It is to be expected for non-Christians to belittle, criticize, cuss and ridicule Christians who take a stand for biblical values.

Such happens in this site's general forums.

Sadly, sometimes it is professed "Christians" who belittle, criticize, cuss and ridicule Christians who take a stand for biblical values. Such also happens in this site's general forums.

How do you respond when the latter happens?

Nice profile picture.

To answer your question. I believe you just keep standing up for Biblical principles and values. Is that not what did Jesus when he faced his time of temptation? Is that not what Jesus did in his various discussions with the scribes and Pharisees? Is that not what Paul did when facing his detractors?

It's a shame when people that call themselves "Christian" denigrate another. Perhaps that's a sign they are not truly a Christian.

someone publicly claiming to be a Christian, doesn't mean that they are

I generally speak to people in the language they understand, which I take to be whatever language they are using,,, except for vulgarity or loud speaking,, which Im just not interested in using under any circumstance

but if you are not keen on speaking respectfually to me, it may make it more difficult for me to show you respect,, whether you claim to be Christian or not

(lol, not you specifically,, obviously,,, you are always respectful )

For me this is a complex question. I do not feel it is my job to teach higher biblical criticism to the average pew-sitter and that as I have said many times: people who respect the bible have never actually read it. Also, I realize that the phrase- traditional xian values is frequently a code word for bizarre right wing fanatical goofiness. One really can't argue with people who use the bible as a conduit for their own self-loathing, hatred and anger. But as always one tries with gentleness and respect

For me this is a complex question. I do not feel it is my job to teach higher biblical criticism to the average pew-sitter and that as I have said many times: people who respect the bible have never actually read it. Also, I realize that the phrase- traditional xian values is frequently a code word for bizarre right wing fanatical goofiness. One really can't argue with people who use the bible as a conduit for their own self-loathing, hatred and anger. But as always one tries with gentleness and respect

Fascinating Journey: How a Former Texas Conservative Operative Left the Religious Right
Elaine White was once in the inner circle of political power. Then a crisis of faith changed all that.
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August 29, 2014 |
If you met interior designer and business consultant Joyce Elaine White, you’d never guess she was once the lobbyist for the group that formed the leading edge of the religious right’s takeover of the Republican Party in Texas; that she was once in the inner circle of political power in the second-largest state in the nation. Then a crisis of faith changed all that.

“Rethinking everything has been a long, slow, and agonizing process,” White told me in a 2010 e-mail. And it’s no wonder, when you consider that her faith journey in evangelical Christianity began in earnest before she entered kindergarten.

***

On New Year’s Day 1958, in Odessa, Texas, a place equally enamored with Jesus and high school football, White’s mother rushed her to see Hattie Love Rankin, a missionary doctor. What White, then almost four years old and suffering from what Rankin diagnosed as bronchial pneumonia, remembers most about that day was not the medical treatment but the prayer. Rankin, beloved among Baptists for her long missionary service in China, laid hands on the young girl. “She prayed that God would extend my life and use me for God’s glory,” says White, now 60.

The young girl was not afraid, as she had already heard and absorbed her pastor’s “turn or burn” message. “I didn’t want to go to Hell, didn’t want to take any chances,” says White. “I prayed and made Jesus my personal savior.”

By age seven, White says, she knew she wanted to be a missionary, having heard tales of Lottie Moon, another beloved Southern Baptist missionary who spent 40 years evangelizing in China. “Going into all the world, sharing the faith, and making disciples,” she now says, echoing the missionary line, “that sounded very exotic.”

Nearly 20 years later, White found herself in Mexico, married to a young man she met at church soon after she enrolled at Baylor University. The two would work as missionaries for a controversial charismatic group, since disbanded, the Maranatha Christian Church. When the couple returned to Texas 12 years later with their two children, they arrived during the heyday of the Christian Coalition takeover of the state Republican Party. White became executive director of the Capital City Christian Coalition in Austin, and the Christian Coalition’s lobbyist in the state capitol.

“I was brainwashed,” she says. Now divorced for sixteen years, remarried and bearing her birth name, White is no longer a card-carrying member of the Christian right.


Elaine White today—no longer a card-carrying member of the religious right.
Photo Credit:
The American Prospect
Click to enlarge.
***

I first met White at Texas Governor Rick Perry’s August 2011 prayer rally, dubbed The Response, held in Houston’s Reliant Stadium just days before he announced his 2012 presidential run. White was there, out of a mix of curiosity and a need to grapple with her own past. She had previously reached out to me via email, hinting that she was an ex-fundamentalist who wanted to share her story. But, initially, she was reluctant to be specific or speak on the record. Meeting her in Houston, I still did not know she had held a leadership role in an influential political organization, or that she had been a compliant, homeschooling pastor’s wife, believing that she had a role to play in helping Christians take over Mexico and Central America throughout the 1980s.

At Perry’s prayer rally, White was dressed in a black pantsuit, a professional counterpoint to many of the attendees who were wearing jeans and t-shirts emblazoned with homages to Jesus. We sat at a table in the exterior ring of the stadium while speakers and musicians roared apocalyptic warnings to a nation they claimed had turned away from God. But White was subdued. That February, her adult son, Joshua, had been killed in a plane crash. She carried bookmarks she’d had made bearing a photograph of the handsome young man and a Bible verse.

She seemed pained that a longtime friend, evangelist Alice Patterson, one of the organizers of the rally, was drawing media scrutiny for her writings, including her belief that the Democratic Party is controlled by a “demonic structure.” During White’s lobbying days, Patterson served as the Christian Coalition’s state field director.

When we talked at the rally, White was fiercely defensive of her old friend, and remains so, three years later. “I have the utmost respect for her devotion and integrity in all she does,” White told me recently of Patterson. “Although our paths have diverged, I believe that we share a common bond, that we show love and mercy to all.”

***

In 1973, at the age of 19, White married Robert Hucklebridge, finishing only her freshman year of college. “I was looking to solve my problem,” she told me. “Mother told me I needed to be a virgin when I married, but I was thinking I might not be able to hold out.” But, actually, it was more than that: At the time, White says, she believed that “there were a lot of things that fell into place,” including that she met him in church, and that “he had a strong commitment to God and his Christian faith, and talked about wanting to be a missionary.”

The two settled in Odessa, where Hucklebridge took a job coaching high school football. (Elaine didn’t work outside the home.) White soon discovered that living in a patriarchal marriage was more than she had bargained for. Three years in, she left Hucklebridge, taking up with a friend of her husband’s, and fleeing to southern California. She attended modeling school. She smoked pot. After a few months, White says, guilt began to creep in, and she began questioning her liberating decision—the kind of life change evangelicals describe as “backsliding.” Seven months after leaving Hucklebridge, she returned home from her waitressing job to find him on her doorstep. He had been called to missionary service in Mexico, he said, and he wanted her to come.

He told her he had prayed to God, promising, “If you will bring her back to me, I’ll call her Joy.” She agreed to follow her husband to his mission post, relinquishing her given name.

“I figured my life was over anyway,” said White, “so why not call me Joy?”

In fundamentalist Christianity, White explains, “they tell you that love is not a feeling. Love is a decision. You decide to love this person. You honor your commitment and your vow that you made before God. I’ve even had ministers say this: It doesn’t matter what you want, think, or feel. It only matters what God wants.” (Robert Hucklebridge did not respond to several requests for an interview.)

The pair became disciples of Bob and Rose Weiner, the founders of Maranatha Christian Church, a charismatic group that had university campus chapters across the country. Former members and critics of the group would later charge the Weiners with “us[ing] a form of mind control that isolated students from their parents and then guid[ing] decisions on such personal matters as career choices, politics and marriage,” according to a 1985 Wall Street Journal article. That article also chronicled Weiner’s efforts to organize support for President Ronald Reagan’s policy of aiding the Nicaraguan contra rebels, and Bob Weiner’s appointment of himself as “chief conduit of revelations that he says come from God.”

Bob Weiner declined an interview request, but when I did catch him on the phone, he said about White: “She’s a wonderful girl, no matter what political persuasion she is, she’s an awesome lady.”


The Hucklebridge family's entry in a Marantha Christian Church directory of missions. The Hucklebridges were missionaries in Mexico.
Photo Credit:
The American Prospect
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Despite widespread criticism of practices many described as cult-like, religious right leaders defended Maranatha. Ralph Reed, who was then founder of Students for America and would later go on to lead the Christian Coalition, told the Wall Street Journal that Maranatha “has gotten a bum rap.” Maranatha was also popular with Christian Reconstructionists, the strict Calvinist movement founded by R.J. Rushdoony that teaches that Christians should take “dominion” and that the country should be governed by biblical law.

During her 12 years in Mexico, White says she was out of touch regarding the accusations against Maranatha in the United States. She did know, however, of Maranatha’s “heavy-handed discipleship,” which included requiring that members submit their marriage proposals to an “assembly of elders,” which would sometimes block marriages because it wasn’t a “God move.”

“I was always questioning things,” said White, adding that Weiner’s wife, Rose, once laid hands on her and “prayed against my spirit of confusion.”

At Rose Weiner’s suggestion, White read books by Rushdoony, as well as his son-in-law , the economist Gary North, who also served as an adviser to Tea Party godfather Ron Paul, the former presidential candidate and congressman from Texas. The ideas of Rushdoony and North, she says, had great influence on her and other religious right activists. In the 1980s, North praised Maranatha, as well, describing the group in a 1986 edition of his Dominion Strategies newsletter as “steadfastly behind” Christian Reconstructionism.

What White remembers from her reading of Christian Reconstructionism was the call for Christians to take “dominion” over the earth, including politics and government. Her later work with the Christian Coalition, she said, “was a vehicle to do what Rushdoony and North had written about.”

White’s daughter, Christi Vitela, who says she questioned religion since childhood, remembers a very patriarchal upbringing, with frequent citations of biblical verses that many fundamentalists interpret as requiring a wife to submit to the authority of her husband, and to “support the belief that females were subservient.”

“Feminism was not encouraged in our household; in fact it was discouraged,” Vitela said in a telephone interview. About her mother, she added, “I could see she didn’t like being treated like a servant.”

Vitela calls her mother’s time in Mexico her “penance time. . . [My parents] really talked about taking over the world. . . if she didn’t do her part she would be riddled with guilt.”

Under the weight of scrutiny, Marantha began to unravel, suffering financial decline and disbandment. In 1992, in the Hucklebridges returned to Odessa. It was no small adjustment—her two children had known only homeschooling in Mexico—but Elaine found a new calling when she became involved in the local Christian Coalition, during the presidential campaign. When she and her husband moved to Austin a year later, her networking with fellow conservative Christians soon landed her a position as director of the Capital City Christian Coalition and later as a lobbyist for the state organization in the state capital.

Upon returning to the United States, though, White decided to pursue the idea of taking dominion in a role distinct from that of pastor’s wife. She abandoned the name given her by her husband and started going by Elaine, her middle name. Joy, her son used to say, “died at the Rio Grande.”

***

The Christian Coalition was “one of the key organizing groups in Texas” in the mid-1990s, said Kirk Watson, now a Democratic state senator who served, during White’s Christian Coalition tenure, as chair of the Travis County Democratic Party.

Around Austin, White, then known as Elaine Hucklebridge, also hosted a local conservative Christian radio talk show, Life Talk, and had a reputation as an arch-conservative, Watson said. The Christian Coalition, he added, “was one of the key organizing elements in Texas politics at that time,” and, he said, “very effective.”

When Ralph Reed, then-executive director of the Christian Coalition, announced the Contract With The American Family on Capitol Hill in May 1995, White was on stage, along with Republican lawmakers including Newt Gingrich, who was speaker of the House, then-Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, and U.S. Representatives Tom DeLay of Texas, John Boehner of Ohio, and J.C. Watts of Oklahoma. (DeLay and Watts have since left Congress.) The Christian Coalition’s “contract” was the organization’s follow-up to Gingrich’s “Contract With America,” the conservative agenda that helped fuel the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 1994.


Ralph Reed, at podium with Sen. Dan Coats of Indiana, unveils the Christian Coalition's Contract With the American Family at a 1995 press conference in the U.S. Capitol. Elaine White (then Elaine Hucklebridge), stands on Coats's left (in yellow suit). She was a lobbyist for the Texas chapter of the Christian Coalition.
Photo Credit:
The American Prospect
Click to enlarge.
Opposing abortion and gay rights were the only issues on the state Christian Coalition’s agenda, White said. She pushed these efforts through her lobbying, her oversight of the local Christian Coalition’s storied precinct-by-precinct voter identification and candidate recruitment, as well as the voter guides distributed through churches. David Barton, the religious right’s revisionist historian—still popular today, despite repeated debunking—“was a big guy at that time,” said White. “Everyone was reading him. People were teaching [his ideas to] their children, because many of them were homeschooled; they were teaching that America was a Christian nation.” Barton also served as vice chair of the Texas Republican party from 1997 to 2006.

Local television news coverage of the 1996 presidential primary shows the former Elaine Hucklebridge dismissing charges that the Christian Coalition was a partisan organization. One senses she is reading from a script. “I can’t really speak for what the different perceptions are,” she tells a reporter. “We are an organization that promotes biblical principles and we really want to see Christians effectively involved in the process.”

White’s counterpart in this news coverage was a young Cecile Richards—now president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America—who had launched the watchdog group Texas Freedom Network in response to the rise of the Christian Coalition and other religious right groups in Texas. In the segment, Richards describes the Christian Coalition as “the single most effective political lobby in this country.”

As White intones, “we’re in favor of seeing the traditional heterosexual couple honored as the family unit,” a Christian Coalition newspaper advertisement is shown on-screen. The ad, in response to the Austin City Council’s 1993 decision to allow benefits for same-sex partners of city employees, described the action as “an inglorious event for Austin,” and that through a “shameful vote” the council had endorsed “illegal behavior” and a “negative morality message to youth.”

White is shown affirming one of the Christian Coalition’s lasting impacts on American politics, as she declares, “we are called to get involved at the lowest level” in government—seeking office and involvement in entities such as the school board—and that the Christian Coalition was “fulfilling a need to get people involved.”

When she attended the 1996 Republican National Convention, White says she was struck with a realization: She knew nothing about issues other than those on the Christian Coalition's seemingly narrow agenda. “That was the little crack there,” she said of the beginning of her questioning. “We were a two-issue organization, and we didn’t have a broad knowledge” of other issues.

While the Christian Coalition’s two big issues got plenty of play at the convention, there was also much talk of pulling the U.S. out of U.N. peacekeeping forces, and calls to eliminate a number of federal agencies, along with a laundry list of other agenda items. “I looked around that big convention center in San Diego,” she said, “and I thought, if I don’t know the answer to this.....I wouldn’t think [many there] would,” as many of them were people the Christian Coalition “had recruited over those two issues.”

Despite her well-earned hard-right reputation around the state capitol, Watson said, White invited him to a Christian Coalition issues forum—an effort, in White’s telling, to live up to the Christian Coalition’s claim to be non-partisan—with his Republican counterpart.

Watson, then serving as county party chairman, said he was “skeptical” of the invitation, fearing it was a “set-up.” But when White visited his office to discuss the forum, he found her genuinely inquisitive about “a guy who called himself a Democrat and was chair of the local Democratic Party was comfortable speaking about faith and talking about faith as a guide for politics.”

At the Baptist church where the forum took place, White fended off audience hostility toward Watson, reminding attendees that the Democrat was their guest.

“She was already, I think, in a process of wanting to understand others better,” even though at the time “she was still pretty rigid,” Watson said.

The Rev. Jim Rigby of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, long active in Texas pro-choice politics, debated White for a local television station in the 1990s. After the debate, he offered to discuss common ground they might find together in the abortion debate. He didn’t hear from her—until she showed up at his church, several years later, wanting to talk.

“It seemed to me that she had lost her moorings,” Rigby said. He described fundamentalism as “a kind of prison,” and he saw that White had experienced “some brutal experiences in her own life with male leadership.” She needed, he said, to “be in the driver’s seat” to “hear the difference between her own voice and who she had been taught she was, who she was taught she should be.”

Fundamentalism, said Rigby, has to keep people “permanently frightened or angry” in order to maintain its hold on them.

Although White didn’t appear to be frightened on the surface, he said, she was “terrified of disappointing people, not doing the right thing, disappointing God.”

But, he said, “she didn’t quit. She kept facing her monsters.”

“You have to grieve your way out of fundamentalism,” Rigby added.

White divorced Hucklebridge in 1997, left her position with the Christian Coalition, and began what has become a successful career in interior design, sales and business consulting. Divorce, she said, was frowned upon in her circles, and she began to lose touch with former colleagues.

Around the time of her divorce, a family member asked White to accompany her to the clinic for an abortion appointment, an experience White now describes as “transformative” and “eye-opening.” Another relative came out as gay and went to seminary to become an Episcopal priest.

“We grew up together,” White said of the relative. “I thought. Gosh, I’m not going to reject him.”

***

Describing the internal factionalism that pitted the Christian Coalition stalwarts against such establishment figures as then-U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and then-Governor George W. Bush, Texas Monthly editor Paul Burka called 1996 “the year the Republican Party of Texas turned hard right.” In his 2012 article, Burka writes that following the 1996 state party convention, “social conservatives had seized control of the party, and they continue to control it to this day.” No one, he added, “understood the significance of this development better than Rick Perry. He had never been much of a social conservative before the convention, but he could read the tea leaves and has been one ever since.”

Perry’s 2011 prayer rally, in a departure from the kind of religious-right gatherings seen in White’s Christian Coalition days, had a distinctly charismatic bent. Many “gifts of the spirit” were on display, including prophesy and divine revelations declared from the stage, and audience members speaking in tongues and falling out, evidencing the rapturous peak to which the speakers brought the crowd.

Surveying Reliant Stadium in 2011, White said she believed things had changed since the mid-1990s. “This is a 'mainstream' event, and it just points to how much organizing these groups have done since I was there,” she said. Christian right events in the 1990s, she added, did not put charismatic gifts on display, even though many activists had experience, as she did, with charismatic worship practices. But political organizers—in this case, Perry—are smart, she said. Charismatics “tend to be serious about making America a Christian nation and returning it to its godly roots,” White said. “They all get out and work.”

Sarah Posner is associate editor of Religion Dispatches and author of God's Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters. Read her blog or follow her on Twitter.

And again:

5 Biblical Concepts Fundamentalists Just Don’t Understand
Here are some verses liberal Christians wish they would get “fundamentalist” about.
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July 30, 2013 |




Right-wing Evangelical Fundamentalism claims to “go back to roots of Christianity.” In fact, the “literal” (i.e. the earth was created in seven literal days) reading of the Bible was invented in the 19th century. Few fundamentalists care about the early church, the Gospels, the Catholic traditions, Augustine, Arian heresies, encyclicals and councils. Rather, they blend Southern Conservatism, bastardized Protestantism, some Pauline doctrine, gross nationalism and a heavy dose of naive anti-intellectualism for a peculiar American strain of ********. As Reverend Cornel West has noted, “the fundamentalist Christians want to be fundamental about everything, except ‘love thy neighbor.'”

Here are some verses we liberal Christians wish they would get “fundamentalist” about:

1. Immigration:

The verse:

When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. - Leviticus 19:33-34.

Why Fundamentalists Hate This Verse:

Because fundamentalists are xenophobic: religious fundamentalism is a reaction to the multiculturalism of liberal democracy. Rather than seek a “brotherhood of man,” religious fundamentalism longs for a tribal community, without the necessary friction from those with foreign beliefs, cultures and customs. Here’s an open letter from the President of an organization called Christians for A Sustainable Economy (Or as I call it: Christians for an unsustainable environment):

We are called to discern among, “sojourners” (like Ruth and Rahab who intend to assimilate and bless) and “foreigners” (who do not intend to assimilate and bless) and to welcome the former with hospitality.

This is an odd spin, given that in Leviticus, the command is unambiguous, there is no aside about a distinction between those who intend to assimilate. The letter then addresses the immigration bill:

Its passage would allow 11 million illegal immigrants to become citizens in the short-term, with likely an additional 20 million family members as new citizens within about a decade. ... The net price tag of S. 744 will be in the trillions of dollars. ... Such escalation of debt is one way to destroy a nation. It is immoral. It is theft from American seniors and children. It is unbiblical. It is unkind.

I could write a bunch of stuff about those numbers being crazily inaccurate, but let me allow the Lord to respond:

I will be a swift witness against… those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against … those who thrust aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts. Malachi 3:5.

2. Poverty

The Verses:

One of the most humorous aspects of modern-day, far-right Christianity is its reverence of capitalism. That’s because Christ could be considered almost “anti-capitalist.” Consider this verse:

Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. - Matthew 19:24.

There is some version of the story of the rich man approaching Jesus that appears in every synoptic Gospel. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus tells the rich man, “go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.”

The story of Lazarus should similarly terrify modern day fundamentalists:

Lazarus is a beggar who waits outside of a rich man’s house and begs for scraps. When both Lazarus and the rich man die, Lazarus ends up in heaven, while the rich man ends up in hell. When the rich man begs for water, Abraham says, “Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish.” Luke 19:25.

Why Fundamentalists Hate These Verses:

Because the only thing fundamentalists dislike more than immigrants is poor people. Seriously. Just this year, Tea Party congressman Stephen Fincher explained why he thought the government should cut food stamps entirely, “The role of citizens, of Christians, of humanity is to take care of each other, but not for Washington to steal from those in the country and give to others in the country.” Michelle Bachmann has also made a similar statement. The entire Tea Party movement is based on the idea that a huge portion of Americans are “takers” who suck the lifeblood out of the economy.

The Catholic Church actually has a long history of decrying the exploitation of the poor and supporting union movements(See Rerum Novarm). G.K. Chesterton’s writing on the rich often hits Occupy Wall Street levels (“The rich man is bribed… that is why he is rich.”) But fundamentalists insist that poverty be explained in terms of a personal moral failure. They therefore hold that success should be described in terms of morality; this is the so-called Protestant ethic that Weber praised. But it is also, as Nietzsche noted, the “ethic of the hangman.” The poor are considered culpable so that they can be punished – like today’s cuts to food stamps or the public shaming of those on welfare.

3. The Environment

The Verse:

In Genesis, man is given stewardship of the Earth, God’s creation. [Stewardship, in the Christian tradition implies protection. Man should exist in harmony with the earth, not work against it.] As is noted in Colossians 1:16-17:

By him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Why Fundamentalists Hate The Verse:

Jesus Christ once told his followers:

No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. - Luke 16:13.

Increasingly, the religious right is trying to do exactly that, intertwining Evangelical fundamentalism with unfettered capitalism — with disastrous results for the environment. Thus, American political life is increasingly dominated by Christians who reject the religious ethos, in favor of capitalist ethos.

One Conservative Evangelical publication, World Magazine, hypes the “We Get It” campaign, which seeks to discredit the threat of global warming. It also claims the threat of climate change is “alarmism” and fears that efforts to clamp down on emissions will hurt the poor (read: corporations). In reality, climate change will have its greatest effect on people living on less than a dollar a day who can not adapt to higher temperatures. Conservative Evangelicals are not concerned with dwindling biodiversity, the destruction of ecosystem, rampant pollution, global warming and the numerous other environmental challenges we face. Rather they, with the business community, are concerned with the bottom line. The future is irrelevant (unless we’re talking about government debt). Thus, the Biblical command to protect the environment is widely eschewed.

4. War

The Verse:

In two Gospels, Jesus tells his followers:

You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. - Matthew 5:38-42, Luke 27-30.

In another passage he says:

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. - Matthew 5:43 – 45.

Why Fundamentalists Hate This Verse:

As a religious and political movement, fundamentalists have defined themselves as a party of opposition, rather than of love, grace and mercy.

In her fantastic essay, Onward Christian Liberals, Marilynne Robinson argues:

The excitement we are seeing now is called by some scholars a thirdgreat awakening, yet it is different from the other two... it is full of pious aversion toward the so-called culture... and toward those whose understanding of religion fails to meet its standards.

While past “Great Awakenings” have looked inward, seeing sin within the conflicted self, this new awakening looks outward, seeing sin in the wider culture. The culture, that which is secular is evil, while the church is sacred. This is why modern religious fundamentalism gravitates towards xenophobia, homophobia, sexism, etc. Fear and disgust are its motivating factors.

This fundamentalism inclines some religious people toward a pre-emptive “war of religion” and a strong disgust (that sometimes culminates in violence) toward Muslims. Oddly enough, the Christian tradition has developed a theory of “Just War” (developed by Aquinas) which condemns war except when all other options have been exhausted and there is just treatment of prisoners (with a specific condemnation of torture). If only one of the past two “Christian” presidents had listened.

5. Women

The Verse:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. - Galatians 3:28

Why Fundamentalists Hate it:

Although the right often claims the Bible supports their absurd ideas about gender roles (just like the Bible supported anti-miscegenation) such claims have been thoroughly debunkedby theologians. Generally, when you’ll hear an explanation of why women belong in the home, it’ll rely on a misreading of one of Paul’s doctrines.

In contrast to Paul, Christ rarely concerned himself with sexual mores, he was far more concerned with fighting oppression. Fundamentalists want to keep women submissive and subservient, but Jesus won’t let them. In Luke, for instance, Jesus is blessed by a priestess named Anna. He praises a woman who stands up to a judge and demands justice. It’s worth noting that in a time when women could not testify in a court of law, all four resurrection stories have women arriving first to Jesus’ tomb (although it’s unclear which women). Jesus talks with a Samaritan woman at a well and praises Mary Magdalene for listening to his words (Luke 10:38-42).

Fundamentalism Obscures True Religion

These verses are powerful and I believe that they should be carefully considered.

I worry that Christianity and religion in general is represented by its most conservative, fundamentalists elements. Remember that Marx drew his the inspiration for his famous quote “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” from the example of the early church (Acts 4:32-35).

I understand the fun that Sam Harris and Reddit have destroying fundamentalism, and I went to a Christian college and had jolly good time of it as well. “Haven’t you read your own book?” I would ask smugly. But once the gleeful potshots are finished, we all have to face the fundamental and aching deprivation of having been born. We can continue to have a fun time berating those who believe the Bible explains science and that there was a snake in the Garden of Eden, but it’s really a waste.

The Christian message doesn’t contradict science, and nor is it concerned with bourgeois politics. Ultimately Christianity (and many other religions) are about transcending politics and fighting for social justice. Think of Martin Luther King Jr., Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and Thich Quang Duc – all of whom were influenced by their religion to change the world. Jesus saw how oppression and oppressors consumed the world. He, as all great reformers have, sided with the oppressed. This kind of skewed fundamentalism is radically new and far removed from true Christianity. True Christianity offers us a far superior doctrine — one of social justice, love and equality.

Sean McElwee is a writer and researcher of public policy. He blogs at seanamcelwee.com. Follow him on Twitter @seanmcelwee.

^^^ Wow, what a straw-man argument.

A straw man is a common type of argument and is an informal fallacy based on the misrepresentation of an opponent's argument.[1] To be successful, a straw man argument requires that the audience be ignorant or uninformed of the original argument.

The so-called typical "attacking a straw man" argument creates the illusion of having completely refuted or defeated an opponent's proposition by covertly replacing it with a different proposition (i.e., "stand up a straw man") and then to refute or defeat that false argument ("knock down a straw man") instead of the original proposition.[2][3]

This technique has been used throughout history in polemical debate, particularly in arguments about highly charged emotional issues where a fiery, entertaining "battle" and the defeat of an "enemy" may be more valued than critical thinking or understanding both sides of the issue.

Clearly, I have not done this. I have illustrated my point that "traditional xian values" is often used as a "code word" for certain agendas. What would be appropriate is for you to operational define "Traditional Xian Vlues" in a manner which demonstrates the meaning you intend

The expression "traditional xian values" is not in the OP of this thread.

Isn't there a rule about hijacking the thread of another?

Well, I make a stand for Christianity. Even when creationists give their 'evidence'. We all learn it in school, "The Grand Canyon is 200 million years old, 'based on how long it would take water to ware down something that big'." . Well, I say the Grand Canyon is only 5,000 years old (around 3,000 B.C.) formed during the Great Flood. "What about the dinosaurs?" Who's to say God didn't want them on the Ark, or if they did get on the Ark, they died right after that from malnourishment, because we have their bones right here.

Interesting question,especially from David.Perhaps if i'm not mistaking,i am one of the most opposed and abused by the so-called christians in this forum.The atheists,agnostics,non-religious and others usually team up with the lip-service sinning hypocrites who think they are christians and shout down any view or opinion that promotes righteousness and good morality.It doesnt disturb my peace cos Jesus encountered such people or even worse when he was on earth.I ain't discouraged nor will ever be,but rather i continued to speak and defend the bible principles in season and out of season knowing that they must one day believe the bible truths either here or after death when all tongue must confess that Jesus is Lord,although it might be too late for them.Persecution from false brethren has always been worse than those from outright infidels both in paul's time and today

Just let'em say what they wish to say. Opinions are like buttholes, everyone's got one and most of them stink. No matter what they say or how they feel about your belief, knowing you're right with God is all that matters at the end of the day. Not what people think or how they feel about it.

It is often broken and rarely enforced.

Good answer!