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Media/Hollywood's anti-Christian campaign


Monster

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I don't object to the persecution of alleged Christians in the media, because the ones being persecuted, typically, are exactly that, alleged or purported Christians.  They are being "persecuted" precisely because of their hypocrisy.

What I do object to is the broad-brush labeling of Christians as being all the same.  The most likely group to be hypocrites or bigots are non-denominational, congregational churches and they are a relatively small percentage of people professing to be Christian in the US. 

Most mainline Protestant denominations are more likely to be "good" Christians or at least neutral by comparison and the churches themselves are almost uniformly a boon to their communities.

And setting aside the institutional problems of the Catholic church for a moment, individual Catholics are more likely to be minorities, minority-sympathetic, and overall classically liberal than your average American.

Unfortunately, "Baptists" are a big chunk of Protestants and they vary wildly from complete assholes to pretty good folks.  And Westboro Baptist is not actually Baptist in that it is not affiliated with any national denomination.  Baptists tend to have more in common with the congregational "evangelicals" than with mainline Protestants, but you generalize at your peril.

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3 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Unfortunately, "Baptists" are a big chunk of Protestants and they vary wildly from complete assholes to pretty good folks.  And Westboro Baptist is not actually Baptist in that it is not affiliated with any national denomination.  Baptists tend to have more in common with the congregational "evangelicals" than with mainline Protestants, but you generalize at your peril. 

well, let's not undersell some of the lovely overlap between baptists and catholics either...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2019/02/10/pure-evil-southern-baptist-leaders-condemn-decades-sexual-abuse-revealed-investigation/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.8403af117bde

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46 minutes ago, F250 said:

I'm a Methodist so I know we don't require name changes but I am not aware of anyone else who does.

What is the story here?

One Sunday morning I went to church with the kid across the street who was CoC. I introduced myself to the teachers and other adults during sunday school, and I guess the fact that I don't have a regular white American Christian name for Dallas in 1981 like Timmy or Joe Dale caused some consternation, so they came for a visit. Once they had said their peace my dad gave them a time limit to get off the property, and they overperformed. 

And to Gsoda's point about Christians treating each other with respect and kindness- I'm sure they believed they were doing us a kindness. They didn't want to see a little boy damned to hell. I'm just not sure why some fundamentalist evangelicals will so readily do other Christians the same sort of kindness but are offended when they return the favor.  

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1 minute ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

One Sunday morning I went to church with the kid across the street who was CoC. I introduced myself to them during sunday school, and I guess the fact that I don't have a regular white American Christian name for Dallas in 1981 caused some consternation, so they came for a visit. Once they had said their peace my dad gave them a time limit to get off the property, and they overperformed. 

And to Gsoda's point about Christians treating each other with respect and kindness- I'm sure they believed they were doing us a kindness. They didn't want to see a little boy damned to hell. I'm just not sure why some fundamentalist evangelicals will so readily do other Christians the same sort of kindness but are offended when they return the favor.  

Interesting story. The CoC are an odd bunch. I dated one but she was also an aggy from Tomball so it was hard to tell if her family was weird because of the CoC thing, aggy or was it Tomball.

Now I am thinking your name is Jesus as in Hey-Zues.

 

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3 minutes ago, F250 said:

Interesting story. The CoC are an odd bunch. I dated one but she was also an aggy from Tomball so it was hard to tell if her family was weird because of the CoC thing, aggy or was it Tomball.

Now I am thinking your name is Jesus as in Hey-Zues.

 

Yeah, I left them out of my screed above because, well, they're weird.  So they objected to Bozo's Christian name as being un-Christian?  So Bozo is Beelzebub?

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22 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

I don't object to the persecution of alleged Christians in the media, because the ones being persecuted, typically, are exactly that, alleged or purported Christians.  They are being "persecuted" precisely because of their hypocrisy.

What I do object to is the broad-brush labeling of Christians as being all the same.  The most likely group to be hypocrites or bigots are non-denominational, congregational churches and they are a relatively small percentage of people professing to be Christian in the US. 

Most mainline Protestant denominations are more likely to be "good" Christians or at least neutral by comparison and the churches themselves are almost uniformly a boon to their communities.

And setting aside the institutional problems of the Catholic church for a moment, individual Catholics are more likely to be minorities, minority-sympathetic, and overall classically liberal than your average American.

Unfortunately, "Baptists" are a big chunk of Protestants and they vary wildly from complete assholes to pretty good folks.  And Westboro Baptist is not actually Baptist in that it is not affiliated with any national denomination.  Baptists tend to have more in common with the congregational "evangelicals" than with mainline Protestants, but you generalize at your peril.

To a non-believer, all Christians ARE the same. You are putting unsubstantiated faith into a god when you appear to be, otherwise, a rational person. No amount of parsing of what denominations are more Christ-like will change that perception. 

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Well, a non-believer doesn't have to talk shit and probably shouldn't.  The persecution going on is not a legitimate criticism of faith (faith by its very nature is unsubstantiated), it is criticism based on specific behavior that isn't universal to Christians.

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1 minute ago, Spankytoes said:

To a non-believer, all Christians ARE the same. You are putting unsubstantiated faith into a god when you appear to be, otherwise, a rational person. No amount of parsing of what denominations are more Christ-like will change that perception. 

I don't know, man. The people bringing food, clean water, medicine and care to those in need see pretty likable. 

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3 hours ago, Mole said:

As the book say, the scandal of the evangelical mind is that there isn’t very much of one. 

Not related to the above post, I grossly underestimated my prediction of how long it would take for those vastly ignorant of history and the church’s complex role in it to start spouting simplistic and plainly bigoted comments. I said five pages but we hit it by page two. There’s a difference between criticism, disagreement, and bigotry and the lines are very clear. Hypocrisy and bigotry is a truly unifying human trait.

A thought experiment: imagine sticking every American who has ever professed a strongly held belief about, say, climate change into one giant room. I can imagine they would number in the tens of millions, so it'd have to be a REALLY big room. Now imagine a mind reading device that can identify everybody in the room whose interest in the issue does not stem from a genuine desire to strike a balance between human welfare and ecological welfare. Now, kick all those people out of the room. How many people are still left?

Now imagine a different room where we stick every American who has ever professed a strong belief in Christianity. Now kick everybody out except the ones who have really committed themselves to following the teachings of Jesus Christ, every single day. Same thing happens as with climate change -- most people who hold a strong political or religious opinion don't actually care about the subject all that deeply. They think they do. They'll tell you that they do. They'll probably even get aggressive if you suggest that they don't actually care about the thing they're so passionate about. Behold, tribalism.

All that to say, if rational Christians are tired of evangelicals, it's long past time for them to fight back. Publicly. Rational Christians should be demanding that the IRS audit whether megachurch empires are abusing their tax exempt status. Only Christians get to raise this issue, because anyone else would feed the persecution narrative that's radicalizing the evangelicals. Rational Christians, on the other hand, can do a sort of jiu-jitsu takedown move and actually flip the persecution narrative inside out -- they can say, "hey, 700 Club and TBN, YOU'RE the ones attacking Christianity," and get people to listen.

Edited by ndawg
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1 minute ago, Spankytoes said:

To a non-believer, all Christians ARE the same. You are putting unsubstantiated faith into a god when you appear to be, otherwise, a rational person. No amount of parsing of what denominations are more Christ-like will change that perception. 

Well, your a very shitty person but I am not going to associate people with your view on metaphysics with your shitty humanity.

Some nuance is required.

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Just now, ndawg said:

All that to say, if rational Christians are tired of evangelicals, it's long past time for them to fight back. Publicly. Rational Christians should be demanding that the IRS audit whether megachurch empires are abusing their tax exempt status. Only Christians get to raise this issue, because anyone else would feed the persecution narrative that's radicalizing the evangelicals. Rational Christians, on the other hand, can do a sort of jiu-jitsu takedown move and actually flip the persecution narrative inside out -- they can say, "hey, 700 Club and TBN, YOU'RE the ones attacking Christianity," and get people to listen.

Yeah, this was attempted over 100 years ago and how America ended up with Evangelicals.

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6 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Well, a non-believer doesn't have to talk shit and probably shouldn't.  The persecution going on is not a legitimate criticism of faith (faith by its very nature is unsubstantiated), it is criticism based on specific behavior that isn't universal to Christians.

I would argue that religion is a cancer on our society that gives license to division, so yeah, the non-religious are pretty vocal about it. To claim any sort of persecution though? Nah, I'm not going to buy that one. Try being a non-Christian in the U.S. on for size. 

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11 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

I don't know, man. The people bringing food, clean water, medicine and care to those in need see pretty likable. 

I didn't say that Christians are bad people nor do I agree with the generalization that only Christians do good in this world. 

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18 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

I don't know, man. The people bringing food, clean water, medicine and care to those in need see pretty likable. 

But those people aren't the ones running our country right now.  In fact, those people are stridently OPPOSED by those running our country right now.

The folks running the country have the spotlight. And those folks are dominionists, jerks like Falwell and Jeffers, and they actively support policies and actions to shit all over the neediest and most vulnerable (and, you know, putting the most vulnerable of THAT group in kiddie jails, separated from their parents).

To the rest of the world, "Christian Values" are defined by those with the bully pulpit who shout loud and often what those values are.  The problem is, from that pulpit, the primary value is "be a dick to others."  So, your pool of decent folks -- and I know hundreds in that pool, and participate actively in such efforts -- are pretty irrelevant.  The brand of public Christianity is "be a buncha dicks."  That's a pretty stout brand.

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7 hours ago, Js1 said:

Young people inherently see through the bullshit that is religion.  

For every Brisket who actually does God's work, there's a Joel Osteen getting rich, a Jerry Falwell Jr. selling out his beliefs to Donald Trump, a bunch of kids getting molested, and a bunch of kids getting thrown in cages while "Christians" do nothing but demonize them. 

And by that, I mean for every 1 Brisket, there is 5 Iconoclasts who want to go to the border and shoot immigrants but thinks he is a good Christian.

So what you're saying is it's not bullshit, it has bullshit in it. Maybe that's the whole wheat from chaft deal that Jesus said.

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22 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

But those people aren't the ones running our country right now.  In fact, those people are stridently OPPOSED by those running our country right now.

The folks running the country have the spotlight. And those folks are dominionists, jerks like Falwell and Jeffers, and they actively support policies and actions to shit all over the neediest and most vulnerable (and, you know, putting the most vulnerable of THAT group in kiddie jails, separated from their parents).

To the rest of the world, "Christian Values" are defined by those with the bully pulpit who shout loud and often what those values are.  The problem is, from that pulpit, the primary value is "be a dick to others."  So, your pool of decent folks -- and I know hundreds in that pool, and participate actively in such efforts -- are pretty irrelevant.  The brand of public Christianity is "be a buncha dicks."  That's a pretty stout brand.

The good ones get arrested by the bad ones when they try to do good. 

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ONE of my objections is that dealing with "good" christians is like reading a Chrispie post. It's all sweet and good and well intended from their perspective but it's a wolf in sheeps clothing standing on your doorstep. I aplogize to those that have read this before. I had a principal that lead the faculty in prayer. As much as an atheist as I am I still have the manners to stand. The aggravation was that his christian subsect called for people to be baptised in his church or give up their ticket to heaven. I have a daughter who passed away. You see the issue. This is not the person I want prostletizing to me.

Edited by Nolacycling
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6 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

The primary group doing damage to Christianity and its perception is.....Christians.  Hypocrisy is a great storyline, always has been.  You can't blame people for noticing and plucking the low-hanging fruit.

If you look at the following sequence:

1 -- read the Gospels (you know, the things that make Christianity Christianity, and not judaism of the Old Testament) with fresh eyes (as in, for the first time), you walk away with some pretty clear messaging.  A first-time Gospel reader, if charged with writing an essay about the point of the Gospels, would write a lot about loving your neighbor, caring for the poor, etc.  

2 -- modern, visible Christians focus their effort/grant their support to causes and people that do the exact OPPOSITE of the Gospel message.  Shit on the other, fuck you I got mine, purposeful cruelty to the weak, to women, to anyone they disagree with, etc. etc. (we all know the drill).  Donald Trump is the unfettered id of modern American Christianity personified, for example.

3 -- modern, visible Christians actively OPPOSE people and groups who try to live the message of point 1.  Caring for your neighbor?  Loving and welcoming the stranger?  Those people are openly mocked and vilified by modern American Christians.

Yes, it goes even deeper, and has more dimensions than that, but the core is pretty simple.  Christianity is about the principles of the Gospels.  Modern American Christianity not only largely fails to follow those principles, it actively and cruelly opposes them, and celebrates doing so.  They think they are clever enough to fool people.  They aren't.  Anyone with a lick of sense sees right through them.  Modern American Christianity is repeatedly shooting itself in the dick because it's self-defined as selfish and fucking mean.  Bitching about Hollywood portrayals of you, when you are doing all you can to make yourself as grotesque as possible, is.....well.....perfect.  Because the other thing that modern American Christianity is great at is ducking all responsibility.

Well said. I believe the KKK believed they were Christian and doing God’s work. So did the Nazis. Also, all those mega churches preaching “prosperity” Christianity. As well as James Bakker. There are a lot of so called Christians using the name of Christ to control and manipulate, and take advantage of those less fortunate, or believing differently. 

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1 hour ago, F250 said:

Yeah, this was attempted over 100 years ago and how America ended up with Evangelicals.

The tax codes that allow churches to be tax exempt didn't exist 100 years ago, so I'm not sure what you're saying directly applies. To your broader point, I'm suggesting that some activism is necessary; the fact that we have an apparent resurgence of racism today doesn't suggest that the civil rights movement of the 60s failed.

But.. what exactly are you referring to? The Third Great Awakening? I'm struggling to see the connection you're making, because I perceive the Third Great Awakening to be less of an activist movement and more of a broader historical period. I'm interested to hear your thoughts, though, because I bet you know a lot more than I do (I don't really study religions or religious movements much)

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3 hours ago, Anastasis said:

American Atheists and the Freedom from Religion Foundation are tax-exempt 501c3's.  So the answer appears to be yes.  

What a bunch of dipshits.  I wanted to tax exemptions from hunting, fishing, and drinking.   I don't want to associate with idiots who want to talk about what we believe....oh fuck...

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Listing rebuttals by popularity.

1. Christians deserve ridicule   

2. All religions are fake.  Atheism is the one true true.

2  All religions are ridiculed equally in the media. (Demonstrably false)

3. Trump.

4. OP is an asshole (Demonstrably true.)

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11 minutes ago, Monster said:

Listing rebuttals by popularity.

1. Christians deserve ridicule   

2. All religions are fake.  Atheism is the one true true.

2  All religions are ridiculed equally in the media. (Demonstrably false)

3. Trump.

4. OP is an asshole (Demonstrably true.)

Why do you choose to be a Christian?

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43 minutes ago, OatmealRaisinCookie said:

I have a friend who sent me the link to this thread. He said, "I think I've witnessed the perfect surly thread" I read the thread and it has:

(lots of words)

 

Bullshit. Everybody knows you don't have any friends.

 

Quote

People (read: most Americans and especially the most self-centered and anti-social among us) are so ravished ....

I ravished your mom last night.

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18 minutes ago, ndawg said:

But.. what exactly are you referring to? The Third Great Awakening? I'm struggling to see the connection you're making, because I perceive the Third Great Awakening to be less of an activist movement and more of a broader historical period. I'm interested to hear your thoughts, though, because I bet you know a lot more than I do (I don't really study religions or religious movements much)

I was referring to the divide between the fundamentalists and the mainline Protestants around the end of the 19th century. There were a number of issues that divided the two but the biggest one was the fundamentalist reaction to modernity in the early 1900s.

Mainline Protestants rolled with the changes occurring with modernism and embraced it. They attempted to steer American Christianity in this direction while dragging the rest of the church with them. A big problem is fundamentalists are mostly congregationlists which means there is no top/down structure to issue guidance like the mainline Protestants have.

The fundamentalists didn't react well to the changes happening (science, reason, skepticism) in society. If you recall, this was during a growth period of strong optimism where it seemed nothing couldn't be conquered with science and engineering. They doubled down on Biblical literalism which was not a hallmark of protestantism and rejected any dissenting voice. 

Both sides attempted to reign the other in but the divide grew to the point where neither one recognized the the other as a fellow Christian traveler. Later on a "middle way" was conceived to bridge the gap and that gave birth to the evangelicals where they incubated after WWII until the 1980's to end up where we are today. The Evangelicals were basically fundamentalists working their way out of a corner they put themselves in a long time ago.

I'm leaving a lot out because there is a ton of history between the two/three groups.

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22 minutes ago, F250 said:

I was referring to the divide between the fundamentalists and the mainline Protestants around the end of the 19th century. There were a number of issues that divided the two but the biggest one was the fundamentalist reaction to modernity in the early 1900s.

Mainline Protestants rolled with the changes occurring with modernism and embraced it. They attempted to steer American Christianity in this direction while dragging the rest of the church with them. A big problem is fundamentalists are mostly congregationlists which means there is no top/down structure to issue guidance like the mainline Protestants have.

The fundamentalists didn't react well to the changes happening (science, reason, skepticism) in society. If you recall, this was during a growth period of strong optimism where it seemed nothing couldn't be conquered with science and engineering. They doubled down on Biblical literalism which was not a hallmark of protestantism and rejected any dissenting voice. 

Both sides attempted to reign the other in but the divide grew to the point where neither one recognized the the other as a fellow Christian traveler. Later on a "middle way" was conceived to bridge the gap and that gave birth to the evangelicals where they incubated after WWII until the 1980's to end up where we are today. The Evangelicals were basically fundamentalists working their way out of a corner they put themselves in a long time ago.

I'm leaving a lot out because there is a ton of history between the two/three groups.

Timely post, as this just happened...

United Methodists tighten ban on same sex marriage and gay clergy

This could lead to a split in the largest non-fundamentalist protestant church in the world. The vote was largely US congregations vs the African and Eastern European churches. I'm a life-long Methodist, and the long tenured and much beloved pastor of the church I've attended for the past 14 years decided to retire last year when this conference was announced. He said at the time he didn't think he had the stomach to stick around to see the church he'd given his live to torn apart.  

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3 hours ago, ndawg said:

A thought experiment: imagine sticking every American who has ever professed a strongly held belief about, say, climate change into one giant room. I can imagine they would number in the tens of millions, so it'd have to be a REALLY big room. Now imagine a mind reading device that can identify everybody in the room whose interest in the issue does not stem from a genuine desire to strike a balance between human welfare and ecological welfare. Now, kick all those people out of the room. How many people are still left?

Now imagine a different room where we stick every American who has ever professed a strong belief in Christianity. Now kick everybody out except the ones who have really committed themselves to following the teachings of Jesus Christ, every single day. Same thing happens as with climate change -- most people who hold a strong political or religious opinion don't actually care about the subject all that deeply. They think they do. They'll tell you that they do. They'll probably even get aggressive if you suggest that they don't actually care about the thing they're so passionate about. Behold, tribalism.

All that to say, if rational Christians are tired of evangelicals, it's long past time for them to fight back. Publicly. Rational Christians should be demanding that the IRS audit whether megachurch empires are abusing their tax exempt status. Only Christians get to raise this issue, because anyone else would feed the persecution narrative that's radicalizing the evangelicals. Rational Christians, on the other hand, can do a sort of jiu-jitsu takedown move and actually flip the persecution narrative inside out -- they can say, "hey, 700 Club and TBN, YOU'RE the ones attacking Christianity," and get people to listen.

The problem is that being Christian requires a bit of humility (remove the plank from thine own eye . . . ) that generally forecloses judgment and attacks on other churches and denominations, even when they are damaging "the brand," as it were.  Besides, once the Methodists declare war on Osteen, where do they stop, Muslims, Jews, Catholics, Presbyterians or those dirty Lutherans?

In the final analysis, in the example set by Jesus Christ, to be Christian is to be persecuted.

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21 minutes ago, Pescado_Rojo said:

Timely post, as this just happened...

United Methodists tighten ban on same sex marriage and gay clergy

This could lead to a split in the largest non-fundamentalist protestant church in the world. The vote was largely US congregations vs the African and Eastern European churches. I'm a life-long Methodist, and the long tenured and much beloved pastor of the church I've attended for the past 14 years decided to retire last year when this conference was announced. He said at the time he didn't think he had the stomach to stick around to see the church he'd given his live to torn apart.  

Ugh.

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1 hour ago, F250 said:

I was referring to the divide between the fundamentalists and the mainline Protestants around the end of the 19th century. There were a number of issues that divided the two but the biggest one was the fundamentalist reaction to modernity in the early 1900s.

Mainline Protestants rolled with the changes occurring with modernism and embraced it. They attempted to steer American Christianity in this direction while dragging the rest of the church with them. A big problem is fundamentalists are mostly congregationlists which means there is no top/down structure to issue guidance like the mainline Protestants have.

The fundamentalists didn't react well to the changes happening (science, reason, skepticism) in society. If you recall, this was during a growth period of strong optimism where it seemed nothing couldn't be conquered with science and engineering. They doubled down on Biblical literalism which was not a hallmark of protestantism and rejected any dissenting voice. 

Both sides attempted to reign the other in but the divide grew to the point where neither one recognized the the other as a fellow Christian traveler. Later on a "middle way" was conceived to bridge the gap and that gave birth to the evangelicals where they incubated after WWII until the 1980's to end up where we are today. The Evangelicals were basically fundamentalists working their way out of a corner they put themselves in a long time ago.

I'm leaving a lot out because there is a ton of history between the two/three groups.

Thanks! You piqued my interest quite a bit. If you had a book to recommend, I would be interested to explore it in more depth.

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17 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

The problem is that being Christian requires a bit of humility (remove the plank from thine own eye . . . ) that generally forecloses judgment and attacks on other churches and denominations, even when they are damaging "the brand," as it were.  Besides, once the Methodists declare war on Osteen, where do they stop, Muslims, Jews, Catholics, Presbyterians or those dirty Lutherans?

In the final analysis, in the example set by Jesus Christ, to be Christian is to be persecuted.

How did Jesus react to the Jewish leaders who had done to the temple what our Evangelicals have done to so many churches?

I have a very shallow understanding of Christianity, but it doesn't seem to me that the only example he set was for humans to accept persecution.

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7 minutes ago, ndawg said:

How did Jesus react to the Jewish leaders who had done to the temple what our Evangelicals have done to so many churches?

I have a very shallow understanding of Christianity, but it doesn't seem to me that the only example he set was for humans to accept persecution.

Well, except Jesus kind of had some special authority, y'know.  Yeah he did do a bit of trashing of the bad guys, but it was mostly subtle and among his adherents as an example of what not to be, not among the general public.

Presumably, as the Son of God, he could have gotten exceeding wroth and smitten those Pharoahs, and Pharisees, and Prefects, but he did not.

Edited by TwiceHorn
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2 hours ago, Brandywine said:

Well said. I believe the KKK believed they were Christian and doing God’s work. So did the Nazis. Also, all those mega churches preaching “prosperity” Christianity. As well as James Bakker. There are a lot of so called Christians using the name of Christ to control and manipulate, and take advantage of those less fortunate, or believing differently. 

James Bakker absolutely know he is running a hustle. Look at his eyes in those videos. He knows he has only just barely gotten over, so it is a weird mix of fear and satisfaction.

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