Is demonizing the "religious right" counterpoductive? (user search)
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  Is demonizing the "religious right" counterpoductive? (search mode)
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Author Topic: Is demonizing the "religious right" counterpoductive?  (Read 2771 times)
I spent the winter writing songs about getting better
BRTD
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« on: February 08, 2022, 08:47:13 PM »

Not really, but I have noticed that liberals tend to not understand the Religious Right at all and this makes discourse over them ridiculous.

For example I've found a lot of liberals believe that basically all evangelicals believe in the following:

-Charismatic practices such as speaking in tongues.
-KJV-Onlyism
-Strict TULIP double predestination Calvinism
-Extreme complementarianism and prescribed gender roles.
-Complete ban on alcohol consumption in addition to drugs.

Not only do probably the majority of evangelicals not believe in any of those, finding one who believes in ALL of them would be quite the unicorn. Like the Venn Diagram of people who believe in those type of charismatic practices and strict double predestination Calvinism is practically two completely separate circles, there's probably more liberal Christians who speak in tongues than such type of Calvinists. And KJV-Onlyism is about as fringe in evangelical Christianity as Cuomo Trutherism is amongst Democrats, possibly even more so.

I remember for example once on DU when some fundamentalist pastor was giving some anti-Democrat hack sermon with a segment transcribed and a bunch of people were like "That's weird, why is he quoting the NIV? Don't fundies believe in only the KJV?" and also some people expressing shock whenever such churches let women speak.
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I spent the winter writing songs about getting better
BRTD
Atlas Prophet
*****
Posts: 113,514
Ukraine


Political Matrix
E: -6.50, S: -6.67

P P
« Reply #1 on: February 09, 2022, 01:20:03 AM »

Not really, but I have noticed that liberals tend to not understand the Religious Right at all and this makes discourse over them ridiculous.

For example I've found a lot of liberals believe that basically all evangelicals believe in the following:

-Charismatic practices such as speaking in tongues.
-KJV-Onlyism
-Strict TULIP double predestination Calvinism
-Extreme complementarianism and prescribed gender roles.
-Complete ban on alcohol consumption in addition to drugs.

As a liberal I don't believe this, don't know anyone who does, and don't even know what the hell the half of that even is.

What is KJV-Onlyism, TULIP double predestination Calvinism, and extreme complementarianism?
Most liberals probably don't know the terms but they know the concepts. And I think this type of mindset might be a bit more dated and very Bush Administration-era since the religious right and the sort of televangelists who defined it have faded so much since then but it was definitely a thing.

As for what they are:

KJV-Onlyism is the belief that the King James Version is the only valid English Bible translation and some go so far as to say that any other translations actually were the work of Satan. Jack Chick and a few televangelists promoted it giving the impression that it's WAY more common than it actually is, I doubt that even 0.1% of evangelicals believe this.

"TULIP double predestination Calvinism" is kind of hard to explain the full meaning without going into theological concepts, but at its core it's basically the belief that God has predestined everyone to Heaven or Hell from birth, people who are good living faithful Christians are only as such because they're the "elect" and God chose to save them, and everyone else is unsaved and unchosen by God and goes to Hell. This is what the Puritans believed and is Calvinism in its purest form, even most conservative Calvinist churches today (like the ones that are common in those uber-Republican counties in Northwest Iowa) try to downplay it or just preach elements of it, but it's a thing. "TULIP" is an acronym for the five points of Calvinism, described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvinism#Five_Points_of_Calvinism

Complementarianism is the belief that God created men and women as different and with different roles, the name comes from that they "complement" each other in those roles but thus that there are roles that it's improper for a man to do or a woman to do. The Catholic Church is the most common example because they believe only men can be in the priesthood. Some of the more conservative churches take it to even more extreme levels and believe women's role is only to mother and raise children and oppose any women speaking in church ever, or having any type of leadership positions at all. This is not a very common view even in conservative complementarian churches, not all evangelicals are even complementarians in the first place including some pretty conservative ones, in fact those Pentecostal churches with the charismatic practices that some people fearmonger over were actually some of the first churches to ordain women and most are pretty proud of this tradition today even if they're still pretty socially conservative, but try explaining that to one of those "THEOCRACY WATCH" bloggers circa 2005ish. The most extreme example of this would probably The Handmaid's Tale even though that's a work of a fiction (duh) and doesn't resemble any Christian sect that has ever existed, which to be fair was not something Margaret Atwood was trying to claim but again that didn't stop a significant chunk of DU posters and aforementioned "secular bloggers" to actually claim it was our future.

Again these are all things but they're pretty fringe views even if only limited to evangelicals. For example Billy Graham was probably the most influential evangelical of the last 50 years, possibly even last 100 years, and he didn't promote any of these (I think he was nominally a complementarian but it wasn't a big issue that he used as a litmus test or pushed, and he had no problem working with or speaking at churches that ordained women.)
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