Missouri pastor on upcoming book-burning: "If God told me to burn the book Clifford the Big Red Dog, then I'd burn the book Clifford the Big Red Dog"

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What part of “opposing the imperial power” is authoritarian, though? What part of “feed the hungry and welcome the stranger” is authoritarian, exactly?

Is that the only interpretation or a byproduct of a particular interpretation?

Including feeding the hungry and throwing the money changers out of the temple?

But somehow that’s the “wrong” way to interpret it?

It’s almost like the world is complicated and not easy to understand… But that can’t be right?

And where did I ever say that it’s JUST “good” stuff? I am really sick of being purposefully misunderstood here.

Yet many seem to do that. I guess they don’t count since a bunch of bigoted men have put their foot down… /s

Ah, yes, as the enslavers were the ONLY ones using the bible for their cause… I mean not a single person used the bible to endorse the opposite… /s

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It’s almost like the people with power used things they knew had power in ways that enhanced their own power… but that can’t be true…

This is a problem of interpretation. I reject letting fascist be the one to dictate ANYTHING. EVER. Fuck them. If that makes me a bad person, then so be it.

And any other framework that they feel supports their views. Like science. Like them using scientific language to reject the variety of gender that actual does exist.

Same for capitalism.

Again read up on eugenics. It was considered a “science” that “proved” the “supremacy” of white people.

No. I reject your efforts to paint @anon29537550 as a bad faith actor here. He’s always very clear on his views and intent.

Which ones? You are aware of just how diverse the various Christian sects are, yeah?

That’s not what I said.

But hey, not categorizing billions of your fellow humans… cool, cool.

I’d suggest that you don’t understand the vast diversity of Christianity, since you’re actively rejecting a large swath of the people you’re discussing.

And we’re assuming that the only real Christians are the ones that the media decide are real, which tend to be right wing, because of how the media works… cool. cool.

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I have met many good people who are Christians/Muslims/Buddhists and so on. And I have met many total assholes who are Christians/Muslims/Buddhists and so on. What I have found is that faith tends to make good people even better while at the same time making bad people even worse.

As an atheist who has nevertheless always taken a keen interest in religion, I have seen how religion can bring out both the best and the worst in people, and I have learned to respect people who view their religion as something that pushes them to better themselves.

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What? Me not understanding what he meant doesn’t mean I think he was acting in bad faith. Sometimes sentences can be read more than one way, that doesn’t mean I’m accusing the author of some personal failing.

Re-reading it, I can see I completely misinterpreted the point you were trying to make there, which is entirely on me and my sleep-deprived brain. I apologize, it wasn’t my intention to misrepresent your argument in my reply.

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Pastor Dusty: “What about ‘The Art of the Deal?’”

DaBigG: “Sure, I’ve read that one. Bit crap, to be honest, that can go on the flames”.

PD: “The Color Purple?”

DBG: “Hold on to that one, lad. It’s on my to-read list. I will get around to it, just been so busy lately.”

PD: “How about Clifford The Big Red Dog?”.

DBG: “Clifford The… the kid’s book? Are you fucking nuts?”

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Some call themselves Quakers.

https://web.archive.org/web/20110224024625/http://www.worldpolicy.newschool.edu/globalrights/sexorient/1964-quaker.html

(Some of the language is dated, it was published in 1964 when being gay was still illegal in the UK, but the intention was LGBTQIA positive)

Also

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Those bits aren’t authoritarian. My point is that the parts that are authoritarian still exist alongside the parts that aren’t, and the fact that the authoritarian parts exist makes it much easier for people to use the religion as a whole to support their negative behaviour.

My entire point back in my first post on this is that it is really easy for this pastor to justify his stance of “I’d do anything if god told me to, even burning children’s books” because "obedience to the will of god " is something that’s a big theme in important stories from his religion.

I never claimed that the stories told as part of Christianity are all bad or only authoritarian. There’s lots of stuff in there, after all. I’m just saying that the parts that are about obedience, submission and the social standards of societies from thousands of years ago, really are in there and can be (and are) used to justify cruel nonsense like the original post.

And when I say those parts that endorse such values are part and parcel of the whole, I mean that they’re already there and are accepted as part of the canon. They can’t be edited out of the religion and dropped as no longer having value, because (despite the history of how we got to the current canon) it’s not something that Christianity does today.

Going right back to the original post, I don’t think it’s that controversial to make my point of “you don’t have to dig far into the Christian mythos to see support for blindly obeying an order to burn a children’s book. In fact, one of the most famous early stories from the bible endorses being willing to follow an even worse order”

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What if God told him to love his neighbor?

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Because the fascists are a minority. Certainly outside the US (remember that American Christianity looks a lot different than pretty much anywhere else in the world, excluding the places where they have exported their craziness through exploiting developing countries).

Even inside the US they’re probably the minority, so why should the majority give up?

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Elvis’ manager, “Colonel” Parker, had a sideline in anti-Elvis merchandise like “I hate Elvis” buttons, stuff like that. Ker-ching.

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Again, you’re just assuming they haven’t.

I just checked on the homepage of the Evangelische Kirche Deutschlands. This is the official protestant church of Germany. It’s as close as you can get to a church hierarchy of the kind you’re talking about outside of Catholicism (I’m looking at protestants because the above pastor is protestant, not Catholic).

These are the items on their homepage right now:

  • thoughts on the upcoming Erntedank fest (i. e. Thanksgiving, but with actual religious significance)
  • a condemnation of ongoing violence in Armenia
  • quotes on climate change from a biblical perspective
  • a look at baptism from a biblical perspective
  • a condemnation of violence in Ukraine

Feature articles on:

  • Freedom of religion and persecution of Christians

  • sexual abuse

  • Climate change

News, including the church calling for European solidarity in the refugee crisis at Lampedusa

This is the sort of thing people think of when they hear “Christianity” outside the US. A bunch of people that only want the best for the world, even if their methods are maybe anodyne and inward-focussed and they have lost their relevance to mainstream society a long time ago. At worst bumbling do-gooders rather than firebrand preachers, at best an institution that can provide comfort and community.

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The counter-argument is, if this pastor’s attitude is to be expected of a Christian, then why isn’t it more expected of rabbis? It’s an oversimplification, but Judaism uses the Torah, which includes some of the most authoritarian parts of the Old Testament, which is way more authoritarian than the New Testament. If what you are saying is true, then Jews would tend more towards authoritarianism than Christians. Yet the opposite is true, in the grand scheme of things.

So I’d argue it’s not what’s in the holy book of choice that matters, but rather the people who make up the particular group and how they are being led when it comes to this bent towards fascism. And that itself all comes back to power and money.

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Given this pastor’s penchant for misunderstanding things? That would be a different kind of scandal…

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I’m arguing that the authoritarianism is less “there” and more about interpretation.

That’s HIS interpretation, though. Plenty of people have taken the same verses he might use here and take away a different meaning. “Obedience” to god might mean rebellion against oppression, which was a common interpretation in the Black church. And that doesn’t even get into the fact that the original Old Testament books are part of the Torah, have been twisted to justify oppression by many Christian leaders. Go read the story I posted above (from the Speaking of faith thread) about interpretation of Job, which has long been seen as a story about a man being obedient to God, and then God being a real dick to him to prove a point, and then Job’s life improving against once he TELLS GOD OFF… The story has been puzzled over for centuries by Rabbis, but some have settled on the view that it’s about speaking truth to power, which is what Job does at the end. I’m not Jewish, but I do know that there is a deep tradition of constant engagement with these texts for over 5000. Plus, they are the history of a people - explaining their troubles, triumphs, travels… Just because Christians have appropriated it for their own ends doesn’t negate that…

No, but you said they were rooted in authoritarianism. But you forget that it was centuries between the time of Jesus of Nazareth and the codification of what’s become the Christian text.

But again, my point here has been that this is an interpretation and as I’ve said, there are many verses that are used for both authoritarian and liberatory purposes, such as the enslavers bible vs. the bible of the enslaved and the free Black population during the antebellum period.

He’d probably ignore it or find a way to make it mean “well, only some neighbors!”… Because, this is all about interpretation…

They are, I think. They are a vocal minority that has managed to claim the title of “real religious people” because the media is full of people who love their us v. them stories, because they get eyeballs.

A good point! There is certainly a movement within modern, post-European liberation Judaism towards a more top-down interpretation of the Torah, but that just isn’t the case with most modern Jewish interpretation, which hinge of the concept of constantly textual engagement with the world around us. I mean, that’s the whole Talmud, yeah? Just heaps of Rabbis asking questions about meaning and engaging with the works of their ancestors?

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And of Mennonites, Amish, Quakers…

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There are plenty of fundamentalist, authoritarian rabbis. The so called Ultra-Conservative community is shaped by expectations of top-down hierarchical control, women are supposed to be all but invisible, there are plenty of arbitrary rules that you can work around but better not just ignore, etc. Given that Jesus himself was a Jew the idea of obedience to god is definitely part and parcel of his teachings.
None of the biblical texts are contemporary with Jesus’s life. The most influential “author” in the canonical sense is Paul, and those texts had the most influence on the structure of the early church.
Most of the arguments here against the church and Christianity as a religion not having an authoritarian basis reads a lot like No True Scotsman.

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Not really no, since I’m pulling on actual historical examples to bolster my arguments here. If you think that the enslavers interpretation of scripture is MORE correct than those of the enslaved, that’s on you. Hell, even Catholicism, with it’s sorted, violent, colonial history, has an interpretation based in liberation and not just blind obedience.

No one said that there is no authoritarian examples of Christianity (or Judaism for that matter). Of course, there are, because the OP is an example of that. The argument is that this is ONE interpretation of the faith, and we see no reason to let them be the one that is “correct.” We’re arguing that the fascists should not be the ones who get to define reality. Is that really a “no true scotsman” argument, when I’m not saying that the fascists aren’t Christians, rather, I’m saying they should not be the ones who get to define everything. Fuck that.

And no one said that Judaism didn’t have sects that are authoritarian in nature… I literally just said that, while pointing out that there is a long history of Rabbinical debate that calls pretty much everything into question.

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I would reccomend you review the framework of the discussion in this thread. We’re discussing whether the authoritarian effect within Christianity is because it is being used in some cases as a tool of fascists or whether, and this is a direct quote, whether authoritarianism is “baked into the framework” of Christianity.

If someone found an isolated and minor exception, then you could claim that was a No True Scotsman argument and write it off. When the vast majority of examples are exceptions, such as with Christianity in America (and an even higher proportion outside the US, as @Doctor_Faustus points out), then you’re not dealing with a No True Scotsman argument. The exception, as it turns out, is the fascists (as they so often are). And for all institutions, the best counter to fascists isn’t to cede the institution to them but to TAKE IT BACK.

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“Matt Frewer captured the essence of TM”

Matt Frewer is sometimes great, sometimes not (YMMV, of course), but when he’s great, he’s really great. I thought he did a surprisinlyg good job in the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake, but his role as Moloch in Watchmen was so good!

“You know the kind of cancer you get better from? Well that ain’t the kind I got.”

Matt_Frewer_Mug_2

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So, ironicly, I was visiting yet another family member with likely terminal cancer when this got brought back up.

I’d like to clarify some things from then to now.

I still believe all those things I said, however, I was speaking of very particular sects of christianity that revolve around dominionism and accelerationism and that seem to currently have a grip on american christian churches. I certainly have run into many wonderful christians who are not in that mold. However, I also stand by my belief that when you look at how Jesus and God don’t seem to be doing anything about these people, it does make me wonder exactly what good Jesus and God are in my life.

If they were actual people who observed people doing these things in their name and places of business, we’d be talking about nazi bars and what you call someone who sits down at a table with 10 nazis. That they are a demigod and prime creator of the universe should give them more responsibility, not less.

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It strikes me that this video I posted addresses some of the points I’ve been trying to make here, probably more eloquently than I have, and with a nice, soothing British accent, to boot!

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