One thing that's clear throughout human history is that the politics of division is destructive on nations and societies. One thing that's equally clear is that for all the talk about unity, the politics of division is effective as a way to earn money, power and votes. This is why negative campaigning works, even though everyone claims to hate it.
One thing that's always bugged me about the right-wing Christian movement is how un-Christian they seem to me. That plus the fact that many people act like right-wing and Christian are synonymous. I was raised in a moderately left-wing Christian household. My parents didn't talk about the evils of masturbation or homosexuality. Instead, they talked about the importance of giving of yourself, of helping those less fortunate. That's what I took from Christianity.
But many people instead take negative things from the religion. Don't do this. Don't do that. These people are evil. Those people are going to hell. Not a positive agenda, but a negative one.
I was interested to read that the man elected president of the Christian Coalition, a group of predominantly conservatives, resigned before he even took office.
He wanted to broaden the group's agenda to include reducing poverty and fighting global warming. I consider these to be noble, Christian goals: helping human beings and the Earth they live on. In other words, taking care of God's creations.
But the Christian (sic) Coalition's leadership opposed this. They said that there members were primarily interested in attacking gay marriage and abortion.
The Coalition's president-who-never-was said of the group's board, "When we really got down to it, they said: 'This just isn't for us. It won't speak to our base, so we just can't go there.'"
And that says a lot about the so-called Christians who make up their base. An agenda centered around helping people doesn't interest them nearly as much as an agenda centered around attacking people.
Ironic since CHRISTianity is supposedly centered around some guy named CHRIST. Christianity's central prophet Jesus was a man who spoke quite a bit about fighting poverty and helping the less fortunate but, to the best of my knowledge, uttered not a single word about gay marriage.
1 comment:
Actually Christian conservatism, has been around, in the US, for decades. I remember in the 1960s, Rev. Billy James Hargis, and Rev. Carl McCintire warned about the hypnotic effect of Pete Seeger's music.
Be sure to see the movie "Jesus Camp". It is about a summer camp in the Dakotas, where children are taught through group dynamics, to be anti-abortion and reactionary fighters. The documentary is slightly dated. I would say dated, for exagerrating the power of the movement.
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