Let's test the opportunity for liberal believer/nonbeliever entente

[dmallind]

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/fischer-make-homosexuality-criminal-offense

I doubt there is much room for disagreement that this is very harmful behavior, motivated by an unacceptably right wing fundamentalist view of Christianity, but indeed motivated by religious belief. We can probably even mostly agree that the scriptural support for this view is tenuous at best in the NT, and depends largely on questionable translation even as it is.

I HOPE we can pre-empt the usual NTS and "just a fringe" by acknowledging that the AFA numbers its members in the deep 6 digits, financial supporters well into the 7 digits, and radio stations in 3 digits, and that it was founded by an Emory-educated theologian ordained in the largest "mainline" Protestant denomination with over 12 million members. The spokesman featured also possesses a Master's in theology from an accredited school.

So assuming all that holds, let's move on. How can liberal believers and non-believers address this utterly negative use of Christian motivation? Can we even understand theologically where it comes from, since Jesus said nothing on the topic and both Paul and Timothy are questionable too? Can we address this in a more potent way than a few preachings to the choir - literally - in small liberal churches? What happens within the faith if liberal Xians do so (cf Bishop Pearson - not that he's all that liberal, but a great example of what happens to preachers who step away from the hate even a bit)? What use if any will it be if secular folks (predictably) object, as the AFA not only expects, but relies on for funding? What other options exist?

This is not a rhetorical exercise.

[patrice]

1. These are very useful questions and, ergo, deserve somekind of longitudinal collaborative effort. nt

[dtexdem]

2. It's crazy that the question even needs to be asked.

As an agnostic, I find it disgusting that common cause on issues of common agreement is so often disrupted by sniping between believers and nonbelievers -- and it pains me that it is the latter who are most often at fault.

[dmallind]

3. WHICH question is crazy?

What we can do about it? What we should do about it? Where this simplistic understanding of scripture comes from? Those are the questions I asked, and I think none of them are useless, let alone crazy.

[Thats my opinion]

4. What can we do?

First the Fischer clip is obscenity at its worst. Thankfully very few pay much attention.
There is a decreasing hard core of bigots. History moves beyond them more every day.

If we together want to take on bigotry then we had better recognize the real enemy and quit throwing nasty salvos at one another. Atheists are not all followers of Ayn Rand--I hold that very few actually are. Most of those I have known--and still know--are humanists, who dismiss the Randian Objectivism as just another secular cult, more admired by religious fundamentalists than by agnostics. On the other hand, to waste precious time and space by searching the Internet for religious horror stories and concluding that all religion is a fraud does not advance anyone's agenda, let alone fight the battle where it needs to be fought. Who is the minister (Methodist?) who founded the ASA? I know quite a bit about Emory and its Candler seminary, and ASA just don't fit. And can you say more about who Bishop Pearson is and what is his story?

Somehow we need to find a national leader who has unassailable liberal credentials and is clearly welcoming to the non-religious. Jim Wallis doesn't fit because of his Gay prejudice. I nominate Bill Moyers, who is going to begin new series in a few weeks. His interviews called "the conversation continues" ought to convince anyone he is a universal advocate of human rights.

In the meantime almost every mainline Protestant group is quietly--and not so quietly-- calling ASA what it is--a citadel of bigotry.

For some time I have been calling for a joining of our forces--in this forum and elsewhere. It is time to do so.

[trotsky]

9. Please list what you believe are the "mainline Protestant group(s)".

Thanks.

[dmallind]

14. So let's keep going.

First the Fischer clip is obscenity at its worst. Thankfully very few pay much attention.
There is a decreasing hard core of bigots. History moves beyond them more every day.

Can you show me this somehow? Surveys or denomination changes away from the fundies maybe? Because as I said this man is the spokesman for a group with a membership in the hundreds of thousands, donors in the millions, with 200 radio stations at their disposal. It sure looks to me like far more pay attention to Fischer than to Spong for example.



If we together want to take on bigotry then we had better recognize the real enemy and quit throwing nasty salvos at one another. Atheists are not all followers of Ayn Rand--I hold that very few actually are. Most of those I have known--and still know--are humanists, who dismiss the Randian Objectivism as just another secular cult, more admired by religious fundamentalists than by agnostics. On the other hand, to waste precious time and space by searching the Internet for religious horror stories and concluding that all religion is a fraud does not advance anyone's agenda, let alone fight the battle where it needs to be fought.

No - these are exactly the people who should be opposed - and their massive warchest and media empire means nobody has to scour anything to find them. They speak loud and proud with massive donations to RW politicians, TV channels and radio stations broadcasting hate 24/7, and a well-oiled PR machine that can flip the trigger on millions of fundy activista whenever they want. I know they are my enemy. You say they are yours too. I'm asking for help.

Who is the minister (Methodist?) who founded the ASA? I know quite a bit about Emory and its Candler seminary, and ASA just don't fit. And can you say more about who Bishop Pearson is and what is his story?

I'm trying to avoid personal jibes here but I'm surprised that a lifelong theologian who speaks of a long and deep struggle against activist fundamentalism is not more knowledgeable about one of their remaining three major founding culture warriors (of five - Roberts and Falwell are gone and unmissed). Robertson, Dobson and this guy - Donald Wildmon. Methodist he is, and at the forefront of their evangelical group (strangely enough by the way, in the UK when I was born, birth certificates included the inherited/presumed denomination of the child. Officially I too am a Methodist, but there it was just singing Wesleyan hymns instead of using the C of E hymnbook, and avoiding booze. Neither stuck, although I'm still fond of some of the hymns). It's AFA by the way. American Family Association. Wildmon started it asa Methodist pastor in Mississippi IIRC in the 70s initially to combat risque TV and movies, but it quickly became another gay/abortion obssessed group.

Carlton Pearson is a bit less high-profile but not much, and is an object lesson on where the real power in Christianity lies. One of Roberts' main lieutenants, he was a huge pioneer in the mega-church craze, setting up a place in Tulsa with 6000 seats and $50k weekly offering takes. In the late 90s though he did a rare thing for a fundy evangelist and started thinking how Hell doesn't really fit the idea of a triple-omni god. Pretty much overnight he started preaching not quite universal salvation, but at least universal non-condemnation, even for gays. Within a couple of months 85% of his white congregants left. Within a couple of years he was officially declared a heretic and kicked out, lucky to see a couple dozen faces every Sunday in a strip-mall church he rented, all for preaching somewhere halfway between hate, and what you and other believers here claim is the normal and accepted tgheological stance of Protestants. If it were, how did he go from thousands to dozens in his pews?

Somehow we need to find a national leader who has unassailable liberal credentials and is clearly welcoming to the non-religious. Jim Wallis doesn't fit because of his Gay prejudice. I nominate Bill Moyers, who is going to begin new series in a few weeks. His interviews called "the conversation continues" ought to convince anyone he is a universal advocate of human rights.

I consider Moyers to be an intelligent, reasonable person. But charismatic leader he surely isn't. We need to get beyond the PBS coffee klatch and grab the imagination and passion of the masses who rarely go beyond Fox and football. But how can we make moderation passionate? How great a warcry is "be nice to others and accept them as they are" compared to "smash the other!"?

In the meantime almost every mainline Protestant group is quietly--and not so quietly-- calling ASA what it is--a citadel of bigotry.

Less quietly would help. Why does the AFA have 200 donor-funded radio stations when the supposedly majority group opposed to them is still using mild letters to the editor and tongue-clucking homilies to a score or two somnolent congregants? Even atheist groups have cable access shows and radio shows and webstreams and we are a tiny fraction of liberal believers even by my estimation of their numbers let alone yours.

For some time I have been calling for a joining of our forces--in this forum and elsewhere. It is time to do so.

Cool. Whereabouts are you located btw? I have some contacts still - maybe for a start I can get you onto one of our shows to call for something similar on youe=r end with an anti-fundy focus. PM is fine if you prefer to not say openly.

[eridani]

5. My thing is ethics, period

You may ground your ethics in some traditional faith, but if you'll look around you'll see the same ethics shared by people of completely different faiths, or no faith at all. I don't give a rat's posterior if you are against pre-emptive war because Jesus told you to turn the other cheek and blessed peacemakers, because the ancient Jewish prophets told you to beat your swords into plowshares, because the Prophet (PBUH) said that God does not like those who commit aggression, because the Wiccan rede advises you that you may do as you will as long as you don't harm others, because the Buddha told you to be compassionate, or because Confucius said that the superior man should never resort to war as the first alternative. Or maybe nobody told you anything--you figured it out all by yourself that deliberately causing a lot of human suffering sucks. If we all get to that particular ethical place eventually, why does it matter how we got here?

[Thats my opinion]

7. Why you are

against war, etc, is not really my concern. I accept the fact that people come to these convictions from a variety of religious perspectives or from solely a secular or humanistic viewpoint. I have no criticism of where they come from, I'm just thankful they come from someplace. And I am willing to join hands with them without evaluating their motivations or rootages. I also want to accept their testimonies without judgement.

[laconicsax]

8. Yet you consistently post about why it matters when it's religion.

It seems that you don't care why people have these convictions when unless they're religious.

[Deep13]

6. Okay, a lot here so let me go through it. Thanks.

"Let's test the opportunity for liberal believer/nonbeliever entente"

Well, we all vote against theocrats, so it seems like we already have that.

"I doubt there is much room for disagreement that this is very harmful behavior,..."

I assume you mean the hate-mongering in the link you provided. In that case, yes, demonizing minority groups is harmful behavior.

"... motivated by an unacceptably right wing fundamentalist view of Christianity, but indeed motivated by religious belief."

Yes, the canonical teachings of all four branches of Abrahamic religion support the persecution of at least male homosexuals and of sex generally outside of very limited circumstances. The RW believers are obsessed by homosexuality and make it the central focus of their beliefs. Either that or huckster preachers are using it to gain attention, money or support for a socially conservative agenda generally.

"We can probably even mostly agree that the scriptural support for this view is tenuous at best in the NT, and depends largely on questionable translation even as it is."

No, it's as canonical as the ban on stealing or in-group killing.

"I HOPE we can pre-empt the usual NTS..."

NTS? Nebraska Tile Specialists? New Typing System? Nutmeg, Thyme and Salt?

"...and "just a fringe" by acknowledging that the AFA numbers its members in the deep 6 digits, financial supporters well into the 7 digits, and radio stations in 3 digits, and that it was founded by an Emory-educated theologian ordained in the largest "mainline" Protestant denomination with over 12 million members. The spokesman featured also possesses a Master's in theology from an accredited school.

"So assuming all that holds, let's move on. How can liberal believers and non-believers address this utterly negative use of Christian motivation?"

I'm really not sure how liberal believers do it. I know when I was one I felt that there were far worse sins in the world as I was not then ready to dispute the Biblical claim that it was sin. Then I decided that Paula and the writer of OT law just didn't know any better because it was the iron age. And while that is probably true, I never did figure out how to decide which parts of doctrine were true and which were not except for relying on instinct which kind of made the holy books unnecessary. As a nonbeliever, my problem is figuring out how to make people realize that their prejudices, religious or otherwise, should not be binding on others. I steer clear of religious arguments and point to common humanity and the principles of freedom and democracy.

"Can we even understand theologically where it comes from, since Jesus said nothing on the topic..."

He said that The Law was still valid which presumably includes the injunctions against male homosexuality.

"..and both Paul and Timothy are questionable too?"

Paul is at least as canonical as the Gospels. It predates the the Gospels and unlike the Gospels collectively, Paul's known writings are not inconsistent with each other and were not written by a committee. He also most thoroughly elaborates the whole Christian basis for salvation through the suffering and murder of someone else.

"Can we address this in a more potent way than a few preachings to the choir - literally - in small liberal churches? What happens within the faith if liberal Xians do so (cf Bishop Pearson - not that he's all that liberal, but a great example of what happens to preachers who step away from the hate even a bit)? What use if any will it be if secular folks (predictably) object, as the AFA not only expects, but relies on for funding? What other options exist?"

I really don't know the answer.

"This is not a rhetorical exercise."

Indeed not.

[Thats my opinion]

10. It is disheartening

that you have gotten so few thoughtful responses to such a critically important post. Do the usual responders in r/t really want to move toward ways in which we together can tackle serious issues or do they just want to snipe?

[Deep13]

11. You are in no position to cast stones.

When was the last time you wrote something that isn't dogmatic or is remotely helpful?

My response wasn't a snipe. It was an honest effort to answer the OP's questions. Not that it matters. We're all just blowing off steam here anyway. No one outside of this website cares what any of us have to say anyway.

[Thats my opinion]

12. Sorry. I wasn't talking about you

Your response was one of the few that was thoughtful, and concerned. I was simply saying that this OP (which I didn't write) really had some substance to it, and I was disturbed that it has gotten so few responses. I'll just forget the personal attack in the first sentenced. It just made even more plain the problem the Op was highlighting.

[trotsky]

13. As disheartening as someone being asked a straightforward question,

and refusing to answer?

I'm painfully aware that you consider me to be one of these evil, horrible "usual responders" so I'll jump right in to say that I already acknowledge the points made in the OP. I view religion as a significant cause of that problem, that those people are indeed Christians just like you are, etc. The OP appears more directed to the liberal believers who discount all of that and instead of discussing the problem or even acknowledging their religion's role in it, turn the attack to atheists instead.

Maybe you should be disappointed in those individuals who refuse to see the faults of Christianity - none of them have chimed in on this thread.