I will not remain silent.

I will say what is needed to be said.

I put "white christian" in quotes because the definition of "white" is not constant, was created by humans, not pre-ordained by God, and has expanded over time. The big "E" "Evangelicals" are not true evangelicals, nor are they true Christians. This ethnonationalist group created their own religion to justify their own prejudices and hatreds. Mormons did the same thing by creating theological explanations for racism to pass off their exclusionary hate as the "will" of God.

But attempting to "live apart from the world but still in it" is no longer enough. An unholy alliance of white nationalists, "christian" dominionists, and fascists is attempting to turn the United States of America into some throwback version of a 1950s banana republic run by a caudillo and his junta or the old South Africa or Rhodesia 2.0. Accusing people of paedophilia or other unspeakable acts is just the start. Every fascist or totalitarian regime in history resorted to terror, oppression, mass surveillance, and detention to stay in power -- but eventually, they all fell.

It is impossible to recreate the past -- no matter how many Draconian laws you pass or how many people you try and outlaw.

You can make left-handed redheads illegal, but they will still exist and will continue to exist.

You can outlaw LGBTQIA+ people, but they will still exist.

You can outlaw non-white people, but they will still exist.

You can outlaw books and films, but they will still exist.

You can outlaw freedom of thought and freedom of expression, but you cannot stop it.

You cannot destroy the human mind.

Stop pretending "god" tells you to do these things. You do them because *you* want to. You do them because you are afraid of the future and afraid of change. If you want to live behind three metre high walls and cut yourself off from the outside world so you don't have to hear or see anything that triggers you or makes you think of a different way of living, no one is stopping you. But you cannot remake the world by force. Many have tried. All have failed. The only resultant is mass death on a horrific scale.

All things end, and so will you.

It's up to you to decide to be on the right side of history -- or not.

The lives of those you destroy will be on your hands.

Wouldn't banning Russians and tennis pros from competition for being Russian be racism? Then it's political, not religious.

Religion appeals to the knuckle draggers, who can't objectively address their own prejudices.

As for Christian Nationalists, racism is the least of their problems. Their inability to think critically makes them useful idiots to the demagogue of the day.

I STAND WITH UKRAINE

(just waiting for an opportunity, my stmnt is Humanitarian, not political)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/24/2022 02:18AM by GNPE.

And I'll add one more statement on top of the ones you've already mentioned.

The basis of the government of the United States is not the Christian Bible as claimed by the late Cleon Skouson and many evangelicals of nearly all Christian faiths.

Thanks for this comment, blindguy. You've got me looking stuff up about this. In between working. Fortunately, I'm my own boss or I'd be in trouble, diverting off to read all these really interesting articles about the point you've made. I was going to give a quick reply pertinent to the subject but quickly realized wow, I've got a lot of reading to do first. Or else I'd be answering out of ignorance. At first glance, it seems like the subject is more complicated than one might expect.

For now, you've got me delving into the Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11. I might be a while...

https://www.salon.com/2021/05/03/america-was-not-founded-as-a-christian-country-based-on-judeo-christian-values_partner/

A common rallying cry of the right in America, to justify regressive morality laws, is often to say that "America was founded as a Christian country" with "Judeo-Christian values" while the common response from the left is to declare that the United States was founded as an explicitly secular country with a separation of church and state.

Would it surprise you to learn both are wrong?

First of all, "Judeo-Christian values" is a dog whistle that erases Jewish values by subsuming Judaism into Christianity. It also excludes other religions, particularly Islam. When politicians claim "Judeo-Christian values" they're almost always describing Christian values but want to pretend they are being inclusive of Jews.

Initially, in the 19th century the phrase referred to Jewish people who converted to Christianity. It wasn't intended to be inclusive of Jews at all. The current meaning of the term was an invention of American politics in the 1930s, as a phrase to show opposition to Hitler and communism. "Judeo-Christian values" is often used by politicians to proclaim common opposition to atheism, abortion and LGBT issues.

Basically, there's no such thing as a "Judeo-Christian values."

Except Judaism and Christianity don't have a common value system on those issues. While it is hard to declare a universal Jewish value—there are many sects of Judaism and one of our core tenets is argument—most Jewish rabbis acknowledge that abortion should be allowed at least in certain circumstances. Jewish law dictates that life begins at first breath, not conception. Additionally, many Jews consider themselves atheists and consider Jewish practice to be through behavior and attitude, not belief. Unfortunately the acceptance of LGBT people in Judaism is more complicated, depending on the sect, but Reform and Conservative Judaism are publicly accepting of LGBT people. Basically, there's no such thing as a "Judeo-Christian values."

The United States was founded with an attempt at secularism as well as freedom of religion. As opposed to monarchies, democracies in general are less Christian-based, as rulers are not justified on the "divine right of kings." Practically, "freedom of religion" often meant the freedom to practice whichever sect of Christianity, or sometimes even Protestantism, a person chose. Considering a number of colonies were founded based on disagreements over which Protestant sect was "correct," even this level of legally inscribed religious freedom was progressive for the late 18th century.

However, when considering religious freedom in early America, we must look beyond federal law and beyond the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights was not applied to the states, except to declare the citizenship of formerly enslaved people, until the Incorporation Doctrine was applied to incorporate the Bill of Rights to the states through the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. This doctrine has been traced to Gitlow v. New York in 1925, when the Supreme Court held that states were required to protect freedom of speech, partially incorporating the First Amendment.

The relevant text of the First Amendment states that, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." This text is meant to prevent an established state religion but also to protect religious practice from government interference. While protection from a theocracy is important, it is hard to argue that this text is meant to enforce secularism. Additionally, the phrase "separation of church and state" is actually paraphrased from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson in 1802. It was not interpreted as part of the intent of the First Amendment until Reynolds v. United States in 1878.

It's tempting to push back by declaring the United States was founded as a secular country. Unfortunately, that claim would ignore a long history of the privileging of Christianity.

Most early colonies supported religious action with taxes. Many established state religions. While some disestablished with early state constitutions, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maryland, Rhode Island and North Carolina didn't. The Massachusetts Constitution limited office to Protestants until 1821. Non-Protestants couldn't hold office in New Hampshire until 1876.1 Maryland, Rhode Island, North Carolina and New Hampshire did not allow non-Christian voting until well into the 19th century when the franchise expanded in 1826, 1842, 1868, and 1877, respectively.2

At the federal level, religion became relevant to citizenship when coupled with questions of "whiteness." Naturalization required an immigrant be "white" or of African descent after the Civil War until 1952. This requirement led to a number of cases, dubbed "prerequisite cases," brought by immigrants to prove their "whiteness." One consideration for the courts was the "racial performance" of immigrants to determine how successfully they would assimilate. Courts often used an immigrant's lack of Christianity as a detriment to assimilation and therefore to whiteness.

There were also forms of state-sponsored discrimination against non-Christians that did not require explicit privileging of Christianity over other religions. Consider the ubiquity of "Sunday Laws," which prohibited people from working Sundays. Jews had to work on the sabbath (Saturday), lose two days of work over the weekend or risk prosecution. These laws resurged in 1880s New York with the arrival of more Jews.3

Non-Christians, particularly Jews, faced discrimination in court. Courts often required people to appear on Saturdays and would forbid a "religious exemption" for Jews.4 Many also considered a belief in Jesus Christ as a requisite for swearability on the witness stand. Not until 1857 did a New York court ruled a Jewish witness must be sworn to testify according to the "peculiar ceremonies of his religion," specifically a Hebrew Bible and with his head covered.5 Jewish witnesses got legal protections in 1871. A Jewish plaintiff was questioned about his belief in Jesus Christ to impeach his honor under oath in a property dispute. When appealed, a Georgia court said a "want of belief in Jesus Christ as the Saviour" was not grounds for exclusion of a witness, and that while some courts have used a belief in Jesus as necessary to render a witness competent, the court clearly ruled that "a Jew is competent at common law."6

It's tempting to push back against politicians justifying their regressive morality laws by way of the "Judeo-Christian values" of the founding. It's tempting to push back by simply pointing to the First Amendment and declaring the United States was always founded as a secular country. Unfortunately, that claim would ignore a long history of discrimination against minority religions and the privileging of Christianity.

In order to fight for a truly religiously inclusive society, we must acknowledge the ways in which Christianity is embedded in the laws and culture of our society. Luckily the founders provided the First Amendment, an important tool in this fight.

I'm going to quibble with your assertion that there is no such thing as "Judeo-Christian values."

If we start with a global perspective, looking at the universe of religions, it is clear that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are very much a single family with a lot of shared doctrines and ethical principles. Each of the three traditions is a lot closer to each other than to, say, animism or Taoism or Jainism or the various indigenous American faiths.

The problem is that the commonalities between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are NOT those claimed by the modern advocates of Judeo-Christian values. You are correct that that term is used as a dog whistle and often contains elements of antisemitism let alone hostility to Islam. The phrase has become Orwellized and is now more political than factual.

https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22419487/religion-justice-fairness


“Religion has been a great historical source for people interested in reasons to love their neighbors and vulnerable people, because religion doesn’t disregard the broken,” she said. “In a culture that valorizes youth and fitness and health, religion still remains powerful in part because it understands the fragility of human life.”

Many religious texts describe how ancient peoples struggled to achieve fairness and confront scarcity, and how they set standards to equitably divide resources and labor during periods of famine and plague. Today, many religious leaders still posit a radical egalitarianism that asks people to consider their neighbors’ plight, cultivate compassion, and envision a more equal world.

Wait--

I did not say anything about what Judeo-Christian-Islamic common values are. You are assuming I meant fairness and justice of the sort that your article outlines, but that is not what I had in mind.

My view is that the three religions share a common Abrahamic tradition and values that are roughly in line with the Ten Commandments. Much of those are unique; most of the world's religions are not monotheistic or even as close to that norm as Christianity is. Another category of shared values would be religious war, or jihad, of the sort that all three religions have engaged in. That's not an ethos I share, but it is a Judeo-Christian one.

Again, there IS such a thing as Judeo-Christian values, principles that differentiate the Abrahamic faiths from others in qualitative and even quantitative terms. Some of those shared principles are good ones, some are bad--and they are not the same as what the modern proponents of Judeo-Christian values assert.

...that the Bible wasn't (and isn't) the basis for the government of the United States.

Was the United States founded by white Christians? You betcha! A very good argument can be made that the Pilgrims and Puritans that founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony were the ancestors of today's white evangelical groups. And the white colonists who founded Jamestown in Virginia weren't atheists, either,, as they were primarily members of the Church of England. And all (or nearly all) of the Revolutionary War leaders were selfprofessed Christians including Thomas Jefferson (who wrote the Declaration of Independence) and James Madison (who had a leading role in producing the U.S. Constitution in 1787).

The thing is, when these white Christians came together to create both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, using the Bible as a guide for government appears to have been the furthest thing from their minds. Why? Because the Bible offers no guide to creating a government whatsoever. The Bible's authors assumed that humans were ruled by either a class of priests or by a king. Words such as "representative,", "Senator," "President,", and "constitution" do not appear anywhere in Biblical texts. Neither do the phrases "checks and balances," nor "judicial review," appear in the founding text of Christianity.

No, these guys, though they were white Christian males, went outside of Biblical text to find a government-running philosophy, and they found it in the writings of John Locke and others, one of whose names I have forgotten but who LW mentioned in another thread a while back.

So, my claim that the Bible is not the basis for the U.S. governing system stands. The other claims may stand or fall as the evidence indicates.

David Hume.

And you are right. The Founders ran away from religion as the foundation for the state. There are a couple of Biblical models of governance--tribal confederacies, which don't make sense in sedentary societies; and theocratic empire, the wages of which were the periodic devastation of much of Europe. There's a reason Poland/Ukraine were cynically described as "God's playground."

So far, the US has avoided a similar fault because--again so far--it has constitutionally refused to be God's playground.

The religious "patriot" right have no interest in democracy.

Comment: "It's about grooming. I know about grooming. Grooming for hatred and bigotry. I grew up in an all-white community in Iowa. There was casual racism and homophobia all around me. On the playground, where we quickly learned the most stinging insults. In school, where we learned that slavery was only "one theory" of what caused the Civil War. In church, where my uncle (a deacon) was ready every Sunday with the latest "joke" about Black people. And even in my own family.
This is what the book banning, Don't Say Gay Law, and obsession over Critical Race Theory is all about. The fraction of Americans who identify with Christian churches has been declining by 1% per year for the last two decades, and it adds up. In my view, that is the most hopeful statistic of all, but white evangelicals are terrified. They don't want their children to see, hear, or read anything that might get in the way of teaching them what "everyone knows" about minorities, immigrants, gays, the libs, or anyone who isn't just like them.
A standard tactic of despots is to accuse others of what they are doing. The groomers are accusing their enemies of grooming. Don't let them get away with it."


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/27/gop-no-longer-a-party-movement-impose-christian-nationalism/

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/2022 05:43PM by anybody.