Thursday, March 6, 2014

What the conservative Christians really fear (updated)

Some of the prominent conservative pundits like Ross Douthat and Rob Dreher are complaining that they've lost and we aren't treating them well.  A reader of Andrew Sullivan's blog responds,
Rod Dreher: American Christians are about to learn what it means to live in a country where being a faithful Christian is going to exact significant costs. It may not be persecution, but it’s still going to hurt, and in ways most Christians scarcely understand.
No. American Christians are about to learn what it means to live in a country whose culture and values and attitudes don’t fully replicate their own. That is all....Their outrage (or, in Dreher’s case, apprehension and sadness) is really a reaction to a loss of prestige, a loss of a sense of centrality, a loss of the sense that this is their country and they are the normal ones, and it’s only natural and correct that the culture and the law should reflect their values and their attitudes.
 And another, I think, puts ze's finger on the real problem they have
It’s like the doomsday cultists who predict the end of the world with absolute certainty and then find themselves utterly flummoxed when the predicted day comes and goes and nothing happens. ...
The larger issue at stake is the truth claims of Christianity, at least in the view of its most stringent interpreters. If the Bible can’t be trusted to be right about whether or not gay people are horrible monsters on par with murderers, swindlers, and slave dealers, what can we trust it for? ... But I’ve often wondered whether, as gays and gay marriage become more mainstream and, well, banal, many Christians won’t find themselves wondering why the apocalypse hasn’t come after all and what that says about Scriptural authority in a lot of other areas. That’s what’s not sitting well with a lot of Christian culture warriors right now.
See, the problem with biblical literalists is once you find something isn't accurate....well, the whole edifice starts to crumble. Because if one thing is wrong, what can you trust?   Episcopal priest Fr Matthew Moretz tackles this question in one of his engaging  "Father Matthew Presents" videos, posted below.  (Episcopalians do not do Biblical inerrancy, and are LGBT-friendly and pro-science.)

From the Washington Post
The religious divide that is growing on LGBT equality, as evidenced in the latest WaPo/ABC poll, which reports 59% of Americans support marriage. Greg Sargent notes,
Republicans are alone here: They oppose legal gay marriage by 54-40; and they don’t believe the “equal protection” clause guarantees the legal right to marry by 54-38. Majorities of independents and moderates are in the Yes camp on both.

Note the religious breakdown: White evangelical Protestants overwhelmingly oppose gay marriage, by 66-28. By contrast, white non-evangelical Protestants support it by 62-27, and white Catholics support it by 70-26.
And it's hard to keep claiming that Christians are persecuted on this issue, when so many Christian are LGBT supporters.



1 comment:

JCF said...

Re inerrancy:

The Bible only has "errors" if it's forced into the straight-jacket of facts that it was never written to live in.

Truth =/= Facts

For Christians, Truth is a Person. Facts are tools. Confusing the two is like hammering a nail w/ a book (of revealed Truth), and worshipping a hammer. Oh, Fundies...