Joe Biden, Senator from Citibank (oops, DELAWARE), to Run for President

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-rfCnW5VlE

MLK was a pretty dece Christian, except for the compulsive womanizing, ymmv

Christianity is chockfull of progressive splinter elements, some of which are mainstream in other contexts (e.g. the Anglican Church of Canada strikes me as chiller than most). Can the same be said for Scientology?

Not to mention that secularized notions of justice are directly derived from the Judeo-Christian tradition. You could even argue – and the case has been made convincingly – that atheism is a precipitate of Christianity, i.e. 'the religion of exit from religion', to quote Jean-Luc Nancy.

I also think that saying 'it's just larger' is kinda moot: there comes a point where the sheer number of adepts necessarily, automatically reflects a degree of diversity such that generalizations are rendered even more useless than usual.

xps

Thats substantially opposite of something I believe. I think America could stand to be more religious, and less white supremacist American evangelical Christian

Judeo-Christian tradition

pom darlin please consider forgetting this stock phrase which means nothing and is mostly used to try to lampshade Christian hegemony and co-opt Jews into its perpetuation

It can also be used to acknowledge that Christianity stems from Judaism and would be unthinkable without it.

That's what I meant anyway. But as we were saying in the anti-semitism thread, there are certainly plenty of (mainly American) evangelicals who act as though they've figured Judaism out better than Jews themselves.

Rarely is it used in that context, in my experience.

In any case Christianity is a descendant of second temple Judaism, a religion as unfamiliar to me as it is to Christians, I think it’s misleading to invoke it in shorthand like this even tho your intentions are pure.

Anyway you might as well say “Abrahamic”, that other big one also has an influential and sophisticated legal culture

Christianity as Liberation Theology was arguably the most powerful counter to Christian-sponsored cold war colonialism in Latin America

origjnal Jesus was p chill imo, people should have a right to be down w the teachings ascribed to him w/o getting lumped in with Tom Cruise ffs

looking forward to the leaked footage that reveals Joe Biden is a Catholic

Rarely is it used in that context, in my experience.

It's the opposite in the academic Ivory Tower, but I'll defer to you since this is a US thread and we're talking about public discourse at large.

guys this is how we get Immortan Joe as a leader

Heh around here it’s just a thing Christians say when they mean “Christian”

Immortan Joe may be unrefined but the market for mother’s milk has never been stronger

don't tell Anthony Kiedis

Incidentally, I always got the sense that American first names are more readily 'Old Testament'-ish (scare quotes intended) than their Christian European counterparts, but that might just be pure speculation on my part. Still, it seems to me that David, Sarah, Zach, Rebecca, etc. are less likely to be 'Christian' in France, say, whereas in the US, it depends.

OG = original gesus

my very religious (now ex)-friend named his kid Zechariah. I'm sure in a few years he'll call himself Inspectah Zech

Tracer, I was raised in a smattering of religious traditions, and many of my thoughts around religion continue to echo those that I had at 13, and I have no problem admitting as much. I did attend a Quaker high school, and have some sympathies with Spinozan formulations of immanence.

That said, I just don't think treating a cult like Scientology differently than a cult-like denomination of Christianity is really productive or worthwhile, but since I'm alone in this respect, I'll shut up.

I just don't think treating a cult like Scientology differently than a cult-like denomination of Christianity

If we're talking about specific denominations, I wholeheartedly agree.

Germany has the right idea imo:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governmental_lists_of_cults_and_sects#Germany

France too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governmental_lists_of_cults_and_sects#French_parliamentary_commission_report_(1999)

Not alone and FWIW I don't think the argument is nu-atheisty at all. Nu-atheisty would be cancelling Bass and all Christian or has-given-a-speech-to-Christian politicians out of hand, not none of them.

xxp table I do think it’s fairer when you put it like that—but fairer still to refer to a stripe of Christianity rather than a denomination per se. The Reagan-era/Ralph Reed brand of fundamentalism is totally a cult.

Yeah, I was painting with a wide brush earlier. The problem then becomes who defines cults, and that's the trickier thing in re: Christianity, particularly in the US. If I had my druthers, all the megachurches would be shut down tomorrow and their pastors forced to pay back all the tithes they've collected over the years, but that's never going to happen.

no argument from me on that score

when I played Pilate I wore Deicide shirts to rehearsal and only one person got it.

Hadrian, the problem is that a significant portion of the US can be defined as fundamentalist or evangelical at this juncture. So they're a huge, huge cult. But they cause immense pain and suffering in the US and other counrties, and they also command an outsized proportion of the political structure here and elsewhere. So while some of broad strokes were a bit too broad, I personally consider "Christian" shorthand for "those fucking wackjobs ruining everything," not mainstream protestants or Catholic Worker Catholics or Unitarians or anything.

In other words, I'll try to be more nuanced in the future

Just for reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelicalism_in_the_United_States#Demographics

Megachurches are fucking weird, man. It never ceases to amaze me.

it's religious sporting event basically

right down to Osteen buying the old Houston Rockets arena

I think part of it is a function of America's approach to grifting: if you fall for something that's bad for you, it's your fault, for any other reading would obviously be detrimental to Individual Freedom™. Put differently:

There's an old saying in Tennessee—I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, "Fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me—you can't get fooled again."

agree on the megachurches and the general grift involved. partic the recent surge in “prosperity gospel” horseshit. i sympathize with a lot of what you’re saying table.

But as we were saying in the anti-semitism thread, there are certainly plenty of (mainly American) evangelicals who act as though they've figured Judaism out better than Jews themselves.

this might be an appropriate time for me to inform the thread that you're all misspelling some pretty important words and concepts - it's Abba Father, Yeshua, HaSatan, and Amein, for example. i know because my 0.01% ashkenazi jew supra-christian dad learned the truth by combing through the original translation of the bible, using google translate, listening to the prophecies of his brother, and other mysterious holy research techniques.

in other words, yes, there is definitely a huge contingent of people who have completely lost their fucking minds and are dangerously dumb. some of them even fucked my mom, lol!!

sorry, a little too intense for the joe biden thread!

btw, speaking of, i have it on good word that biden has selected tim kaine for VP

Is your dad acquainted with the angel Moroni?

xp

we used to have semi-regular Shit on Mormons night at the FUndie church

not literally shitting but playing videos in youth group that showed the batshittery of Mormonism and pointing and laughing at them, while at the same time believing the world was literally 6,000 years old and that evolution was a lie.

those were the days.

i have never heard of Moroni, but here is my impression of what my dad would say about it:

"Moroni was unclean, but wasn't Yeshua the most pure of all? Moroni was thus cleaned, Amein, just as all the impure will be cleansed during the Wrath. Moroni thus becomes Moronua, the original Latin term, the true name, and we shall spread the salt on the fallow fields in His name. can you please pass the wine? i want to drink it half and half with tap water because i'm a fucking moroni"

I only believe in Xenu.

Is your dad our century’s William Blake?

*asks jeeves and returns back 35 seconds later from a Stormfront page*

"I know everything about Xenu now, my son, and it turns out that in order to hold the most true belief, i must now say something incredibly racist that contradicts everything you knew about Xenu"

the NASDAQ is up 1.2% on news that my dad has been selected as biden's VP pick

(his seed)

lol

...in secret. :D

shouldn't the democratic party ramp up their apocalyptic death cult bona fides, though? they're getting killed by the GOP on this

This part of Biden's VP announcement speech really struck a chord with me:

Where lies the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner I shall bring forth the seeds of the dead to share with the worms that gather in the darkness and surround the world with the power of their lives while from the dimlit halls of other places forms that never were and never could be writhe for the impatience of the few who never saw what could have been. In the black water with the sun shining at midnight, those fruit shall come ripe and in the darkness of that which is golden shall split open to reveal the revelation of the fatal softness in the earth. The shadows of the abyss are like the petals of a monstrous flower that shall blossom within the skull and expand the mind beyond what any man can bear, but whether it decays under the earth or above on green fields, or out to sea or in the very air, all shall come to revelation, and to revel, in the knowledge of the strangling fruit—and the hand of the sinner shall rejoice, for there is no sin in shadow or in light that the seeds of the dead cannot forgive. And there shall be in the planting in the shadows a grace and a mercy from which shall blossom dark flowers, and their teeth shall devour and sustain and herald the passing of an age. That which dies shall still know life in death for all that decays is not forgotten and reanimated it shall walk the world in the bliss of not-knowing. And then there shall be a fire that knows the naming of you, and in the presence of the strangling fruit, its dark flame shall acquire every part of you that remains.

I guess if he's gonna keep doing this it's a step up from Neil Kinnock

God, I nearly had a heart attack for a second there

my recommended picks in my email to Biden:

Barbara Lee
Wanda Sykes
anyone but Rice or Harris