LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

jahbulon sent me this link:

How To Fight The Religious Right

Here's an interesting paragraph:

Fundamentalist Christians use the Bible as their sole authority. Anything else is suspect at best - satanic at worst. If you wish to mount a good defense, you must use their own "authoritative" book against them. You might think such a defense would be impossible, but it's not. Remember, Fundamentalists use a made-truth, one of their own creation, and despite their claims to the contrary, the Bible often contradicts their point of view. It happens because most Fundamentalists don't actually read it for themselves. The Bible, therefore, becomes the perfect weapon to use against them.

I've done that more than once myself, and am slowly amassing a small library of theological and historical rebuttals of many of the things they claim as The Truth ™. The irony of the whole thing is that in some of these encounters, it's clear that I know more about the history and internal workings of Christianity than most Christians- including seminary graduates. I always remember that True Believers ™ do not want you to think for yourself- heck, they don't want you to think at all unless it is to promote their particular cause- be it religious, political, or whatever. Any more, though, I don't want to waste time, thought or breath with them, and prefer to walk away. Keeps the blood pressure down.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Mark Morford wonders where the good Christians are.

I know they're out there.

I forget, often, too often, just how many there are but I know they exist in much larger numbers than you might be led to believe by current spiritually embarrassing headlines and I know they are just as, if not more, passionate and healthy and deeply felt in their beliefs than the overpublicized sects of angry and frothing "true believers" screeching into the megaphone of the culture, the ones yanking BushCo's chain and pounding their Bibles and hiding their warped porn fetishes and forcing their way into our lives and laws and bedrooms right now.

They are the decent Christians. They are the calm, morally progressive, compassionate, open-hearted Jesus-loving folk who don't really give a damn for archaic church dogma or pious noise or sanctimonious candlelight vigils, for repressing women or bashing gays or slamming Islam and. in fact, turned to Christianity precisely because they believe these things are abhorrent and wrong and, well, anti-Christian.

They are Episcopalians, for example, that most nimble and intelligent and groundbreaking of Christian churches, a rather revolutionary sect that recently appointed its first openly gay bishop and supports gay marriage and dares to ordain women as priests.

And they're still deeply involved in amazing charity work, AIDS and orphanages and Africa and stuff that makes you humble and amazed and they have not, due to this seemingly blasphemous dichotomy and much to the shock of their homophobic conservative brethren, been struck by lightning or doomed to hell for all eternity -- or, rather, if they have, they'll go down happy and intelligent and singing and believing in Jesus anyway, all the way down.

They are the legions of recovering Catholics, people for whom the radiant and positive aspects of this most intense of faiths still hold powerful sway but who just can't abide by the ridiculous and outdated and often homophobic and sexist doctrines hurled forth like so much flaccid manna from the unhappy red-robed automatons of Vatican City.

They are the moderate Christians, the ones who do not support illegal wars or the killing of all doctors who perform abortions and who are all for social justice and who think Bush is a bit of an imbecile, and even if they find themselves for some unfortunate reason in support of the Republican cause overall, they still think it's rather abhorrent that the man dares invoke God to support his lie-ridden wars and the smashing down of women's rights and gay rights and abuse of the environment et al.

How do I know they're out there? Because I hear from them all the time, especially when I get carried away and lump them all together in my often overly harsh criticisms of the faith and my utter lack of patience for its more rabid and small-minded and hateful practitioners and its more violently self-righteous elements, stuff so completely antithetical to what true Christianity, what true faith, true spiritual connection, is all about, it would make Jesus wince. ( Read more... )