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Christianity says that there is something above humanity. This can be interpreted as being a good thing or a bad thing. Leftists interpret it as a bad thing because it means that reshaping humanity is always beyond their ability because something in humanity is above and beyond them. Conservatives and many liberals view the something beyond humanity as either a good thing (Jesus loves and forgives you) or something to be reckoned with (Men are not Angels and cannot be made to be Angels).
What’s more, the European/American strain of Leftism has an outer appearance of Christianity. It speaks of equality and being part of a body of something greater than yourself. Christianity is i’s rival because Leftism is the bastard son of Christianity who wishes to kill the ideology and usurp it’s throne.
The secularists go to all of the trouble of curating just the right value set to scratch their itches and place themselves at the center of the universe per the pandering pedants that peddled them pablum and then these awful Christians blaspheme against their righteous godhead! As if there were some other god above scratch. The rudeness of the people, they really need to be taught a good lesson. Can’t do it today, of course, but as soon as those social distancing rules are lifted it’s time to shop lions!
Sing them a hymn. They’ll always remember you.
Lord have mercy.
” One leader at the discredited Southern Poverty Law Center called for the field hospital to be expelled. “
It reminds me of a bunch of medical staff protesting the Koch brothers building a wing on their hospital, but this was political instead of religion. Still, leftist bigotry is everywhere . . .
[My “post quote” button still doesn’t work. Any else have this problem?]
A minor editorial suggestion: You should say “exploit” rather than “use.” And omit “misguided.”
Good article, but ends saying “Let’s hope we learn our lesson and choose unity over division before it’s too late” Top down always seeks unity. And that is what the left seeks against the ground up diversity that exists among our religious communities, and historically, communities in general. Diversity is an essential reality in our giant republic and the left always seeks top down unity. We now have to agree on what to do about a unique situation so division enters the question because it’s meaningful for specific questions. Even there, I think diversity will teach us more than trying to end divisions on the question by herding over 300 million of the most diverse people on earth in one direction. The far left and the Democrats, (they’re not the same, at least in their own heads), want unity on their opinion that anything and everything Trump does is wrong. We face a dangerous reality with this situation, and it’s this unique top down unity. We had to have it fighting the Nazi’s and we haven’t undone that yet, so we have to be really cautious.
I think that the opening sentence is wrong. I’m pretty well versed in Roman history, for a layman. My impression is that the Romans were generally tolerant of other religions, other than Christianity, and they had their reason. Almost all religions of the time were polytheistic, and it is my understanding that the Romans had no objection to various conquered people keeping their own gods, as long as they added the Roman gods to their pantheon, particularly the Emperor and prior Roman greats who had been elevated to godhood. The Jews presented a problem in this regard, and the Romans generally tolerated this, too, because they valued tradition and the Jews certainly had a long tradition of monotheism. They viewed Christianity as an innovation, and therefore not worthy of respect like Judaism, but those pesky Christians adamantly refused to worship the Emperor.
The Romans understood that religion was an important tool in maintaining civil authority, and understood that unity and peace in the Empire required some degree of common belief. I actually think they were right about this, though I think that they were wrong about the religion(s) that they chose.
We don’t seem to understand this lesson. The essential problem in the OP, in my view, is that it doesn’t recognize the difficulty of holding together a polity in which there are large groups with vastly different world views. It conceptualizes this in terms of prohibiting “discrimination,” without seeming to realize that this is precisely the basis on which the Leftists are demanding that Christian groups tolerate homosexuality and other, shall we say, non-traditional behavior. I think that comment #5 makes a related mistake, praising “diversity” and appearing to object to “top down unity.” There has to be something that unites us, and it’s unlikely that a large polity can maintain such unity without some degree of governmental support of the dominant religion or world view.
In the past, I think, we had both top-down and bottom-up unity in support of a non-denominational Protestant faith and ethic. There were many factors contributing to the decline of this unity, but I think that a major factor were the religious rulings by SCOTUS between the late 1940s and the early 1960s, essentially prohibiting any top-down support of religion, even at the state or local level.
We now have no unity, and the result is constant strife. Well, yeah. That’s the natural result of disunity.
Many people seemed to think that the “nondiscrimination” principle could provide such unity, which I think is nonsense. You can’t make a unifying principle out of a rule that says do-whatever-you-like-and-no-one-is-allowed-to-object.
At it’s core the goals of the LBGT movement/agenda are completely at odds with religious liberty. The two simply can’t co-exist.
Well, misguided could be tweaked a bit. Maybe deranged? Psychopathic? Unhinged? Oh, wait, try this one on for size. What do you think of demonic?
These adjectives are loaded!