"The unsaved are dead already"

[bloom]

"The unsaved are dead already"

This is what a fiftyish Indianapolis suburbanite professional-class man said in response to someone suggesting that Jesus said to love your enemies.

He also said that one way to "love" your enemies was to attack them with swords because (something to the effect) "Jesus did that in Revelations and Jesus is God and God is love".

IOW he has no problems with the US killing Iraqi civilians or for that matter - me or probably you.

I was flabbergasted to be a room with someone who looked reasonably intelligent - that could rationalize "Christian" hatred in such a way.

Apparently 15-18% of Americans are being brainwashed in this manner. 33% of Republicans.

Anyone who thinks this is insignificant or that people are willy-nilly "Christian-bashing" should think again.
__________
"US Christian fundamentalists are driving Bush's Middle East policy"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1195568,00.html

"To understand what is happening in the Middle East, you must first understand what is happening in Texas. To understand what is happening there, you should read the resolutions passed at the state's Republican party conventions last month. Take a look, for example, at the decisions made in Harris County, which covers much of Houston.

The delegates began by nodding through a few uncontroversial matters: homosexuality is contrary to the truths ordained by God; "any mechanism to process, license, record, register or monitor the ownership of guns" should be repealed; income tax, inheritance tax, capital gains tax and corporation tax should be abolished; and immigrants should be deterred by electric fences. Thus fortified, they turned to the real issue: the affairs of a small state 7,000 miles away. It was then, according to a participant, that the "screaming and near fist fights" began.

I don't know what the original motion said, but apparently it was "watered down significantly" as a result of the shouting match. The motion they adopted stated that Israel has an undivided claim to Jerusalem and the West Bank, that Arab states should be "pressured" to absorb refugees from Palestine, and that Israel should do whatever it wishes in seeking to eliminate terrorism. Good to see that the extremists didn't prevail then."
<more>
__________
"Conservative Group Amplifies Voice of Protestant Orthodoxy"

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/22/national/22CONS.html?th

"As Presbyterians prepare to gather for their General Assembly in Richmond, Va., next month, a band of determined conservatives is advancing a plan to split the church along liberal and orthodox lines. Another divorce proposal shook the United Methodist convention in Pittsburgh earlier this month, while conservative Episcopalians have already broken away to form a dissident network of their own.

In each denomination, the flashpoint is homosexuality, but there is another common denominator as well. In each case, the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a small organization based in Washington, has helped incubate traditionalist insurrections against the liberal politics of the denomination's leaders.
<snip>
The institute has brought together previously disconnected conservative groups within each denomination to share resources and tactics, including forcing heresy trials of gay clergy members, winning seats on judicial committees and urging congregations to withhold money from their denomination's headquarters.
<snip>
The Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, a Roman Catholic priest and former Lutheran minister, wrote its founding statement and other neoconservatives joined an advisory board. (In addition to Father Neuhaus, the institute's board of directors currently includes Mary Ellen Bork, wife of Judge Robert H. Bork, Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard and Fox News, and Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute.)"
<more>
__________
This site had some interesting European perspectives:

http://www.eurolegal.org/uspoleur.shtml

[wtmusic]

1. attack with swords = love

there is a fundamental disconnect here

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. literally. *l*

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. The fundagelicals are in for a real surprise one day

when they find out they misinterpreted what He meant.

Would Jesus love a liberal? You bet!
http://www.geocities.com/greenpartyvoter/liberalchristians.htm

[CulturalNomad]

4. lets call it American Christianity - because

all i read overseas is Christian leaders against the war....

[GreenPartyVoter]

6. Welcome to DU. And no, it's not just Americans who are nuts that way

And as a liberal American Christian I can tell you that "they" do not represent "us", so I don't want to be lumped together with them.

[bloom]

11. This article discusses how the liberal Christian voice is under attack

"Conservative Group Amplifies Voice of Protestant Orthodoxy"

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/22/national/22CONS.html?th


Christian Fundamentalism seems to be a product of the US.

[GreenPartyVoter]

12. Actually, I heard of a group of missionaries from South Africa

coming to the USA to evangelize because we've so lost our moral compass. I'm not sure, but I seem to recall they had more in common with the moral majority than progressives.

But yeah, a lot of the puritanical stuff is thanks to the USA. But if Europe hadn't essentially kicked them out, they could have been home to this trend. *l*

[Classical_Liberal]

29. The episicopalians should fund a move to split the Southern Baptists

There leadership is far more conservative than the typical person sitting in pews. We should do it to the Assemblies of God too.

[JHB]

24. Call them what they are: Pharissees

...i.e., they get all gooey over certain displays of piety and hung up on certain scriptural passages, while completely missing the central message.

Hell, I'm more Christian than these foobs and I'm an atheist.

[bloom]

27. LOL

"Hell, I'm more Christian than these foobs and I'm an atheist."


That's what I think, too. :)

[shimmergal]

30. I love it!

"Hell, I'm more Christian than these foobs and I'm an atheist."

Not an atheist myself, but I do agree with you. I _hate_ the way the religious right has hijacked the word Christian.

[Az]

5. Unfortunately for them

the sword Jesus wields in Revalations comes out of his mouth. So if they want to emmulate Jesus I will be more than happy to cram a sword in their mouth.

[Fenris]

9. Supposedly, that's his "word"

The sword is meant as a metaphor, according to evangelicals, because it would clearly be impossible for a sword to come out of Jesus' mouth.

It's funny. They pick and choose which parts of Revelation are metaphors and which are literally true. Seven headed demon = the Word of God. Sword coming out of Jesus' mouth to slay the unbelievers = the Metaphor of God.

[noonwitch]

10. LOL-and he's the color of jasper, right?

So Jesus is the Green Man!

I'm a liberal christian and to accept the Revelation (which either is symbolic of the death of the roman empire, or a description of insane world events yet to come) as justification for hating all non-christians is letting an alleged prophecy counteract the direct words of Jesus as recorded in the gospels, which are to love your neighbor as yourself (it doesn't say love your neighbor only if he believes what you do), to love your enemies and pray for them that mistreat you, and his own actions in reaching out to the samaritans, a race despised by the jews of his own time (the palestineans' ancestors?).

Jesus sounded pretty liberal, didn't he?

[Az]

23. The greatest words in the bible IMO

Matt 25:40 Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

If more Christians learned just this lesson ....

[madrchsod]

13. jesus was dead

when the book of revalations was written, it was written about and to the people in the 7 cities in what is now turkey. if i remember right it was written by john and mary. all fundies haven`t a clue about the history of the bible -666- are greek letters not the sign of the devil. that is why i destest the fundies,that are comopletly ignorant of what really happened historically..ask them about the coptic church and they have no idea what you are talking about...

[Az]

22. To get technical about it

Jesus was dead when the gospels were written as well. The oldest of the gospels is preported to be Mark and the closest we can peg it to is about 50 years after the supposed events it claims to be about.

[salin]

7. *sigh*

that makes absolutely NO sense. Serious brainwashing to allow logic to fly out of ones head - and to not even "hear" how illogical and theologically unsound such statements are.

[tom_paine]

8. Nazi Talk, now becoming common from Busheviks

They are SO EXCITED that they are so close to DESTROYING AMERICA so that they can implement Orwellian Totalitarian Imperial Rule with Strong Theocratic Overtones.

They can't hold it in anymore. They have been waiting so long to "get" the Jews, Liberals, Blacks, Gays, and everyone else they hate.

They just can't hold it in anymore, and thus are starting to give us glimpses of who they REALLY are and what they REALLY WANT TO DO TO PEOPLE THEY HATE.

And now, like a German Jew, I now hate them, once I fully redcognized and understood what the Busheviks were.

nazis. "Kinder and gentler", all right, but Nazis.

[AgentLadyBug]

17. why do you hate german jews?

<bad joke trading on a formal ambiguity>

:)

[tom_paine]

21. Heh. Heh. But the Bushevik-Nazi similraities are not funny

I hate the Busheviks as a German Jew hated the Nazis and for much the same reasons.

[dammit905]

14. philosophy

I'm bothered to no end when I'm trying to have a reasonable discussion about something, and they can only justify their points by quoting the Bible. There's so much loose material in the Bible open to interpretation that you can justify nearly ANYTHING, and there's no proof that any of it is true. Just impossible to discuss something with people who cling to their verses as word-for-word truth, rather than taking lessons from the messages.

[AgentLadyBug]

18. in the words of the immortal principal skinner.....

prayer has no place in school, just like facts have no place within organized religion.....

<I hesitate to put quotation marks around it because i'm not sure i got it 100% right>

[tjwash]

31. Not only loose material...

...but downright incorrectly translated material, but then the fundies just took out their erasers and translated it more to their liking anyhow, as did those before them, and those before them, and those before them...

[sangh0]

15. This link explains why they don't mind killing

http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=sojomail.display&issue=040512#3

"Are liberal Christians phony?
by David Batstone

The query came into my in-box this week, with the obvious inference that SojoMail is both liberal and phony. The accuser identified himself by name, adding that he had his Ph.D. and hailed from the state of Texas.

Without getting caught up in political labels - my self-proclaimed "liberal" friends stumble over some of my faith-informed views - I found his theology intriguing. Without a doubt, he clearly drew borders that zoned Christians into different political territories.

He opened his note as follows:

Liberal Christians have no understanding of the God-given role of Government. Liberal Christians are Peter-Pan Christians who demand that Governments, before the return of Jesus, foolhardily beat their God-given swords into plowshares and live according to the Sermon on the Mount. Liberal Christians do NOT realize that the plow-share things happens during the 2nd Coming of Jesus, when Jesus takes back the swords from Human Governments as He establishes God's Kingdom on Earth. This is why our Hero taught us to pray: "Please hurry Thy Kingdom to come, so Thy will is done on Earth as it is in Heaven."...

[blm]

16. This is why the Left Behind books were actually more politically driven

than religious. Bush and his cohorts just USE the believers as their protection for their own fascist goals. Fundies are so snowed they will accept a nuclear event by Bush as a prophecy fulfilled.

[Trajan]

19. As a dedicated atheist and secular humanist ...

I MUST point out that this person does not speak for the vast majority of christians ...

As much as I despise the anti-human rhetoric of the Apocalypse of John, I dont think that one person's view represents the whole ...

[bloom]

25. It was my impression

that many of the people there attended fundamentalist churches and had their children attend fundamentalist schools.

So I was struck by the sense that in this suburban area of what one would consider well-educated people (I was at my brother's house who has a degree in engineering), this was probably fairly usual.

OK - so it is Indiana - but I've lived here most of my life, and I think that fundamentalism is growing.

[salin]

26. That has definitely been my impression

Having lived in and out of the state for the past 20 years (and growing up here prior to that) - that even in this fair liberal oasis in Indiana - many of the mainstream Protestant churches have taken a slightly fundamentalist bend - and the more fundamentalist churches have gotten even more extreme. I think there has been a shift - even in the more cosmopolitan (as defined by more influx from people from other states, more urban and urbane, more educated, etc.) areas.

That said, there still seem to be a great number of mainstream Prostestant churches that I know in B-ton and Indy that have remained true to their points - and have not moved to the politicized more religious right direction. I think that is because in many parts of the state - hoosier pragmatism runs very deep - and the politicized fundamentalists push views and positions that stretch beyond pragmatism.

Remember a year or so the small city/town of Salem (I believe) was so frustrated by the members of the Phelps-like group coming to town and screaming down citizens (I understand why B-ton is a favorite place of theirs to scream... but Salem?!) - that they took to passing a city ordinance to prevent types of protesting (can't remember the details but it was specific to this group.) The ordinance crossed the line and the ICLU got involved and the town dropped it - but it was a reaction to the ugliness of the extremism. That is the pragmatism that gets turned off by the religious extremists to which I refer.

[troublemaker]

20. The undead are saved already

[Classical_Liberal]

28. Tim Lahay and Sun Yung Moon are former intelligence agents

It is genuine brainwashing.