At The Mendocino Humanist – Cheerfully Contrary there is an article which required our attention but can not reblogged, like the original article at Church and State from 2013 by Dakota O’Leary , which on its turn a review of the article by Katherine Stewart in the Guardian entitled “How Christian Fundamentalism Feeds Into the Toxic Partisanship of US Politics,”
Dakota O’Leary agrees that America has an infection. We would even say a serious problem, which did not become a lesser problem with the new president. Though that 45th president of the U.S.A. may have Jewish family, he has a racist tendency on some strange and dangerous facets, which seemed to be very much liked by neo-Nazis and extreme right Christian fundamentalists.
From certain reactions on our writings and on what we came to see in certain articles talking about Christian faith and Muslim faith we only can come to the conclusion that there are many extreme conservative and right-wing Christians blogging. A big problem with them is that they do not seem to want to listen or to accept certain things, like matters of language. For example not willing to come to understand that “Allah” is a word which is used in many languages to denote “God“. As such there are many Catholic and protestant Bibles with that word in their printed editions, but those Americans refusing to see that and to see that “Allah” is not a false god but the God of Abraham and the God of many Christians, Jews and Muslims.
That refusal to understand or to know that the English word “God” means “Allah” in many other languages gets such articles as “Muslims bow and worship allah / satan Everyday!!” or often repeated and reblogged (a.o.) Muslims bow and worship allah / satan Everyday!!, , Blasphemy!! Florida City Council Meeting Opens with a satanic prayer to satan and allah!!, Ungodly!! House of Representatives allows the sworn enemy of America to pray to allah-satan Baal on the House floor!!, with people not listening to others who dare to react to such stupid indications. They forget that such articles not only set bad blood by Muslims but also by devout Christians and by Jews who dare to speak out a tittle, because “God” or “Allah” is a title and not a name. But many American writings in the ‘Bloggosphere’ have authors who even do not seem to know the difference between a name and a tittle.
Some American writers see in that attitude of their compatriots the lack of their education and give the impression we should feel sorry for them. But than you could wonder why they not adjust their thinking when others do not mind to spend time to react to their wrong ideas and want to give them more correct information. Dakota O’Leary thinks such conservative Christians are infected with the consequence of anti-intellectualism, a steadfast refusal to acknowledge that one’s worldview is mutable, a worldview in which facts are only facts if they fit that worldview, and that anyone who disagrees with a Christian fundamentalist worldview is an “enemy” of God.
The infection has taken hold in conservative politics, where it has spread to a significant portion of the American population, and even into a significant amount of the Canadian population. Though the Religious Right lost some ground in 2000 and in 2008 the Time Magazine dared to declare “The Religious Right’s Era Is Over,” having the Republican party platform containing only two references to God and reaffirming its past positions on issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage and gays in the military but not expanding on them. Four years later the party’s platform contained again more references to God (10) and 19 references to faith, but also the first reference to a “war on religion.”Because at that time it really seemed that certain American citizens had declared a war on religion. The first and worst victim of that war were the Muslims and the second victim the true followers of Jesus, who do not worship their Trinity. Clearly we in Europe saw their battle against president Obama, some even claiming he would be a Muslim, and their battle against anything which had a social flavour, loathing it as ‘communist’. Normally one would expect from a good Christian that he is willing to share with others and to help those in need, but the American Christians with a big mouth are not at all prepared to share anything from their wealth with the needy or to contribute to a healthcare system when they are in good health.
Citing what it calls the Obama administration’s
“attempt to compel faith-related institutions, as well as believing individuals, to contravene their deeply held religious, moral, or ethical beliefs regarding health services, traditional marriage, or abortion,”
the platform accused “liberal elites” of trying to
“drive religious beliefs — and religious believers — out of the public square.”
From many writings on several blogs we in Europe could only conclude that several Tea-party members and extreme conservative Christians, mostly Creationists, wanted to gag the more liberal or freethinking Christian authors.
In Katherine Stewart’s article in the Guardian entitled “How Christian Fundamentalism Feeds Into the Toxic Partisanship of US Politics,” Stewart notes:
I don’t believe for a moment that this hysterical voice [Christian fundamentalism] that screeches in America’s political sphere is the authentic voice of religion in America. Most religious Americans want to mix it up at lunch! They want to make friends across party lines, and they want to help people who are less fortunate. A survey by the Public Religious Research Institute, released on 24 October, reveals that 60% of Catholics believe the Church should place a greater emphasis on social justice issues and their obligation to the poor, even if that means focusing less on culture war issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. Earlier this year, in response to the Ryan budget, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops joined other Christian leaders in insisting that a “circle of protection” be drawn around “essential programs that serve poor and vulnerable people”.
So why is it that the so-called “values voters” are urged to vote against the politician who supports choice, not the politician who wants to shred that “circle of protection” for the poor and vulnerable? Why is it that when politicians want to demonstrate just how religiously righteous they are, they talk about banning same-sex marriage and making contraceptives hard to get, instead of showing what they have done to protect the weak?
There is an obvious answer, and it is, in a sense, staring you in the face every time you watch a political debate or read about the latest antics of Focus on the Family and the AFA. The kind of religion that succeeds in politics tends to focus on the divisive element of religion. If you want to use religion to advance a partisan political agenda, the main objective you use it for is to divide people between us and them, between the in-group and the out-group, the believers and the infidels.
The result is a reduction of religion to a small handful of wedge issues. According to the religious leaders and policy organizations urging Americans to vote with their “Biblical values”, to be Christian now means to support one or, at most, a small handful of policy positions. And it means voting for the Republican party.
Dakota O’Leary says
Christian fundamentalists are not to be confused with mainstream evangelical Christians.
and he might be right because it seems to apply mainly on principally North American evangelicals. But we must be aware their language or their voice is spreading as a virus, and could come to infect several European, African and Asiatic evangelical and Pentecostal churches, coming to brew mischief between all the denominations who have people who in their language have “Allah” for the English word “God”. They also stir up trouble in regions where there are many Muslims who than find a stick to throw at the Christians. It gives than reason for Muslims to get on the wrong side because it makes it clear that Christians would prefer to worship an other God than the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jesus and his disciples. In Christendom and in Christianity there is already the problem that those words gets mixed up and that the majority of people who call themselves Christian worship three gods instead of the One God, like real Christians worship the God of Abraham, the Elohim Hashem Jehovah Who is Only One. But those real Christians also come into problems by those extremist Christians who claim they are worshipping Satan or Baal, and as such give every Muslim reason to believe so.
One good thing about is is that several trinitarian Christians are noticing to Whom Jesus prayed (“Allah” Jehovah God) and that they are seeing that the doctrine of the Trinity is a false human doctrine. Bad thing or a regrettable matter caused by those North American writers is that they are pushing away many Christians in the hands of Muslims teachers so that they become Islamic converts, instead of coming to non-trinitarian Christian groups which there is choice enough here in our regions. We encountered already many previous Catholics who now became Muslim and to whom we try to show that Jesus is the way to God and that real Christianity is the following of Jesus as the son of God and not as a god son.
Not only on the level of loosing Catholic and protestant believers to the Muslim Faith because of those Christian fundamentalists we also see that the position of our teachers and preachers gets undermined. The symptoms of the infection of anti-intellectualism brings an erosion on education, not only in the States but also in the Old World. Escalating attacks on teachers as bad citizens, teachers’ unions as greedy “takers”, the evolution vs. creationism debate, resistance to stem cell research (or any kind of scientific research that conflicts with their Biblical worldview), fundamentalist emphasis on voucher system to create taxpayer funded fundamentalist schools, fear of a changing, increasingly pluralistic society (the current face of which is the extraordinary power fundamentalists give to the LGBT community as the force eroding American morality and bringing down the entire nation), and a negative economy which is generating public support by those who consider themselves members of the Religious Right by demonizing public education as a “liberal conspiracy” to take their children away from God. Many who see how those extremist want to have their will also on educational matters, prohibiting children to learn about the normal evolution in this world and coming to accept that dinosaurs really existed and that our world still evolves, makes many now wanting to be part of a religion that prohibits to see the reality of our world.
Calling anything that disagrees with a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible a product of Satanic manipulation makes many religious people to doubt their faith and to abandon it.
Today we also might find an oversimplification by the idea that there is a clear right and wrong (based on Biblical laws, or cherry-picked verses), the universe is either moral or immoral, and that so-called “assaults” on religious “freedom” of fundamentalists signify an invisible war between the forces of God (or “good”) and the forces of Satan (or “evil”).
American essayist and Federalist politician of the 1790s who was an archopponent of Jeffersonian democracy Fisher Ames.
According to the North American extremists there may not be such thing as Religious Freedom or Freedom of belief, because every one all over the world has to come to speak English and using their words and terms on all levels and should come to believe that what they believe. Lots of Americans do forget many of their ancestors just left the Old Word to get more freedom. They also seem to have forgotten that the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was signed January 16, 1786, and is commemorated each year on National Religious Freedom Day. Thomas Jefferson’s landmark statute became the basis for Congressman Fisher Ames’ establishment clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Consitution.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
Today the majority of North Americans seem to want against that idea and do not want to leave other people enter their nation and want to make sure no person shall have an other faith than they.
Those who want prayers being said in class should remember that all religious people should be respected and in such instance should have prayers according to their faith too. If they want certain specific prayers being said they should do that in their own private schools, like Catholic Schools, Anglican Schools, Presbyterian, Evangelical etc religious schools, like there should also to be the freedom to have a Muslim or a Hindu school. But the State School should be open to everybody, allowing people to wear their own religious symbols, be it a little cross, a fish, a Davidstar, a yarmulka or other head covering. Each government all over the world should take care that every person can feel himself or herself happy in an environment where there is no discrimination for skin-colour or religious affection.
Some Americans do forget that they want to limit freedom of speech and freedom of religion by demanding to have only their religion presented in public schools.
Breitbart News’s Senior Editor-at-Large Rebecca Mansour goes so far to say taht
“The symbols and celebration of Christmas have shaped our history [and] Western Civilization,
having so called christians to think that she noted Christianity’s “transformative” impact on the old pagan world and the culture of Germanic barbarian warrior tribes, forgetting Christmas is totally a presentation of all the pagan elements, and is even an abomination in the eyes of God.
Christianity and broader Judeo-Christian values, suggested both Bannon and Mansour, reinforce Western Civilization’s sense of purpose in the face of internal and external threats.
The migration of tens of millions of Muslims to Europe in recent decades, said Bannon, is an existential threat to Europe and modern iteration of aforementioned civilization conflict between Western and Islamic societies: “The entire situation with this mass migration and refugee situation, which is really, there is no doubt, is starting to destroy Europe.” {Judeo-Christian Values essential to Victory of Western Civilization vs. Islamic Invasion of Europe}
+
Preceding
American Christianity no longer resembles its Founder
Governments need to be more proactive to ensure racism is kept in check
Added commentary to the posting A Progressive Call to Arms
You are what you wear
Allowing dress code according liberty of religion
Meditating Muslimah on “hijab to be a religious obligation”
A British judge rules that mother can’t indoctrinate son with religion
++
Additional reading
-
- Responses to Radical Muslims and Radical Christians
- You might be an extrimist if …
- Religious Practices around the world
- Religious Freedom in a Multicultural World
- Christians acting towards filmbusiness
- Being Charlie 8
- Coming closer to the end of 2015 and the end for Donald Trump as presidential candidate
- Blinded crying blue murder having being made afraid by a bugaboo
- >The clean sweeper of the whole caboodle
- Silence, devotion, Salafists, quietists, weaponry, bombings, books, writers and terrorists
- Preventing conflicts and war
- Don’t be Muslim
- Not true or True Catholicism and True Islam
- Where is the USA wanting to go with the freedom of their people
- Migrants to the West #2
- Migrants to the West #10 Religious freedom
- Who is a Jew?
- God’s forgotten Word 5 Lost Lawbook 4 The ‘Catholic’ church
- Being in isolation #1 Baptists making an important choice
- Couple Ordered to Stop Holding Bible Study at Home Without Permit
- Cambodia: A land where the Gospel is taking root
- Lack of religious freedom South Sudan
- People of Faith for Obama video
- Women in France running with naked bosom all right but with covered bosom penalised
- 34th World Congress of the International Association for Religious Freedom (IARF)
- ank” rel=”bookmark noopener”>Engaging the culture without losing the gospel
- 60 years after creation of European Economic Community, Europeans skeptical about one of their biggest achievements this century
++
Further related
- Religious Freedom
- [Review] Reality Check: How Science Deniers Threaten Our Future, by Donald R. Prothero
- Christian values; Porn stars and religious freedoms
- Violent extremists up to interpretation by homeland security chairman Mike McCaul
- The argument for deluded losers
- Great Thor they are at it again. They seem unable to understand secular country and religious freedom for religion and from theirs. Hugs
- On religious freedom
- Where Does It End???
- Catholic radio priest admits “250 popes were wrong about union of church and state and religious intolerance”
- Submission: Religious Freedom
-
-
-
-
-
- January 16, 2018 – National nothing-day – national without a scalpel day – national fig Newton-day -national religious freedom dayAttorney General Jeff Sessions scores 8 out of 20 on Religious Freedom
- Religious Freedom in an Emergency Department
- Is the Separation of Church and State Even Possible?
- Freedom from Religion coalition warns Colorado school that evangelical program could have “legal ramifications”
- Julian Mann: Make no mistake. This Ofsted plan is a threat to religious freedom. — Conservative Home
- Clergy uphold full “religious freedom” at Bethesda abortion clinic
- First Amendment Issues: Islamic Prayer Allowed in Schools, but War against Christianity
- Radical Muslims, Environmentalists, and the Green Jihad
-
-
Like this:
Like Loading...
Stepping Toes 