Well, I didn't say that these things aren't damaging. I merely said that the main problem is that it isn't something that they consider to be all that important... and thus something that they'd rather just not think about -- instead giving the knee-jerk reaction of "team" solidarity. One of the best arguments that actually work with some people is to point out Christian churches which are quite the opposite of the fundie-administered stereotype. There actually aren't very many Evangelists around here, but when a political entity says "Christian" what they really tend to mean is Evangelists (or conservative Catholics, which we do have around here... though not quite as many as we do mainline protestants).
I think you are making a mistake by trying to generalize from what you experience around there. Compared to the South it sounds downright "Free Thinking".
Some of the Northeastern versions of The Baptist Church are a great example of Christian groups which don't agree with much of what's being portrayed in the public discussion as "Christian" in the generalized sense.
Someone asked for evidence. Well, here's some pertaining to this discussion:
http://baptistnews.com/opinion/colu...us-freedom-used-to-mean#.VTAn_oBa0_g.facebook
As a matter of fact, The Baptist Church in (Rhode Island, I think? -- somewhere in the northeast) is often credited as the impetus for the separation of church and state at the very beginning. According to their beliefs, free choice is extremely important in matters of faith. The idea was that it is heresy to follow a religion because of social expedience.
The Baptists of 17th and 18th century New England were a very different beast than those of the 19th century South. Unlike the Puritans, who were Congregationalists with a specific credo of central authority, and had come here to build a theocracy so they could make other people pay attention to them instead of ignoring their religious admonishments, the Baptist were a truly persecuted group in England and the rest of Europe.
Their beliefs were founded in the concept of individual worship and the following of faith.
Unfortunately, there's plenty of Baptists around here that don't appreciate their own history (Lutherans are the most common religious group locally though).
The Baptists
around here, which is to say the historic South, quite formally and deliberately split away from northern Baptists when they formed the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845. They did this because they felt that the proper interpretation of their religious beliefs supported slavery and white supremacy. There was nothing wishy-washy about it. That was their upfront purpose for the division.
Needless to say this put them hand-in-glove with the political machinery of the day, and that relationship continues even now.
One of the more ironic results of this is that keeping religion out of schools was a premise for which which Southern Baptists were strong supporters ... until around 1954. (Yeah, right about the time of
Brown v. BOE. What a coinky-dink, eh?)
That's sort of what you get when you've got one of your main political parties hijacking religious loyalties (and vice versa) for popularity. Not only does the government get worse, but the religion does, too.
The thing is, if the churches are anything like mine was growing up, these aren't even things they're hearing from the churches -- at least not locally -- it's coming from popular media and politicians. Evangeli$m is what you hear most from regarding Christianity, since it's sort of the populist/commercial branch of Christianity. It's not particularly similar to the traditional forms of the religion in the way it tries to propagate, however. Catholics, Mormons and Jehova's Witnesses are other groups that have a political stance. Most of the mainline protestants actually don't, but much of their membership is getting drug along for the ride anyway, due to the ways the media and politicians portray it.
That's just it. They're not. Not down here in the Below the (Mason Dixon Line) Bible Belt.
If anything the opposite is true. The church-on-every-corner Southern Baptists (that's a proper name, not a description) define and maintain the political issues, and they do it based on their religious tenets. When churches which had been members of the SBC refused to go along with a recent set of declarations which included things like wives having to be subservient to their husbands those churches were promptly booted out of the Convention. Likewise ordaining women, and marrying gays.
This. coming from a group which splintered from the mainstream specifically because they believed that each congregation should be able to believe and worship in the manner they chose, without the oversight and control of a higher ranking organization.
Ironic, isn't it.
Politicians around here don't hijack the religious. It's entirely the other way around. Very vocal conservative fundamentalist religious leaders set the agenda which the politicians purportedly on the right
have to follow if they want to make it out of the primaries. (Or mebbe even
into them in the first place).
This is taken as serious stuff around here, and if anything the fervor is getting worse as they see the general tide of public discourse and opinion passing them by in less intolerant parts of the country.
(Damned Yankees!)
