Another possible candidate for our terminology. But it seems more like a case in which a direct crime is involved rather than appropriating civil rights icons for non-civil rights/equality issues. “I’m the Rosa Parks of whatever dumbass thing.”
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Hmmm. I’m not sure that this necessarily disagrees with anything I said in my original reply - since my point was that “faith” is hardly confined to religious people; it seems to me to be far more of a tribal affliction than anything else (where I am using the word “tribe” to cover any group that reinforces self-identity largely through demonising and ridiculing those not in the group - and that’s everything from sports fans to political parties and beyond.)
I am not remotely attempting to absolve “Christians” from this failing - my point was that it’s not a Christian failing, it’s a human failing.
So I shall finish with a minor satirical jab.
Thank GOD the [insert name of ruling political party in your country here] aren’t making the rules for everybody. Oh, wait. They are.
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Sure, maybe. But no other religious culture goes about it with quite the stridence as Christianity. The closest analog is Sharia-law-based Islam. The undertone, here in the USA, is that Christians feel particularly
persecuted
kept out of power
ignored
backstabbed
rights trampled
Their list of grievances goes on and on…
Meanwhile, who is the aggressor, socially and morally, in this country? Yes. Them. Not all of them. Naturally. But if I had to loop a lasso around them, it would be them. The Christians. Especially the fundamentalists, but, more importantly, flavors and shades of nearly every branch of Christianity in the USA.
We could probably toss out the Unitarian Universalists, and I’m sure the Gnostics and a few other utterly passive groups don’t give a shit if John kisses James, and won’t go hunting around in the bible to prove they are sinners deserving damnation.
Back to the point, though. Who colonized the West and interjected their morality into every major culture, the world over, starting in the late 1400’s? That’s right… Christians. And more specifically, the cultural and spiritual rejects of Europe. The fundamentalists are who funneled out of Europe. We are left in the echoes of their aftermath. STILL. The need for a SCOTUS ruling on marriage equality is a DIRECT, LONG-TERM RESULT of Christian fundamentalism from Europe, transplanted and thriving in the US of A.
So, it’s not bad information to ascribe these conservative seethings to humanity. Sure, we suck. But it’s not GOOD information either. It’s not telling us anything.
It is more poignant and useful information to remind ourselves who the aggressors are and where they came from, because in this case it is very specific who they are.
Shit, look what happens just with completely unfettered access to the internet.
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I’m pretty sure stridency can be found in all faiths as well as in realms that aren’t related to religion… it’s just as americans or Europeans, we happen to see the Christian side of things more, and we see the “Sharia law” stuff because we are actively bombing Islamic majority countries.
Except many were here for economic reasons, plus let’s not forget the many non-christians who came to escape persecution, as well as the various minority Christian sects who came for the same reason.
I’d argue that much of the modern strain of Christanity is just that - modern, like this century modern. Especially the whole injecting themselves so actively into the political arena, like that’s like Cold War modern.
I agree they are aggressors, but not all Christians are these aggressors and this variant of Christanity is a distinct response to modernity and the dislocation it has caused.
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[quote=“awjt, post:144, topic:60634”]
Who colonized the West and interjected their morality into every major culture, the world over, starting in the late 1400’s? That’s right… [/quote]
…western European white males. That’s who. Their shared religious faith was, indeed, part of it, but so too was their nationalism and desire for resource exploitation that’s at the heart of every conflict ever. The disguise is important, sure, but if it were the root cause, then there would be no war anywhere else in the world save for where the Christians hang out… [Yes, I’m being facetious. But not perhaps as much as I wish I were being.]
Also, reducing the narrative of the original colonists to simply one of religious persecution (especially since that’s not wholly true anyway as Mindysan33 points out) risks reinforcing the stereotypical notion that everything can be reduced to a simple model cause-and-effect, rather than the complex tapestry that all such stories truly are.
(Equally, I am not convinced by your suggestion that those groups who aren’t bewailing their oppression and who don’t indulge their prejudices by recourse to scripture are “utterly passive”; being passive implies a lack of activity, but you can be highly active without feeling the need to publicise everything all the time.)
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This is one of the reasons I’m so open about much of my life. (The other being that I find it impossible to live any other way.) No, I don’t think I’m such a shining example of pansexual, genderqueer, polyamorous, Linux user, or whatever other deviation I happen to be practicing, but at least I’m a known example of such to those in my life. These terms no longer refer to some faceless queer entity, but suddenly to that (hopefully) nice guy who came by and fixed your computer after you clicked yet another malware link. I may not be their flesh and blood, but I think it can only be beneficial to have another person on that list of “Well I don’t mean $person …” exceptions list.
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I see a bright line on this issue. That line encircles fundamentalist Christianity in the USA as the source of the moral and ethical underpinnings of the majority of oppression in our short tenure as a nation. It is not muddy or ascribable in a useful way to other groups besides Christians in the USA. Sure other groups are bad, but the Fundies take the cake, here. They are the point.
So, who really goes inside the lasso? Any person or group who seethes at the SCOTUS ruling goes inside my lasso. If you start polling Christian denominations, you may become surprised at who goes inside the lasso and how few would remain outside it.
If you are a part of one of those lasso’ed groups, why would you want to STAY in that group if they espouse values that run counter to yours on equality and justice? The overwhelming majority of Christian denominations in the USA preach some form of sexual purity, desire for institutionalized inequality and discrimination as core values, i.e. your assent to these ideas is a requirement of your continued membership. Or, at the very least, you must ignore the others who are loud about these issues in your church in order to carry on your business as a Christian.
Why would you stay in or near that group of oppressors? Why would you associate with those people? To change them? LOL.
We would react the same way with KKK members: “Well, my daddy’s daddy was in it, and I don’t really believe in lynching but I believe in separation of the races.” Most people would view that reasoning as flawed and consider the person saying it as a combination of ignorant, disingenuous and stupid for being part of a group whose history and existence does not rule out public displays of bigotry and violence towards others.
Consider your Christianity. Consider what it means to be a part of the group that you are in. What are their values and requirements? Why are you there, when you have so many choices?
I was a Christian. Grew up that way. I came from a VERY open-minded denomination. One of the pioneers in same sex marriage. But I still moved on from the church. It was time. The morals and requirements of being a Christian ultimately precluded my personal and moral development and stood in direct contrast to my personal choices. I refuse to participate in or associate with discrimination, which my membership in the church ultimately made me a party to.
People often say to me, “Well, TRUE Christians can stay their church and work towards their own personal interpretation.” To that I say BULLSHIT. Do not be a party to discrimination or organizations that have not clearly figured it out. It’s that simple.
So, good luck in your quest.
First, I’m not a Christian. I’m pretty much not at all conflicted and confused about my own personal morality on these matters. However, I know many Christians, many who are good, moral people, others who are fundamentalist assholes.
I’m essentially saying that the vocal minority don’t speak for the majority of Christians and I’m not sure its fair to assume that they do. Rather than take them as a group, perhaps we should judge them as individuals or groups of individuals.
As for Christians being the majority oppressor, that’s true, in general because of the religious demographic make up of the US. That being said, you can say the same for the flip side of that equation - Christians also made up the majority of those seeking freedom and equality. King’s organization was indeed the Southern Christian Leadership conference, and CORE was led by Quakers, a religious group that has long held generally progressive views on race relations, way back to antebellum days. What about church groups that fully supported marriage equality? Or those that spend their time feeding the poor and doing good works in their community? Or those white churches that joined with King against segregationists? Do you think they’d appreciate being dismissed because they happen to believe in the mythology of Jesus?
I think your KKK analogy is somewhat flawed, though. Yes, I agree with you that someone saying they don’t believe in lynching and but they do believe in separation of the races is deeply flawed. But I think your analogy is closer to saying all white people, rather than the children of KKK members.
So, we agree that Christians can be oppressors, but we disagree that it’s religion necessarily that is the core of oppression, rather than a complex set of other things.
Last, I can understand where you’re coming from. But to attribute all forms of oppression to religion rather than to specific, historical things, I think is somewhat myopic.
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There is the problem of ‘overspecification’ by constantly pinning things on specific historical events and individuals, while failing to recognize larger patterns. Useful patterns to recognize.
“Well, THOSE guys were terrorists and they don’t represent [insert: Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, etc].”
Meanwhile, there is a systemic problem, a rot in the heart of the religion itself that is being given a pass. All religions get this pass. They should not.
Jesus said love thy neighbor. He did not pull a Leviticus or a Romans and prescribe no meat on Fridays, don’t mix up the cheese knife with the meat knife, cover your head when you enter a building, women are man’s servant, stone all the gays and divorcées, you may marry your sister if you first sacrifice three lambs and kill 12 infidels… scratch your genitals in church and you are going to HELL.
While Jesus was most likely an upstanding gentleman, a swell guy, the religion that ensued by interpretation and embellishment of his teachings is what rotted. Just as it has in EVERY organized religion.
You bet I ascribe it all to religion, a tool of the rich and powerful to control and manipulate the masses. Specifically, religion. Religions are the longest-standing institutions of hatred on the planet. Governments and families are a distant second, because they come and go. Only religions have stood the test of time. Until we shed ourselves of them, there will be no true freedom or self-determination, only simulacra.
My point is that it can also be a tool of freedom and rebellion, too-- and it has been historically. The problem is not religion necessarily, but how it’s used. Think of it as a tool, whose use can have a variety of outcomes. Much as you can say that there are useful patterns to be discerned via the oppressive use of religion, we can also suss out the converse of that as well.
As to your point about “patterns” in history… I’m not fully convinced of that, as a historian. It’s hard to see those patterns until something is over and done with. Clearly, we can’t say that about the role of faith in public life in the US. It’s still playing out.
I agree that people who act immorally while hiding behind their faith should be called out/shunned/etc. But by this standard, do you reject everyone who acted righteously, because they are in part motivated by their faith? That doesn’t seem fair.
And I’m down with the critique of western imperialism, of course. But I think there are far and away more motivating factors that we need to account for other than religion. All too often, religion was a fig leaf to justify all sorts of nastiness. But it wasn’t religion acting alone. In fact, as I indicated earlier, the interactions with native americans varied by group. While many in the colonies used religion to subjegate Native Americans, some used their faith to argue for equal treatment of Native Americans…
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That’s the pass that religion gets. There’s never a good time or a good enough reason to call the whole thing out and say, “Wait a minute! Back up back up back up a sec. This is all wrong!” nope. Religion gets a pass. It always gets a pass. It rolls on and on…
By the same line of reasoning, I could say that people who act morally for the greater good are hiding behind their religion; but in reality, they were acting alone out of a higher instinct. Starts to approach absurd, doesn’t it?
So, where is the line between individual and religion? I say it’s in the effects. If the overall effect of religion has been thousands of years of conquest, torture, murder, war and subjugation, I am going to ascribe that to the group rather than individuals. I’ll blame not just the despot, but his entire entourage and the financiers and more importantly the moral, religious basis that they all have inescapably acted from.
You would have to convince me that 99% of what religions have done in the world is good, with only 1% or less as evil. I can’t give you a %age from my perspective, but it is that religion has wrought far more evil than good.
I feel similarly about the roots of racism. Of course it takes individuals to act it out. But I ascribe the reason as systemic. Most whites cannot see how they have built in bias. (We’ve discussed this at length in other threads, if you recall.) When it’s a systematic bias, I stop looking at individuals and I look at groups and how those groups are organized. Follow the effects. Just like with religion. That’s the key, to follow the results then trace back.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t hold people accountable for what they do that’s clearly destructive, but that we should hold them account for that. So sure, white supremacists and religious groups that use religion as a means to oppress should be condemned. But by painting with such a broad brush, you’re essentially ignoring the contributions to human progress made by people who were religious.
Again, I’d argue that while people, and groups, can do things destructive, and use religion as a legitimizing framework, when it can be other motivating factors at work - capitalism, imperialism, etc.
So if you don’t have any numbers to back this up, what makes you think that religion has been generally a negative historically? And why does the religious oriented KKK outweight the Southern Christian Leadership Conference or the Quakers? Further more, do you honestly think that if we all woke up tomorrow in a religion/god free world, things would magically get better? Other things drive conflict our world, it’s not just religion.
I’m not trying to deny that religions can be a tool for evil in this world or that they haven’t been, but I’m just arguing that it’s a mixed bag, through out history. I really don’t think that people of faith should get a pass just because of their faith. I’m saying we should make connections with those who have similar goals to move humanity forward in some positive way.
I dunno… maybe in this case, we’re just going to have to agree to disagree.
But I like @awjt very much… I just happen to disagree with him on this point…
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I’m glad you like me. I like you back. As an interlocutor, you are excellent. You make me think and work hard.
But… Some backup would be nice. Guys? Guys? Oh jeez you turds. Not AGAIN.
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Well, that’s why we should be here, right? To make each other think harder, and hopefully, be better, more thoughtful people at the end of the day. It’s nice to be able to disagree and not be disagreeable, you know.
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I think that people who did good in the USA, did so despite their religion. And people who did bad on a mass scale, did so because of their political ideology as stemming from religio-philosophical influences.
What is a religion? The first definitions are faith and following a deity. The second definition of religion is “a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance.” The lines blur. Political ideology and religion are blurred. Where does one leave off and the other one begin? I call it all religion. It may as well be. It’s an idea. Lots of people are having it, together, and doing things because of it. But more importantly: they are enforcing it on others. It’s outward-oriented. Contrast that with what I’m about to say.
This is a good thought exercise to have. I’ve had it often. It creates questions that are fun to think about.
If there were no organized religion, would we still organize non-politically in other ways?
Would we build mega-buildings to get together in every Sunday for what? Parcheesi, Cheez-Wiz and Cheezits?
Would we use an old book or a single text as a go-to reference for how to live?
Would we stratify ourselves into groups and form hierarchies based on power structures?
Would our government even be anything like it is?
Would we still have all those annoying conversations like I talked about up-thread?
How would we deal with nations that still had religion?
How would that society deal with the rebels who hate society’s conventions and must form a religion? Would it be like China cracking down on the Falun Gong? What would happen?
So many questions. I’m game for living in that world. I’d love to live in a place without religion. Not China or someplace as oppressive. Someplace relatively free and and free of religion. Not a naive place where religion hasn’t happened yet. A learned one that used to have religion but realized it was holding people back from their innate nature to explore oneself and to be forced to come up with our own ideas about how to live, rather than receive those instructions from others.
Personally I love this thought experiment. It would be awesome to have what we all have and also not have religion. That would be an alternative way to move society forward. We don’t need the religion. We can molt and throw it off and mature as a species. Go internal, be less conformist.
I’m glad to check in and see that this conversation is ongoing, and congenial. That said, I simply don’t see this as an accurate statement. Where is the “surprise” we should be seeing in these poll numbers (gay marriage support, circa 2014)? Yeah, members of Christian sects under the “fundamentalist” umbrella are generally opposed to gay marriage, but Mainline Protestants and Catholics (who make up twice that count, in this poll) are majority pro, as are several other groups. Even Muslims are nearing a 1:1 ratio.
Today, the Episcopal Church officially voted to fully allow same-sex marriage, a stance they’d been working towards for some time (they’ve been ordaining LGTB people and performing civil ceremonies for years, now). I’ll note that the convention/voting process started like, last week, and culminated within days of of the SCOTUS decision. That sounds like it’s pretty much in synch with tides of our national sea-change, to me.
That’s why people “stay in groups,” even when those groups don’t perfectly reflect their feelings of what equality and justice mean. Because they can change them. I get the frustration with the way in which organized religions get a pass on retrograde thinking or seemingly glacial rates of change, I really do. But I feel the same way about humans in general. Why do any of us get a pass for our bumbling, back-tracking path towards a more perfect humanity?
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Does that not exclude all education then? Where does “receiving instructions from others” stop and “unthinking religion” begin? I still think you are working from a very prescriptive definition of the word “religion” and then assuming that your definition extends to cover anything that calls itself a religion, whilst ignoring a lot of social structures that fit that same prescriptive definition but do not call themselves a religion. That’s why I specifically cited political parties because in our modern western media democracies, they seem to meet all the same criteria as your definition of religion - unthinking following of a “party line” that is sometimes not even followed by the people who preach it.
Yes, there are people out there who are attempting to impose a worldview on others and decrying anyone who dissents as being a heretic who should be burned. But the whole point of this argument is that I am saying that this is simple tribalism, and nothing to do with religion per se. Yes, it manifests a lot in religion, but it manifests itself in every other form of human society just as much (look at, e.g. GamerGate for a completely non-religious example.)
I applaud your desire for us to “mature as a species”. I just don’t think that you are aiming at the right target.
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