Culture Warriors category archive

Michael Austin is professor of psychology and a professing Christian. The Christianity that he professes is the kind of Christianity that I grew up with, one that focuses on love and forgiveness, not on hate and vengeance.

At Psychology Today Blogs, he explores the essential hypocrisy behind the “Myth of the Bible Belt” by contrasting the Christ of the Bible with the Christ of the Bible Belt.

The South may be the most religious part of the United States if church attendance and a verbal profession of Christian belief are the sole criteria for religiosity. However, if we take a set of criteria from the New Testament, then this may be a myth. As far as I can tell, the central criteria in the New Testament for an authentic Christian faith begins with a profession of faith, but then essentially includes the following:

• love of God
• love of one’s neighbor (no matter their religious beliefs, or lack thereof)
• transformation of one’s character
• care for the “least of these” (i.e., the poor and marginalized) in society.1

If the criteria from the New Testament are applied to our behavior, then atheist high school students wouldn’t receive text messages that say “Hey, Satan.” And atheists wouldn’t lose their family and friends because of their lack of religious faith. To reject someone or cut them out of your life because they are an atheist is one of the least Christian things one can do.

Read the rest, then read Matthew 6:5.

Via AMERICAblog.

By their status updates shall ye know them.

All they can think about is sex (and war).

Addendum, the Next Day:

Speaking of war . . . .

These folks are deeply, deeply warped.

One of the aspects of privilege is the inability to realize that one is privileged.

To put it another way, it’s to accept privilege as one’s due, without question, just as, when I was a kid growing up under Jim Crow, I accepted without question that most black folks did not have nice houses as Just the Way Things Were Meant To Be.

Today, teabaggers can answer that question.

Afterthought:

These folks live in a Fox News world. They really believe that the country wants to return to 1850, when white men ruled and everyone else knew their place.

They may be buffoons, but they are dangerous buffoons.

Not a difference in kind, merely one in degree.

May 16, 2014 | Posted by: Frank | Posted in: Culture Warriors | Bookmark this post

The Rude One is distressed by the Supreme Court’s recent sidestep closer to theocracy and argues that public prayer is always coercive. He recalls what happened when he was a young ‘un and sat down for a little-last minute studying during the “voluntary moment of silent prayer” mandated by his school.

A snippet:

She (the teacher–ed.) explained that it was disrespectful for him to sit down while everyone was praying. “But I thought it was voluntary,” he said. It is, she said, but even so, it’s just good manners to stay on his feet. If he had thought that causing trouble was worth the effort, he might have responded, “So it’s not voluntary . . . .”

In other words, he was coerced into participating, whether he liked it or not.

Find out why he finds this story worth telling at the link.

In related news, the resident curmudgeon of my local rag finds the ruling quite okay, provided that

Still, it’s worth remembering that there’s a difference between what’s legal and what’s polite. It is rude – some would say downright un-Christian – to use an opening prayer to make others squirm in discomfort.

But, really now, unleashing your private beliefs and practices on others who are forced to just take it is inherently obnoxious, isn’t it? That is what those who would pray loudly in the public square wish to do.

The persons who most loudly demand prayer at public functions, and particularly prayer in schools, want to make people squirm. At the least, they see forcing their prayers on unbelievers as a form of proselytizing and indoctrinating them; at worst, they are the religious variant of gun nuts who parade around the Little League park with assault weapons just because they can.

Matthew 6:5.

Afterthought:

In Fundamentalist Christian lingo, forcing one’s beliefs on those who are not interested is called witnessing for the faith.

In Florida, a man who is against the idea of gay marriage has filed a motion in a federal case saying those who love inanimate objects should get some legal love too.

Chris Sevier, allegedly a former judge advocate general and combat veteran, wants to marry his “porn-filled Apple laptop” according to the motion, says the Broward-Palm Beach New Times.

The judge rejected the emotion.

Which came first: obsession with sex or wingnut politics? The two are so oft coupled that I suspect a dissertation lurks in the question.

Afterthought:

Despite what millions of men have told their wives/mothers/girlfriends, the computer did not become “porn-filled” on its own.

The humblebrag.

In the context of a much longer post about the antics of Cliven Bundy, his tools, dupes, and symps, Chauncey Devega gives as good a working definition of “privilege” as you are likely to see (emphasis added):

Privilege consists of all those day-to-day things that a given person does not have to think about.

In the context of Cliven Bundy and the rise of the White Right in the Age of Obama, white privilege consists of the freedom for white conservative protesters and militia members to point guns at federal law enforcement agents and to do so with the reasonable expectation that you will not be shot dead.

Moreover, if you are shot dead for brandishing a weapon and/or threatening the life of a federal law enforcement agent, white privilege guarantees that you will become a martyr and hero for movement conservatives and those who are drunk on the fumes of the Right-wing media.

Follow the link for the rest.

Every day, persons who consider themselves–and are considered by others–to be decent folks, rationalize the acceptance and perpetuation of evil. Nowhere in our history has this been more common than in the creation and perpetuation of the South’s institution of chattel slavery. Southerners who considered slavery to be evil found all kinds of reasons to not only do nothing about it, but to profit from the theft of labor.

In the Roanoke Times, Halford Ryan explores the self-serving rationales of one slaveholder, the one who is most often, after Thomas Jefferson, held up as a paragon of honor. Just read it.

While we are on the subject, I also recommend listening to this scholarly exploration of the history of the concept of race in America.

Take a quiz on your general (and I do mean general) religious knowledge.

Via Juanita Jean, who theorizes:

At the end, you’ll enjoy seeing how Fox News has had an influence on the answers.

Read more »

So much for that “no religious tests” for office malarkey, at least in the Palmetto State.

It starts young.

Racists rush to prove that Hank Aaron was right.

Clumsy, but accurate.