A brief plea

[adderslj]

Folks,

I know many of you are very upset by the election result, but please bear in mind that "Christian" and "right-wing Christian conservatives" are not synonyms.

Thank you.

Comments

[rougeforever.livejournal.com]

Good point, well made.

[brusse.livejournal.com]

Thmubs up!

[innocent-man.livejournal.com]

For a change, my biggest peeve isn't the religious mindset, but that people in America ignoring the fact that religion shouldn't enter into the political process at all. Separate church and state, right?

Yeah, right.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

Religion cannot help but enter into the political world, because both religion and politics are about people and their relationships with each other.

And Church and religion aren't synonymous either.

[adders.livejournal.com]

It depends on how you define that. Does that mean people with religious views shouldn't participate in the political process at all? That's how some of the more strident criticism comes across. You can't expect people to not act on their most deeply-held beliefs, and to live lives seperate from them. That includes voting.

On the other side of the coin, some people don't seem to realise that you can't legislate people into faith. They have to come to that by choice. To take the gay marriage issue, which is far more theologically complicated than the media are prepared to allow (I have several, thick volumes debating the issue on my bookshelves), if you fall into the "homosexuality = sin" camp, you should still realise that you can't legislate people into a righteous life, because you're taking away their ability to choose it freely.

(Abortion is a slightly different issue. If one genuinely believes that it involves the murder of a small child, then you do have the right to try and get it legislated against. We're blessed in Britain with a more reasoned debate on the issue, and a constant willingness on all sides to check that the legal position is in line with medical discoveries about fetal development. That seems to be less the case in the US, where there appears to be greater polarisation along Right to Life / Right to Choose lines.)

The "seperation of church and state" issue in the US originally came around to prevent the UK-style situation arising, where the nominal head of state (the Queen) is also in charage of the church (Church of England). We circumvent the problem because she's only the nominal power in both cases, with the true power being vested in the Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Now, I realise that many people are afraid of a theocracy developing in the US, and there is good reason for looking at the issue from the point of view of keeping the political system free of religious control. But you also have to be careful not to disenfranchise the religious in the process. That's deeply undemocratic.

Frankly, I've seen too many ad hominem "you're a Christian, so your opinion doesn't count - seperation of church and state" attacks in recent weeks, not to regard general statements along these lines with healthy suspicion.

[fraserspeirs.livejournal.com]

Does that mean people with religious views shouldn't participate in the political process at all?

Well, that's how they do it in the European Commission (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3966983.stm).

[adders.livejournal.com]

Too true. I wrote a little about that on Kingdom Come.

[fraserspeirs.livejournal.com]

It's hardly surprising though, given that "deeply undemocratic", as you put it, has been the modus operandi of the European Union for what seems like forever.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

That's not the case.

Rocco Buttiglione was put forward for the position of Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security and, in the opinion of many people his stated views made him unsuitable for that position, no matter where those views came from.

Given that the post would make him the EU Commissioner with responsibility for dealing with issues of discrimination, I don't think that's unreasonable.

There's nothing stopping him, as a person with strongly held religious views, from being involved in politics; after all, he's an Italian government minister. The Italians presumably have no problem with him representing them.

But a sufficient majority of MEPs felt that they could not allow him to represent them.

[innocent-man.livejournal.com]

All very true. Bears noting, too, that I see religious folks use their faith as a badge or a dodge pretty frequently, as though being Christian (or Wiccan or whatever) allows them the luxury of never having to think about an issue, or to stop thinking when the facts intrude.

Abortion is a sticky wicket, and the cop-out I usually use is that I'm a man and therefore don't have any business legislating it. I do feel that people should fuck responsibly, however, but that's less an abortion issue and more an attitude issue.

And I really don't feel the gay marriage thing is terribly complicated. If it's a sin...well, then people are sinning. As you say, they need to be free to make that choice, especially in a country that supposedly separates church and state.

As far as disenfranchising the religious...I dunno, man. I see religion getting used as a crutch, a tool and a dodge far more often than anything else. And, FTR, the people that I know who do have faith and are serious about it (rather than claiming faith and then going out and acting in opposition in their everyday lives) tend to be pretty big proponents of the whole "free will" thing.

[adders.livejournal.com]

And I really don't feel the gay marriage thing is terribly complicated.

Just to clarify, I was talking about it being complicated within Christianity - is homosexuality a sin? Can a church justifiably bless a gay marriage? - and there are strong arguments for and against. Personally I tend towards the "yes" camp. My wife is strongly in the "no" camp.

As far as disenfranchising the religious...I dunno, man. I see religion getting used as a crutch, a tool and a dodge far more often than anything else.

And I see people using it as a tool to disregard opinions from believers that they don't want to hear. I suspect we're seeing the exact same human behaviour from different sides of the coin.

[yangti.livejournal.com]

I may be opening a can of worms here, but I have a question you may be able to answer for me, Adam. Does the Bible have any passages within it that explicitly forbid woman/woman sex? I read an assertion some time ago stating that only man/man sex was addressed in the Old Testament. I looked and couldn't find anything, but frankly was too lazy to plow through the whole thing looking for a single passage that may not exist. Not that I would care personally one way the other, as many of those Old Testament injunctions strike me as fascinating but irrelevant, but when I'm talking to someone who is a Bible literalist and is against homosexuality on those grounds I'd like to use that as a talking point, if it is in fact true.

[innocent-man.livejournal.com]

Just to clarify, I was talking about it being complicated within Christianity - is homosexuality a sin? Can a church justifiably bless a gay marriage? - and there are strong arguments for and against. Personally I tend towards the "yes" camp. My wife is strongly in the "no" camp.

Mmm. As a member of no church, I couldn't care less what churches think of gay marriage except where it impacts the vote. If we're going to be a free country, let's be free (and yeah, I'm for legalization of drugs and guns and a bunch of other things, too). As you say, you can't legislate people into faith.

And I see people using it as a tool to disregard opinions from believers that they don't want to hear. I suspect we're seeing the exact same human behaviour from different sides of the coin.

Yep. I will say, however, that in any religious/faith-based discussion there comes a point where I'll hit the wall, because the final, underlying issue - I don't believe in god - means that after that point discussion is pretty useless.

That doesn't mean that believers don't have anything worthwhile to say. I know that. It's very difficult for me to really listen when people use faith or the Bible as their justification for action or thought, but I conciously strive to listen anyway.

[oakthorne.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

All too often, we find politicians whose sole justification for certain intiatives and endeavors is their religion. I find this patently unacceptable. I could never be an effective politician because I have certain closely held beliefs that I would have to compromise in order to effectively lead a group made up of people who don't necessarily believe that, and I'm not willing to do so.

Frankly? Make laws based on solid reasoning, rather than "because I am a member of X Religion, and you shouldn't do that in my religion." If someone proposed to me that I shouldn't murder because its a sin, I'd tell them where to put the concept. Tell me I shouldn't do that because of human rights, etc, then we're talking.

Regards,
Joseph

[adders.livejournal.com]

I'm beginning to wonder why I bothered.

I agree with you.

Not all Christians think like those politicians, which is point I was making in the first place.

*head in hands*

[oakthorne.livejournal.com]

No, no. My apologies - I obviously did a poor job of communicating what I meant. Our points were the same: I know that not all Christians think that way, nor would they try to legislate their faith over those they'd been elected to lead.

The point that I was trying to make was that anyone who entered a political position when he knew his own belief systems might not enable him to either lead impartially or would force him to try and overlay his faith over those who aren't interested in such are inherently unethical.

It's not Christians I distrust, brother - its politicians.

Regards,
Joseph

[bruceb.livejournal.com]

And for that matter, "right-wing Christian conservative" doesn't mean "theocrat wannabe" - there are plenty of right-wing Christians who recognize that Caesar's law is not God's, and does different things in the sphere of public life. (For instance, the law already recognizes the marriages of atheists and unbelievers, while several of my friends who perform religious marriages will do so only for people whose souls are in order according the minister's creed. This is as it should be, since marriage in the eyes of God and the compact of civil marriage are different things.) The real problem is people who feel threatened if others are allowed to choose differently.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

You know, I'd never considered the issue of atheistic marriages.

Thank you. Food for thought.

[bruceb.livejournal.com]

Glad to help. The state already recognizes many marriages that aren't acceptable in any given creed, and this context seems often lost in talking about gay marriage.

[magentamom.livejournal.com]

No, indeed. A great many Christians realize that theocracy is as damaging to churches as it is to states and wish to run far, far away from legislated morality. Jesus didn't compel anyone to follow him, nor should we.