Majority of White Evangelicals Believe You Have to Be Christian to Be Truly American (via Pew)

Majority of White Evangelicals Believe You Have to Be Christian to Be Truly American

(Link): Majority of White Evangelicals Believe You Have to Be Christian to Be Truly American

Excerpts:

Fifty-seven percent of white evangelicals make a strong connection between their nationality and Christianity, the survey shows, noting that the percentage drops down to 29 percent among white mainline Protestants, and to 27 percent among Catholics.

A majority of white evangelical Protestants say it is very important to be Christian to be a true American, and about a third of all Americans also believe the same, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center.

…Overall, 32 percent of Americans say it is very important for a person to be a Christian in order to be considered truly American. And 31 percent believe one’s religion is not at all important.

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Related Post:

(Link): The Biggest Loser in the (2017) Alabama Election – Christian Witness by M Galli

 

On Not Filtering Every Choice Through the Bible

On Not Filtering Every Choice Through the Bible

This is one of those topics I’m working my way through right now. Maybe a year from now, my opinion will flip on it. But here is where I am now.

I was first made aware of this post from John Piper’s “Desiring God” web site via someone posting to SCCL Facebook group.

Here it is:

(Link):  How to Drink Orange Juice to the Glory of God by John Piper

Excerpts:

• I said that one of my reasons for believing this comes from 1 Corinthians 10:31. “Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” I asked, “Is it sin to disobey this Biblical commandment?” Yes.
• …Some of you then asked the practical question: Well, how do you “eat and drink” to the glory of God? Say, orange juice for breakfast?
• ….Orange juice was “created to be received with thanksgiving by those whobelieve the truth.” Therefore, unbelievers cannot use orange juice for the purpose God intended—namely, as an occasion for heartfelt gratitude to God from a truth heart of faith.
• But believers can, and this is how they glorify God. Their drinking orange juice is “sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer.”

Yes, it’s an entire post explaining why and how Christians may drink Orange Juice to the glory of God.

This is a part of Christianity that I am glad to leave behind. In my faith crisis of the last few years, there have been some advantages to ceasing turning to the Bible as an authority in decision-making in life in every area.

Conservatives, Christians, Transgenders, and Bathrooms – Addressing Libby Anne’s “Love, Joy, Feminism” Post About Transgenders

Conservatives, Christians, Transgenders, and Bathrooms – Addressing Libby Anne’s “Love, Joy, Feminism” Post About Transgenders

I really don’t feel like devoting too much time on my blog to the topic of Transgenderism.

To date, I’ve done only 2 or 3 posts on the subject, one defending transgender people from criticisms by some Southern Baptist guy, and another that is critical of the transgender phenomenon.

Much farther down this post, I address a recent post by Libby Anne (of the “Love, Joy, Feminism” blog on Patheos) that pertains to Christians, child sexual abuse, and Transgender persons and the bathroom debate.

I would say I am mostly on the conservative side of the Transgender issue but appreciate that some conservatives can be too harsh towards Transgender people and may find myself agreeing with liberals on some of their comments on this sort of topic.

In other words, this is another subject where I neither totally agree with either conservatives or liberals, and I think both sides make good points in favor of their positions, and both sides sometimes make bad, unfair, rude, or stupid points.

“Coming Soon To Women’s Restrooms Everywhere” – (image first discovered on James D. Nichols Twitter)

I see a lot of misunderstanding by liberals of the conservative position on Transgender people using public restrooms.

I can’t speak to every single conservative or Christian who is opposed to Trans people using bathrooms, but there is definitely one component of conservatives and Christians who aren’t opposed to Trans people using opposite gender bathrooms per se.

In my case (as a conservative), I don’t know if I care if a biological male who wears a skirt uses a woman’s bathroom or not – it might make me uncomfortable, but that is not my big problem with this issue.

My problem resides in the fact that – damn, I don’t know all the liberal alphabet soup labels they slap on everything, is it Hetero CIS men? – my problem is that Hetero CIS men who are rapists will PRETEND to be Trans women so that they can have access to more female victims.

If You Were Sexually Abused, You Cannot Work At These Churches

If You Were Sexually Abused, You Cannot Work At These Churches

Not only is child sexual abuse addressed on some of these employment forms, but according to these articles (links farther below), some churches ask applicants about their views on fornication, or if they’ve ever been accused of homosexuality.

I find this pretty hypocritical. If you’ve followed this blog before, you know I was waiting until marriage to have sex – as a result, I am now over 40 years of age and still a virgin, because I never married.

What I have observed as I’ve gotten older is that while many Christians pay “lip service” to respecting adult virginity or celibacy, that in practice, they do not.

Sometimes, some Christians (conservatives, no less, but also most progressives) ridicule and mock virginity, and they ridicule or put down adult virgins for being virgins. (Please see the links under the “Related Posts” at the bottom of this post for examples.)

Not only is there little to no philosophical, theological, or intellectual support for adult virginity (and by extension, adult singleness past one’s mid 20s or so), but there is no concrete support – churches and Christians seldom have ministries to meet the needs of adult single celibates.

There are rarely sermons preached on a regular basis on adult single celibacy – compare that to the topic of marriage. Most churches offer a “ten steps to a stronger marriage” type sermon series once every few weeks but never sermonize about singleness.

Hypocrisy Alert: (Anti Virginity Proponent) Russell Moore to Pastors: Don’t Do Wedding Ceremonies for Couples Living in Sin

Hypocrisy Alert: (Anti Virginity Proponent) Russell Moore to Pastors: Don’t Do Wedding Ceremonies for Couples Living in Sin

This is the same Moore who (Link): attacks and ridicules adult Christian virgins for being virgins until marriage.

 So this doofus  has a hella lot of nerve lecturing Christian preachers about not performing Christians who are living in sexual sin.

Moore: you do not honor Christian adults who are Virgins who are waiting ’til marriage to have sex, (which is a very basic Christian sexual ethic), so how do you square away bad-mouthing and shaming Christian couples who may be “shacking up?”

You actually have, in the past, criticized and shamed singles who are living sexually pure life styles. You are being absolutely hypocritical here:

(Link): Russell Moore to Pastors: Don’t Do Wedding Ceremonies for Couples Living in Sin by S. Smith

Excerpts:

• Leading Southern Baptist ethicist Russell Moore is encouraging pastors not to perform wedding ceremonies for couples who are not Christians and those who are living in sin simply because members of their families belong to their church or their congregation is pressuring them to do so.
• Moore, who is the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, spoke at a conference on “The Church and Sexuality” that was held at the First Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, by the state’s Baptist and Southern Baptist leaders on Monday.
• (Link): Alabama.com reports that Moore told the crowd of about 500 people that pastors cannot hold non believers and those already living in sin accountable to their wedding vows if they are already not living their lives by God’s design.
• “You cannot marry anyone except believers and people under the authority of Jesus Christ,” Moore explained. “Unbelievers, you cannot hold accountable to their vows.”

A Valentine for the Single Christian by K L Bishop

A Valentine for the Single Christian by K L Bishop

She says a lot of things in her post I’ve been saying on my blog for years. So if you appreciate some of the points I’ve been making on my blog, you should probably dig this.

(Link): A Valentine for the Single Christian by K L Bishop

Excerpts:

…. It seems that being single in the church is a difficult situation these days. Many churches have made marriage and family somewhat of an idol. There have probably been millions of sermons delivered on dating, courting, marriage, waiting for marriage, etc.

But it is not often that our pastors preach to the adult singles in the pews, or encourage people to embrace their singleness.

Facebook’s motherhood challenge makes me want to punch my computer screen by F. Everett

Facebook’s motherhood challenge makes me want to punch my computer screen by F. Everett

I am friends with people on Facebook who have told me in private that their mother friends – one lady is Facebook friends with a sister of hers who has three kids – are actually terrible parents in real life.

Yet, these same terrible mothers who blather on about how wonderful their children are when they are on Facebook, who post scads of posts of their smiling kids, yell and scream at the kids in real life – or neglect them.

Remember that every time you see posts by parents on Facebook, with their sweet family snaps, who are bragging about their children. They are often times selectively editing their social media to present a glossy, happy version of their life that may not be real most of the time.

(Link):  Facebook’s motherhood challenge makes me want to punch my computer screen by F. Everett

(Link): Mommy Blogger Confesses in Blog Post that Mommy Blogging is a Bunch of Fake, Happy-Clappy B.S. – Kind of Like Most Christian Adult Singleness Blogs

• Of course it’s meant to be a bit of fun, but this smug club fetishises motherhood, and creates a new way to measure women and find them wanting
• There are certain phrases that make my heart sink. After “Can I be really honest?” and “Mind if I join you, ladies?” the latest to engender a sense of creeping misery must surely be (Link):“Facebook motherhood challenge”.Of uncertain origin, this viral “challenge” demands that mothers post a series of pictures that make them “proud to be a mum” and then tag other women who they think are “great mothers”.
• Many of my friends have done this, bouncily posting shots of themselves with interchangeable babies, all of whom look like glow-worms in padded snowsuits, and tagging whole lists of other “awesome mums” inviting them to do the same.
• And while I fully understand that they have no intention of hurting anyone, that they are simply happy to have their wonderful children, #blessed, #lovinglife and so on, I still want to punch the screen of my computer in whenever a new one pops up.
•  The most offensive aspect of this is the idea that it’s a “challenge” at all.
• A challenge is coping with grief when you wish you were dead, or pushing your mind and body to the limit in a feat of superhuman endurance. It’s not posting a few snaps of your toddler and waiting for your friends to type “aw gorgeous hun xxx” underneath. And it’s unclear whether the challenge in question is to prove what a great mother you are, or merely to challenge your friends to prove that they are too.
•  This insidious idea of (Link): motherhood as a beatific vocational calling began with the Virgin Mary, and reached its peak with the Victorian notion of “the angel of the hearth”, when mothers who didn’t have to work, and had nannies and housekeepers and nursery maids rushing about looking after their children, were depicted as celestial beings radiating goodness, their sole purpose on Earth to gather little children to their rustling taffeta bosoms and gently instruct them.

Leaving Christianity gave me the fairy-tale ending I always wanted / Divorce and pre-marital sex destroyed my relationship with Christianity by T. Sheehan

Leaving Christianity gave me the fairy-tale ending I always wanted / Divorce and pre-marital sex destroyed my relationship with Christianity by T. Sheehan

Even though the details of my life and situation are different, I sure did relate to this lady’s story.

My eye brow did raise at one or two points of this essay, such as her claim that people at her church encouraged her to get an abortion when she became pregnant out of wedlock, and from the way she discusses her church, they sound pretty conservative and legalistic.

Perhaps she is telling the truth and that really did happen, it’s just that most conservative Christians are pro-life, not pro-choice, so I am having a hard time picturing any of them advising a pregnant woman to get an abortion.

With possibly a few wacko Protestant church exceptions, (Link): like this one, where the church’s preacher allegedly encouraged the women members to get abortions. But then, of course, there is information such as this: (Link): 2015 Poll: 70% of American Women Who Have Abortions Identify As Christian

By and large, though, most churches are pro-life, not pro-choice.

At one point in this essay, Sheehan says that although she and her male friend were not having sex, that due to being constantly suspected and accused of having sex by Christians at her church, is actually what in large measure drove her and her boyfriend to become sexually active with one another.

Major irony there. Or maybe not…

As I have said time and again at my blog, most Christians, just like secular culture, just blindly assumes that celibacy is impossible for anyone over the age of 25 or so, and that it is impossible for men and women to be platonic friends.

It is entirely possible for men and women to remain friends, and it is entirely possible for an adult to stay celibate for months or years at a time.

I have also explained before, in previous posts, that one reason there is so much fornication among Christian singles is precisely because most Christians have such low expectations: they expect that single adults will, or have, had sex outside of marriage. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy quite often.

The couple discussed in this post were expected, assumed to be, and suspected by their fellow congregants of sleeping together; this couple got tired of being falsely accused, so they figured, well, we might as well have sex, since everyone is already assuming we are and harassing us over it.

I also notice that one reason this woman’s husband, who was a Christian at one time, but is now an atheist or agnostic, began losing his faith over how miserably his grief (over the death of his father) was mishandled by Christians.

Oh yes, I relate: after my family member’s passing a few years ago, rather than receiving love, empathy, and encouragement from Christians in my family or churches I went to, I instead received judgment, criticism, platitudes, or indifference. This in turn is one of several things that caused me to partially leave the Christian faith.

One of a few things that caused Sheehan to leave the faith is over how one church she attended mishandled her abusive marriage – her priest told her to stay with the abusive husband.

This advice is also usually given in Baptist or Protestant situations. Christians often put keeping an (abusive) marriage before the welfare of the two persons who comprise the marriage.

Abused wives are usually instructed to stay with the abusive spouse and submit to the abuser more, or just pray about things. None of this resolves the situation but actually prolongs it.

I am not surprised in light of all the insensitive treatment that she and her husband endured at the hands of other believers, that they both developed major doubts about Christianity and walked away from it.

There were a few supportive comments to the woman who wrote this, in the comments area under the essay, but there were also a lot of hateful, judgmental, or naive posts left to her by Christians.

There were also a few annoying posts by atheists who were just there to say “all religion is idiotic, there is no God” to any of the well-meaning, yet naive Christians who were telling her to hold on to the faith, in spite of the Christians who had been mean to her at her prior churches.

Honestly, I wish those types of atheists would refrain from posting under articles like this one by Sheehan. I find their opportunistic, anti-theism drivel and rants to be about as bad as the nasty posts by the Christians who scolded Sheehan for leaving Christianity.

(Link): Leaving Christianity gave me the fairy-tale ending I always wanted 

• Divorce and pre-marital sex destroyed my relationship with Christianity by T. Sheehan

• My family has always been part of the Catholic Church, including being actively involved in fighting for those beliefs in Ireland and France through the centuries. It is all I knew and I never imagined a life without it. Even in today’s permissive society, divorce is still a huge don’t in the Catholic Church.

  When my priest advised me to stay in an abusive marriage rather than lose access to the Catholic religion, I stayed — until my husband left me for one of the many women he had been seeing.

  I went back to my priest for help but instead found myself without a church.

  Confused and directionless, I ended up seeking help at a Word of Faith Christian Church in Texas.

  Although the church and I both believed in Jesus, the similarities ended there. Everything was so different from what I had grown up with, it made the transition very difficult.

  They kept trying to break down my identity by using scripture to suggest that everything about me, from Catholicism to my Irish culture, was evil and against God. It was like going through spiritual boot camp as they attempted to rebuild me into a person that could gain access to heaven.

  During my time there, I met my current husband. He was also having a tough time as his father had died suddenly the year before, causing him to question the church he had been raised in and even the existence of God due to how they handled his grief.

  We became really good friends who spent hours talking as we each struggled with our sheltered worlds collapsing around us, no matter how hard we tried to fight to keep the walls intact.

  The damage in our lives, caused by blind devotion to a religion, forced us to question all the truths we had been raised to believe.

Pro-Life, Yet Anti-Celibacy, Anti-Singleness, Anti-Childless Christian Site Tweets Story about Mother Who Slit New Born Infant Son’s Throat to Save Her Sex Life

Pro-Life, Yet Anti-Celibacy, Anti-Childless Christian Site Tweets Story about Mother Who Slit New Born Infant Son’s Throat to Save Her Sex Life

Hmm. I am pro-life. I sometimes follow pro-life feeds on Twitter, one of them, Life News, is apparently Catholic. I assume.

Generally, your Catholics and conservative evangelical Protestant Christians, especially “gender complementarian” Christians, are opposed to celibacy and singleness.

Oh sure, those groups might pay some amount of lip service to a person remaining single and celibate, but most of them assume that to truly be adult, mature, and godly, you must not only marry, but marry AND have children (and you must get married and have children at the ages and in the manner THEY deem most godly, see this link, which is on this blog).

The current Pope has been on record the last two years as bashing adult singles, adult celibates, and adult childless / childfree. For additional information on that, as well as rebuttal’s to the Pope’s views, please see this link, this link, and this link.

I once exchanged a few Tweets with whomever maintains the Life News Twitter account. I pointed out to that person that some of the material they link to at times is shaming to adult celibates like myself who have never married or had children.

I further explained to the person at that Life News Twitter account that the God of the Bible nowhere shames or excludes adults for being single, being celibate, being childless or childfree. (Or, at least, any stigma about being childless was removed under the New Covenant.)

The person at the account tried to reassure me that no, they don’t mean to shame or criticize singles or celibates – but the type of material they sometimes Tweet belies that claim.

Today, I saw this story on Twitter, linked to via Life News:

(Link):  Mom Killed Her Newborn Baby to Save Her Sex Life, Cut His Throat Minutes After Birth

• May 2014
• Now here is the terrible story of a young woman in Germany who killed her own newborn baby because she didn’t want to ruin her sex life by being a single mother. She cut his throat 30 minutes after her baby boy was born and then went to dance at a local disco.
• Nadine Koenig, 20, from Regensburg, smothered her newborn son before killing him with a Stanley knife. Koenig concealed her pregnancy from her parents, gave birth at their home and, after she was arrested, her mother committed suicide. Later she dumped the body of her baby in the river.

Now, that is a terrible story. It most certainly is.

But it flies in the face of the common conservative Christian, both Protestant and Catholic view, (and sometimes secular view), that people are not true, caring, loving, mature, giving adults unless and until they pro-create.

I have yet to see how giving birth automatically makes a woman more godly, loving, mature, or law-abiding than a woman who either cannot have children, or who chooses not to have any. Here is what I am not understanding.

This Christian pro-life news site will rightly call this woman’s actions out as being selfish or wicked – but I have seen this same pro-life Twitter account publish links in their tweets to editorials by Protestant Christians who shame and criticize adults for staying single, celibate, and/or childless or childfree, or for delaying or skipping marriage, as though childless, childfree, celibate, or single people are immature, selfish, or terrible (please see this link for more about that) What universe would you rather live in:

1. one where women, moments after giving birth, slit the throat of their son (and at that, to “save their sex life” and to attend a disco party), or

2. one where women simply do not have children for whatever reasons (ergo, they are not abusing children – one cannot abuse children who do not exist)?

It is evil to give birth and then slit the throat of the baby – it is not evil or wrong for a woman to refrain from getting pregnant in the first place.

Yet, some of these conservative Christians treat the two situations as though they are morally equivalent. Conservative Christians behave as though being single and childless or childfree is just as bad or evil as murdering an infant.

There are some women who want to get pregnant, but they cannot, because they believe in getting married first; they cannot, or believe they should not, due to moral reasons, raise a baby without a husband.  These women often get the short end of the stick in these conversations.

I just have a difficult time wrapping my head around the cognitive dissonance concerning people who feel that a woman slitting her baby’s throat is a sin, and yet, so too, they feel, it is a sin for a woman who cannot or who does not marry, or who cannot or does not get pregnant in the first place.

And yes, the spokespersons of these sites will SAY and CLAIM they do not denigrate singleness, if they are asked straight out about it, but they do actually denigrate singleness and celibacy – because they are operating under the Old Testament, Genesis “Be fruitful” mindset, which assumes that God COMMANDS all people, even in this day and age, to marry and to have children, and so they will shame you and criticize you for not marrying or for not pro-creating, though under Christ, this was repealed. (See this post for more on that, and the links on that post, under the “Related posts” section).

I find it deplorable that some of these conservative Christian groups basically consider women who remain single, virgins, or celibate and childless, to be the same as women who murder their infants. They put both categories of women in the same group.

Both groups are derided as living life wrong, of being selfish, in error, and as displeasing to God.

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Edit. Every time I have edited this post since I first published it, to add new links or fix mistakes, Word Press messes up the formatting, and it deletes the “Related Posts” section.

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Related Posts:

(Link):  Are Marriage and Family A Woman’s Highest Calling? by Marcia Wolf – and other links that address the Christian fallacy that a woman’s most godly or only proper role is as wife and mother

(Link): Hypocrisy: Conservative Christians / Catholics Pressure Women To Feel Their Only Worth is in Becoming Mothers, But If Women Try to Use Medical Technology to Get Pregnant, the Women Are Condemned by The Same Groups

(Link):  Pro-Life Groups Pit Abortion Against Animal Cruelty – How Much People Care Outrage

(Link):  “Who is my mother and who are my brothers?” – one of the most excellent Christian rebuttals I have seen against the Christian idolatry of marriage and natalism, and in support of adult singleness and celibacy – from CBE’s site

(Link): The Irrelevancy To Single or Childless or Childfree Christian Women of Biblical Gender Complementarian Roles / Biblical Womanhood Teachings

(Link): If the Family Is Central, Christ Isn’t

(Link):  The Rise of the Lone She-Wolf by Charlotte Alter

(Link): Is The Church Failing Childless Women? by Diane Paddison

(Link): Lies The Church Tells Single Women (by Sue Bohlin)

(Link): Do You Rate Your Family Too High? (Christians Who Idolize the Family) (article)

(Link): The Isolating Power of Family-Centered Language (How churches exclude singles and the childless) by E A Dause

(Link): Why all the articles about being Child Free? On Being Childfree or Childless – as a Conservative / Right Wing / Christian