LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

The UK newspaper "The Guardian" has a very interesting and chilling article about the beliefs of certain fundementalists, and how they affect world stability:

Their beliefs are bonkers, but they are at the heart of power ( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

The author of the Guardian article below is George Monbiot, who has also written some other interesting -and chilling- articles about the slow slide of the US into religious Dark Ages.

The articles are located in the "Religion" section of the site. Some excerpts:

-From "America is a Religion"

(from a July 29, 2003 column)...The United States is no longer just a nation. It is now a religion. Its soldiers have entered Iraq to liberate its people not only from their dictator, their oil and their sovereignty, but also from their darkness. As George Bush told his troops on the day he announced victory, "wherever you go, you carry a message of hope - a message that is ancient and ever new. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, "To the captives, 'come out,' and to those in darkness, 'be free.'"2


So American soldiers are no longer merely terrestrial combatants; they have become missionaries. They are no longer simply killing enemies; they are casting out demons. The people who reconstructed the faces of Uday and Qusay Hussein carelessly forgot to restore the pair of little horns on each brow, but the understanding that these were opponents from a different realm was transmitted nonetheless. Like all those who send missionaries abroad, the high priests of America cannot conceive that the infidels might resist through their own free will; if they refuse to convert, it is the work of the devil, in his current guise as the former dictator of Iraq.


As Clifford Longley shows in his fascinating book Chosen People, published last year, the founding fathers of the USA, though they sometimes professed otherwise, sensed that they were guided by a divine purpose.3 Thomas Jefferson argued that the Great Seal of the United States should depict the Israelites, "led by a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night".4 George Washington claimed, in his inaugural address, that every step towards independence was "distinguished by some token of providential agency".5 Longley argues that the formation of the American identity was part of a process of "supersession". The Catholic Church claimed that it had supplanted the Jews as the elect, as the Jews had been repudiated by God. The English Protestants accused the Catholics of breaking faith, and claimed that THEY had become the beloved of God. The American revolutionaries believed that the English, in turn, had broken their covenant: the Americans had now become the chosen people, with a divine duty to deliver the world to God's dominion. Six weeks ago, as if to show that this belief persists, George Bush recalled a remark of Woodrow Wilson's. "America," he quoted, "has a spiritual energy in her which no other nation can contribute to the liberation of mankind."6

I wish that US journalists had the courage to write things like this. It is sad that we have to step outside the bounds of the US to see what we're becoming, and what we look like to outsiders. It isn't pretty.

Sunfell

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

While the goal of Dark Christianity is to closely examine the darker and scarier aspects of certain Christian sects and their interaction with both our government and the world at large, I want to make sure that it doesn't become a bastion of intolerance itself. Not all conservative Christians are neocons and want to turn the US into a theonomy or destroy the world for Christ. In fact, quite a few of them are rather unhappy about being seen as such people. And in all fairness, I want to make sure that these folks get some fresh air time.

Baptists tend to be some of the loudest of the Christians, but not all of them have been assimilated by the Neoconservative Borg Collective. It is helpful to remember that before the rise of fundementalism, Baptists of various sorts - along with other Christian sects- were instrumental in making the US the paradise for religious expression that it once was, before its current decline.

That said, I want to introduce you to some Mainstream Baptists who are not your "Landover" sorts, and who have broken away from the Southern Baptist Convention because the SBC's increasing intolerance and narrow-mindedness. This refreshing view includes the treatment of women, the neoconservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, and a Biblical innerancy test that will bring a smile to your face.

Yes, these are conservative and deeply religious people. But their faith emphasizes good works and quiet faith- much on the lines of former President Jimmy Carter, who did not use his faith as a cudgel to hammer out a war, but as a means to improve the world. People tend to forget that- but he is one of my heroes because of it.

So, go take a peek. Read, learn, understand. Get to know these quiet but faithful people. They are not the virulently intolerant foes so often maligned in the press or elsewhere. In fact, these folks might be the key to our country's salvation in more ways than one.

(Yes, I'm quoting articles that were mentioned in earlier posts, but good things are worth going back to- as you can see.)

Sunfell