Your marching orders have arrived. The Cliff’s notes version? Gingrich good. Thompson bad.
(After all, Gingrich has done such a fine job of exemplifying the Christian ideal of the sanctity of marriage…)
H/T: TPM
Royalty was like dandelions. No matter how many heads you chopped off, the roots were still there underground, waiting to spring up again.
It seemed to be a chronic disease. It was as if even the most intelligent person had this little blank spot in their heads where someone had written: "Kings. What a good idea." Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw. It was its tendency to bend at the knees.
-- Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay
Dobson . . . another one who needs to join the von Danikeners and UFOlogists in the dustbin of history.
This is especially odd:
It used to be just Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Unitarians who were shut out of “the body of Christ” - now it’s anyone who’s not an evangelical. That should make all Catholics and about 3/4 of Protestants particularly happy.
It’s not clear how literally Schneeberger meant that - whether he was just explaining what Dobson was saying, or whether he really means that Dobson and his gang don’t regard anyone but themselves as Christians. But either way it demonstrates how narrow the right-wing Christian mindset is - so narrow it doesn’t even encompass all right-wing Christians!
Personally, I don’t care how the label is applied, though I am tickled at the religious-right infighting going on in this campaign. (I was especially pleased to see the National Catholic Register declare that the only Catholic candidate in the race was unacceptably liberal!) But this incident strikes me as of a piece with the gay-marriage thread in an earlier post. Aside from any particular policy question or campaign issue, we have to decide as a society whether we will let a minority of angry, hateful, and self-interested trouble-makers insist that every policy or aspect of our society must meet with their particular approval or be restricted so it does. Now that they are starting to gore each other’s oxen, maybe they’ll start to realize how wrong they have been.
Dobson may have done something useful for once. It may actually be helpful for the people who have been so loudly demanding that their preferences about other people’s lives be written into law now hear themselves dictated to by an even more reactionary religious figure. I rather suspect the religious Republican right won’t enjoy being told that their current-favorite candidate is unacceptable because he didn’t pass someone else’s religious test - still less that they’re apostates on James Dobson’s say-so! I honestly don’t know if they have the moral sensitivity to extrapolate from that experience to the disappointment of others whose very lives and liberties they want to constrain on the same grounds, but this will at least be a valuable educational opportunity for them.
You don’t think someone else’s marriage is “sanctified”? Well, hell, you’re not even a Christian! Dobson declares it so. Your candidate’s disqualified, too. Dobson says that also. Now what do you think we should do about that?
Comment 3/28/2007
Actually, based on what the New Testament teaches in the Bible, being baptized into a church doesn’t make you a Christian. Tons of people attend church but that doesn’t make them Christians any more than going to a garden market makes someone a fruit or vegetable.
Unfortunately, the term Christian has morphed into some all-inclusive thing that basically means nothing. There is a HUGE difference between the “religious right” and “Christianity” just as there is a HUGE difference between the “secular left” and “Atheism”. Unfortunately while the latter would be agreed to, the former would not by most people, especially those on the left.
Comment 3/28/2007
[…] Attention Religious Right […]
Pingback 3/28/2007
Big U, the question of who is a Christian is difficult, because different people can claim all kinds of definitions to exclude certain people. Many Protestants exclude Catholics from ‘Christian’ and yes, some evangelicals reduce ‘Christian’ to their very specific set of beliefs.
Etymologically, it simply means something along the lines of ‘follower of Christ’, and I’d say that anyone who follows Christ and calls themselves Christian should be accepted as such - this is the onl neutral way to apply the label, without picking denominational sides.
I have known Christians who do not even believe Christ to be divine, yet they still follow him and call themselves Christian. I certainly wouldn’t try to deny them that title.
By the way, most of us are perfectly aware that not all Christians are relgious right (and not all religious right are Christians). Ironically the religious right itself wishes to perpetuate this mistake, by denouncing religious people on the left as not really Christian (think John Kerry, etc) and repeatedly referring to the left as atheistic.
Comment 3/28/2007
Good, this is a big plus for Fred Thompson. I am glad he is set free. Now if only Falwell and Robertson will do the same.
Thompson looks more like Reagan every day. Your team better hope he doesn’t run.
Comment 3/28/2007
Pejar,
Mostly, I think you’re spot on, but I have one quibble: Calling Jesus of Nazareth “Christ” makes a particular theological claim, that Jesus was the Messiah (the Christ).
I’d prefer to use a term such as ‘Jesusian’ for those who follow his teachings without regard to his divinity. Then again, this sounds stupid and nobody else does it.
Also, I’m inclined to suspect that if there were a non-theistic ‘Jesusism’, it’d already have a name: ‘Buddhism’.
Comment 3/28/2007
Pejar, I have heard far more comments from the left about the evil religious right and its huge impact than I have ever heard from the right about the atheistic left.
Perhaps part of the reason for this impression is the left’s apparent desire to remove any influence of religion or God from having any impact on their lives while the right tends to want to infuse God into more areas of people’s lives. I think there is plenty of blame to go around on both sides on this debate.
Comment 3/28/2007
Big U,
Note that “secular left” is effictively identical to “atheistic left” as a pejorative, but has the added appeal to partisans that ’secular’ is something many “leftists” are proud of being (what with secular government being one of the underpinnings of a civilized republican society).
Comment 3/29/2007
Dobson doesn’t like Thompson? It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
Comment 3/29/2007
Big U:
That’s because the religious right actually has influence.
Comment 3/29/2007
“I have known Christians who do not even believe Christ to be divine,”
No, you don’t. It is impossible to be a Christian without belief in the Diety of Christ.
Comment 3/30/2007
Yes Fred, ever since the rest of Christendom killed all the Gnostics, there haven’t really been any Christians who don’t believe in the divinity of Christ.
Some Buddhists actively recognize him as a pretty cool guy, though. Jesusism might be kinda like Buddhism… instead we got stuck with the Paul’s Christianity. Wonderful.
Comment 4/3/2007
“Yes Fred, ever since the rest of Christendom killed all the Gnostics, there haven’t really been any Christians who don’t believe in the divinity of Christ.”
Was that post intended to make any sense?
Comment 4/7/2007