(Week-old news. I’m posting this for the XGW archive.)
Exodus President Alan Chambers likes to accuse his conscientious critics of being the agents of Satan, while presuming that he enjoys God’s special favor.
Former President and Baptist Jimmy Carter has said some words that happen to describe Chambers’ immoral and egotistical worldview, which also consumes other U.S. fundamentalist leaders and, to some degree, the current White House.
From CBS via Christian Alliance for Progress:
“Fundamentalism exists in religious circles and now very overwhelmingly in Washington,” he says. “A fundamentalist believes, say, in religious circles, that I am close to God. Everything that I believe is absolutely right. Anyone who disagrees with me, in any case, is inherently wrong and therefore, inferior. And it violates my basic principles if I negotiate with anyone else or listen to their point of view or modify my own positions at all. So that is what has permeated this administration.”
Carter describes a contempt for fellow humankind, a refusal to communicate, a self-segregation, a runaway quest for power, and a blindness to one’s own unrepentant corruption. Do those characteristics, combined, qualify as a form of hatred?
I agree that those characteristics do qualify as unbridled hatred. Jimmy’s quote confirms my own experience: fundamentalists put such a high value on rigidity of beliefs there is no room for fairness, rationality, or specific logic to establish objective truth. The anti-gay fundamentalists consider complicated thinking necessary to truth an evil in and of itself.
I agree that those characteristics do qualify as unbridled hatred. Jimmy’s quote confirms my own experience: fundamentalists put such a high value on rigidity of beliefs there is no room for fairness, rationality, or specific logic to establish objective truth. The anti-gay fundamentalists consider complicated thinking necessary to truth an evil in and of itself.
It very easily becomes hate, as we humans love to over-simplify the complicated. I really do think there’s some refusal to acknowledge the obvious in some religious circles. The phrase “there are none so blind as those who refuse to see” comes to mind. GLBT people exist openly and are happy productive members of society. Some fundamentalists can’t accept this as the truth because it runs counter to what they’ve been taught.
What I’m getting at is that since the Bible in some places says homosexuality is wrong, it must be so. However, the Bible says a lot about other sins, which is conveniently ignored or dismissed because the culture has long since accepted it.
There’s also a tendency for fundamentlists to think that morality is very black and white, with NO gray areas and it’s a one size fits all thing – that “what’s wrong for me is wrong for all and therefore must be banned for the good of all, since we know there’s only one true source of what’s good, and it happens to be mine.”
Fundamentalism really dislikes critical thinking.
When Jimmy Carter was a little boy, his family’s nearest neighbors were a black family. They weren’t employees of the Carters, but there was casual MUTUAL support.
Carter would go over to the neighbor’s house to spend the night. If his parents had to take a trip or if the two families need to clear their respective properties or plant, they did it together as social equals.
And as a child of the South, his experience with the institution of Jim Crow and the damage it did to the black members of his social network was acute.
It’s with this eye he could also see that churches were essentially segregated too.
Baptists were no less racist or could be and would be unabashedly so.
Many of the same principles that fuel homophobic laws and actions also fueled Jim Crow.
I think he knows well at least that segregation HELPS nothing and any laws that support this structure are more destructive than justified.
During his Presidency, gays and lesbians weren’t as organized and as visibly diverse around their basic equality as they are now.
I don’t always agree with Jimmy Carter about his foreign policy.
But I think he would have given gay people more of a break than the Presidential administrations since.
You might disagree, but for me it’s a thought to ponder.
Meant to put this in earlier, but missed the thread somehow. Karen Armstrong in her book The Battle For God discusses the distinction we make today between fundamentalists and evangelicals. The book is an overall view of the phenomena, and a great help in understanding today’s issues. Highly recommend. And suggest that xgw should have a book review section.
Armstrong has investigated this distinction, which looms so large in the modern world of the conservative Christians. She finds it dates to the early 1940’s. And began as part of Billy Graham’s advertising campaigns. Graham and his supporters realized that the word ‘fundamentalist’ had acquired such negative overtones that a new word needed to be invented for the religion. Their solution was ‘evangelical’. Which was the new improved fundamentalism. The distinction is a commercial one, having nothing to do with theology.
It may descirbe behavior. Evangelicals do seem marginally better behaved and socialized than fundamentalists. But still, this is an advertizing ploy.
Without looking up the standard definitions, I’ve always understood “evangelical” to mean that the group or denomination believes in actively spreading the Gospel to others (or at least to a far greater degree than others). I’ve not heard the term used for other faiths but I suppose you could substitute any belief for the Gospel and have the same meaning. I think there is a bit of confusion over just what fundamentalism means, probably even amoung those who would label themselves as such. However, I have always understood at least part of it to be a strong belief in the inerrancy of scripture. Today it seems to me this has morphed into something like “a strong belief in the inerrancy of whatever we say scripture says.” My 2 cents.
David
As someone who grew up Lutheran, may understanding always was the ‘evangelicals’ were those who tried to bring Christian practice of the Traditional Church into harmony with the Gospels. Which meant Lutherans and Anglicans. The rest were those who rejected the Traditions of the Christian faith, like Baptists and so forth who set forth some sort of emotional experience against Christ and His Church. My confirmation class teachers raged against the snake handlers of the evangelical covenant and such churches.
So many Christians, so little time…
Being that I’m an avowed pagan…the Red Sea wide gulf between Christians is astonishing.
Sad and scary.
I do believe we are now witnessing a new millenium version of The Crusades.
Us pagans, atheists, Druids, Wiccans, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and Polynesians aren’t so invested in making the world in OUR image.
A really hateful Christian or Muslim…will let that hate boil out eventually.
The insanity seems to be getting down to Christians vs. Muslims…vs. everybody else.
The ridiculous thing is, how much certain ones will deny they hate anyone, and think the rest of us are too stupid to see it’s a lie.
And enough of you have witnessed exactly who I mean.
Will the real golden rule believing, one love Christians please stand UP?
So many Christians, so little time…
Being that I’m an avowed pagan…the Red Sea wide gulf between Christians is astonishing.
Sad and scary.
I do believe we are now witnessing a new millenium version of The Crusades.
Us pagans, atheists, Druids, Wiccans, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and Polynesians aren’t so invested in making the world in OUR image.
A really hateful Christian or Muslim…will let that hate boil out eventually.
The insanity seems to be getting down to Christians vs. Muslims…vs. everybody else.
The ridiculous thing is, how much certain ones will deny they hate anyone, and think the rest of us are too stupid to see it’s a lie.
And enough of you have witnessed exactly who I mean.
Will the real golden rule believing, one love Christians please stand UP?
Actually the bible does not point out Homosexuality is wrong, it refers to specific acts of lust and sex which are wrong and immoral and lead to death and disease. What you fail to realize is certain acts were considered wrong because by not participating in them, it showed you were in the world but not of the world, you were identified as one of God’s people. The ridiculous claims of “the bible says homosexuality is wrong and sinful” is nowhere in the Bible, unfortunately people want to repeat the incorrect ideas of others because they are in line with personal views and fail to acknowldge that they are required to be meek and humble.
The Bible says Homosexuality wrong? Just where does it say this?
Sodom and Gamorah? Here’s a little leasson for you about supposed claims of homosexuality being the “sin” of these sister cities.
Eze 16:48 As surely as I am the living LORD God, the people of Sodom and its nearby villages were never as sinful as you.
Eze 16:49 They were arrogant and spoiled; they had everything they needed and still refused to help the poor and needy.
Eze 16:50 They thought they were better than everyone else, and they did things I hate. And so I destroyed them.”
Hmm doesn’t say anything bout destroyed for homosexuality & we are not allowed to add our own thoughts to the Bible or change what God has declared just to suit our dislike of something. Remember meekness is submitting to God’s will not our own.
“If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless.
Religions that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself
from being polluted by the world.” James 1:26-27
Other than N0T mentioning same-sex affections … consider what it DOES. Looks
like to opposite of What James wrote. Imagine that!
Jude 1:7
“So also Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighboring towns, since they indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire in a way similar to these angels, are now displayed as an example by suffering the punishment of eternal fire.” NET BIBLE First Edition
I tend to believe that this is describing the gang-rape action the town was obviously practicing (and attempting on Lot’s visitors) which did happen to be homosexual in nature. There is no doubt that hospitality was a big issue in those times, but there is definitely a sexual component to the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah.
David
ReasonAble at December 16, 2005 11:19 AM
This is a joke, right? One, given that Lot’s visitors were not human–they were angels–the most that might be said is that there may have been something akin to bestiality involved. Two, given that Lot offered his daughters (with whom he subsequently had incestuous sex) to the crowd suggested that he knew that the crowd was not homosexual.
The quotation from Jude is an outlier. Actually, all of Jude is an outlier.
Raj, I’m not going to do this.
David