I’m racking my brain for an example of a book or text that might disprove this.
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Watch out, or you’re gonna make my grandma climb up out of her grave to swat you.
/s
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It seems that some folks embrace what they think were simpler times in history to demonstrate a greater level of belief. As for your point about technology, not everyone uses it. In PA, there was this terrible case involving an Amish family: Lee Kaplan, Who Fathered Kids With Amish Teen, Gets 30 to 87 Years in Prison – NBC10 Philadelphia
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Even they were like “No, but really, she was a virgin.”
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Also: “Yeah sure, I stoned to death the guy who came around ask to date my daughter. He was picking up sticks on a Saturday - it’s what the Bible said to do!”
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Hooooly shit, I just saw this poll. Evangelicals are now more accepting of “immoral” behavior by politicians than the general public.![DOXTEaCVoAAv-GM[1]](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/boingboing/original/3X/8/d/8de630a4c0cf8bbf8d679c8a56aa752b245922d9.jpg)
Any claim whatsoever by American evangelicals to any sort of moral stance is now laughable on the face of it. The way they so quickly abandoned any pretense of principles is quite interesting, too.
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…Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson has publicly advised his fans to marry 15- or 16-year-old girls, because “you wait until they get to be 20 years old, the only picking that’s going to take place is your pocket.”
The patriarch of the Canard Caliphate.
Is it just me, or does he look exactly like a Islamist preacher? He’s got the beard and skullcap and everything.
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As a not-christian, I am ever amazed how christianity is so welcoming as to accept, say, the prosperity gospel which, to this outsider, seems to fly in the face of all of their god’s teachings, or the abuse of teenage girls.
And as their way of worshiping their god, really, there’s nothing to be done.
And why thinking Moore’s love of young flesh will be a minor problem for him at worst. That it will sink his campaign is a sweet dream and nothing more, specially when Jones is running against so much of Alabama’s heritage.
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But they’ve been resistant to change for so long that they passed through conservatism and have become reactionaries.
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American Talban.
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You’re right to say that Christianity, or even Baptist Christianity, covers a lot of people with a wide range of views, and it’s unfair and unhelpful to regard all those people as having a single mind.
But I would say that there is a flip side to that, and it creates a potential blind spot that members of any Christian church – from Unitarians to Westboro Baptists – ought to think about. A child-pimping church in Alabama can only exist because it’s supported by slightly more progressive teen-pimping churches in neighboring towns, which are supported in turn by ultra-progressive (“wait til adulthood to pimp your daughter”) churches in nearby counties, and so on. It’s this network of ethical Chinese whispers that eventually lets nice Presbyterians in Westchester, NY comfortably exist under the same umbrella that elsewhere shelters child slavery and witch-killing and other unpleasant stuff.
If you’re even slightly inclined to tolerate someone like Roy Moore because of his avowed “Christianity”, then you’re on shaky footing protesting that your Christianity is not the hatemongering pedophile kind.
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This is quite literally the ‘anything to outlaw abortion’ syndrome. The abortion debate has been politicized to the point that people have abandoned other tenants they may have had just to ‘win’. The Catholic church is large in the blame for this.
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The Second Commandment, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain,” is widely viewed as a prohibition on profanity - but it is much more. Profanity is the mildest of sins against
the Commandment, which is a prohibition on claiming to act in the Lord’s name while acting for yourself and committing evil. It’s prohibited precisely because it brings God into disrepute, and because it induces others to sin in emulation.
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And the craggy scowl.
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The inclination to tolerate disliked behavior from members of your in-group is pretty much universal in human beings. Left, right, religious, national, regional, tribal, race, etc. If you identify with it, even nominally, the odds are that you will judge such things less harshly, and if it fails your judgement even then, you will keep your peace unless directly asked.
To expect otherwise it to isolate yourself from every possible group (unless you think the groups you identify with don’t do this, in which case look harder).
I found Chavez’s nominally leftist authoritarianism repulsive (and it has destroyed way more people’s lives) and I haven’t publicly condemned the Venezuelan government. I suppose that makes my leftism the authoritarian, power-hungry kind.
Roy Moore deserves condemnation for his repulsive behaviour. But I don’t expect it to come from those who share an even nominal identity with him.
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And every time I point out that my two favorite women on the planet are Helen Mirren and Bette Midler I get the old “What?!? But they are old!!!”
Yeah, but they are fucking adults!!! We can have a conversation, talk about life and the world around us. We can have coffee and drinks together. We can understand our mutual joint pain and why it hurts to get out of bed in the morning. You know…we can have a real connection!!!
I will never ever EVER understand why men chase drastically younger women. It’s gross.
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You comment reminded me of the story told by Deeds (Brad Dourif) in the film “Grim Prairie Tales”. That’s how you write a sympathetic villain.
@cheem I once gave Wasabism a go, but it was too hot for me.
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I was thinking of saying, if someone uses Christianity as part of their campaign platform, then Christians more than anyone should see this as a dealbreaker. But I figured it’s not my place to say that. Or IDK, maybe it is.
Right, but my point was, you can decide who is and is not in your group. Plenty of people are functionally Christian, without feeling that they automatically share a tribe with – and speak for – anyone else who uses that word.
If it weren’t for Comedy Central, I’d embed here that Daily Show bit about Sarah Palin’s talk of “real Americans”, and in particular Jon Stewart’s response (“…fuck you.”). IMO, any Christians who don’t like being painted with the same brush as Roy Moore, that should be their reaction to Roy Moore using Christianity.
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