[Peace-discuss] Clash of Fundamentalisms in the News-Gazette

[John Bambenek]

Message: 4
Date: Sun, 09 Jul 2006 18:13:19 -0500
From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu>
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Clash of Fundamentalisms in the
       News-Gazette
To: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
Message-ID: <44B18D8F.8020408 at uiuc.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed

John Bambenek wrote:
> And I'm the one accused of being a bigot...
>
> For once, frighteningly, I agree with Estabrook.
>
> On 7/9/06, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:
>
> No more true, of course, than either of the first two versions.
 >
 >> Robert Naiman wrote:
 >>
 >> There was a typo. I fixed it.
 >>
 >> =====================
 >>
 >> Democracy is foreign concept to Christian culture...


[I should think that you'll find it's not difficult at all...
On the subject, the following article from one of the country's leading
Protestant theologians (and a friend) was published today.  --CGE]

The idea that people should be treated fairly and equitably isn't
something you and I disagree with.  The idea that government is the
solution is something I find self-defeating and bound for complete
failure.  The idea of calling an intellectual movement progressive
that really is a return to historical notions that the government
should be the provider of all human needs is ironic at best.

If by progressive you mean concerned with your fellow man, I think
you're radically misinterpreteting evangelical thought.  I'm not sure
I'm an expert in that category being a Catholic (and by extension,
wholly unconcerned with protestant or evangelical notions of
Christianity, particularly those of Pat Robertson and friends who
believe my Church is the whore of Babylon) however I think they would
say that feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, et al is not an
optional consideration of Christianity.

You're a smart person, Carl, if you disagree with something I have
confidence you can stay in the realm of ideas without demonizing a
group of evangelicals. Particularly described the religious right's
"heavy-handed intrustion" into the Terri Schiavo matter as if the
Right to Die crowd were simply innocent bystanders or that there was
no real points of legitimate contention (like the seeming absurdity of
having a husband who is already living with another woman whom he
calls his fiancee and has had two children by as being the person
without any conflict of interest in the matter of whether Terri should
be starved to death or not).  People could have characterized the
"religious right's" as heavy-handed intrusion during the 60s Civil
Rights movement too, but that's largely not the point.

And while you might demonize the religious right of today for speaking
out against abortion or other political ills, generations ago people
had no problem standing behind a pulpit to deal with the moral issues
of the day that happened to intersect with politics (albeit to good or
bad effect depending).

A religion that cannot engage the world around us and guide us to how
we should live and construct our society is not a religion but a dead
philosophy.  Avoiding the contentious issues to "get along" turns a
religion centered on God into a popularity contest focused on each
other.  Either God made man in his image, or we made god in man's
image.  I'd prefer a church that believes the former.  A church that
believes the later is a fraud.  Most of the left-wing evangelical
churches are the later who tend not to try to discover how to
reconcile themselves with God, but how they can reconcile god to
themselves (as illustrated by the wholesale discarding of truths based
on novel doctrines of context-changing).

j