How to Break the Republican Lock on God

[mobeau69]

The progressive leaders Pete Buttigieg and Stacey Abrams are confronting the hypocrisy of the religious right.

The best Christian argument against Trump comes from Christ. The essence of Christianity is his exhortation that people treat the sick, the hungry, the poor, the imprisoned as they would treat him. “Whatever you did to the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did to me.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/opinion/stacy-abrams-pete-buttigieg.html

[LongtimeAZDem]

1. Or, maybe we just all grow up and stop arguing over legendary figures?

[mobeau69]

3. Not likely to happen now, is it?

Regardless, it's not arguing over legendary figures. It's arguing over what they've reportedly said.

[bitterross]

4. I so agree with you.

I wish we could get mythology out of our public policy. That, unfortunately, is not going to happen before 2020.

There are far too many people who have been indoctrinated since birth. As a species, this is one of the most effective tools for thought control for us.

So, I begrudgingly have to admit we must join in the ignorance to defeat the ignorance.

[marylandblue]

5. Well that,s fair. You don't have to believe what they believe.

You just have recognize you have potential political allies who believe in such things and find inspiration in them.

[TexasBushwhacker]

7. Good luck with that

I'll settle for them to quit being religious hypocrites. There is NOTHING in the Bible about abortion. There is NOTHING in the New Testament about homosexuality.

[stopbush]

10. Actually, homosexuality is negatively addressed in Romans.

Look it up.

[LongtimeAZDem]

12. And arguably, Corinthians and Timothy

[stopbush]

15. Indeed. When will we as a species stop our annoying habit of giving

a “get out of jail free” card to religions? We seem so hellbent on excusing away the parts of religion that hit up against enlightened thought. In the process, the ugliness and hatred of religion - particularly Christianity - gets swept under the carpet.

[NastyRiffraff]

28. Yes, by that bigot Paul

Paul was a horrible misogynist and homophobe. There's been speculation that he was actually gay (and self-hating) but who knows?

[stopbush]

29. Sure, but he's also the founder of Christianity.

You can’t have it both ways. His bigotry is fundamental to Xian belief.

[NastyRiffraff]

30. True.

I'll never forget a nun in class reading one of his diatribes against women. This was in sixth grade, and even then I was recoiling.

[stopbush]

9. Bingo! And while we're at it, let's stop referring to mythical figures

as being legendary figures.

[LongtimeAZDem]

11. I disagree that Jesus can be definitively categorized as mythical; like Robin Hood, it is

reasonable to argue that there is at least one historical person at the heart of the story.

Unfortunately, as a result of centuries of deliberate revision and censorship, it is unlikely we'll ever get the real account.

[stopbush]

18. The best arguments against Jesus being a real person are:

1. The writings of Paul, who states clearly that Jesus was a spiritual, not a corporeal being

2. The fact that there are no historic sources outside of the Buybull attesting to Jesus existing, outside of “people say he existed”

3. The fact that sects of the early church believed he was not a corporeal being

4. The fact that there is nothing at all in the lifestory of Jesus as portrayed in the Buybull that couldn’t be garnered from the beliefs and dogmae of other contemporaneous religions of the time. There doesn’t need to be even a single “real” person to serve as the genesis of the Jesus story as all of the elements already existed in the myths of the day, anymore than a real person needed to exist upon which to base the myth of Zeus. In fact, the story of Jesus makes every effort to conform his story to that of other godmen of the era. That’s how they “proved” Jesus was a god to the people of his time - his life imitated the life of other gods that people were already aware of.

[LongtimeAZDem]

22. Agreed, but none of that explicitly refutes the possibility of a preacher or preachers whose stories

form the core of the legend. That doesn't, of course, make the legend true.

[stopbush]

25. Sure. I give it a less than 1% chance that it's true, but that's still a chance, no?

[WeekiWater]

31. Not much on history?

Sorry to be so blunt but you are putting forward an argument that goes against reality. A bit of irony there.

[LongtimeAZDem]

33. Very big on history; before I studied, I took Jesus' historicity for granted. It wasn't until

college that I discovered that there are no contemporaneous accounts the existence Jesus as portrayed in the gospels; none at all.

The closest we get is a passage in Josephus that mentions a "brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James", which, given how common both messiah claimants and executions were under Roman rule, is hardly extraordinary; and, in any case, it is a tertiary source at best. The Testimonium Flavianum cannot be verfiied and is not considered reliable.

Tacitus states that Christians "derived their name and origin from Christ, who, in the reign of Tiberius, had suffered death by the sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate" While this confirms the existence of Christians, it does not reference Jesus directly, and may simply have been relayed from the Christians themselves. At best, it corroborates the existence of the crucifixion story, but does not support any other aspect of the Jesus legend.

Suetonius mentions a "Chrestus", but during the reign of Claudius, which is after the alleged death of Jesus. Even if it refers to an earlier individual, there is nothing tying the title to Jesus, and, again, does not support any other aspect of the Jesus legend.

Pliny mentions early Christians, but nothing of Jesus.

That's it; no contemporaneous accounts of miracles or any of the other extraordinary events of the legend.

[WeekiWater]

34. That, combined with societal historical trends,..

Is where the irony is at.

[LongtimeAZDem]

35. Societal historical trends are not proof of legendary figures

[WeekiWater]

36. I'm not looking for proof.

Each of my comments have only been directed at the “growing up” part.

[LongtimeAZDem]

37. OK, fair point

[marylandblue]

2. This used to be called the Social Gospel, and it was big more than 100 years ago.

during the original progressive era. Seems to be making a comeback now.

[beachbum bob]

6. democrats have tended to shy away from god and religion talk and that enabled the rightwing to

go at it. You go on the offense using the New Testament and teachings of Jesus. It does work, especially when you get republicans to diss Jesus's doctrines

[stopbush]

26. I am very much against the Ds using Christianity as an arrow in their political quiver.

BTW - you say we should go on the religious offensive, but then you indicate that must be a Christian-exclusive offensive. “The NT and teachings of Jesus?” Can you be any more noninclusive? No teachings from The Prophet? No holy (sic) books outside the NT?

See, this is the problem with Xianity. It it has so infected American society that we don’t even realize when we are spouting its biases and elitist stature.

[bitterross]

8. Sounds like a way to re-brand the term "Democratic Socialism" It won't go anywhere.

This is pretty much the gateway to Democratic Socialism. I'd like to think it is an effective road to Democratic Socialism but I'm not convinced it will be.

I'm not sure the Trump-voting "Christian" can be swayed. These idiots have bought into the Prosperity Gospel (capitalism), not the Social Gospel and they, somehow, see Trump as a mandate from God. Thank you Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Franklin Graham and others.

My reading on most of these Trump-voting "Christians" is they are only Sunday-morning Christians these days anyway. The rest of the week they are combatants in the harsh, evil capitalist society we have created in the US. A form of Hunger Games/Game of Thrones where they must aspire to become a rich, asshole like Trump to survive.

This is by design on the part of the GOP. They want people at the serf level believing they can become a lord, lady or even king of the realm through hard work. But that immigrants and Muslims (the "other&quot are preventing them from achieving that goal. This makes it easy for the GOP to insert immigrants, Muslims and others as the "enemy."

The older white women and men who voted for Trump are the long-term Christians and believers, but they're listening to the younger ministers and pastors who are Prosperity Gospel people and single-issue anti-abortion people. So they vote for Trump when Joel Osteen or Creflo Dollar say vote for Trump. Those older people were taught to listen to authority and not question. They do what their "authorities" tell them to do.

I'd like to think people are going to finally wake up and see Trump, his administration, and all of his actions as the exact opposite of their Jesus' teachings. I just don't see that happening though. It's far too difficult to get people to admit they were wrong in the first place because it is cognitively painful. Much less admit that and then make an affirmative change in the proper direction. That's just not how the human psyche works.

I hope I'm wrong.

[JudyM]

13. If only we could engineer tightly moderated public debates between Prosperity and Social Gospel folk

The P-Gospelites are such smooth talkers though, twist facts too quickly for most to get a critical thinking frame on what they’re saying.

[marylandblue]

20. Historically, people move surprisingly fast under certain conditions.

If they believe existing ideas have run their course, they are nominally committed to them, but have a lot of inner doubts. They become open to new ideas, when presented with them. This is difficult to predict in advance, but we can see it retrospect as with the civil rights movement or the fall of the Soviet Union.

I believe that we are at such a time. Signs of it have been growing. But I can't predict any better than anyone else. Nonetheless, it's my operating assumption, and I like Buttigieg because it appears to be his assumption too. He is seeing a future that nobody else sees yet, so he sounds fresh and bold.

[progressoid]

14. This is a futile battle. The religious right doesn't give a shit about their hypocrisy.

They've shown this over and over.

[LAS14]

16. True, but I'd like to see the agnostic middle educated to the...

...FACT that Christianity is not defined by right wing politics... except, perhaps, as its opposite.

[progressoid]

21. I suspect that the agnostic middle is, well, agnostic on the subject.

So for them, this is a meaningless battle.

[marylandblue]

24. I suspect that many people sitting in the pews are less enamored of their right wing preachers

than they used to be. Of course, I don't know that for certain, but I think there are some signs of that.

[LAS14]

17. I'm so glad that this is happening.

When DUers blithely demonize "christianity" wholesale, I wish they'd consider the fact that almost all of our admired leaders are practicing religious people, whether Christian or Jewish or even Muslim. Why do you think that is if religion has no good effects?

[stopbush]

19. It happens in spite of religion.

Last edited Fri Apr 12, 2019, 12:22 PM - Edit history (1)

It’s based more on Enlightenment thought than religion.

A specious argument. Why are all of our presidents male and all but one white?

[marylandblue]

23. There is much more complex interplay between philosophical and religious thought

The 18th Century Enlightenment thinkers thought they were making a clean break, and in many ways they were, but at the same time they were building on earlier religious humanism and a sort of theological scientism of the 17th Century. And after the Enlightenment came Romanticism, which brought back feeling and religion, even as rationalism marched on. We are still living in a mix of Enlightment and Romantic thought, and that mix affects theology.

[JustFiveMoreMinutes]

27. As my pastor is doing, he's preaching what Jesus Taught

... and not what the old testament or the generations following Him taught.

It's driving the older traditionalists of 'judgement and purgatory' away... but it's bringing a new inclusive and doctrine based fellowship concerned with loving one another, support of our being human, and bringing us together... not discord.

A WONDERFUL direction away from the Moral Majority and Right Wing Zealots.

[highplainsdem]

32. John Pavlovitz is particularly good at confronting the hypocrisy of the religious right:

https://johnpavlovitz.com/


I suggest anyone not familiar with Pavlovitz read his columns, including the older ones.

For instance:

https://johnpavlovitz.com/2019/03/02/god-is-not-a-straight-dude/

https://johnpavlovitz.com/2019/02/13/hey-evangelicals-the-planet-is-a-pro-life-issue/

https://johnpavlovitz.com/2019/01/28/its-inhumane-not-to-want-someone-to-have-healthcare/

https://johnpavlovitz.com/2019/01/20/im-a-christian-mike-pences-hateful-christianity-is-offensive-to-me/

https://johnpavlovitz.com/2019/01/06/selling-the-souls-of-american-evangelicals/

[mobeau69]

40. Thanks. These look good! Will read them all later.

I have some perfect recipients in mind to forward them to.

[Blue_true]

38. Yep. Christian democrats must hit the religious right head on.

When Christians that are on our side mince words, the religious right claim God.

[Skidmore]

39. I'd prefer that religion, all religion,

be driven from the public square. It is corrosive and divisive. Moral and ethical rules exist outside of religion. Agree on public rules and keep religion in places of worship and the home. There should be no insistence that all of the nation be forced to observe religious practices of any faith.