Letters to the Editor
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Are people really wising up?
I certainly hope so, but I'm not holding my breath. As long as there is a buck to be made selling the "prosperity gospel," there will be charlatans out there selling it, as well as the equally ridiculous notion that a political candidate who panders to the one or two issues near and dear to your church has your general best interests at heart. I've seen scant evidence of this happening myself.
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I'm sorry
But clearly religion doesn't explain the human experience.
We are a backwater solar system in a backwater galaxy in the universe. We will live and die and burn up in seven billion years without having the benefit of interacting with our intergalactic neighbors. It's sad but true.
The only thing we can hold on is to treat our children with love and respect. I don't know if it matters in the long term, but it matters to me.
So that's what I do.
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waiting with bated breath
Every time articles like these appear on Salon, it always seems to bring out the worst and most ignorant sides of people who are usually quite reasonable. I am talking mostly about people who virulently despise religion without really understanding it, and decry theology without any knowledge in it. So hopefully we won't see so much of that here.
All I can say is that most evangelicals and fundamentalists are not true Christians by any real definition, whether you define that as having given up their lives for Christ, or modeling their own lives after Christ, or following the Bible as a moral guidebook. Most modern "Christians" are just idolaters who have superimposed their own cultural beliefs and assumptions over Christ. Even worse, they are biblialaters who have superimposed the written human bible over God. Real Christianity is much, much harder than these people would like it to be. Real Christianity entails embracing sacrifice and selfless love and casting out your idols... and most people are too self-centered to even realize what all their idols are to begin with. Self-help Christianity is a lie. Feel-good Christianity is a lie. Christianity will not make you rich or prosperous. In fact Christ tells us that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than it is for a wealthy man to get into the kingdom of heaven.
I think ultimately American Christianity, as the heir to the legacy of a religion that was hijacked from true believers by wealthy, intellectually arrogant, opulent Romans, suffers from the condition that we, as Americans, have nothing in common with the actual belief system of Christ Jesus or his disciples. We Americans worship "rights" and "freedoms" and "opportunity." We grow up knowing that if you are successful, you will become wealthy. If you know how to pick your friends, you will make good connections that will help you. To try to transpose such social values onto Christianity will inevitably lead to self-deception and moral confusion, such as the variety that evangelicals experience now.
Christian values are ultimately antithetical to the values of the wealthiest class of the most powerful empire in the world. It was true in Rome and it's true now.
So it's hard to find a Christian in America. It's hard to be a Christian in America. But God, unlike America or Americans, gives credit for a good effort.
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Do real Christians ever eat quiche?
The frequent debates over what a "real Christian" is show that a primary and unfortunate role of religion is self-justification of the individual religionist. Since political identity is similarly self-justifying, I fear that religion and politics will rarely be disentangled in American life.
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The Attempted Suppression Strike
Rosenkavalier writes, hopefully:
"Every time articles like these appear on Salon, it always seems to bring out the worst and most ignorant sides of people who are usually quite reasonable. I am talking mostly about people who virulently despise religion without really understanding it, and decry theology without any knowledge in it. So hopefully we won't see so much of that here."
I hope to see lots of people using this opportunity, once again, to slam and deride religious ignorance in all of its forms. I hope we wee "so much of that here."
I can hardly wait to see Marks, a cloying annoyance if there ever was one, ripped to shreds.
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I just want religion to go away
why can't it just go away?....
The world would be such a better place
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Take another step...
John Marks: But when you get to this central question -- Do you believe that Jesus Christ redeemed you for all time and do you live as if that's true? -- most people cannot tell you how many real believers there are.
What if it's possible one day to test 1000 "believers", and find out how many actually really believe? What would the policy implications be if just a tiny fraction of individuals who support the promotion of religion believe in it? Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith is studying the ability to do just that by looking at the human brain and how it acts on all kinds of belief:
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1694723,00.html
John Marks: Mitt Romney posed all kinds of questions because of his Mormonism, even though he was right on the money in terms of social values. McCain has never been someone who can be relied on to appoint the right judges, to be an ear. He might be right on abortion, but he's wrong on most everything else; I think that's the way a lot of evangelicals feel.
I disagree that the motivations behind evangelical leaders support of the candidates has much to do with policy questions, with the possible exception of support for End Times prophecy types and the role of Israel in this equation. Instead, support from religious leaders has everything to do with maintaining relevance and power. Look at Pat Robertson, who endorsed Rudy Giuliani right out of the gate when it looked like he was polling as the national frontrunner! Was Giuliani "right on the money in terms of social values?"
In terms of the evangelical population, their support for Mike Huckabee in recent primaries only speaks to how blinding faith can be. To one looking in on the movement from the outside, I see only support for a man who would use the power of government to coerce his interpretation of religious doctrine through amendments to the US Constitution. How is this morally different from the mandates of Sharia law on a population? It is because we've put the Inquisition behind us? Or, perhaps because we're in between pedophilia scandals? Perhaps enough have died of AIDS because of mandated abstinence education? Or do we need to sacrifice thousands more women to cervical cancer by denying them an HPV vaccine delivered to us by the Devil himself?
This nation has many decades to go before out political discourse will be returned to any kind of reality-based discussion. By that time, we will have thoroughly bankrupted many generations that follow us pursuing "righteous" wars packaged with all the moral authority that religion can provide.