Did you know that Abolition, Civil Rights, and opposition to Nukes was strictly a religious thing?

[cleanhippie]

The collapse of the religious left

Many of the great leftist movements in our country were explicitly religious in nature. The American Experience series is showing the Abolitionists for the next couple of Tuesdays. Episode 1 was last Tuesday. It is clear that those abolitionists were exceptionally religious bordering on fanatical. The entire purpose of the movement was to cleanse the US of the original sin of slavery. A hundred years later the Civil Rights movement was every bit as religiously motivated. It was from the inside of temples, mosques, and churches that the foot soldiers of the Civil Rights movement arose. In the 1980's the nuclear freeze movement was another religiously driven movement as was the anti death penalty movement. Now, here we are at the second Inaguration in a row where we can't seem to find even one famous pastor of the religious left to lead a closing prayer. Maybe one of the nuns on the bus.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022177862

[dimbear]

1. The program on the Abolitionists has some quirky aspects,

particularly when the woman speaker who was so eloquent and effective because she was a former slaveholder herself was told by the men to sit down and shut up on religious grounds.

The rest of the post cleanhippie is citing is pretty compelling unless, of course, you know American history.

[OswegoAtheist]

2. From the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Church at Los Alamos:

Chapter 3:

1And verily the LORD has made the Uranium and the Plutonium atoms to be unsundered, 2except that it shalt decay as all flesh does. 3And thus man, whose flesh also decays 4shall not sunder the atom of Uranium or the atom of Plutonium, 5and man shall not maketh the sword or the arrow which shalt smite great cities 6with the sundering of the Uranium or the Plutonium 7for it is an abomination

Oswego "In case you couldn't tell... " Atheist

[intaglio]

3. I think Bertrand Russell might like a word

as well as all the others you mentioned.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

4. Lincoln was not religious. Let's see, hm. . . . . emancipated something, didn't he?

[kdmorris]

5. LOL "sin of slavery"

How many times are slaves mentioned in the bible? Aren't there whole passages about the treatment of slaves, children and wives (all of which had the same status)?

[Exultant Democracy]

6. Bull shit, read the end notes Frederik Douglass for his autobiography, or Walker's Appeal

Walker is the greatest forefather of the abolition movement. Both Walker and Douglass made it very clear that the horrors of slavery in America were fully entangled with Christianity. They both argued that there was something especially sick about Christianity because in all the history of the world only Christians had ever treated their slaves so poorly.

[Exultant Democracy]

7. As for civil rights are you unfamiliar with SNCC? Not religious, just pissed off kids

They specifically avoided working with religious groups (even Dr. King) because they felt the soporific effects of religion was an impediment to progress. If on the ground grass roots organizing is the bar with with we measure civil rights groups then the SNCC is absolutely on of the most successful and influential groups civil rights or otherwise to ever form in the US.

[cleanhippie]

10. You do realze that I brought this up in this group so that if you disagreed....

you could go to the original post in GD and refute the bullshit in that OP.

Maybe I should have added the sarcasm tag, but I thought my intent was clear.

[Exultant Democracy]

12. Thought this was the religion forum oops.

[mr blur]

8. And yet the abolitionists, "exceptionally religious bordering on fanatical",

never once pointed out that their holy book not only never condemns slavery but actually condones it?

Shame.

[Exultant Democracy]

9. Also Einstein's letter to Roosevelt was nominally the first opposition to nuclear weapons.

Einstein was not a religious man and moreover I've read the letter and it isn't religious it is humanistic.

[idwiyo]

11. The power of delusion is strong in religious ones. V. V. Strong.

[trotsky]

13. Of course, we need to ignore that slavery, Jim Crow, the KKK, and warmongering...

were ALSO "religious things."

I find it hilarious that we are supposed to fawn over and praise religion for fighting problems that it helped create (and perpetuate) in the first place.

[onager]

15. Plus ca change...

Mark Twain's famous rant from 1869, still applicable...

The methods of the priest and the parson have been very curious, their history is very entertaining.

In all the ages the Roman Church has owned slaves, bought and sold slaves, authorized and encouraged her children to trade in them. Long after some Christian peoples had freed their slaves the Church still held on to hers. If any could know, to absolute certainty, that all this was right, and according to God’s will and desire, surely it was she, since she was God’s specially appointed representative in the earth and sole authorized and infallible expounder of his Bible.

There were the texts; there was no mistaking their meaning; she was right, she was doing in this thing what the Bible had mapped out for her to do. So unassailable was her position that in all the centuries she had no word to say against human slavery.

Yet now at last, in our immediate day, we hear a Pope saying slave trading is wrong, and we see him sending an expedition to Africa to stop it. The texts remain: it is the practice that has changed. Why? Because the world has corrected the Bible. The Church never corrects it; and also never fails to drop in at the tail of the procession - and take the credit of the correction. As she will presently do in this instance.

http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles/comment/twain01.htm

[Rob H.]

14. Most pro-slavery people believed just as fervently, and in the same God

Do people really not get that? Just look at the Southern Baptist Convention: it arose from Southern churches' support of slavery! Granted, they did eventually apologize for their racist beginnings--130 years after the end of the Civil War.

Way to minimize the support and participation of the non-religious in those world-changing movements, though, progressive religious people. Nicely done. You're nothing at all like the crazy, right-wing fundagelicals that way.