I swear I’d not seen the term “christofascism” until this year. It’s an apt term for all the talk about the new speaker of the house, rolling back of Roe v Wade, banning books and increased persecution of LGBT+ rights…
But if I was Christ I’d be pretty darn upset right now. I talk about love and tolerance and peace and you’re going to use my name to make shitty, power grabbing, political, oppressive moves? The fuckin audacity. I’d be flipping tables and calling out the hypocrites.
I know it’s a conversation as old as time. I also don’t believe Christian’s should be able to point at it and say “yeh but that’s not MY Jesus.” Doesn’t fucking matter, they’re identifying as a You so if You don’t do something about it then it’s as good as doin it yourself.
Sigh.
As an atheist this is just a grossly superficial reading of Christianity.
Christianity isn’t about being non political it’s about political expediency. Christians were told to obey the government for survival (i.e no needless rebellion, unlike prophesied in Judaism), there is no part of the Bible that says that you can’t enforce Christian morality if you are in power. (“Judge not yadda…yadda”- that’s about hypocrisy, it is infact encouraged to judge and purity test others, Christian or not).
Infact moral systems require some obligation to to follow them, as much as people want to circle-jerk about how they don’t obligate others to do what they think is right, nobody actually believes this. The sheer fact that you believe something to be good or bad means that there is some property that makes this distinction relevant, this property is the obligation to do good and not do bad. People who assert that they don’t think others have this obligation as well are engaging in special pleading that only they are obligated to do good and not do bad. In other words, individual moral relativity is universally rejected, the few people that claim to ascribe to it would object to being stabbed as a good action simply because the perpetrator felt it was.
“I don’t believe Christians should be able to point at it and say ‘yeh, but that’s not my Jesus’”
I agree. If people don’t believe in Jesus as described in the Bible, they shouldn’t characterise it as “Jesus”.
Your objection on the other hand is ridiculous. If someone identifies as X, and it is physically impossible for others that identify as X to force them to stop identifying as X (not exactly sure how you think people can “do something” greater than repudiating them, which you already characterised as insufficient), then the problem of categorisation falls on the observing third-party. Well it always was the problem of the third-party, the unreliability of self-reporting is simply more obvious in this case.
“If I was Christ, I’d be pretty darn upset right now”
Seems weird that the purported Son of God would not be more explicit in social critique. Jesus as described would probably be far more conservative than any public figure nowadays. I don’t remember him advocating for democratic voting, freedom of speech, LGBT rights, or universal education.
He probably would be upset, just not in the same way you are.
they’re identifying as a You so if You don’t do something about it then it’s as good as doin it yourself.
That’s an interesting idea. Would you apply this rule evenly across all groups, or only in special cases?
To give an example, the rate of people with Tourette Syndrome is around 0.5% (less than 1 in 200). The rate of people who fake Tourettes is much higher.
Applying your rule, if a person with Tourettes doesn’t speak up against the larger group of people faking Tourettes, is that as bad as them faking Tourettes themselves?
I’m not sure. Maybe the difference is that Christianity is something you choose to align with, Tourette’s is a medical issue.
People with Tourettes don’t get a choice in having tourettes and they don’t try and spread tourettes actively to other people because you can’t. Ideologies are different. If you create a group defined by an idea then the make up of the group includes contradictory information then those outside the group will either expand the definition of the ideology to reflect it’s actual makeup or the inside needs to police it’s own borders or be content to deal with people using that definition. What “Christian” means is malleable, what tourettes is not.
Hmm, that’s a great point. It reminds me of fandom groups where most people are just trying to have fun and enjoy the fan content, but then a vocal group of unpleasant people will also designate themselves part of the fandom and damage its public image.
In that situation, the only thing that really seems to fix the public image of the group is having an authoritative leader (such as a creator of the original work, or a fandom conference organizer) making a public statement like “We do not condone persecution, we support the right to abortion, LGBT+ people are welcome at our fandom conference, etc”.
Tying back to the original topic, maybe the equivalent would be if well-known Christian leaders were to make statements like that?
Probably not? A fandom has a “canon” with usually a creator who has an authorial intent. Religious leaders are more like secondary interpreters of a work something more akin to like youtube critics. Even if you got the heads to all agree on something if the rest of the group continues as they always have or disowns or changes their leader then people on the outaide looking in will still expand their definition to fit the best and worst of a thing. What people’s personal experiences are with a group are also a formative thing.
Like for me my most regular everyday experience with visible Christianity is a guy near my train station with a megaphone and a Jesus paste board sign who I try not to make eye contact with or draw attention from because he has attacked other visibly queer people in the past. My definition of Christian is gunna include him just as much as like the Pope or the Sisters of Perpetual indulgence. The difference being that I don’t really have to worry about what the Pope or the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are doing.
You are right. Real Christianity is practically the opposite of fascism. But anyone can just call themselves Christian and we can’t do anything about it.
I’m not even sure I like real Christianity, but I would like the opportunity to see it and decide for myself. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it!
If you want to know real Christianity, read the Bible. I would recommend starting with the gospel of John.
“If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?”
– 1 John 4:20 (King James Version)
I fucking hate the King James version so much. I grew up with NRSE and it’s like “why are you still using this archaic shit?”
Here’s the same passage in language normal people can understand:
Those who say, “I love God,” and hate a brother or sister are liars, for those who do not love a brother or sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.
Honestly doesn’t make sense to me either way.
Of course I can love something I can’t see over something I can see. The reason I hate them is because I can see them.
That’s not the point he was trying to make. :)
It’s hard to make sense of it now, let alone two thousand years ago.
Here goes nothing:
God is in everything, so you cannot love God without loving each and every part of Him. It’s easy to love something you don’t experience in your everyday life – the true challenge is to love that which you do experience, like your “brothers” and “sisters”. If you have hate in yourself at all, you do not completely love God.
Makes sense now?
You might be interested in “The Law of Love and the Law of Violence” by Tolstoy. He makes the same argument, that most Christians are terrible at following the actual teachings of Christ.
Why give a flying fuck to follow such when forgiveness, as a protestant, is a forever freebie if you ask but once and get that death promise.
Alternatively you can simply accept that the mouth runner will rape your kids and that’s just fine.
They’re both lies. Catholics ain’t special. There are more changes to the new testament than there are letters.
There’s also Dostoevsky’s story “The Grand Inquisitor” from The Brothers Karamazov, in which Jesus returns only to be told that the church no longer needs him or his ideals.
