…and this is a 
Priorities!
Category: Religion
Posted on: November 26, 2006 8:03 AM, by PZ Myers
What's really important to the Christian Coalition?
The Rev. Joel Hunter, of Northland, A Church Distributed, in Longwood, Fla., said he quit as president-elect of the group founded by evangelist Pat Robertson because he realized he would be unable to broaden the organization's agenda beyond opposing abortion and same-sex marriage.
He hoped to include issues such as easing poverty and saving the environment.
"These are issues that Jesus would want us to care about," Hunter said.
Well, I suspect Jesus would have been fanatical about a lot of old rabbinical minutia that we'd find distinctly creepy nowadays, but never mind that—Christianity is clearly the institution to be in if you're a fussy, petty prude who is most interested in policing what people do in their bedrooms, so Hunter was obviously out of touch with his flock.
Comments
There's a lot of it about. The Church of England - aka the Episcopalians in the US - has been a fairly harmless, even mildly useful place that typified the English distrust of enthusiasm. It's now on the verge of falling apart over homosexuality: the liberals can't see what on earth it's got to do with Christianity (seeing as Jesus never mentioned it), while the conservatives see it as absolute Biblical anathema on the grounds that there are a couple of proscriptions amid the not eating shellfish and not letting women speak in church bits.
There's a coalition between the very fundamentalist (and very populous) African wing of the church and some very fundamentalist (and very rich) European and American strands, and they're forcing a schism.
And the _only_ factor of any significance is what one does with one's nether regions and, if one does certain things (or has a certain configuration - women priests are all part of the unwholesome stew) one can wear pointy hats.
For a faith whose founder banged on and on about the poor, injustice, community, love and redemption, this is a pretty poor show. From an atheist, rational point of view, it looks indistinguishable from a large group of unpleasant people prepared to wreck a 500-year old institution in order to justify and promote their homophobia.
(In next week's rant: why elderly homophobic men in frocks are the right people to teach your children about love)
R
Posted by: Rupert | November 26, 2006 8:44 AM
"From an atheist, rational point of view, it looks indistinguishable from a large group of unpleasant people prepared to wreck a 500-year old institution" based on faith and superstition, to which they all belong, in an argument over nonsense on stilts.
Where do I get popcorn?
Posted by: Russell | November 26, 2006 9:16 AM
Fascinating! Even when a Christian tries to do something with which most of us would agree and which certainly seems consistent with what Jesus allegedly said, the Coalition blocks it. Maybe they need to rethink their name. "Christian Coalition" could be replaced with something like "Prude Bedroom Police."
Posted by: vjack | November 26, 2006 9:18 AM
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As a concerned environmentalist, I've cheered the recent recognition by churchy types that the ecosystem matters and that they might put their collective weight to the task of saving and repairing it.
As someone who says "If you have a faulty model of a complex system in your head, you get right answers only by accident," they worry me. I have a slightly harder time warming up to someone who thinks "saving God's creation" is the basic motive of environmental concern.
What if "God" changes his mind later? Or decides that black bears and wolves are evil, satanic creatures? Or starts to think that homosexuals are a threat to the natural order that must be stamped out BEFORE concentrating on the Everglades?
When you're dealing with unreason, it's not automatically a good thing to suddenly find it on your side.
(That being said, I mostly STILL find it heartening that godders are going green.)
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Posted by: Hank Fox | November 26, 2006 9:25 AM
Sex is dirty, dirty, dirty. In Leviticus 15 you will find that if you have an "issue" you'll have to wash, wash, wash.
Posted by: remy | November 26, 2006 10:21 AM
One of the few bad things about Ted Haggard's downfall is that he was one of the rare Christian ministers who took environmental stewardship seriously. The vast majority of them belong to the old James Watt school of "use it up now -- Jesus is coming soon". Still waiting!
Posted by: Zeno | November 26, 2006 10:39 AM
If they really wanted to save God's creation, they'd be promoting homosexuality and birth control instead of fighting them. Imagine how good it would be for the planet if we could hold the total population fixed for a while.
Posted by: MarkP | November 26, 2006 10:46 AM
"One of the few bad things about Ted Haggard's downfall is that he was one of the rare Christian ministers who took environmental stewardship seriously."
Well, see? That should have been their first clue ...
Posted by: Scott Simmons | November 26, 2006 10:56 AM
Not to indulge in bragging rights or anything, but I beat PZ to this one! Yes, pretty ironic, the CC losing its president because he wanted to be nice to people. But then, the CC isn't exactly relevant anymore.
Posted by: Martin Wagner | November 26, 2006 12:03 PM
An interesting comment, because relevance implies influence, which in turn boils down to power. People who are interested in power for its own sake tend to cling to positions of authority whether it's good for them or for others. People who are not personally interested in power won't do those things, and often turn their back on institutions that in their judgement aren't doing the right thing.
Perhaps Rev. Hunter is one of the latter, and thus worthy of encouragement?
Posted by: Scott Hatfield | November 26, 2006 12:18 PM
Well, sometimes the track can reverse itself. Bush was once influential and relevant and wielded his power rashly; now he's still powerful but no longer influential and increasingly irrelevant.
Clearly Rev. Hunter didn't like the CC's insistence on wielding its remaining power and influence on pursuing negative goals rather than positive ones.
Posted by: Martin Wagner | November 26, 2006 12:31 PM
Actually, if anything I'd say Jesus was anti-minutiae -- that was his fundamental philosophical difference with the Pharisees, and a key reason why Christian thought is so vastly different from Talmudic Jewish thought. Inasmuch as Jesus would have been obsessed with such things, he probably wanted to get rid of them. (Curiously ironic how Pharisaic the modern Christian leadership has become... the term "canon law" really says a lot, and that's just a Catholic term...)
Truth is, GLBT issues tend to become yesterday's news pretty quickly -- four states are now on the gay marriage/civil union train, and out of the three that have already implemented it, I have heard no complaints outside a specific lunatic fringe (pretty much the same bunch that throws out accusations of "judicial activism" and corruption as casually as they throw out bible verses).
Posted by: Brian X | November 26, 2006 3:55 PM
There is more to Christianity than the words of Jesus.
I don't think this is true. He apparently didn't think rules mattered as much as the people involved but he clearly supported OT ideas.
Posted by: GH | November 26, 2006 4:15 PM
Well, you have to realize that the Christians you don't hear from are mostly like this. It's just the attention-whoring vocal fundamentalists the media likes to give air-time to who paint a very diverse religion as a monolithic and homogenous entity.
I quoted Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde of St. John the Baptist Episcopal Church last year in my blog regarding the homosexuality amendment here in MN: "The time and energy spent, wasted, pushing this amendment forward would be better spent addressing the issues that are genuine threats to families in our society and in our state -- unemployment, homelessness, poor access to health care."
So, to have one of these right-wingers wake up and come out and say nearly the same thing publically, "Hey, shouldn't we be doing stuff like helping people and solving their problems?" No, it's not a realization issues like homosexuality are just so much empty and distracting noise, but it is a step towards sanity.
Posted by: Rev. Raven Daegmorgan | November 26, 2006 4:40 PM
I am not saying that you are wrong (actually I think you are likely right), but how do you know that? It's like talking about the silent majority - it's easy to claim that you know what they are thinking, but we only have your word for it.
Posted by: Kristjan Wager | November 26, 2006 4:46 PM
Sez the Buffalo News:
So, the organisation that refused to broaden its agenda to include easing poverty and saving the environment is apparently already too liberal and diffuse!
What a sense of personal fulfilment these CC guys must feel, believing what they do so strongly that they are utterly incapable of realising what homophobic, misogynistic bigots they are. I just worry for their wives and children.
Posted by: Peter Barber | November 26, 2006 5:36 PM
Sex is dirty, dirty, dirty. In Leviticus 15 you will find that if you have an "issue" you'll have to wash, wash, wash.
Does this mean Leviticus endorses mixed showering?
Posted by: Phoenician in a time of Romans | November 26, 2006 9:16 PM
Kind of makes you wonder what'll happen if these guys actually ever do gain control somewhere.
"We've outlawed gay marriage and abortion boss, where to now?"
Maybe nose rings?
Posted by: faux facsimile | November 26, 2006 10:57 PM
"Kind of makes you wonder what'll happen if these guys actually ever do gain control somewhere."
Oh, really ...
The answer is obvious -look at history and dystopic fiction.
Calvin's Geneva.
Post Albigensian France
The Spanish Inquisition (not funny this time)
Stalinist Russia
Pol Pot's Cambodia
"Gilead"
Posted by: G. Tingey | November 27, 2006 3:03 AM
Rupert observes:
It's happening all over. My own denomination, the American Baptist Churches/USA, has been shredded by this issue as well.
About 15 years ago, my home church got together with eight others to found the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists, a specifically GLBT-inclusive organization. It wasn't long before several of our regional associations started kicking out churches that joined AWAB - a very un-Baptist action, since our denomination's founding principles include congregational autonomy along with personal "soul liberty."
One entire region (in supposedly "liberal" southern California, of all places!) voted to leave the ABC altogether. (The minority of churches that voted against the move immediately petitioned the ABC to recognize them as a new association.)
The upshot of all this wrangling is that general-support offerings have fallen off drastically, as local churches cut way back on their contributions and individual members leave for more conservative churches. One of the denomination's financial officers recently joked bitterly that "we now have more income from dead Baptists [i.e. endowments] than from living ones."
The fighting goes on, and the ABC/USA is now facing some tough choices about its future. My mom, a former General Board member, says, "It may be the end of the denomination as we know it."
Gaak. What a bunch of un-Christian idiots. A gay pastor probably saved my life 10 years ago when I went into a severe depressive crisis. Who's to say God didn't call him to a place where he could be there for me?
If there's anything positive coming out of all these far-right shenanigans, it's that a number of the more moderate Southern Baptist churches are coming out of the woodwork and have formed the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (which may become a separate denomination eventually, since the SBC has taken to kicking out CBF churches), and a number of ABC and SBC churches have banded together to form the nationwide Alliance of Baptists in affirmation of real Baptist principles.
End of sermon. We now return you to your regularly scheduled church-bashing (prob noblem; sometimes I'd like to bitch-slap a few of 'em myself =grin=) already in progress.
Posted by: anomalous4 | November 27, 2006 12:48 PM
This is true, and I don't really have anything other than my personal, anecdotal experience to back it up. There's a hint of some statistic so vaguely recalled, I only recall its existance and not its content, but meh, like that helps.
Posted by: Rev. Raven Daegmorgan | November 27, 2006 4:38 PM