General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: This Church Sign Is Awesome {It's real, so don't even start with me.} [View all]thucythucy
(8,048 posts)of all Christians? Or Dietrich Bonhoeffer? Or Sophie Scholl, the Berrigan Brothers, the Rev. Jessie Jackson, the Wilmington 10? They all identified themselves as Christians, and yet all of them lived lives of progressive activism, all of them were imprisoned for their beliefs, several of them were even murdered for speaking truth to power and standing with the poor and oppressed. You're saying they weren't really Christians? Or that, contrary to their own statements, they were wrong about the core of their own beliefs?
Lumping all Christians into one category is like saying all socialists side with Stalin. When I encounter a self-identified socialist, I don't start quoting Lenin and Marx at them, nor would I toss out a copy of the Gulag Archipelango to discredit single payer health care. Forgive me for what is perhaps a clumsy analogy, but I figure all of us are individuals, and all of us -- within certain limits -- get to define our own beliefs. If Martin Luther King says he's a Christian, I take him at his word. In fact, more than that, I closely consider what he's saying, since he was obviously a smart guy, had put a lot of thought into his beliefs, and had drawn from them a courage and commitment I frankly find quite humbling.
As an aside: there are some Christians who count only the actual words of Christ as being the core of their theology--everything else is historical context. Even then there is debate, since the Gospels were written decades after Christ was executed, and three of the four recognized Gospels (among dozens that were written) were evidently based an an earlier text, called "Q", which is considered more authoritative than what was allowed to be passed down by the Church oligarchy (which by the time of Constantine had been utterly co-opted by the Roman imperium).
I take this minister at this word when he says he's a Christian, and believes what he wrote on that sign. More than that, I praise his courage, and gladly welcome him into whatever part of the progressive movement he'd care to join. I think, even as a crass political calculation, this makes more sense than to stereotype and condemn tens of millions of people for beliefs they evidently don't share, for a label which evidently can mean very different things to different people.