A please for getting educated. "In Biden's Catholic Faith, an Ascendant Liberal Christianity"

[LAS14]

It is always annoying to me when DUers use stereotyping to lump all Christians in with right wing "evangelicals." It's the kind of blind ignorance that we normally ascribe to lots of Republicans. Whenever I see it I want to remind people that every one of our Democratic presidents and presidential candidates back to Carter has been a practicing Christian, some profoundly so. Here's an article from Sunday's times that might help with our collective education on the subject. Sorry. I got the link from Google News, but it's probably behind a paywall. I've copied 3 paras.

And with Mr. Biden, a different, more liberal Christianity is ascendant: less focused on sexual politics and more on combating poverty, climate change and racial inequality.

His arrival comes after four years in which conservative Christianity has reigned in America’s highest halls of power, embodied in white evangelicals laser-focused on ending abortion and guarding against what they saw as encroachments on their freedoms. Their devotion to former President Donald J. Trump was so fervent that many showed up in Washington on Jan. 6 to protest the election results.

snip...

Yet the current influence of liberal Christianity in the Democratic Party goes beyond Mr. Biden. Senator Raphael Warnock, the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, won election with a campaign rooted in Black liberation theology. The Sunday after his election, Mr. Warnock preached about John the Baptist, the “truth-telling troublemaker,” he said, who was beheaded by King Herod for his prophetic witness.

Representative Cori Bush, a pastor who led Kingdom Embassy International in St. Louis, has started her tenure in Congress advocating universal basic income. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez connects her Catholic faith with her push for reforming health care and environmental policy. She has said her favorite Bible story is one where Jesus, in anger, threw money changers out of the temple.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/23/us/biden-catholic-christian.html

[Turin_C3PO]

1. I have no problem with Christianity in general.

Jesus Christ’s teachings were revolutionary for his time and laid out a good moral direction for people throughout the ages. Some of our greatest heroes have been devout Christians, one example being MLK.

What I have a problem with is Christian fascists in America. They use their religion as a battering ram to institute fascism, uncontrolled capitalism, bigotry, and other repugnant ideals. Luckily, Joe Biden actually follows Christ’s teachings and allows his faith guide him into pushing policies that are humane and just.

[HelpImSurrounded]

2. The downfall of liberal christianity is the Book of Matthew

The Book of Matthew teaches christians to avoid pride and bragging. To not be performative in their christianity. To be anonymous in their charity. Liberal christianity takes this to heart.

I'm fairly certain that right wing bibles exclude this book or, at least, avoid it. The Right Wing christianity is all about performative prayer and worship. Never do a job without a spotlight and a camera.

So they get all the publicity while liberal christianity gets forgotten.

Liberal christians need to counter that if they are going to reclaim the religious high ground.

[TigressDem]

3. People of faith need to focus LESS on judging others and MORE on following Christ's example.

WWJD was maybe simplistic, but so was the Golden Rule.

Jesus said, "Love others as I have loved you." We stick to that, and we are doing good, not harm.


Jesus ragged on the hypocrites who made themselves look good while doing evil behind closed doors. He was SO disappointed in Pharisees who sat in the front of the church soaking up the praise meant for God and then did evil once they walked out the door.


The ones who really pissed him off were the money changers, but that was a singular instance. Pretty cool and dramatic, though.


Making money off God while being a creep, is definately NOT following Christ in any way shape or form.

[MineralMan]

4. People use religion to support a very wide range of political and social beliefs.

There is no universal "Christianity" or any other religious belief. There are only subjective interpretations of religion.

Roman Catholicism is still the largest denomination of Christianity worldwide. However, one cannot characterize any individual Catholic or even groups of Catholics, based on any particular interpretation of Catholicism.

The Roman Catholic Church, as an organization still denies women equality in its hierarchy, even though many Catholics think that is a mistake. The Roman Catholic Church tolerated pedophilia within its leadership ranks for a very, very long time, despite its membership's abhorrence of that.

There is no universally agreed-on set of principles of Christianity. There are only interpretations. Even within the many denominations of Christianity, there are internal groups who hold different views. There is no single Baptist set of principles, nor Presbyterian, Methodist, Catholic, or any other denomination.

Religion is not just one thing, no matter what its name is.

We need to get over that idea, once and for all.

Look at what individual people stand for and what they do, not at what they call themselves in terms of religion.

That is why the United States of America is officially a secular nation. It must remain so.

[OriginalGeek]

5. I wish there weren't so many believers in government.

But I guess I have very little choice.

So at least the liberal ones support most of the same things I do.

[MineralMan]

7. Religion can be a force for good. It can also be a force for evil.

Sometimes it is a force for both at the same time.

Religion, as it is practiced, is a human organizational thing. Overall, it is independent of how we are governed. That depends on individuals and groups of individuals working together.

Religion is useless as a foundation for government, because it is not uniform in any way.

Religion is a human invention. It creates deities in the image of human nature. It is pure mythology, created and written about by human individuals.

If we remember that, we will be putting religion in the background when it comes to governance.

[OriginalGeek]

10. I agree with all that and I am happy to remember it but

my pretty conservative libertarian atheist friend supports all the goofy right-wing religious stuff even if he won't admit they are religious opinions trying to govern us. He grew up in South America as his parents were missionaries and I don't know how he came to be an atheist but he held onto nearly every conservative belief his folks instilled in him. My mother and stepfather were also far right wing religious nuts and child-evangelists for many years but I rejected all of it and a happy liberal atheist today.

It's a steeeep uphill battle but battle I will.

[MineralMan]

11. Like you, I am also an atheist.

Some atheists are liberals; others are right-wingers. A few have become tyrants.

The same thing applies as with religion. It is what individual people believe and do that matters, not the label they apply to themselves with regard to religion or any alternative to it.

Such labels, in themselves, are worthless in understanding who a person is or what principles a person follows.

I simply ignore labels, and look at the behavior and expressions of each person separately.

[dalton99a]

6. There is a difference between Pope Francis and Jerry Falwell Jr.

[MineralMan]

8. Yet, both of them style themselves as Christians.

There's the rub in a nutshell.

[stopbush]

9. The conceit of all religions is to elevate fiction to the level of received wisdom

or worse, fact.

We as a species don’t really need these elitist and childish tales of make believe to be good people.

[JT45242]

12. Mainstream Christian groups mostly fall into this

From the Old Testament:

What does the Lord require of you -- act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.

From the New Testament

The two great commandments: Love the Lord, your God. Love your neighbor as yourself. (Followed by a description that makes clear that neighbor includes people who are very different from you).

This is the essence of what most Christians believe. I hope it is what most of them try to live.

Make no mistake -- choosing the leader of the Poor People's Campaign the Rev Barber of the Christian Church(Disciples of Christ) to preach at the national prayer breakfast with a sermon from Isaiah that spoke of the evils of getting rich at the expense of the poor -- was a move against the prosperity gospel and the RWNJ who masquerade as Christians including the younger Graham.

This was an attempt to move away from the hate filled self-aggrandizing megachurch preachers who surrounded Trump with leaders who live what the Bible says, from a variety of denominations, Catholics and Protestants.

I believe that we will need to look after the weakest of these -- this is part of acting justly. Justice is making certain that everyone gets what they deserve both the good and the bad. On the good side: a decent home, enough food, education, access to health care, and an expectation of a fair political and justice system. On the bad side: equal and fair punishments for both the rich and the poor. A guy with three rocks of crack is a user with his next fixes the same way that a guy with three joints is a user with his next fixes. That one is a felony and the other is a small fine is not justice. We should fight that. That the Milken brothers and other bankers stole billions through white collar crime and received minimum sentences while a dude who robbed a liquor store to get $200 gets twenty years is not justice.

Unfortunately, we are the silent majority of Christians and not the ones who get the attention of the media.

[shrike3]

13. That's the Christianity I've seen for most of my life, frankly

[Crunchy Frog]

14. I too hate the blanket condemnation of ALL Christianity and all religion

that is often seen here, along with extreme and inaccurate generalizations.

And I'm pretty much an atheist.