McCain, the flyers were accusing McCain of having illegitimate children with a black women. These flyers were placed on cars in areas of the south where racism is still prevalent. Again Carl Rove denied any knowledge of who could have made and distributed them. Later, as we are all aware, when Bush ran against Kerry, Carl Rove dug up a man that had been paid by the Nixon people way back in the early 70's to slander John Kerry's military record, then, and was happy to get paid to do it all over again for Bush. We all saw the disgraceful result of that.
My point is that the republican party, specifically Carl Rove and George Bush, have been promoting and exploiting the
worst inclinations of the most conservative and angry Christians among us for some 15 years, now, and this has had a big effect on the "face" of Christianity in general. As the republican party has stirred up and exacerbated religious Christian ignorance, prejudice, anger, resentment, and bigotry; and focussed it on their political enemies, they have in effect been condoning and supporting these character traits as though they were virtues.
And if this were not bad enough, at the same time Carl Rove was discovering that he could exploit the character flaws of these super-conservative southern Christians for republican political gain, various unscrupulous media moguls were discovering that they could use the same tricks to gain loyal listeners and viewers from all segments of America. Slandering all things liberal has became the "gravy train" of the moment for both the republican party and the more unscrupulous media/entertainment companies. And the result is that being rude, arrogant, dishonest, ignorant, inflammatory, and proud of it, has become very fashionable among right wing conservatives of any religion these days. All their deep seated anger and resentments have been brought to the surface, and encouraged to be expressed by these professional liars and exploiters in politics and the media.
Hubris is in fashion these days.