Pay To Pray?

[Neon Genesis]

I've never suggested churches should focus only on themselves but I think there are other ways to make a difference in the world outside politics, like sending aid to Japan and Haiti to help them recover from their disasters, giving to the poor, visiting elderly people in nursing homes, and helping our local community recover from the seven tornados that struck us about two weeks ago. I think there may be some issues where churches should speak out against injust politices like when it's a life or death situation like the Uganda kill the gays bill. But too many times when churches intervene in politics they're speaking on issues they have no expertise on. What usually ends up happening is Christians cherry pick parts of the gospels that agree with their already preconceived philosophies and create a Jesus in their image that coincidentally happens to agree with them on everything. So you get liberal Christians who claim Jesus was a socialist pacifist who would all be for Obamacare if he was around today and Tea Party Christians who claim Jesus was an intolerant anti-government libertarian freedom fighter or something. Rather than discussing the issues themselves on their own merits, the debate then turns into a shouting match between liberal Christians and fundamentalists over who's interpretation of scripture is the correct one, nothing gets accomplished and the rest of the world is puzzled as to why we're consulting a 1000 year old book to solve our modern day economical problems instead of economists and health insurance experts.

 

The other problem is that more often than not, the bible has been used as a justification for immorality rather than social justice. Like in the slavery debate, you had abolitionist Christians who used the bible to justify their anti-slavery views but then you had pro-slavery Christians who used the bible to argue why slavery is endorsed by God. What ended up happening is that while the abolitionist Christians were right about slavery being immoral, the pro-slavery Christians were right that the bible in fact promotes slavery rather than condemns it. Nowhere in the gospels does Jesus ever condemn the practice of slavery and in fact numerous times in the NT there are verses attributed to Paul where he defends slavery and tells Christian slaves to obey their masters. The bible more often than not is used as a sword of oppression rather than a shield to defend justice. One poem I find inspiring that addresses this problem of using the bible to justify political issues is Mark Twain's War Prayer and I would recommend reading it.

[murmsk]

Many of the sea changes that have occurred in the US have been born in the churches. Civil rights, Womans rights, slavery to name a few. The churches realized that there were morality problems with a specific institution and set out to change it.

 

Robert Fogel in "The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism" discusses it at length. His premise is that there have been 4 big sea changes in the US through it's history. Basically, technological advancements lead to ethically problems or at least brings them to the forefront, the churches then in their attempt to address the social problems put pressure for a political solution.

 

It has bee more than a few years since I read the book so forgive the vagueness.

 

The 1st great awakening was in the 1700's and lead to the idea of freedom which lead to the American Revolution

 

2nd GW 1800's lead to abolition among other things

 

3rd GW 1900's lead to womans rights, civil rights, idea that poverty is a social failure not a personal failure which lead to the expansion of social programs in the 60's

 

4th GW (currently in) sort of a backlash to the 3rd GW rise of social conservatives.

 

 

In his view, all of this was driven by the churches .

 

 

Robert Fogel is not a nut . He is an Economist from University of Chicago. I think he won the Nobel prize for Economics.

 

It is an interesting read.

 

steve

[Neon Genesis]

Yet Christian sexism still has its roots in the scriptures and there are many passages in the epistles of Paul and Peter where women are referred to as the "weaker vessel" and passages where "Paul" says for women to be submissive to men. While many churches played an important role in the women's suffrage movement, equal rights for women owes as much to atheist feminists as it does to Christian feminists like Ernestine Rose who was the first woman to ever do a petition drive in New York. Rose along with other anti-religious feminists like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Candy Stanton, Lucretia Mott and Frances Wright all played important roles in the passing of the Married Women's Property Act. Though MLK Jr was a devout Christian, he was highly critical of the moderate white church for their wishy-washy positions on civil rights for blacks and MLK Jr's famous "Letter From Birmingham Jail" was a critical attack on the failures of moderate Christians in the civil rights movement and it was moderate white Christians who criticized MLK Jr for getting arrested for his non-violent resistance instead of doing it the "right way" by obeying unjust laws. No doubt many moderate Christians have done many wonderful things to support social justice but religion has also often been a source of trouble in politics and it hasn't been just the fundamentalist Christians who have failed to act either.

[murmsk]

There are plenty of other examples where churches have been on the wrong side of morality and the political movements associated with them. The whole GLBT issue comes to mind.

 

Don't think that I am suggesting that the churches rode in on their big white horse to save the nation. I was just trying to suggest that churches have played a big part on our political process from the beginning. Sometimes good, sometimes bad , sometimes very bad. The problem as I see it is not that churches are involved in the moral/political debate but rather that a radical few have

 

 

 

 

 

The book is a very interesting read tho.

 

steve