I know this will rub some people the wrong way... The situation he's talking about sounds to me like a transition from a world of theocracy to a world where people's philosophy/theology is subject to free market forces. In a theocracy it didn't need to compete. When he says "In a "post-Christian" world, the church cannot expect favorable treatment...", what favorable treatment should it be given at the expense of people who are not adherents of the chosen religion? He mentions a world with blue laws and school prayer, that's what you would expect in a theocracy (even a weak one). The other things are fine by me, as long as they are done by a private business and not government (and don't violate civil rights laws), and there still are religion sections in newspapers (while most large newspapers have gutted their science departments, and don't even have a science writer anymore).
He says "None of this has to do with the church's internal functioning..." That sounds like he trying to shift the blame. In America the church officially lost it's favored status in the beginning because we saw how bad it could get if it didn't. People talk about this being a Christian nation, and the founding fathers really meant for this to be a sort of theocracy with no official denomination (it's true the majority of people are Christian, but that's not what they mean). I would say that they wanted exactly the opposite, and that's why we wanted independence. During English rule in the colonies there were witch hangings/burnings, Baptists run out of towns for not practicing infant baptism, Quaker hangings...and then we had the revolution and enacted a constitution that proscribed that there shall be no religious test to hold office, no establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. That's all the constitution says about religion. Nothing about soccerless Sundays. Many states tried to maintain their own blue laws. South Carolina's Supreme Court decided in 1997 that the no religious test clause applied to them at the state level. 1997 that had to be challenged! Is that the kind of world he's talking about? Where I, an atheist, can't get a government job?
In Europe it's been diminishing pretty rapidly over the last hundred years or so. In countries that have state religions, people start to take the ever present church for granted. Rather then bemoaning the loss of special privileges and status, maybe you should be pushing for less. They could also see firsthand how it was being used to divide people. The phrase "IN GOD WE TRUST" was put on all the money in the 1950's along with "Under God" in the pledge. Have Christians ever complained about that? It's something that people use to treat me as a second class citizen or even a non-citizen. It could also save us money by getting rid of things like chaplains. Maybe it was helpful at one time(although mainly to Christians), now days members of congress can call their own personal religious advisor anywhere in the country from their desk in the Senate easier then it would be to walk down the hall to the chaplains office to make an appointment to see him.
I've seen on your blog that you're more sensitive to church state issues then other religious leaders, and I thank you for that. It's one of the main issues atheists/Humanists have. We'll be the first to be tied to the stake when someone gets their way and tries to create their idea of a 'perfect theocracy'. Sorry to screed on your blog, but the Alban page doesn't seem to want comments. Have a good weekend.
Cat's Staff, thanks for your comments. Please rest assured neither I nor Pete Steinke (if I can dare speak for him) are looking to establish a "perfect theocracy" (or even a "soft theocracy"!), nor would we put you to the stake or ban you from government jobs for being an atheist/humanist.
Nor am I or Steinke arguing for a return to "Christendom." In fact, I would say in a lot of ways Christendom is one of the worst things that could have happened to Christianity because of the ways cozying up to empire compromised the gospel and made Christians complacent disciples.
The reality is, though many of the Founding Fathers were more generically Deists than specifically Christian, and while Constitutionally we have no national religion, functionally the United States has spent most of its history living out of a WASP-ish Christendom (as evidenced by blue laws and additions like "In God We Trust" to the money). He's not arguing this was either good or bad, it just was, and the church ministered and organized itself according to this "favored" status for over a century (incidentally, he doesn't argue this here, but others make the case that Catholic parochial schools were push back against this functional Protestant Christendom by Catholics who feared their kids becoming too indoctrinated by Protestantism in public schools).
This functional Christendom has been breaking down in the last 50 years or so, but a lot of Christians are in denial about this (which describes the majority of mainstream Protestants) or actively push back against it (think the theocratic moves of the religious right).
What Steinke's arguing for is not a return to Christendom but an awakening in the church that it no longer exists. He's trying to help the church come to grips with the fact that the world has changed, and consequently the ways of being church and doing ministry that worked in the 1950s no longer work in 2010 (because a lot of churches are hung up on recapturing their "glory days" which in living memory for most means when all the Boomers were kids in Sunday school). He's trying to break open Christian imagination to envision ourselves not as the Temple in Jerusalem (the center and regulator of all religious life) but as Israel in exile (dislocated, disempowered, on the margins of religious and civil society), which is an entirely different way of existing and representing God in the world.
I know he wasn't recommending any extreme measures, and neither of you (or most moderate Christians) would want to live in a true theocracy. I just like to keep reminding people of how bad it can be.
You're right, the well organized Catholic school system was a response to protestant prayers in schools and also in many places in the South they were kept from becoming teachers. They were also very involved in getting rid of school prayer (along with atheists and other minority religious groups). It's ironic that Christine O'Donnell, who identifies as Catholic, thinks that local school districts should decide if they want to have school prayer and teach 'the theory' of intelligent design. She seems to have forgotten her history.
He may not be arguing that it's good or bad, but there are people who think it's very good and intend to do everything they can to see it happen. I'm of the opinion that it's very bad, because it would be bad for me(and everyone) by way of being bad for the government if religion was more involved with it. That was Jefferson's view. I also like appealing to religious people to see Madison's position that governments involvement in religion is bad for religion. If you think it's a neutral sort of thing I worry that the largest group of people (moderate Christians) may not be interested in standing up against it if they see it happening. Atheists have been complaining about it for a long time, but since the 'out' atheists are only about 1 percent of people it's not going to have much of an impact.
I don't worry that anyone is preparing piles of wood to burn me at the stake anytime soon. I was at the county service center in Brooklyn Center last week and the whole time I was there they were blasting VERY religious Christmas music on the PA (no Jingle Bells or Frosty the Snowman kind of songs). I looked around and there were a few people there who were obviously Muslims, a few Christians (I'll assume), the person I brought was from Buddhist, and me... It's little things like that that bug me. I have plenty of religious Christmas music in my personal collection that I play, but it's another thing for the Government to be doing it.
5 comments:
I know this will rub some people the wrong way... The situation he's talking about sounds to me like a transition from a world of theocracy to a world where people's philosophy/theology is subject to free market forces. In a theocracy it didn't need to compete. When he says "In a "post-Christian" world, the church cannot expect favorable treatment...", what favorable treatment should it be given at the expense of people who are not adherents of the chosen religion? He mentions a world with blue laws and school prayer, that's what you would expect in a theocracy (even a weak one). The other things are fine by me, as long as they are done by a private business and not government (and don't violate civil rights laws), and there still are religion sections in newspapers (while most large newspapers have gutted their science departments, and don't even have a science writer anymore).
He says "None of this has to do with the church's internal functioning..." That sounds like he trying to shift the blame. In America the church officially lost it's favored status in the beginning because we saw how bad it could get if it didn't. People talk about this being a Christian nation, and the founding fathers really meant for this to be a sort of theocracy with no official denomination (it's true the majority of people are Christian, but that's not what they mean). I would say that they wanted exactly the opposite, and that's why we wanted independence. During English rule in the colonies there were witch hangings/burnings, Baptists run out of towns for not practicing infant baptism, Quaker hangings...and then we had the revolution and enacted a constitution that proscribed that there shall be no religious test to hold office, no establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. That's all the constitution says about religion. Nothing about soccerless Sundays. Many states tried to maintain their own blue laws. South Carolina's Supreme Court decided in 1997 that the no religious test clause applied to them at the state level. 1997 that had to be challenged! Is that the kind of world he's talking about? Where I, an atheist, can't get a government job?
In Europe it's been diminishing pretty rapidly over the last hundred years or so. In countries that have state religions, people start to take the ever present church for granted. Rather then bemoaning the loss of special privileges and status, maybe you should be pushing for less. They could also see firsthand how it was being used to divide people. The phrase "IN GOD WE TRUST" was put on all the money in the 1950's along with "Under God" in the pledge. Have Christians ever complained about that? It's something that people use to treat me as a second class citizen or even a non-citizen. It could also save us money by getting rid of things like chaplains. Maybe it was helpful at one time(although mainly to Christians), now days members of congress can call their own personal religious advisor anywhere in the country from their desk in the Senate easier then it would be to walk down the hall to the chaplains office to make an appointment to see him.
I've seen on your blog that you're more sensitive to church state issues then other religious leaders, and I thank you for that. It's one of the main issues atheists/Humanists have. We'll be the first to be tied to the stake when someone gets their way and tries to create their idea of a 'perfect theocracy'. Sorry to screed on your blog, but the Alban page doesn't seem to want comments. Have a good weekend.
Cat's Staff, thanks for your comments. Please rest assured neither I nor Pete Steinke (if I can dare speak for him) are looking to establish a "perfect theocracy" (or even a "soft theocracy"!), nor would we put you to the stake or ban you from government jobs for being an atheist/humanist.
Nor am I or Steinke arguing for a return to "Christendom." In fact, I would say in a lot of ways Christendom is one of the worst things that could have happened to Christianity because of the ways cozying up to empire compromised the gospel and made Christians complacent disciples.
The reality is, though many of the Founding Fathers were more generically Deists than specifically Christian, and while Constitutionally we have no national religion, functionally the United States has spent most of its history living out of a WASP-ish Christendom (as evidenced by blue laws and additions like "In God We Trust" to the money). He's not arguing this was either good or bad, it just was, and the church ministered and organized itself according to this "favored" status for over a century (incidentally, he doesn't argue this here, but others make the case that Catholic parochial schools were push back against this functional Protestant Christendom by Catholics who feared their kids becoming too indoctrinated by Protestantism in public schools).
This functional Christendom has been breaking down in the last 50 years or so, but a lot of Christians are in denial about this (which describes the majority of mainstream Protestants) or actively push back against it (think the theocratic moves of the religious right).
What Steinke's arguing for is not a return to Christendom but an awakening in the church that it no longer exists. He's trying to help the church come to grips with the fact that the world has changed, and consequently the ways of being church and doing ministry that worked in the 1950s no longer work in 2010 (because a lot of churches are hung up on recapturing their "glory days" which in living memory for most means when all the Boomers were kids in Sunday school). He's trying to break open Christian imagination to envision ourselves not as the Temple in Jerusalem (the center and regulator of all religious life) but as Israel in exile (dislocated, disempowered, on the margins of religious and civil society), which is an entirely different way of existing and representing God in the world.
Does that make sense?
I know he wasn't recommending any extreme measures, and neither of you (or most moderate Christians) would want to live in a true theocracy. I just like to keep reminding people of how bad it can be.
You're right, the well organized Catholic school system was a response to protestant prayers in schools and also in many places in the South they were kept from becoming teachers. They were also very involved in getting rid of school prayer (along with atheists and other minority religious groups). It's ironic that Christine O'Donnell, who identifies as Catholic, thinks that local school districts should decide if they want to have school prayer and teach 'the theory' of intelligent design. She seems to have forgotten her history.
He may not be arguing that it's good or bad, but there are people who think it's very good and intend to do everything they can to see it happen. I'm of the opinion that it's very bad, because it would be bad for me(and everyone) by way of being bad for the government if religion was more involved with it. That was Jefferson's view. I also like appealing to religious people to see Madison's position that governments involvement in religion is bad for religion. If you think it's a neutral sort of thing I worry that the largest group of people (moderate Christians) may not be interested in standing up against it if they see it happening. Atheists have been complaining about it for a long time, but since the 'out' atheists are only about 1 percent of people it's not going to have much of an impact.
I don't worry that anyone is preparing piles of wood to burn me at the stake anytime soon. I was at the county service center in Brooklyn Center last week and the whole time I was there they were blasting VERY religious Christmas music on the PA (no Jingle Bells or Frosty the Snowman kind of songs). I looked around and there were a few people there who were obviously Muslims, a few Christians (I'll assume), the person I brought was from Buddhist, and me... It's little things like that that bug me. I have plenty of religious Christmas music in my personal collection that I play, but it's another thing for the Government to be doing it.
Anyway....thanks for responding.
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