Right-Wing Hatemongering Fueled by Christianity? The ugly side of Evangelical Christianity is very much to blame for the anti-Obama hyperventilating. By Frank Schaeffer, AlterNet. Posted September 21, 2009. Former president Jimmy Carter went on the record to point out that he believes that racism is at the heart of the great deal of the extreme animosity being leveled at President Obama (NBC News September 15). Carter identified himself as a Southerner with an insider's understanding. There's something he didn't mention however: the special culpability of his own religion -- Evangelical Christianity -- for the anti-Obama hyperventilating and furious reaction to our first black president. And that reaction has less to do with race and more to do with the ugliest side of religion. The fact is that if you're going to blame one group above all others for the willful ignorance and continuing ugliness of the response to President Obama the best candidate would be the evangelical/fundamentalist community. The angry part of the South Carter spoke of is racist because it's dominated by a certain type of "Christian" culture. Since Carter is also an evangelical Christian (as well as a Southerner) he would have done well to use his evangelical insider status to point to not just racism but to scream bloody murder about a bigger problem today: the hijacking of Christianity as the source of the hate and anger directed against all things "other" by a vocal (and health care lobby-organized and funded) angry minority of voters who are poisoning the American body. American Christianity Is At The Heart Of Our Worst Problems Are the New Atheists leading us to enlightenment? The problem with the recent New Atheist attacks on Christianity is that they mirror the hostility of the evangelical/fundamentalist subculture toward the secular society that it so disdains. The real answer to the question; "Can Christianity be saved from the Christians?" is not going to be found coming from people like Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris et al. Instead that answer may be found in the life and work of Christians such as former president Jimmy Carter, President Obama, the late writer John Updike, and other public figures from Desmond Tutu to Nelson Mandela who's faith can be taken seriously because of the moral authority given them by their achievements outside the realm of theology. The people running around calling Obama is "Hitler", the so-called "birthers" and all the rest can't be understood outside of the context of the hermetically sealed world-hating gated community known as Evangelical Christianity. As a former Evangelical and son of an Evangelical Religious Right leader, let me share a little of the insider perspective that I wish Carter had brought to the subject. What Defines American Evangelicals These Days? The key to understanding the Evangelicals is to understand the popularity of the Left Behind series of books about the "return of Christ" (and the whole host of other End Times "ministries" from the ever weirder Jack-the-Rapture-is-coming!-Van-Impe to the smoother but no less bizarre pages of Christianity Today magazine). This isn't some new or sudden interest in prophecy, but evidence of the deepening inferiority complex suffered by the evangelical/fundamentalist community. Left Behind The words "left behind" are ironically what the books are about, but not in the way their authors intended. The evangelical/fundamentalists, from their crudest egocentric celebrities to their "intellectuals" touring college campuses trying to make evangelicalism respectable, have indeed been left behind by modernity. They won't change their literalistic anti-science, anti-education, anti-everything superstitions, so now they nurse a deep grievance against "the world." This has led to a profound fear of the "other." Jenkins and LaHaye (the Left Behind authors) provide the ultimate revenge fantasy for the culturally left behind against the "elite." The Left Behind franchise holds out hope for the self-disenfranchised that at last soon everyone will know "we" were right and "they" were wrong. They'll know because Spaceship Jesus will come back and whisk "us" away, leaving everyone else to ponder just how very lost they are because they refused to say the words, "I accept Jesus as my personal savior" and join our side while there was still time! The bestselling status of the Left Behind novels proves that, not unlike Islamist terrorists who behead their enemies, many evangelical/ fundamentalist readers relish the prospect of God doing lots of messy killing for them as they watch in comfort from on high. They want revenge on all people not like them--forever. Generations Of Indoctrination We are several generations into the progeny of leaders such as James Dobson and his radio show Focus On The Family. These offspring extol the virtues of corporal punishment, patriarchy, applying biblical law to public governance and so forth. Millions of evangelicals have been raised in homes where they've been isolated from the wider culture, home schooled and/or sent to "Christian schools" where they have been indoctrinated to believe that the Federal Government is the enemy of all true believers, that the "End" is near, that secular society is their enemy as is art, learning and culture. They now form a Fifth Column of the deliberately intellectually disenfranchised. They know they are out of the loop and hate the rest of us for their own self-imposed isolation. I'm afraid they will soon turn to violence. Here Are The Alternatives To Change the Theologically-Induced Hate Landscape: A) all sane Americans must become atheists or agnostics, or... B) those of us who are Christians must rescue Christianity from the willfully ignorant evangelicals and fundamentalists. I favor the second alternative. First, having been raised in an evangelical/fundamentalist home I've long since moved beyond my background when it comes to my politics and my theology. That proves something; people can change their minds! I did. But I believe more strongly than ever that we human beings are spiritual beings with or without the permission of those who take a purely rationalist approach to human existence. The better -- and I think only realistic option -- is to regard religion as an evolving process of human consciousness and work to reform rather than eliminate it In my soon-to-be published book Patience With God: Faith For People Who Don't Like Religion (Or Atheism) I have very deliberately started a radical conversation through which I hope many of us can carve out a position that embraces religion while absolutely rejecting the type of insanity that has become synonymous with the word "Christian" in contemporary America. Two "Threads" In Religion As I argue in my new book the choice between the absolutist secular fundamentalism of the New Atheism and the authoritarianism of James Dobson's-type of "Christianity" is no choice at all. The better alternative is to understand that there are two main threads running all through almost all religions including Christianity: 1) an open, inclusive and questioning thread and... 2) a closed and exclusionary thread. The more open thread is not some modern phenomenon developed by "liberal thinking." As I explain in Patience With God this "thread" can be found in the earliest Christianity and Judaism. If you look around and see good results from Christianity, say from the invention of modern hospitals, which have their roots in religious groups or the music of JS Bach, you're looking at the fruits of the best of the open tradition and thread. When you see a group of scared racist white people like Joe Wilson in Washington DC screaming "liar" or "Obama is a socialist" or "Obama wasn't born in America" you're seeing the madness of the other thread: fundamentalism that wants absolute certainty about everything, and forces its followers to live in a narrower and narrower field of existence. Conclusion Christianity is worth saving from the Christians for two reasons. First, because as moral and spiritual beings religion should feed our souls rather then strip out our humanity. Second, because whether we like it or not, religion is here to stay. Better to shape it rather than to simply denounce it. I may be an idealist but I believe that if others will step forward and add to what I have tried to begin with my new book together we can give good answers to both the extremes of the New Atheists and to the hate of the Evangelical fundamentalists. Join me to build a better vision. We might actually be able to change the conversation in America about religion. Is that important? Yes, like it or not religion will not go away. It motivates the worst in the American psyche and some of the best too. It is Joe Wilson's religion of hate but it also motivated Martin Luther King Jr. Perhaps a generation from now the image of a typical Christian won't be a hate-monger like James Dobson but rather a lover of peace such as Bishop Desmond Tutu, or a literary giant like John Updike, and yes, a President Obama. The only real answer to the hijacking of Christianity by the Religious Right, the longevity of religion-based racism, and the backward and inward looking movement we now call "American Christianity" is not to talk everyone out a having faith but rather to fight for the humane and ancient thread found within the Christian tradition. Blaming everything on race is too easy. If you get the chance to read Patience With God please let me know what you think of it. I'm asking one big question in the book: Can Christianity be rescued from the Christians? You tell me.
Actually the worst thing on the horizon for the US is the unfunded liabilities.. .they were put there purposely to destroy us so that Socialists could do a complete takeover.... that was all accomplished before the collapse of the Soviet Union and the total exposure of it's abject failure and the abject failure of Socialism when it's in complete control... The people that are to this day still wishing to add to the liabilities come from a lot of different backgrounds.. but the biggest organizations outside of the Left wing of the Democratic party are the Catholic and mainline big liberal Protestant denominatons.. they support ever more socialism.... they also have all tossed the Bible out for all intents and purposes... they buy into various ideas like the Pope has to rule the world then Jesus can return, or the world has to be made into something that Jesus would approve of before He can return... it's all bullshit, Jesus can return in the middle of the worst mess imaginable if He wants too, he's not afraid to get his hands dirty 'ya know Edit: then there is "The Family"... I just discovered this mess recently.. they are powerful Evangelicals that operate on a foreign policy level... and guess what their core belief contains: the idea that God has set them up as an Elite class and that it's not God's will that the lower class should improve their economic condition.... same as the other ones mentioned above probably... all these elites.... so many elites, so little time to laugh at them all...
southern racism has always been a christian majority. the kkk itself is a christian group. http://www.kukluxklan.bz/about.html I. THE CHARACTER OF THE ORGANIZATION And here it is necessary to repeat briefly some things with which you are already familiar. THIS IS A WHITE CHRISTIAN ORGANIZATION, exalting the Caucasian Race and teaching the doctrine of white pride. II. IDEALS : WE STAND FOR WHITE CHRISTIAN VALUES. Distinction among the races is not accidental but designed. This is clearly brought out in the Bible the one book that tells authoritatively of the origin of the races.
What about northern racism hypocrite? Plenty to go around, they just hide it better. What about Indiana KKK in early 1900's?
you obviously do not not know the first thing about Catholic or main line protestant eschotology. The pope has to rule the world? I have heard a lot of things in protestant and Catholic churches but I have never heard that. Have you tried looking up those churches thoughts on revelation or the end times?
Maybe the question should be... Can Christianity be rescued from the "so called" Christians? Lots of people "claim" to be a Christian or say and do things in the name of Christ. That doesn't mean what they say, do, or even think about for that matter gets the Lord's approval. RC