Evangelical Christianity - a threat to democracy, and maybe human civilisation itself?
LAKISYLVANIA:
And to be honest, like if i were American and would do a presidential campaign or be actually president, i would not focus on it either because it is simply not worth it to burn political capital on it, simply because there's little to gain on it, while a lot to lose on it.
Donald Trump for example, i doubt, was a very religious person. He was just religious the way he was, because his electoral base was religious. If i were president, i would probably identify as a christian too. Not as a practising every-day church-go'er, but I would not break with the tradition that USA presidents do. It is almost impossible to be elected or succesful as a non-religious person as USA president.
I would instead burn political capital on what I believe would really help American people instead on the short term, because you're only president for 4 or 8 years, and there's almost nothing to gain on it, only a lot to lose.
I truly don't think Trump for example was pro-second amendment, pro-life and so on. He just was, because he could not afford to have a different position on it, based on his electoral base. I believe in picking your battles, and picking the right ones, in order to achieve change, and there are other things perhaps even more urgent, like housing issues or student loan debt forgiveness and lot more issues. You cannot do everything, if you understand what I mean.
So with regards to religion, i would just blend in. Even if my opinion is that it is harmful and that nobody does anything about it, exactly because it is already harmful and unstoppable [which is already one of the challenges of a democracy, on a lot of similar issues, where issues that have to be dealt with are not, because it doesn't offer any reasonable gains].
Conservatopia:
Quote from: CumbrianLefty on October 03, 2022, 05:42:56 AM
Inspired not just by last night's result in Brazil, but on how they herded sheep like behind a man who was probably the most "godless" POTUS in history.
I like you as a poster, and you are a wealth of knowledge when it comes to British political history but I have to say that you don't seem to "get" evangelicalism or fundamentalism at all. In the past you've alleged multiple times that we want Jews to move to Israel so that they can die, which is a bizarre, nonsensical belief that I've never heard from any Christian, you (and others) are also very quick to tar all evangelicals with association with televangelists and those people who spread the prosperity gospel. At the risk of doing the "no true Scotsman", those televangelists don't represent us, they're heretics and are absolute scum who go directly against Christ's teachings.
On the subject of Bolsonaro and Trump, people like myself typically realise we are supporting somebody immoral, however when presented with the choice of an immoral man who will uphold hardline Christian beliefs and a more moral man who will uphold liberal beliefs, we're always going to back the man who, whilst perhaps less moral himself, will not promote the rise of liberal immorality in office.
To a certain extent, I don't even care what religion somebody is. I would have liked Patel or Javid as PM, I supported a non-religious candidate in the past two Tory leadership elections. Thr politician's religion doesn't really matter, it's their policies that do.
The world will shine with light in our nightmare:
No, because, and I literally cannot say this enough, evangelicals are a big portion of Christian believers and are both theologically as well as culturally diverse. If you want to specifically attack people like MTG or Boebert for their support of Christian nationalism, then do so, but plenty of evangelical Christians have done good things for the country and the world.
Francis Collins, who fully retired just last week, is one of those people.
LAKISYLVANIA:
There are about 1,5 billion christian people in the world. Of course when you talk about christianity as a whole, there is going to be generalization. It is unavoidable because essentially you talk about a quarter of the global world population. The share of "evangelical christians" i don't know, and i'm not too educated on the exact differences, i also don't think there is a sharp boundary between evangelical christians and other kind of christians because it is basically one melting pot of a similar religious belief, and if you expand that melting pot, one can say that judaism and islamism also belongs to that melting pot because both share all the same origins or are relatively slightly different interpretations in the same events, that most people see as different, largely because of the associated culture with it. It just diverged earlier from christianity than the great schism, but in fact share a very commonly framework and describe the same events.
There are so many people who think Allah is a different God, while it literally is the arabic name for God. Jesus is named Isa in the Quran. And let me be clear, radical islam terrorists really haven't read the quran all that well, they're just brainwashed by hate, but you're not gonna tell me they've read the Quran as an intellectual, because they clearly didn't. It is no coincidence that during the Islamic golden age most scholars came from the Islam. Back than, thousands of years ago, practicing muslims were more progressive than practising christians, and that lasted through most of the middle ages until perhaps religious wars and enlightment, and definitely during the modern times, a lot has changed. But for large part of the middle ages, the Islamic world was more progressive, even the (early) Ottoman Empire was a more progressive and rich empire than most of the European powers, mostly more tolerant to other kind of believers, even though the Islam has basically prosecuted other religions as well like zoroastrianism, but that was mainly from a stability kind of perspective, and ensuring that the boundaries of certain empires was kept (not that i approve of these, obviously).
Things started to change with colonialism & discovery of the new world because it made Europe so much richer and the center of the world shifted. Without that, our entire history would be unrecognizeable.
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