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Church & State

Observant1
edited November 17 in Off-Topic
“Jesus’s movement was about humility, it was about service to others, it was about uplifting the marginalized,
not about total right-wing domination. John Fugelsang, host of 'Tell Me Everything' on SiriusXM Progress
and author of the New York Times Bestseller 'Separation of Church and Hate,' talks to Jordan Klepper
about how MAGA and the far-right have wrongly co-opted Christianity as a cloak for authoritarianism
and bigotry – the opposite of Jesus's call for individuals and states to 'take care of the poor, take care of the sick,
welcome the stranger, and be kind to those in prison.'”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj3OcfMS4AU

Comments: Politicians deliberately abuse Christianity in pursuit of contradictory goals.
Although I'm not particularly religious, I've long found this behavior to be extremely distasteful.

Comments

  • CrashCrash
    It's a Christian tenet that if one is baptized, it makes them Christian, having undergone the Initiation. That's why it feels so awful for me to be lumped -in together with the MAGA-evangelical types in the eyes of a great many people. The "Christian" Right has won the P.R. battle. That's the image many people have of what the Church is, and their impression of what the Church thinks of itself. But that white Christian nationalism, tied to the old myths of Manifest Destiny and Rugged Individualism, is junk. It's always been junk. The overly-individualized approach to the Christian faith stems from the Anglo/Irish (bogus) theologian named Darby. ..."Have you accepted Jesus Christ into your heart as your Lord and Savior?"
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Nelson_Darby
    Excuse me. Is THAT what this is all about? I didn't know Jesus could fit in there, anyway.
    Philip Berrigan: "The poor show us who we are. The prophets show us what we can be. And so, we hide the poor and kill the prophets."

    Yes. Separation of Church and State. No government-endorsed church. But government doesn't have to be divorced from truly religious purposes when it is true to its own purpose: SERVING ITS PEOPLE.

    Thanks for posting that.
  • Old_JoeOld_Joe
    I was raised and educated as a Catholic, but dropped out completely at an early age. I tell you that because I am no fan of the Catholic Church or religion in general.

    But I find it very interesting that the present Pope, Leo, has no use for Trump and his works. And to my utter amazement, just last week the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops also opted out of Trump's world :
    The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops condemned parts of President Donald Trump's "indiscriminate" and "inhumane" methods of immigration enforcement on Tuesday.

    “We are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement. We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants,” the statement read.

    The message then expressed the bishops' "concern" over the condition of detention centers and detainees' lack of access to pastoral care before it denounced the detention of illegal immigrants in hospitals, schools, and churches.

    "We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools,” the message said. “We are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones.”
    This council rarely makes such statements, so this is unusual and significant.
  • CrashCrash
    Indeed. And it is encouraging to see it. The history of the church is, to say the very least, checkered. Humans create (quite imperfect and flawed) human institutions. Even so, when there are scandals, it is a failure, and real people are hurt. I could tell you some awful stories. Thankfully, when I was a victim, the severity came nowhere near approaching the horrors of what some others experienced.
  • Observant1
    edited 2:04AM
    Old_Joe,

    Thanks for the info.
    I didn't know that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops
    issued a "Special Message" regarding immigration last week.
    The last such message was in 2013 so this is rather unusual as you said.
    https://thetablet.org/us-bishops-approve-special-pastoral-message-on-immigration/
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