Is Christian Nationalism politics or religion?
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NO ONE HERE ASSUMES THIS. WHY DO YOU KEEP MAKING THIS POINT!
You stating that repeatedly implies you believe someone here needs to hear it, that is, someone here assumes every Christian does. You are in essence calling one, some, or all of us bigots.
This is what was done from the beginning.
No one said 100%. You did. You assumed it. You misread the thread and won’t let go.
Exactly. Just as no one has said that all Christians allow their faith to shape their politics or try to shape the law to conform to their religion.
Why can’t you see that?
Or
The thing i think you keep missing is confusing a persons religious choice with a broader point. There are plenty of good people who happen to be evangelicals, and plenty of things that evangelicals believe that we would agree to be good. And plenty of evangelicals that voted for Biden.
But what has become increasingly apparant given the hypocrisy we have seen accelerate in recent years is that evangelicalism is not apolitical. It’s more than just an alignment between followers and voters. They have mixed to the point where one of the only ways to claim they are distinct is to say x% voted for Biden.
The perversion of this is when evangelical candidates start to claim disagreements over their politics are attacks against their freedom of religion. That is complete bullshit. But the idea then permeates back through the congregations and communities around them, and now you have lost any way to differentiate the religion from the politics.
Is this more perception that reality? Maybe. Is that because of public statements from politicians rather than religious leaders? Probably. Boeberts church if she even has one could come out and say they think her posing with guns in front of a Christmas tree is not the image of Jesus that they teach, but that doesn’t happen. They have shared goals, they need each other to survive. This feeds back into system, and leads to defending increasingly extreme positions.
Again, this isn’t EVERYONE who is an evangelical, but it is a problem with evangelicalism today.
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I missed this part, especially the “only”. Can you point it out to me?
Editing to add that I have pointed out some quotes that I do not believe support your assertion. Although one poster was thoughtful enough to offer some clarification after I did so.
Well I certainly agree that this would be an inaccurate claim.
Eh, disagree.
Oh so only rituals you don’t find offensive are OK. Good to know where you draw the line on determining what other peoples religious beliefs are allowed.
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Huh? No. I didn’t say “offensive”, I said “sincerely held”.
I find lots of sincerely held religious beliefs offensive. I think it’s offensive that the Catholic Church opposes birth control, as an example. But I respect their right to believe something I find offensive and I think mandating that they pay for birth control for their employees crossed a line.
Conversely, I don’t find tattoos offensive, but I don’t believe that the religious beliefs of the members of the Church of the Tattoo (or whatever it’s called) are sincerely held.
My point earlier was that religious beliefs are fine until they start to infringe on the rights of others. Are you really looking for me to recount all the ways religious organizations are trying to control our politics? It’s a long list.
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OK so Twig is the arbiter of what is “Sincerely Held”, my bad.
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what if a religion “sincerely believes” that a certain race is inferior and refuses to hire or do business with that race? It’s a sincerely held belief, so do you respect it and allow them to do this?
or another example which might actually occur. An employer sincerely believes that a person is born a specific gender and refuses to acknowledge their choice to identify as the gender they were not assigned at birth due to their “religious beliefs”. is this okay?
And why wouldn’t your first example actually occur?
BTW, not trying to speak for Twig, who I think is making much more sense than most in the thread give her credit for (yes, that is a very low bar), hasn’t Twig said that religious beliefs which do not hurt others should be tolerated? Both your examples do involve harm to others.
Not really, she thinks that people should be allowed to deny healthcare to their employees based on their own religious beliefs.
No one would say that people have to use birth control. The harm comes from letting their beliefs dictate what others can do.
Yes, that would certainly meet my definition of “harm” and I wouldn’t allow thet decision by employers.
Again, without trying to speak for Twig, I could see a person arguing that ao_fan’s examples are more harmful than the birth control example and that ao_fan’s example should not be allowed even if the birth control example is.
i’m not sure my 2nd example isn’t allowed in some states.
By definition, one person’s beliefs cannot directly harm another. There are varying levels of indirection, and varying probabilities that harm will come to fruition. Also, there’s a difference between believing a thing, and trying to force others to behave as though they believe that thing.
I think we have an open question on whether if (say) 85% of the people who believe a certain thing are rather shitty while the other 15% are overall nice, should it be socially acceptable to treat the 15% the way the 85% deserve to be treated, without making any reasonable effort to distinguish the two groups. IMO, the 15% have an obligation to proactively distance themselves from the 85%, and people may disagree on what constitutes a reasonable effort.
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if by “birth control” she means abortions, not paying for that as part of healthcare seems harmful to me. not as harmful as my examples but still harmful.
It is encouraged in most states run by religious Republicans.
And you cannot separate their religious beliefs and blame it just on being republicans when they use their religion to justify their hate.
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The actions of the vast majority of the group made me remove any benefit of the doubt for the grouo as a whole.
I would be happy to be proven otherwise, but this subset of people have dissapointed me most of my life, so i will not be holding my breath.
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