I don’t usually post about politics, but when I do, it is to make fun of the Religious Right.
Found this pic floating around on the interwebs. It came accompanied with this quote by former Arizona Republican Senator Barry Goldwater (a five-term Senator and the Republican Presidential nominee in 1964):
Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.
At least the Religious Right isn’t completely synonymous with the Republican Party, otherwise they would’ve gone full crazy and actually picked Santorum or Bachmann as their nominee. Still kinda scary how big of a role the Religious Right plays in the Republican Party though.
Unfortunately, his campaign managers have remade Romney in Santorum’s image, so for our political discourse anyway I’m not sure there’s any practical difference.
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IF we really disliked the state being tasked by us with the role of God or the church, we’d oppose all modern politicians. The right has it’s flaws, the left has it’s. Both worship Caesar more than Christ.
The right sometimes wants the state to decide what we can do, the left sees Caesar as our beneficient savior and Lord providing for us. The right wants to see the USA as a threatening and violent empire of God’s to re-fashion all for capitalism and our use, the left wants much the same with some nuances. The left would pay some lip service to fairness while not being fair, there are too many examples to think otherwise.
Until we American believers stop worshipping Caesar above Christ, all politics is poison. Not just the right.
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This essay sums up the situation very well:
http://tpjmagazine.us/adams29
Chris Hedges in his book American Fascists: The Christian Right & the War on America fills in details.
Plus 3 references on applied Christian politics 101.
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~spanmod/mural/panel13.html
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/cruelty.html
http://www.logosjournal.com/hammer_kellner
All of which was INEVITABLE the very moment that the multivarious early Christian movement was co-opted by the Roman state and thus became a key/integral player in the Western drive to gain complete power and control over ALL human beings, and indeed all of Earthkind.
This drive became consolidated when the “official” version of both the Bible and of Christianity was thus defined. All other versions were thus instantaneously deemed as “heresies”. And we all know what happened to “heretics”.
Never-ending violence against both “heretics” and ALL other forms of religion and culture, including of course (and especially) the Jewish people, also became inevitable because Christians erroneously believed and thus acted upon the premise that they ALONE possessed the one true way/faith/revelation, and that they had the bogus “great commission” to convert ALL other people to the one true way.
Such a belief/presumption is, by its very nature, a declaration of war against everyone else
Christians have thus always used whatever means they could in any and every time and place to “convert” others.
This presumption of cultural superiority is still very much alive in the world.
The third of the three references about is a review of an unspeakably vile sado-masochistic snuff-splatter movie which was very popular at the time.
In my opinion that movie was a prophetic picturing of the horrors that were to come in years and decades to follow.
Patrick, when and where have Christians ever worshiped “Christ” above Caesar?
When and where will that occur?
Can a sinner, who is by self-definition and thus action, entirely Godless, ever worship Christ.
If you begin with the presumption of sin, then everything that you do will be an extension of (or tainted by) by your sin.
So too with any collective of mere true believers.