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I see American Christians have reached the point of actual unambiguous heresy and sprinted past it without looking back.
I guess the next step is turning all their crosses upside down and introducing a golden idol of Og-Baeth, the great pig father of Gomorrah.
idol of Og-Baeth, the great pig father of Gomorrah
they do that with flags
James Cone quotes as a timeline cleanse:
“The gospel of Jesus is not a rational concept to be explained in a theory of salvation, but a story about God’s presence in Jesus’ solidarity with the oppressed, which led to his death on the cross. What is redemptive is the faith that God snatches victory out of defeat, life out of death, and hope out of despair… Without concrete signs of divine presence in the lives of the poor, the gospel becomes simply an opiate; rather than liberating the powerless from humiliation and suffering, the gospel becomes a drug that helps them adjust to this world by looking for ‘pie in the sky.’"
“We have had too much of white love, the love that tells blacks to turn the other cheek and go the second mile. What we need is the divine love as expressed in black power, which is the power of blacks to destroy their oppressors, here and now, by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject God’s love… If God is not for us, if God is not against white racists, then God is a murderer, and we had better kill God.”
I love this quote!! I will search for answers, but I’m interested in your perspective first, especially considering your username - who is James Cone?
I do indeed live under a rock, I’m sorry.
No worries! He’s an important figure, but not super well known outside of religious studies.
James Cone was the father of black liberation theology in the USA. He grew up in Arkansas and pursued his theological training during the heights of the civil rights movement. Once we got a job teaching theology back in Arkansas, he saw that his training had no connection to lived experiences. He wrote about his experience, “What could Karl Barth possibly mean for black students who had come from the cotton fields of Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, seeking to change the structure of their lives in a society that had defined black as non-being?”
He was heavily influenced by Malcolm X and the black power movement and, later, MLK Jr. His writings began as more influenced from that secular thought than from moreso than liberation theologians writing at the same time like Gutierrez, Boff, and Segundo influenced by Catholic Vatican II. He started with black people and their experiences, not with academic theory. This actually allowed him to explore more his own material conditions and how his training fell short first vs diving deep into Marxist theory, which he did later in life. It also allowed him to work through some of his experiences that he owned up to and repent, like his latent homophobia and transphobia. He publicly apologized for this, repented, and spent the last decade of his life upholding queer rights in his work.
His last work The Cross and the Lynching Tree was his life’s work. He’ll argue that without the white church seeing the cross as a lynching tree, as a killing device meant to shame its victims and impart horror and fear into those like those victims. He says unless we see Jesus as experiencing this, and then see black people in America as identifying exactly with this experience, as an victim of oppression.
The Cross and Lynching Tree is critical reading, in my opinion, not only for followers of Jesus but for those interested in how liberation theology works. This lecture was given a few weeks before his death and summarizes his work.
I don’t know how to adequately thank you for this - this was a beautiful read, and I’m really excited to dive into his work, this feels like something that could reshape a lot of how I feel about the world and The Word. Really - truly - thank you. ❤️ I appreciate your time and your care so much, thank you, thank you.
I hope so! His work is monumental, and I hope it can bring you growth and hope. As Cornell West said at James’ funeral, James was a warrior of love. If you ever have any questions or just want to chat about it, feel free to make a post in c/christianity. You can always ping me, and I’d love to chat about whatever it is you’re reading or finding!
Increasingly convinced that god isn’t real but the devil is
We live in the berserk universe where gods and angels are the same thing as demons
Strap in folks because I know the lore here.
tl;dr this article is doing fan-fiction ala CS Lewis on a hyper-calvinist, misogynist evangelical site so it’s both worse than you thought and also just insider nerd shit
CW misogyny
Desiring God was founded by John Piper, a evangelical hyper Calvinist, and he was one of a few big names who really got really big in the 90s and 00s. He was first famous for “Christian Hedonism” which is his youth minister term for the tagline: “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.” You’ll not be surprised to learn this is a consequentialist ethic, influenced by Rand.
Piper and others were influential in keeping evangelicalism hyper-masculine. He helped craft an evangelical statement on “biblical manhood and womanhood” describing how wives are subordinate to husbands. This was happening, by the way, because people were fighting against the Southern Baptist Convention’s fundamentalist takeover which had, at this point, married into the Moral Majority for power which itself was a reaction to the fundamentalist-modernist controversy in the early 20th century. The political power, the hyper Calvinist stance, and the hyper-masculine positions came to describe most “New Calvinists” at the time. Piper had hilarious takes such as “well, it’s okay to vote for McCain/Palin because Palin is VP not Pres.” He was, as all evangelicals are, obsessed with sex and purity culture and said absolutely insane things about sex and women generally: “Knowing God produces holy sex” " Down by the river the teenagers would go to make out. I watched them drive back. They never looked happy. Especially she." Link, further CW: SA, misogyny
Piper’s brand is that he is the more academic of the freaks, so his company Desiring God tends to publish poorly written academic-ese. This article is one of them: "This is the second of two letters on the demonic distortion of the virtue of compassion. Read the first titled “Killing Them Softly: Compassion That Warms Satan’s Heart.” I made it past the second paragraph before getting bored. The guest author here has a book out on, you guessed it, the evils of porn. He’s clearing doing The Screwtape Letters bit from CS Lewis because evangelicals love him, but it sucks
I “love” the dumbasses who act like Lewis was a theologian. Even Tolkien dunked on his ass for writing shitty/lazy allegory.
I really wonder what that relationship is like. Even though LotR is a bit problematic w/r/t racism… there is no denying that the man was a world-historic writing talent. Humans will be reading LotR 2,000 years from now.
And then you have Lewis, who at best can write some pretty prose but it dogshit at everything else. I mean, Tolkien went out of his way to say how much he hated allegory, and then Lewis writes just about the most ham-fisted allegory you can imagine. It would be like one of us writing down our thoughts on capitalism, showing it to Marx, and thinking he would be impressed.
I’ve actually been told by British Christians that they don’t think too much of Lewis, and that his following is mostly Americans, idk.
I liked Narnia sure the allegory was obvious but it also was a good story with interesting characters and fun fantasy concepts like giants with regular bodies and massive legs, aristocrats who have a word that can destroy the world using it in a stupid argument, at one point there is a bell with a sign do not ring but if you don’t ring won’t you wonder what it did
Yeah they’re fun books for sure. You don’t have to reach the incredible heights of LotR to write something worth reading
The tragedy of pre-internet days. The guy in your social circle who shares your fixations and you can finally have a conversation about the stuff you’re passionate about, but also he’s annoying.
he literally yelled at Lewis for including fauns, Santa Claus, and Jesus in the same story and then kept talking shit about it in his letters lmao
I’m firmly convinced that the inklings would have been better off without Lewis. Easily the worst writer of the bunch. Which says a lot given Chesterton was a member. The OG Reddit fedora wearer.
Christian Hedonism" which is his youth minister term for the tagline: “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.” You’ll not be surprised to learn this is a consequentialist ethic, influenced by Rand
interestingly enough this is almost exactly what the ranters believed
Truly demonic. American Protestants are Mammon worshippers
My parents were atheists, but my grandma took me to church and raised me to be Southern Baptist. And coming from that background, I have never seen Christianity as being any sort of positive force in any way. As soon as I realized all the vile shit they said wasn’t true and terrifying, I turned 180 and became the most annoying middle school atheist you’ve ever seen.
It’s only as an adult that I’ve even really been able to understand why the fuck even people largely on my side on things would still make positive claims about Christianity, how the church they went to didn’t spew the evil hatred that mine did, and come to accept “maybe not all churches, not all Christians”
But no, after the last few years I think middle school me was right. Christianity is a dangerous death cult that should be banned and persecuted. Churches should be razed and Christianity should only be spoken of in history classes in the way we currently talk about Aztec human sacrifice. Christianity has probably been the largest force for cruelty and evil for the last 2000 years, and is incompatible with a compassionate human society.
One day in Poland is enough to make anyone a virulent middle school atheist. My life mission is to destroy this religion and every church in this country.
“But muh historical buildings 😭”
Shut up cracker, I’ll demolish them too :sicko-yes:
Same in Romania. They also have the audacity to build a state-funded megachurch. Why are my taxes paying for this monument to orthodox christian grifters?
We can keep the fanciest churches, and turn them into science libraries and museums.
The tradition of history. Repurpose the nice shit.
I’ve been to a couple nice old churches that are now breweries. Great vibes.
Blasphemification of churches??? That might just save us dynamite in the long run…
Some of the oldest breweries still around are monasteries
Oh yeah, those make good mead. Perfect for blasphemous events :sicko-crowd: and actions :sicko-yes::sicko-fem:
Critical support for Christianity.
Stuff like this doesn’t do much to dissuade me from thinking people in general suck insanely hard and probably shouldn’t have been a thing imo
It’s easy to view this as an aberration, some corruption of the true Christian faith by some outside force, but the cruelty has always been the point. Look at “Mother” Teresa. She’s seen across denominations as an exemplar of the faith, but, in reality, she hoarded donations meant to help the poor, withheld palliative care from the dying, and provided inadequate care to the treatable. She has the suffering of thousands at her feet, suffering dealt out because she thought it was necessary given the parameters of her religion. That the eternity of bliss that surely awaited them on the other side could be purchased with a lonely and agonizing death. The whole enterprise is rotten from first principles. Burn that shit down.
After she blew up and gained international prominence and again when the church began the canonization process, people looked into the conditions in the houses of the poor and what they found wasn’t great - treatments administered before the diagnostics were done, lack of painkillers stronger than aspirin, untrained nuns doing medical work, inconsistent sanitation and hygiene. Conditions didn’t really start improving until after her death, by which point her order had amassed hundreds of millions in donations, some of which were used to open up facilities elsewhere but most of which ended up unaccounted for and likely ended up being absorbed by the Catholic Church. A lot of the criticism out there comes from Christopher Hitchens, who defenders argue had a chip on his shoulder and twisted the facts, and Hindu nationalists, who argue that she was engaged in forced conversions, but even her softer critics describe someone who was fundamentally well intentioned but who ended up with a twisted worldview as a result of her religion:
CW slight ableism:
spoiler
Mother Teresa was, without question, the most dedicated, self-sacrificing person I’ve ever known, but not one of the wisest. Mother Teresa wasn’t interested in providing optimal care for the sick and the dying, but in serving Jesus, whom she believed accepted every act of kindness offered the poor. She had her own doubts and feelings of abandonment by God, but her spiritual directors urged her to interpret these “torments of soul” as signs that she had come so close to God that she shared Jesus’ passion on the cross. Under the sway of such spin, Mother Teresa came to glorify suffering. This resulted in a rather schizophrenic mindset by which Mother Teresa believed both that she was sent to minister to the poor AND that suffering should be embraced as a good in itself. Mother Teresa often told the sick and dying, “Suffering is the kiss of Jesus.” Mother Teresa’s sisters offer simple care and a smile, not competent medical treatment or tools with which to escape poverty. One could argue that Mother Teresa’s faith both facilitated and tragically limited her work. With the enormous resources at her disposal, Mother Teresa could have done more, but she always saw helping the poor as a means to a supernatural end, never a good in itself.
I personally trend more toward the opinion that she should have known better and her presence in Calcutta did substantial harm, but, even if you disagree, the amount of good she did was severely limited by an ideology that praised intentions over outcomes and didn’t require her to inform herself or incorporate the improvements that were happening in the secular medical field while she was active.
well that’s as close as you can get to the exact opposite message as Christianity. It’s very rare for theology to be exactly wrong
It’s like a hedonistic Buddhist levels of wrong. Or an astrology fan that likes science.
I mean it was here the whole time: Matthew 25:40
The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for satan.’
that’s a good point arguably this is so heretical that it is mistaking the holy spirit for the devil which is a pretty big no no
Pssh, how big a deal can denial of the holy spirit be? It’s like the least important of the Trinity.
It’s the worst sin and by a lot
ok that’s on me. I’m bad at guessing tone on text posts
You’re good, this is sorta theology inside baseball so the default assumption that someone doesn’t know that is usually the safest.
this is sorta theology inside baseball
what does this phrase mean
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Christians conveniently ignore the part where Jesus violently throws all the merchants out of the church
Also that quote in both the bible and the qur’an about it being easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven; at least as far back as the 10th century, rich Christians have argued that there is a gate in jerusalem called “eye of the needle” and that’s what the quote refers to. To this day some US christians believe this; there was never any such gate of course.
I was taught this at one point (though I’m not Christian), but isn’t the existence of such a gate irrelevant since the meaning of the phrase is unchanged? Like, either way, the point is that a camel is too big to get through the thing.
The way I heard it IIRC their justification is the gate is small but not that small so it’s a bit hard to get a camel through but not, you know, that hard and definitely not impossible
Why would he even say this then though lol
“Peace, love, God, but also have you seen that oddly named gate? It’s crazy small! Like, a camel could probably get through, but it’d be tough. This is like a rich man going to heaven for some reason”
I heard this one growing up. It was one of many examples that made me realize the version of fundamentalism I grew up was bullshit. We were taught the Bible was literal truth, no metaphors or interpretation allowed, but were also taught weird theories like this. Even as a kid it was obvious we were still just picking and choosing what to believe
If you really want to go for a loop on this point, Eckhart Tolle has this theory that Jesus’ whole shtick was present moment awareness misinterpreted through the ages. When it comes to this line in particular, he had lectured to the effect that a rich man is a person who has abundant thoughts and therefore any attempt to find peace, God nature, cessation of mind made suffering, etc. is futile because you can’t stop the mind machine from spinning. You’d have an easier time getting a camel through the eye of a needle than to think your way out of suffering.
I honestly like this interpretation and then I’d follow up saying that the bible would be a poor piece of theory for communist revolution. For every piece of Jesus kicking out merchants and line like this, you could find some cringe that has nothing to do with anything.
he had lectured to the effect that a rich man is a person who has abundant thoughts
nope it’s extremely clearly in context talking about a person rich in actual stuff and the message is that having tonnes of stuff while others have nothing is bad
personally I think being rich is incompatible with Christianity because wealth messes with your head and makes it harder to empathise with people and also the fact that rich people have money and resources that really would be better used making sure everyone has a roof and enough to eat etc
Not only does it have pieces about nothing to do with anything, it also has parts about laying down and taking it on the chin because there’s pie in the sky when you die.
Getting real tired of the western leftist desire to salvage christianity
probably not a good idea to throw aside the majority of humanity and liberation theology
Just because you have to work with Christians doesn’t mean you have to support Christianity. Liberation theology is seven people and their dogs and is a perfect example of trying to “fix” Christianity
love to discount marxist theology because they have a small number of followers today after they they were brutally murdered by the capitalists. damn I wonder why there are so few indonesian communists around today. liberation theology is very popular in latin america, and its influence is still felt in black american churches. jeremiah wright had to step down from his church for daring to speak out during obama’s presidency run. cornell west is literally running for president right now. it is a popular movement to struggle against the dominance of capitalism within christianity, and it should be supported and commended
At the end of the day, Jesus (or the writings that his cringier followers left behind since I would like to think the historical Jesus was a lot cooler than what was in the Bible) would rather blame a bunch of collaborator Jews than the Roman oppressors who have their sandals on the Judeans’ collective throats. It’s very hard to read his trial with Pilate in the Gospel and not see how the received text constantly tries to downplay Pilate’s role in Jesus’s torture and execution, never mind that Pilate was a colonizer governor who could simply free Jesus with a snap of his fingers and crucify the entire crowd with another snap of his finger since as Roman governor, he had an entire Roman legion under his command. Who were the Pharisees going to complain to, the Emperor himself?
The Zealots were easily the coolest Jewish factions because unlike the Christians, Pharisees, and Sadducees, they understood who the enemy was and actually tried to do something to rid the people of Judea of the Roman yoke. Sadly, they failed in their historic task, and the surviving Christians and Pharisees would go on to spit on their graves for daring to free themselves.
Sincerity Post Alert - Sorry in advance for the cringe.
This honestly hurts my heart.
I’m an atheist now, but I grew up in church, I attended a tiny, private Christian school from 8th grade through 11th (and only left because they weren’t chartered to give diplomas), I literally had formal Bible class 6 days a week and happily attended evening services - because I was a naive kid who truly believed that “love everyone” and “do unto others” stuff was as important to everyone else as it was to me.
I was always a weird kid without many friends my age, and the kindness and friendliness of the adults at church was a big deal for me. Coming to terms with the hypocrisy in the adults around me - realizing how judgemental and shitty most of them actually were - made my late teens extra lonely.
Nobody’s perfect, but - Jesus Fucking Christ, I don’t know why, but I still get surprised at the depths of awful behavior done in his name, and the ways his message of empathy and compassion gets twisted to justify it.
His message of empathy. That is the core of his message. Mark, Chapter 12:
28 One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
29 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.[e] 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’[f] 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[g] There is no commandment greater than these.”
32 “Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. 33 To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
34 When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.
Versus
Enticing Empathy: How Satan Corrupts Through Compassion
This is truly evil. The antidote for the prosperity gospel brainworms is empathy and compassion. Honestly, I truly, deeply believe in my stupid little naive heart that the antidote for most societal ills is empathy and compassion.* How do you actually, really solve the diseases of greed and selfishness without them?
This demonization of caring is just evil. How do I talk my evangelical boomer parents out of their brainworms if they’re getting this kind of messaging in church? Idfk. I guess I just keep reacting with the appropriate level of disgust to this sort of thing and ask questions and hope they’re not too lead-poisoned to someday see the contradiction between the message of Christ and the message of church.
This is a real bummer, but I guess it’s better to know than not. yuck.
/* - I understand there are also problems that require math and/or guillotines.
I honestly can’t take the Bible seriously even from a socialist perspective. Like entire swaths of Christians just dismiss the Old Testament because it was harshing their vibes and “no longer relevant.”
The OT and Revelations (and I actually like Revelations) are just violent fantasies about genocide and murders and righteous retribution, much of it with specific rules against what we consider today as progressive views and how to punish them. And none of the “historical context” of the texts really matter because the majority of people believe it to be literal or are indifferent and go with the stream.
I can only see it from a pragmatic POV. Literally ignore everything except the stories about Jesus and the aftermath, and you might convince some people to do some good. But like I said, even if they don’t care about the OT anymore, they’ll still cling to the rules.
Agreed. Inserted into any pantheon Jesus would be the god of compassion. This is vile.
This is why I dug into the Buddhist message of compassion against the Christian church’s that I’d been exposed to up to my early teens. The other benefit then was that I could become atheist while learning about it.
American Christianity is a truly baffling thing. I had a pretty similar upbringing to you, and after recognizing the hypocrisy I just couldn’t bring myself to engage. Like, there’s no way to make someone see what they refused to acknowledge, so why bother? Matt Christman likes to say protestantism has replaced a socially constructed understanding of God with the crass glorifying/worshiping of a person’s own ego (ie a personal relationship with God). And… as much as that smacks of an “edgy middle-school atheist rant”… yeah, that unfortunately seems to be the most accurate description.
American Christianity is basically Christians doing everything they accuse us Jews of doing…but it takes on a classy reskin because it’s Christians doing it. Look at the Koch brothers, the Waltons, and every bloated pig-in-a-suit that calls itself an oil CEO and most of AmeriKKKa’s citizens.
This is a really interesting comparison that I would have never made on my own. It’s very true
lol, yeah
perhaps the most glaring inversion of the right-wing trope is the history of America’s support of Israel. After World War 2, a buncha old senators, congressmen, and businessmen all pushed for the formation and funding of the Israeli state. There was a “shadowy cabal” (in the loosest sense of the term), but it was White Anglo-Saxton Protestants leveraging the powers of state and capital to manufacture the conditions for New Testament prophecies. Plus, also, they didn’t want Jewish refugees moving into their neighborhoods.
Matt has a lot of rants that don’t seem to make sense initially but the more you think about it the more you realize he’s right. That man talks in so many layers of abstraction it’s hard to follow sometimes.
I think evangelicals should be shot
Fuck it i think they should be drowned
They can be reborn again, don’t worry
Every evangelical needs to reenact the ending of bioshock infinite
I don’t think they should be drowned, but consider, hypothetically, that it might be better for them that a millstone be hung around their neck and thrown into an ocean than for them to continue leading others astray like this.
Good to see the evangelicals questioning controversial theologians such as checks notes Jesus.
The biblical basis for American Evangelicalism is, in order:
1.) Paul’s letters (even though the historic Paul only wrote maybe half of what’s attributed to him)
2.) Selective interpretations of the Old Testament
3.) The Book of Revelations
4.) Stuff Jesus said (but also very selectively interpreted)
Don’t forgot throwing out every part of the Bible that did directly contradicts them no matter how established it is.
also not even supporting the parts of pauls letters that contradict them
