Don't call the religious right, Christians anymore, here's a better name!

[charlie and algernon]

I brought this up in another thread, but it warrent's it's own thread. If you listen to any "christian" rightist rant on and on about their faith, rarely do they actually bring up what Jesus said. That's what i find most amazing. here we have supposedly good faithful people, christians, who will go to any length to avoid bringing up Jesus' actual teaching and sayings. I spent several months with a christian fellowship group in college and in all my time there, all i hear was Romans, Corinthians, Galations, hebrews, psalms, Dueteronomy, Leviticus, and other OT books. The only time the Gospels came up was when it fit what they were arguing.

Now if anyone spends anytime reading the bible, and i've read about 75% of it, you find two very conflicting veiwpoints. One viewpoint is of a vengeful, wrathful God, a transcendental God. One where God is way up in the sky and we're down on earth far away from Him, lying in the filth and mud. This is the main veiwpoint in the OT, it justified the mass slaughter of any town, city, or nation that was deemed pagen or heathen.

The second viewpoint came about with Jesus, with Him, you got the picture of a loving God, where "love your neighbor as yourself" became the driving force. In fact, Jesus himself says that all Laws rely on that command. Jesus preached tolerance for one's neighbors and He was deadset againt wearing your faith on your sleeve. He slapped down any showy Pharasiee or Sadducie. He preached against violence, preached for peace, justice, especially social justice towards Society's down-trodden.

After Jesus' death, we got Paul, perhaps the best and worst thing to happen to Christianity. In one hand we got someone who was able to spread the faith to wide swaths of the known world. In the other hand, we got someone who, while having good intentions, got Jesus' message totally wrong. Instead of carrying His message of love and peace, he returned to the OT viewpoint of humans being filth, of a vengeful, wrathful God. To put it succinctly, Paul knocked Christianity back 100 years before it had a chance to get started.

Skip forward 2000 years, we now have two groups of Christians. One group has continued the message of peace and Love that Jesus carried. They are more concerned about helping those around them than just helping themselves. The other group has carried Paul's message, they are more concerned about themselves, and let others be damned. While the first group shuns war, violence, and inequality, the second group revels in it, in fact the second group sees it as perfectly natural to wage war, as if it's a calling from God.

We can no longer call that second group christians anymore, for two reasons. first, they don't actually follow the teachings of Christ. Second, they only hurt the actual Christians and the true Christians suffer at the hands of the false Christians. We must call this group Old Testament Paulists, or OTPs for short. We must make a distinction that they DO NOT speak for true Christianity and all they do is distort the teachings of Christ.

From now on, call the "Christian" rightist, OTPs. And perhaps, perhaps, we can take Christianity back and can bring Jesus' message of love and peace back into the limelight.

[Mythsaje]

1. Paul/Saul's "good intentions" are debatable.

I don't disagree with the rest...from my p.o.v. there are "Old Testament" Christians and "New Testament" Christians. The evangelical fundies fall on the wrong side of the line, in my opinion, making their alleged Christianity questionable, at best.

[LSDMTMA]

16. Right On!

But all christianity is questionable at best. I read a lot of Dr. Robert Price, a historian who believes the character of Jesus NEVER EXISTED, let alone was the son of some god. Dr. Price has a great NEW internet based radio show called The Biblegeek, check that out sometime, his rants are highly intellectual and humorous.
Google BIBLEGEEK and find the several free downloadable MP3s scattered about the net.

[Homer12]

2. How About.

The American Taliban.

[Roland99]

5. Talibornagain

[FiveGoodMen]

20. That's my favorite!

[charlie and algernon]

6. that works for here

but they aren't just in the US, how do you think Benedict got elected Pope, this is a much bigger problem than an American one.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

17. I think American Taliban

is over the top if this is a serious discussion on language.

If we're just shooting the breeze, it is okay. It gets across an idea.

But I agree with the OP on a point that is important to me: what to do about my hijacked religion. The whole thing makes me understand how moderate Muslims must feel.

But hyperbole weakens an argument. And as bad as they might be, they don't yet approach the Taliban. Unless I've missed some public stonings or something.

[Ian David]

24. The Christian-American Taliban is NOT over the top...

Neither are:

Talibornagain
Christo-Facists
KKKristians
Dominionist Christians

Remember, we are not talking about Christianity in general, but about the Power Elite controling the Lunatic Fringe of Bush's base that makes about 35% of America's Christian population.

I really can't think of any word to extreme too describe the likes of Pat Robertson, Fred Phelps, Pope Ratzinger, James Dobson and their ilk.

And I do have names to describe the handful of my fellow Jews who have joined their bandwagon-- Brian Camenker, David Lerner, Ira Korff, Jack Abramoff, etc. Goldjuden and Judenrats.

Goldjuden:
The Goldjuden--Jews of gold--were in charge of handling
the money, gold, stocks, and jewelry. They subjected the prisoners to
an intimate search just before the gas chambers. Another, the dentist,
would open the mouths of the dead and pull out gold teeth with a pair
of pliers.
http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/gcpoltreb1.htm

Judenrats:
As far back as 1933, Nazi policy makers had discussed establishing Jewish-led institutions to carry out anti-Jewish policies. The concept was based upon centuries-old practices which were instituted in Germany during the Middle Ages. As the German army swept through Poland and the Soviet Union, it carried out an order of S.S. leader Heydrich to require the local Jewish populace to form Jewish Councils as a liaison between the Jews and the Nazis. These councils of Jewish elders, (Judenrat; plural: Judenräte), were responsible for organizing the orderly deportation to the death camps, for detailing the number and occupations of the Jews in the ghettos, for distributing food and medical supplies, and for communicating the orders of the ghetto Nazi masters. The Nazis enforced these orders on the Judenrat with threats of terror, which were given credence by beatings and executions. As ghetto life settled into a "routine," the Judenrat took on the functions of local government, providing police and fire protection, postal services, sanitation, transportation, food and fuel distribution, and housing, for example.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/judenrat.html

There are no words too ugly for any of them.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

32. Could we explore this a bit more?

I'm trying to understand how you equate these fundamentalists with the Taliban. Are you looking at their POTENTIAL to become LIKE the Taliban? Because if that is where you are going, I'm inclined to follow somewhat, if not all the way. (The Taliban were created by years of war and strife that we have not had over here)

But to equate the names you mentioned with a regime that killed women for showing ankles, whipped men in the face for cheering at a soccer match, refused to allow women education or health care, stoned people to death publically for all kinds of "infractions," and killed people for apostasy... well, I just don't see it.

Can you elaborate?

[Ian David]

33. It's not what they ARE doing or CAN do but what they WOULD if they could

If it were up to them, people would be getting rounded-up into camps and "re-educated" or even exterminated.

We've got illegal torture prisons.

We've got juvenile offenders being sentenced by judges to "faith-based" programs that require a particular Christian faith-- whether the kids subscribe to that faith or not.

And this is aside from the kids whose own parents force them into "de-homosexualization" camps.

What was the last statistic on the number of Americans surveyed who approve of torture?

Why is it that more people believe Bush lied to us to get us into the war in Iraq than actually mind that he did it?

We are living among The Christian Taliban, and they are running the country. Not because they're in a majority, but because they have been allowed to seize power by people too naive to see them for what they are.

Hitler made the trains run on time, and Bush was going to preserve marriage, help the middle-class, and keep America safe from the brown people.

[GirlinContempt]

39. Ok, saying what they would do

is reaching.
Come on, rounded up an exterminated?

[Ian David]

40. That's the same thing they said about Hitler, "Oh, he can't be serious."

Pay attention please.

[knitter4democracy]

3. That's a good idea.

It's a very accurate assessment of their beliefs, too. It's one reason why we switched churches, too--we needed something based more on what is in the Gospels.

[Warpy]

4. Calvinists

I used to think they were Paulists, too, but they lack even the positive things Paul brought to the whole enterprise.

Calvinists not only committed the Pauline sin of saying faith without good works was sufficient for salvation, they also went a bit farther in posing a determinist model that said the rich were blessed by god and deserving of near worship while the poor were obviously cursed by the same god and deserved nothing more than a boot on their neckis. Poverty became synonymous with immorality and lack of spiritual worth, completely upsidedown and backwards from what the Jesus of the New Testament taught.

I'm afraid I rarely pass up the opportunity to hurl another epithet besides "Calvinist" at them when they're expounding upon this rubbish, "unchristian." Since most of them have read (and discarded as sissy) the words of Jesus in Matthew and Mark, it packs a punch and a half.

[charlie and algernon]

8. that's a good point

my problem with the calvinists, is the predestiny thing they having going on. the belief that God decided before we were born who was going to hell and who was saved. and of course only those deemed to be saved could lose that title, those destined for hell have no way of changing that. That's the saddest part of their faith.

[mzmolly]

37. You nailed it!

:toast:

"Poverty became synonymous with immorality and lack of spiritual worth, completely upsidedown and backwards from what the Jesus of the New Testament taught."

"Calvinist" it is!

[dkofos]

7. I prefer to call them SFA's

Stupid Fundie Assholes

[jeff30997]

10. We have a winner!

[derby378]

9. Fristians

"OTPs" is just a bit too complicated for the average Joe.

[TomInTib]

11. "The religious right is neither"

Bumper sticker I saw on a car in Dallas.

[charlie and algernon]

13. haha, i saw that bumper sticker too

It's great!

[sandnsea]

12. christofascists

If it's good enough for the rest of the fundamentalist terrorists..

[drb]

14. One easy word will do: Pharisees ..................eom

nt

[Initech]

15. I prefer the term "religious reich"

Zeig heil!! Zeig heil! Zeig heil! Zeig heil! Zeig heil!

[beyurslf]

18. I call them Xians. They have taken all of Christ's teaching out of the

religion.

[entanglement]

19. They're Old Testament Talibots

n/t

[YOY]

21. Jeebillies!!!

Jeebidy Jebus!!!

[Cassandra]

22. The funny thing is...

that Jews are much less OT vengeful than the "Christian" right.

[Ian David]

25. Something like 85% of American Jews are Liberals. And we're learning...

See related thread:

The ADL stops giving evangelicals a free ride for "supporting" Israel
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=124x105448


The End of Apologies?
By Esther Kaplan

Sun Nov 20, 2005 at 08:16:11 PM EST

It seems to have finally dawned on Abe Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League and a highly visible Jewish community talking head, that he should stop making nice with the Christian right. Just a few years ago he was calling on American Jews to show evangelical conservatives some gratitude for their hard-line support for Israel. But last week, Foxman used the ADL's annual conference to sound the alarm about attempts to "Christianize America."

Back in 2002, he was penning editorials like "Why Evangelical Support for Israel Is a Good Thing." "American Jews," he wrote, should be "highly appreciative of the incredible support that the State of Israel gets from a significant group of Americans-- the Evangelical Christian Right. In many ways, the Christian Right stands out as the most consistently supportive group of Israel in America.... This is especially noteworthy during the current Administration, as they are conveying their sentiments to a President who shares many of their religious and social perspectives."

Foxman went on to decry the "reluctance in certain sections of the American Jewish community to welcome or encourage Evangelical support," over concerns about anti-Semitism. Foxman dismissed such concerns: anti-Semitism is now "history...among Evangelicals," he claimed, "superceded by the new special role of the Jews in the modern state of Israel."

Never mind that Christian right leaders such as Jerry Falwell have called Jews "spiritually blind and desperately in need of their Messiah and Savior"; that the Southern Baptist Convention has made the conversion of Jews a special mission; and that much Christian right support for Israel is based on End Times scenarios in which Jews must return to Israel to expedite the second coming of Christ. There's just one catch: Once that glorious event occurs, Jews who don't convert will burn in hell for all eternity. As Craig Unger vividly illustrates in his article in the December issue of Vanity Fair, in which he recounts his travels to the Holy Land with best-selling apocalyptic novelist Tim LaHaye, if you peel back Christian right support for Israel, you find a Jewish death wish. Plus, in geopolitical terms, the Christian right's "pro-Israel" stance could prove to be a significant obstacle to peace; since Christian right support for Israel is based on belief in a Biblical covenant, conservative evangelicals typically oppose any dismantling of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

But last week, according to an account in The Forward, Foxman used the ADL's annual conference to sound the alarm about attempts to "Christianize America." Criticizing several leading Christian right organizations by name, including the massive, Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family and the influential beltway lobby group Family Research Council, Foxman said the movement "had built infrastructures throughout the country... intend{ing} to 'Christianize' all aspects of American life, from the halls of government to the libraries, to the movies, to recording studios, to the playing fields and locker rooms of professional, collegiate and amateur sports....Their goal is to implement their Christian worldview. To Christianize America. To save us!"


More:
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2005/11/20/201611/28

[HockeyMom]

26. They only need the Jews for the RAPTURE

As somebody who grew up in NYC among a very large Jewish population, the only thing I can say is that ALL the Jews I knew did not want their children saying prayers to Jesus, singing Christian Christmas Carols, or reading the Bible (i.e, Bible is not the TORAH) in public schools.

Please tell when and how all this changed?

[Ian David]

27. I guess they thought, "It can't happen here."Some people are slow learners

Read the rest of the article I linked to.

[Ian David]

23. Other possible names

1) Xians

Pronounced either Eks-ians or "Cross-chins." The idea being that they only care about "The Cross" and not the figure that allegedly died upon it. Their message centers upon the violence of the death and ignores the beauty of Jesus' message before, or the gift of the resurrection after.

That's the one that I came up with. Xians and their war to save Xmas at the expense of Christmas (which, by the way, was November 18th this year. The 15th of Tishri is the real birthday of Jesus).

2) Pharisees:

"Pharisees" and Christianity

In the 4th century CE, Christians canonized a "New Testament" consisting of texts written between 60 CE and about 150 CE, which spell out a "new covenant" and provides the case for its basis in the Bible. In the "New Testament" the ruling Pharisees of his time (the house of Shammai) are often represented as being the ideological foes of Jesus.

An important binary in the New Testament is the opposition between law and love. Accordingly, the New Testament presents the Pharisees as obsessed with man-made rules (especially concerning purity) whereas Jesus is more concerned with God’s love; the Pharisees scorn sinners whereas Jesus seeks them out. Because of the New Testament's frequent depictions of Pharisees as self-righteous rule-followers, the word "pharisee" (and its derivatives: "pharisaical", etc.) has come into semi-common usage in English to describe a hypocritical and arrogant person who places the letter of the law above its spirit. Jews today (who ascribe to Pharisaic Judaism) typically find this insulting if not anti-Semitic.


Speaking as a Jew myself, I have never known anyone who identifies with the Pharisees or finds it anti-semitic.

Many non-Christians object that the four Gospels, which were canonized after Christianity had separated from Judaism (and after Pharisaism emerged as the dominant form of Judaism), are likely a very biased source concerning the conduct of the Pharisees. Some have argued that Jesus was himself a Pharisee, and that his arguments with Pharisees is a sign of inclusion rather than fundamental conflict (disputation is the dominant narrative mode in the Talmud). Jesus' emphasis on loving one's neighbor, for example, echoes the teaching of the school of Hillel (Jesus' views of divorce, however, are closer to those of the school of Shammai). Others have argued that the portrait of the Pharisees in the New Testament is an anachronistic caricature. For example, when Jesus declares the sins of a paralytic man forgiven, the New Testament has the Pharisees criticizing Jesus' blasphemy. But Jewish sources from the time commonly associate illness with sin and healing with forgiveness, and there is no actual Rabbinic source that questions or criticizes this practice. Although the New Testament presents the Pharisees as obsessed with avoiding impurity, Rabbinic texts reveal that the Pharisees were concerned merely with offering means for removing impurities, so that a person could again participate in the community. According to the New Testament, Pharisees wanted to punish Jesus for healing a man's withered hand on the Sabbath, but there is no Rabbinic rule according to which Jesus had violated the Sabbath. According to the New Testament the Pharisees objected to Jesus's mission to outcast groups such as beggars and tax-collectors, but Rabbinic texts actually emphasize the availability of forgiveness to all. Indeed, much of Jesus' teaching is consistent with that of the Pharisees.

Some scholars believe that those passages of the New Testament that present a caricature of the Pharisees were not written during Jesus' lifetime but rather sometime after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, at a time when it had become clear that most Jews did not consider Jesus to be the messiah. At this time Christians sought most new converts from among the gentiles. They thus presented a story of Jesus that was more sympathetic to Romans than to Jews. Moreover, it was only after 70 CE that the Phariseeism emerged as the dominant form of Judaism. For Christian leaders at this time to present Christianity as the legitimate heir to the Old Testament Covenant, they had to devalue Rabbinic Judaism.

The Apostle Paul of Tarsus, who authored much of the New Testament, spoke positively of being a Pharisee. Acts 23:6 records Paul on trial in the Temple Courts. He apologized for speaking against a priest without knowing who he insulted, and then claimed his belief in the resurrection was based on his doctrinal beliefs as a Pharisee. Paul emphasized the disagreements between Pharisees and Saducees for his own benefit, resulting in his release. As F.F. Bruce notes in a commentary on Acts, "A Sadducee could not become a Christian without abandoning a distinctive theological tenant of his party; a Pharisee could become a Christian and remain a Pharisee--in the apostolic age, at least." (F.F. Bruce, The Book of Acts, p. 428). The author of Acts indicates that Paul remained faithful to the rituals and practices of a Pharisee even after becoming a Christian (Acts 26:4-6). However, in the event known as the Jerusalem Council, Paul argued strenuously that the ritual requirements of Judaism do not apply to Gentile Christians (Acts 15:1-29). In his writings to the church in Philippi, Paul referred to his strict Jewish credentials as a cause for boasting (Philippians 3:4-6), but then stated his belief in Christ Jesus was more glorious.

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharisees

[xchrom]

28. paul misunderstood the apocryphal jesus and changed his writings --

and i use writings loosely since we can't attribute all that much to him after all -- to better suit his evangelizing and -- yes -- demonizing of pagans.

paul desperately wanted to witness the end time -- and that more i think than the actual faith motivates paul.

[Ian David]

34. Paul fixed the intelligence? n/t

[xchrom]

38. lol -- to a certain extent -- that's true.

paul had to be anxious about jesus and the apostles -- and that anxiety would have affected his writing.

paul after all didn't go straight from syria after his conversion to the apostles -- he wandered around bringing a messiah message of his own to folks.

why put that meeting off?

[elehhhhna]

29. Ask 'em why their god is such an a$$hole. That puzzles them up good.

[Ian David]

35. Anyone who thinks Gawd worthy of worship hasn't read The Book of Job

[servant_wayne]

30. Saved from being born

Saved from being born

Christianity, the religion of the Romanized Christ, is an Abrahamic House of Bondage. For any teachings of God that can so pollute the minds of a believers into thinking that "Amazing Grace" is an appropriate hymn for the funeral of a child is truly a House of Bondage and surely is the Spiritual Land of Egypt.

Christianity is a self-condemning religion, whose chains of bondage bind more tightly than the chains of Judaism. For where Judaism is a religion of judging the outward things of the flesh, Christianity is a religion that judges the inward things of the mind. And where Jews can perform rituals to absolve themselves of a transgression, rituals can not erase the thoughts of Christians. And in being perpetually caused to judge their every thought, many Christians are driven into insanity and fill our mental wards.

Christianity is a faith born of fear of unbelief, rather than love of God, love of Jesus, or love of what is believed. It is a faith dependent upon one's self-loathing, passive ignorance, and an unrighteous fear of God. It is a faith that discourages truthfulness before God, with self and with others; for Christianity it is upheld by its demand of an unquestioning faith, with the threat of damnation to question what it claims. It is a religion that requires one to accept beliefs of God that are contrary to one's own sense of what is righteous. It is a religion that is more suitable for the dishonest than the honest, for it makes a liar of all. No rationally minded person truthfully believes that were it not for the crucifixion of Jesus, they are deserving of being cast into a fiery hell and eternally tormented. And no sound minded sane person is capable of loving a bloody butcher who would command the slaughter of defeated people - including the butchery of women, children and infants. For any child of God claiming to believe that what the bloody one of 1 Samuel 15:2-3 commanded men to do is good is making a liar of himself before God and men.

The Romanized Christ
http://www.harrington-sites.com/Romanized.htm

Harrington Sites - Revealing the Spiritual duality of the Bible. For it serves neither God nor truth to try and rationalize irrational things the Bible says of God.
http://www.harrington-sites.com

[AnnieBW]

31. Talibornagains

I like "Taliborn-agains"

[Maat]

36. I'm involved in a huge interfaith effort among people who are progressive.

I struggle with this also.

I like 'Religious Reich.'

But I'm struggling to come up with a good acronym, to distinguish them from the best peace activists I know: my liberal Christian friends, who are generally Methodist, Episcopalian, United Church of Christ, part of Unity, or Unitarian-Universalists.

I'm a person of faith, but not a Christian. I'm a Religious Scientist.

I haven't quite hit on the perfect term for the DobsonBots or SouthernBaptistBots.