I think you are soon going to see, Miss Serpentia, a break-up of the so-called "Christian Coalition."
For one thing, the "catholic" and "apostolic" churches--the ones with a more or less coherent theology (and, therefore, the ones able to deal with the moral ambiguity that plagues all human concerns)--will be parting soon from the single-issue politics that keeps the Republican Right in business.
If you've paid attention to what I write, during the past couple of years we've been on each others' friends lists, you know that my experiences in the Third World taught me to recognize some of the most divisive issues that fret Western Christians to be essentially frivolous, as compared to the destruction of the planet, of its indigenous peoples, and the enslavement of the world's poor to the gross materialist imperatives of the "global economy." It's not that I don't sympathize with "gender politics" or don't recognize the injustices done to women and queer people, BUT THESE POPULATIONS ARE NOT BEING FORCED TO DIE!
Well, now that the issue of legalized immigration is surfacing in our politics, I think that the matters of paramount concern to the poor of the Third World are coming home to roost here. And this issue will be followed soon by concerns regarding the destruction of the planet. The Catholic magazine The Tablet--published in England, where I now am--opined on its editorial page the other day that Catholic Christianity must come up with a theory of environmental justice IMMEDIATELY. The times are changing; it was inevitable...
"Christianism" Vs. "Christianity"
For one thing, the "catholic" and "apostolic" churches--the ones with a more or less coherent theology (and, therefore, the ones able to deal with the moral ambiguity that plagues all human concerns)--will be parting soon from the single-issue politics that keeps the Republican Right in business.
If you've paid attention to what I write, during the past couple of years we've been on each others' friends lists, you know that my experiences in the Third World taught me to recognize some of the most divisive issues that fret Western Christians to be essentially frivolous, as compared to the destruction of the planet, of its indigenous peoples, and the enslavement of the world's poor to the gross materialist imperatives of the "global economy." It's not that I don't sympathize with "gender politics" or don't recognize the injustices done to women and queer people, BUT THESE POPULATIONS ARE NOT BEING FORCED TO DIE!
Well, now that the issue of legalized immigration is surfacing in our politics, I think that the matters of paramount concern to the poor of the Third World are coming home to roost here. And this issue will be followed soon by concerns regarding the destruction of the planet. The Catholic magazine The Tablet--published in England, where I now am--opined on its editorial page the other day that Catholic Christianity must come up with a theory of environmental justice IMMEDIATELY. The times are changing; it was inevitable...