The author of this piece has managed to crystallize a number of ideas I've been batting around, and takes it farther than would have occurred to me.
She goes on to detail how the contemporary evangelical/Republican movement has damaged Christianity itself, but I think she misses a beat here:
What she's missing here, I think, is that fact that authoritarianism is built into Christianity: the source of all truth is one authority that is beyond question. Add in human hierarchies, such as structure most forms to Christianity (and, frankly are more or less hard-wired), and it only gets worse. And it should go without saying that, given the intrinsic hierarchical nature of the Abrahamic religions, it follows that hierarchy would be built into the societies that favor them, and that those who differ from those received norms are ostracized. Thus the sexism -- or outright misogyny, if you will -- justified because Eve was the one who caused the Fall. (And it's telling that learning to think for yourself would be considered the Original Sin.) And Evangelicals are firmly anchored in the Old Testament -- the sacred texts of a tribal religion.
Read the whole thing. And then think about what happens when this mindset has the influence it has on the current regime.
Evangelicalism doesn’t have a brand problem; it has a product problem.
Ok, Evangelicals do have a brand problem—but they also have a major product problem.
Bible-believing born-again Christians, aka Evangelicals, have had a brand problem since Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority sold the Born-again movement to the Republican party in exchange for political power a generation ago, forging the Religious Right.
The Republican party has been using Christianity’s good name to cover bad deeds ever since, all the while tapping Evangelical media empires and churches as communications and organizing platforms to bring ordinary believers along with the merger. Having become true-believers themselves, Evangelical leaders have offered themselves up as trusted messengers for this New-and-Improved political gospel project.
She goes on to detail how the contemporary evangelical/Republican movement has damaged Christianity itself, but I think she misses a beat here:
Real soul searching would mean asking what it is about the Evangelical worldview that has made Evangelical leaders and ordinary Bible-believers susceptible to courtship by authoritarian, bigoted, sexist, tribal, anti-intellectual greedmongers who dangle the carrot of theocracy. But few Evangelical leaders are asking this question because that would mean revisiting the peculiar status they grant to the Bible itself. And that is off-limits.
When one treats the Bible as the literally perfect and complete word of God—which most Christian scholars don’t but most Evangelicals do—it isn’t hard to find support for every item in the ugly list that now darkens the Evangelical brand.
What she's missing here, I think, is that fact that authoritarianism is built into Christianity: the source of all truth is one authority that is beyond question. Add in human hierarchies, such as structure most forms to Christianity (and, frankly are more or less hard-wired), and it only gets worse. And it should go without saying that, given the intrinsic hierarchical nature of the Abrahamic religions, it follows that hierarchy would be built into the societies that favor them, and that those who differ from those received norms are ostracized. Thus the sexism -- or outright misogyny, if you will -- justified because Eve was the one who caused the Fall. (And it's telling that learning to think for yourself would be considered the Original Sin.) And Evangelicals are firmly anchored in the Old Testament -- the sacred texts of a tribal religion.
Read the whole thing. And then think about what happens when this mindset has the influence it has on the current regime.
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