if i believed that god has been fucking with the earth on and off with genocidal floods and shit there’s about a 0% probability that i would give a fuck about climate change. this is not rocket science.
@wrenman @Ddanielson Even the whole support for Israel by evangelicals is based on the “end times” belief otherwise they’re as anti-semitic as they come.
@pratik @wrenman @Ddanielson I am furious with the idiocy of evangelicals and, by extension, all of Christianity. Like the white patriarchy, however, their demographics are not looking very good in the near future. If we can keep them from bringing on the end times we will soon get to the place where they are irrelevant.
@mbkriegh @pratik @Ddanielson here’s the difference between white supremacism and religion, though. white supremacists will keep going down in number, that’s a fact. religious ppl are however increasing in number, fueled by immigration. and a lot of these ppl, once they get more stable in terms of immigrant status, likely switch over to the religious fascist party. look at hispanics who’ve been moving to the gop because of their views on abortion. look at hindus who’re threatening to move to the gop because of caste blowback. look at muslims threatening to move to the gop because of israel. the problem of the future is religion.
@Ddanielson @wrenman I don’t discuss politics with my mom but somehow this came up a few weeks ago and she literally said, “The environmentalists are trying to save the world but they won’t be able to do it. I believe the world will end just like the Book of Revelation says.”
@pratik I didn’t, at least not directly. It wouldn’t do any good and, besides, I’m not invested in particular interpretations of the book of Revelation! Instead I just talked about some of the things we’ve been doing to support the life here on our property and why we do it. Less confrontational, more about talking about what we love.
@jabel @ddanielson environmentalists missed the obvious first step of convincing ppl that everybody on the planet roasting to death is actually a bad thing regardless of what the bible says
@jabel True. No point in confronting and trying to change basic beliefs at this point in their life.
@JohnBrady Antilegomena! When I left my fundamentalist background I went into the Lutheran church. I was fascinated when I discovered the concept–and that Luther himself questioned the legitimacy of Revelation, among others.
@mbkriegh “I am furious with the idiocy of evangelicals and, by extension, all of Christianity.” That is not a valid extension. One of the things that frustrates me about evangelicals is that they’ve so dominated the airwaves that people make that erroneous extension, but believe me, it’s false.
@pratik There’s truth in that, but it’s too categorical about their support of Israel and way too categorical about antisemitism. (I’m an ex-evangelical and obsessively critical of white north American evangelicalism, but I don’t believe that they’re antisemitic — though I flirted with the idea.)
@jabel Orthodoxy recognizes that Revelation is part of the canon. We just don’t have it in our lectionary for reasons that have never been explained to me but which I like because it inflames literalists.
@ReaderJohn What I meant was, the evangelicals who profess to be pro-Israel are motivated by the “end times” myth or are reflexively against Muslims. Otherwise, they would be more likely to be anti-semitic, like most of their ancestors were. Most of the anti-semites (e.g., Musk-like people) are trying to sell themselves as pro-Israel because that would mean Jewish people have to “go back” to Israel.
@pratik @ReaderJohn As an American evangelical, who is probably more critical of American evangelicals than both of you, I think a distinction must be made between American Evangelicals and Global Evangelicals.
Some, not all, of American Evangelicals view their religious beliefs as an extension of their political and/or cultural beliefs. This is where I think @pratik is correct. Some have culturally racist beliefs that they inherited from their society that they project onto their religious beliefs. They then speak of their interpretation as “the biblical” interpretation and condemn other interpretations, which are often more global and better represent the historical interpretation of the church, as “unbiblical.”
Unfortunately, American Evangelicals dominate the airwaves in America. Evangelicals from, say Palestine and Israel themselves, have little airtime in these topics, because some bombastic preacher from Idaho gets center-stage.
@KyleEssary I can’t readily see anything in there to disagree with, unless it’s to add “white” before American evangelicals in your first paragraph.
@wrenman @mbkriegh @jabel @pratik @ReaderJohn @KyleEssary @JohnBrady
Marilynne Robinson, saying it perfectly:
“Over the years many a good soul has let me know by one means or another that this living out of the religious/ethical/aesthetic/intellectual tradition that is so essentially compelling to me is not, shall we say, cool. There are little jokes about being born again. There are little lectures about religion as a cheap cure for existential anxiety. …
“Am I the last one to get the news that this religion that has so profoundly influenced world civilization over centuries has been ceded to the clods and the obscurantists? Don’t I know that J. S. Bach and Martin Luther King have been entirely eclipsed by Jerry Falwell? The question has been put to me very directly: Am I not afraid to be associated with religious people? These nudges would have their coercive effect precisely because those who want to put me right know that I am not a fundamentalist. That is, I am to avoid association with religion completely or else be embarrassed by punitive association with beliefs I do not hold. What sense does that make? What good does it serve? I suspect it demonstrates the existence of a human herding instinct. After all, “egregious” means at root “outside the flock.” There are always a great many people who are confident that they recognize deviation from group mores, and so they police the boundaries and round up the strays.”
@tinyroofnail I take her point, even though I think the condemnation could be stronger than “clods and obscurantists”.
@KyleEssary @ReaderJohn @pratik the other issue of course being that America is now very far from being the global seat of evangelicalism.
@tinyroofnail What a great quote! You have given me a smile and something else to be thankful for this Thanksgiving Day.
@danalcantara Can you unpack that “very far from being the global seat of evangelicalism,” please? I know, f’rinstance, that pentecostalism is huge in South American, but I tend to distinguish pentecostalism from evangelicalism simpliciter.
@tinyroofnail @wrenman @mbkriegh @jabel @pratik @KyleEssary @JohnBrady
> My Lord is the One who resurrects. He resurrects the dead from morning until dusk, and from dusk until dawn.”
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> What the morning buries, the Lord brings to life in the evening; and what the evening buries, the Lord brings to life in the morning.
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> What work is more fitting for the living God than to resurrect the dead into life?
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> Let others believe in the God who brings men to trial and judges them.
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> I shall cling to the God who resurrects the dead.
St. Nikolai Velimirovich, Prayers by the Lake
@ReaderJohn my source is the book Gospel People by Michael Reeves, he’s the president of Union School of Theology in Wales. The main goal of the book is defining evangelicalism in a way that is historically faithful to its claims (primarily being people of the evangel) rather than as a sociological category. By that definition, he says, “by percentage of population, the heartlands of evangelicalism today are not the US or UK, but South Korea and Kenya.”