I still feel abiding affection for Jesus

[sophiaserpentia]

...but i'd rather see Christianity eradicated entirely than watch it continue to be hijacked in the name of bigotry, greed, and sexism:

The Northern Marianas Islands are a U.S. protectorate (so it can label goods "Made in the USA") in the Pacific being used as a sort of labor gulag, with workers imported from China and elsewhere and paid pitiful wages. Jack Abramoff had a contract with the government of the Marianas to lobby against stopping the flow of immigrant labor to the islands and to prevent a minimum wage bill (mandating a level higher than the island's standard $3.05 per hour) from getting to the floor of the House.

The islands are home to classic sweatshops. In 1996 and 1997, Abramoff billed the Marianas for 187 contacts with DeLay's office, including 16 meetings with DeLay. In December 1997, DeLay, his wife and their daughter went on an Abramoff-arranged jaunt to the Marianas. DeLay brunched with the Marianas' largest private employer, textile magnate Willie Tan.

Tan had to settle a U.S. Labor Department lawsuit alleging workplace violations. According to the book "The Hammer" by Lou Dubose and Jan Reid, among the violations common on the islands is forbidding women to work when they are pregnant, thus leading to a high abortion rate.

Evidently, DeLay didn't have time to look into such allegations, since he was busy playing golf and attending a dinner in his honor, sponsored by Tan's holding company. According to The Washington Post, it was at this dinner that DeLay called Abramoff "one of my closest and dearest friends." He also reminded those present of his promise that no minimum wage or immigration legislation affecting the Marianas would be passed.

"Stand firm," he added. "Resist evil. Remember that all truth and blessings emanate from our Creator." He then went with Tan to see a cockfight.

This is why DeLay's professions of Christianity make me sick. He was there. He could have talked to the workers. Instead, he chose to walk with the powerful and do real harm to the very people Jesus mandated we especially care for.

from Molly Ivins: DeLay's sins

Speaking of Tom DeLay's profession of being a Christian, let's see some notes from a conference he attended recently in DC, alongside Senator John Cornyn, Gary Bauer, Alan Keyes, Phyllis Schafly, and others:

Beginning with the premise that there is a war on Christianity, conference organizers and participants were eager to issue calls to arms in response. “We are under spiritual invasion!” intoned Rod Parsley, an evangelist from Ohio. “Man your battle stations! Ready your weapons! LOCK AND LOAD!” (The audience responded to these imperatives with a raucous and exuberant standing ovation.) Parsley also claimed that those Christian churches not sharing the perspective of the Christians represented at the conference constitute “the devil’s demilitarized zone,” naïvely and fatally embracing “peace at any price.” Meanwhile, Laurence Wright, a Lutheran pastor and co-president of Vision America, announced that the time of a peaceful and contemplative Christianity is over; that Christians have been AWOL (“absent without Lord”) in the battle; and that “We must attack the evil now where it is strongest” in order to restore America, the city high on a hill.

... Perhaps the most explicit call to arms came from Ron Luce, the president and founder of Teen Mania, a Christian revivalist youth ministry, and the author of Battle Cry for a Generation, a multimedia campaign that deploys military images and language to recruit soldiers in Christ’s army. Toward the end of his speech, Luce invoked the biblical story of the Levite’s concubine in Judges 19. (In the story, the Levite’s concubine is gang-raped by men who wanted to do sexual violence to the Levite. When the Levite’s host refuses to deliver the Levite to the assailants, he offers them his own virgin daughter and the Levite’s concubine instead. When the assailants reject such an exchange, the Levite simply expels the concubine from his host's house, leaving her to be raped repeatedly throughout the night. The following morning, upon finding the concubine’s dead body on his host’s doorstep, the Levite dismembers her and sends her body parts out to the twelve tribes of Israel as a provocation to revenge.) “I kind of feel like the Levite,” Ron Luce confessed. And then he uttered a battle cry of his own: “CUT UP THE CONCUBINE! CUT UP THE CONCUBINE! CUT UP THE CONCUBINE!”

from Notes from the War Room (thanks to _raven_ for the link)

Comments

[alobar.livejournal.com]

Expression of such vile hatred in the name of religion aught to be grounds for taking away the group's non profit status, and also be grounds for criminal investigation of the persons making such statements looking into possible child &/or spousal abuse.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

At this point i doubt whether i agree that religious organizations should have tax-exempt status, period.

[alobar.livejournal.com]

I can live with that. Seems to me that teaching mythology is not really in the same league with teachiing science or history.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Nope, not even if it's nice mythology about peace and love. I am a firm believer in divorcing mysticism from materialism entirely, because interjecting material concerns leads (inevitably, it would seem) to commodification of the mystical message. Which in turn allows the message to be twisted and misused.

Compassion and loving-kindness cannot be taught in a book and do not require huge edifices; they are best taught one-on-one, by the examples of people's lives, or in small discussion groups.

"Christianism" Vs. "Christianity"

[publius-aelius.livejournal.com]

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...

Re: "Christianism" Vs. "Christianity"

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

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!

Sure they are. Just not as visibly. For example, withholding the HPV vaccine will kill several thousand women a year in the US alone. The fundamentalist "war on condoms" leads to many unnecessary infections by AIDS, Hepatitis, and deaths by childbirth complications (which is the leading cause of death for women in many countries). I've alleged that religious intolerance of queer people has lead to a stealth genocide: one in four queer people are kicked out of their homes as teenagers, and one in three queer teens attempts suicide, and virtually all are victims of bashing and harrassment. It's not happening in death camps or in the streets, it's happening behind closed doors, in people's bedrooms and bathtubs, but it is genocide nonetheless.

These things are all being done in the US in the name of Christianity. It's not as visible as classist cannibalism in the third world, but it is no less real.

Re: "Christianism" Vs. "Christianity"

[liminalia.livejournal.com]

I have to disagree with you that women, gender minorities and sexual minorities are not being forced to die. Thousands of female fetuses are aborted in India and China each year, to the point where boys are having trouble finding spouses. Iran hanged two teen boys for allegedly being gay last year. Gwen Araujo was murdered because her sex partners feared questioning their own sexuality--they have said as much in court. Young girls die every year in Africa from septicemia due to unsanitary clitoridectomies. Women and girls in the Middle East are routinely executed by their own families for "honor". I could go on but we'd be here all day.

Re: "Christianism" Vs. "Christianity"

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I hope you're right that Catholic churches will soon visibly part from the Religious Right. I've commented before on a pattern i've seen in the mass media, a deliberate attempt to wallpaper over existing differences between right-wing Protestantism and Catholicism, in support of the Chaliban's campaign to recruit Catholics to their cause.

Racism is going to be a big issue in politics this year, because of the immigration debate and because of Katrina. Here's one matter where Catholic doctrine is at distinct odds with Chaliban ideology, and Catholic leaders are not afraid to speak their mind on important issues...

Re: "Christianism" Vs. "Christianity"

[liminalia.livejournal.com]

A group of Catholic priests are at this moment hunger-striking outside Hastert's Batavia IL office until he meets with them regarding just treatment of illegal immigrants. Hastert is famous for simply refusing to speak to any constituents who might disagree with him.