This is about the writings of others on (Christian) religious matters.

Let us start with the beauty. It is a post on hypocrisy by PoserOrProphet (or, as is his real name, Dan). It’s not about others being hypocritical, but is very much focused inward - on the temptation to use the appearance of being ‘radical’ rather than actually living out a godly life (Dan works in the inner city and is thus often seen as a Christian ‘radical’). I can’t recommend you enough to go read the whole thing - this is precisely the kind of Christianity that I can respect and still, in some way, aspire to its goals.

Now for the wingnuts. I found this little gem on women from the ever-informative Challies, whom I use as a sort of Christian wingnut repository. What is it about this article you may ask. Well, the author - one Dr. James MacDonald, who holds graduate degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and Phoenix Seminary, and is the founding pastor of Harvest Bible Chapel, a conservative evangelical megachurch in Illinois - begins with the observation that men are (generally) physically stronger than women. He then assumes that relative physical weakness means vulnerability and it is part of God’s ordained plan for women to be ‘vulnerable to’ (and thus - though he does not come out and say it explicitly - inferior to) men. Of course, there are a couple of obvious upshots of this: a woman is either vulnerable to/beneath her husband, or if she is single, to her father or male church leaders. The raw patriarchy in this post is astonishing, and I say this quite despite the talk about honoring women in their weakness. Money quote:

God created the woman to be vulnerable and dependent upon the man as a reflection of the Church’s vulnerability and dependence upon Christ. It should not be our goal to help women be less vulnerable before men—which is physically impossible anyway—but rather to work toward the realization of the image of Christ’s self-sacrificial relationship to the Church. Women by their very nature will always be vulnerable before men. The call of Christ is not to pursue an ill-fated attempt to abolish this vulnerability, but rather to protect and honor women in the midst of it.

To put his metaphor in more explicit terms, man is the God to woman’s humanity. This is not just scary because it’s something that one man believes, but because it is something that a large number of people (not a small percentage of evangelicals) in this country believe, and what its implications are for how they live their lives, teach their children, and how they treat and view women. However, living in what is largely an egalitarian society (or attempting to be one), this leads to some odd paradoxes in worldviews (e.g., women, who represent the church, are weak before men, who represent God, but Sarah Palin is nevertheless fully capable of being president).

The next and last wingnut is none other than our very own Focus on the Family, and in case you thought they weren’t crazy, just you wait. Focus on the Family Action - the political arm of the organization - released a fictitious letter from a conservative Christian living in the year 2012 after four years of an Obama administration. The letter, which you can read a synopsis of here, or download the entire 16-page pdf here - details an end-of-the-world scenario in which activist liberal judges actively persecute Christians (and Boy Scouts - no joke!) by making up laws forcing gay marriages and abortions upon unsuspecting Christians. Since the letter is long and I do not expect you all to read it (though I encourage it), I will proffer a few quotes from it, in order, to give you an idea of the tone:

We are not “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” Many of our freedoms have been taken away by a liberal Supreme Court and a majority of Democrats in both the House and the Senate and hardly any brave citizen dares to resist the new government policies any more.

On (Focus’ favorite topic) homosexuality:

The most far-reaching transformation of American society came from the Supreme Court’s stunning affirmation, in early 2010, that homosexual marriage was a “constitutional” right that had to be respected by all 50 states because laws barring same-sex marriage violated the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. … This was a blatant example of creating new law by the court …

The Boy Scouts no longer exist as an organization. They chose to disband rather than be forced to obey the Supreme Court decision that they would have to hire homosexual scoutmasters and allow them to sleep in tents with young boys. …

The Bible can no longer be freely preached over radio or television stations when the subject matter includes such “offensive” doctrines as homosexual conduct or the claim that people will go to hell if they do not believe in Jesus Christ. …

While churches are still free to turn down homosexual applicants for the job of senior pastor, churches and parachurch organizations are no longer free to reject homosexual applicants for staff positions such as part-time youth pastor or director of counseling.

On homeschooling:

The Court declared that home schooling was an illegal violation of state educational requirements except in cases where the parents (a) had an education certificate from an accredited state program, (b) agreed to use state-approved textbooks in all courses, and (c) agreed not to not to teach their children that homosexual conduct is wrong, or that Jesus is the only way to God, since these ideas have been found to hinder students’ social adjustment and acceptance of other lifestyles and beliefs, and to run counter to the state’s interest in educating its children to be good citizens.

On foreign policy:

Since 2009 terrorist bombs have exploded in two large and two small U.S. cities, killing hundreds, and the entire country is now fearful, for no place seems safe. … In early 2009 [Russia] followed the pattern they had begun in Georgia in 2008 and sent troops to occupy and re-take several Eastern European countries, starting with the Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. … Then in the next three years Russia occupied additional countries that had been previous Soviet satellite nations, including Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Bulgaria, with no military response from the U.S. or the UN. … In mid-2010 Iran launched a nuclear bomb which exploded in the middle of Tel Aviv, destroying much of that city.

And much, much more, including the shutting down of Christian booksellers due to the popularity of the pro-homosexual agenda (the menace behind everything!), the author reprimanding naive evangelicals for voting for Barack Obama, Christian leaders thrown in jail for non-compliance with the new liberal laws of post-apocalyptic America, children unwillingly exposed to pornography, and that’s just the start! If this isn’t a piece of populist, Christianist (tip o’ the hat to Andrew Sullivan for the word) drivel, I don’t know what is. I particularly enjoyed the fanciful thoughts about what the Supreme Court could and could not do, and the link drawn (as is common in these spheres) between homosexuality and pedophilia. I can tell you I’ve worked with kids a plenty and not once thought anything less innocent than ‘oh, I really do want to be a father, don’t I?’

I don’t criticize this out of any great love for Barack Obama - viewing myself as something rather close to a libertarian, I have problems with many of his positions (and that does not mean anything about whether I support him or not). But seriously people… I mean, are you serious?

Nevertheless, this is the kind of material put out by a leading organization within evangelical Christianity, and one of the wealthiest, too. This sort of thing, along with my own reflections, has led me to believe that religious fundamentalism of whatever stripe (Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and yes there are Hindu and Buddhist fundamentalists) is one of if not the most dangerous challenge of our time. And if you want more information on fundamentalism as a worldwide phenomenon, might I suggest looking in your local library for the University of Chicago’s Fundamentalism Project, a multi-volume set of on-going releases looking at various aspects of all sorts of fundamentalisms - examining their differences and their similarities. As the ideologies of fascism and (a very loosely Marxist but in reality totalitarian) communism were destructive forces in the 20th century which had to be resisted in order to secure the future of the globe, so is fundamentalism in the current era. The answer is emphatically not, as much as men like Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher may like to think otherwise, the destruction of religion. Human beings are religious creatures - and have been since the beginning. But rather, the alternative is for religious moderation and rationality, a religious perspective that seeks to understand and integrate itself into reality and to be for the positive, demonstrable benefit of mankind, rather than the harmful attempt at molding both mankind and reality into its pre-conceived agendas (and this is what, at some level, all fundamentalisms aim to do).

Rant over.