Pluralism & Individualism vs. Authoritarnianism in the Christian Right
Wednesday November 15, 2006
The Christian Right in America today tends to behave as though there is only one valid way to be a Christian and, if people aren't sensible enough to accept this voluntarily, then Christian values will have to be imposed through force of law. It's common to argue that this is un-American, but what many may not realize that it can be described as un-Protestant as well.
Book Notes: Pluralism & Individualism vs. Authoritarnianism in the Christian Right
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“what many may not realize that it can be described as un-Protestant as well.”
It’s appalling how many Christians, especially the Fundamentalist ones, have no clue at all about their history.
As a Baptist, I’m especially alarmed by that. Roger Williams, founder of the Baptist church in America, was thrown out of the Massachusetts colony because of his unorthodox views, particularly his criticism of the control the church had over laws and society.
Did you hear that, Pat Robertson and all his supposedly Baptist friends? The Baptist church was founded on rebellion against the church controlling the state! or the colony, at any rate.
Mandatory church attendance was part of the social contract; Williams once said that “forc’t Worshipp stincks in God’s nostrills.”
Williams went on to found the colony of Rhode Island on the principles of religious freedom and separation of church and government. Ironically, he ended up leaving the Baptist church about a year and a half after it was founded, because he believed that the church was starting to become too much like the Massachusetts churches in trying to control civil affairs.
He never stopped working for his colony’s right to exist independently of an official religious establishment, and he finally secured a colonial charter explicitly recognizing religious freedom and the split between religion and civil government.
Historically, the Baptist church has been distinguished by its insistence on soul liberty (individual freedom of conscience), soul competency (the idea that individual believers have the ability, and therefore the right, to study the scriptures and make good faith and life decisions), and congregational autonomy (which seems to be falling more and more by the wayside as the more conservative
Baptist denominations increasingly call for conformity to official “statements of belief” (which amount to creeds, even though Baptists have a horror of calling them by their true name).
Another thing that has fallen by the wayside is the American church’s historic commitment to remedying social ills and caring for the needy and oppressed. The anti-slavery movement, movements for public health and the abolition of child labor, and the civil-rights movement all had their roots in evangelical Christianity, as have numerous other human-rights advocacies right up to the present day. Needless to say, the current hyperconservatism of the most vocal “Christians” these days isn’t even on the same planet with their history!
Ignorance. Bah. Humbug. What they don’t know can, and does, hurt them - and the rest of us as well. The saddest irony of all is that their ignorance gives not only them but the rest of us Christians (and now more and more, Americans in general) a very bad name. Dear God, save me from your “believers”!