Sep. 16th, 2005

sophiaserpentia: (Default)
The floodwaters are making them come out from all over, seeking high ground: the bigots, finding new zeal in their victim-blaming. What's scary is how blatant they are being, not even trying to disguise their hatred. It's as if they sense now is the time to finally take off the mask and reveal themselves in all their ugly, racist glory.

You've all heard, of course, this comment by Rep. Richard Baker (of Baton Rouge): "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did." The "looting vs. finding" thing is old news, too.

[livejournal.com profile] pamscoffee reports that an official at Greenville Technical College in South Carolina lost her job after twice referring to Katrina evacuees as "yard apes." As in, "sending yellow buses to pick up the yard apes."

Amanda Marcotte's timeline of victim-blaming on AlterNet shows how right-wingers, hoping to deflect criticism of Bush, finally settled in on blaming the welfare state.

This isn't about the President leaving the citizenry of a major American city to die in a hurricane! No, this is a story of black people obtaining expensive goods that the teller of the story deems them unworthy of owning.

George Will is touting the line that the tragedy of Katrina could have been prevented by people marrying and having children the way he tells them to. How it is that married couples in the Superdome could have gotten water, food and evacuation vehicles there faster need not be explained. Laying the blame for Katrina on the shoulders of the mythological Welfare Queen and other Republican bogeymen looks like it's shaping up to be the primary distraction from laying the blame at the feet of those in the federal government who actually had power to help but didn't. The important thing is getting everyone in a tizzy over those awful hurricane victims who dare to believe that they deserve rescue just because they need it.


A frightening and insidious manifestation of this memetic rot was pointed out by [livejournal.com profile] lady_babalon: An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State

There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit—but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals—and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep—on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.
sophiaserpentia: (Default)
Emphatically with a comma at the end instead of a period, "God is still speaking," is the new catchphrase of the United Church of Christ. (Incidentally, i have not yet visited a UCC congregation, though there is one about a half-mile from our house. On the whole, i am still resistant to becoming involved again with organized religion, even touchy-feely liberal "gays lover" organized religions like the UCC or UUA.)

Much of the Christian tradition insists though that revelation ended during the apostolic period. This point is argued strenuously, based on the thin premise that a single line in the Revelation to John disallows "additions to this book" -- which they take to mean the Bible, not just the book of Revelation.

Once a church has taken the stance that revelation has ended, it has taken a big chance on the presumption that its leaders know the mind of God. The doctrine of "supersessionism" suggests that God tore down the religious edifice she'd installed -- the Temple in Jerusalem -- because she was displeased with its apostasy. Anyone who holds that doctrine should know that the logical corollary is that God would not hesitate to do it again if she saw fit. Any supersessionist church that claims that revelation has ended takes this chance.

On the other hand, it was seen as a necessary move to protect the "purity of doctrine" against encroachments by the Marcionites, the Valentinians, the Sethians, the Montanists, the Manichaeans... the Mormons, Christian Science, the Moonies, and so on. Many of these movements grew out of prophetic or esoteric revelatory pronouncement.

Another problem with the idea that revelation ended with the apostles is the fact that some of what we would now call core elements of Christian doctrine were not clearly defined until hundreds of years after Christ. The doctrine of the Trinity did not solidify until the Fourth Century disputes over Arianism. Original Sin was not clearly articulated until the disputes between Augustine and the Pelagians. The dispute over filioque and Anselm's articulation of the doctrine of substitutional atonement took place over a thousand years after Christ.

History shows the struggle for "Christian doctrine" as a struggle between the orthodox and the heretical. However, what went on could also be characterized as the struggle to establish a priestly monopoly. Since the establishment of "orthodoxy," prophets and mystics have been viewed with a wary eye. Some of the brightest luminaries in the history of Christianity, such as Meister Eckhart, were in their day accused of heresy. At any time, a prophet or mystic can start making revelatory proclamations and sway the people -- or in other words, cut in on their terf and run off with the customers. A cynical interpretation perhaps, but one which fits.

The Christian prophets, in their day, swayed people away from an edifice which ruthlessly guarded its religious monopoly for centuries -- the Aaronite priests who insisted that the only valid place to offer sacrifices was at the temple in Jerusalem. The "high places," other sacrificial temples occasionally established outside Jerusalem, were destroyed whenever the Aaronites successfully convinced the King of Judah to destroy them. Religious monopoly is serious business.

Those who seek to preserve religious monopoly for the Christian church can really only say, "Well, our demogogues were correct while theirs are heretical." In doing so, they cross their fingers and hope that God has not sent another prophet to tear down the temple once again.

Profile

sophiaserpentia: (Default)
sophiaserpentia

December 2021

S M T W T F S
   1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
2627282930 31 

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 10th, 2025 04:57 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios