How come Republicans are the most fervent Christians?
How come Republicans are the most fervent Christians?
[Disclaimer] - I am not an American and I consider myself atheist, I am Caucasian and born in a pre-dominantly Christian country.
Based on my limited knowledge of Christianity, it is all about social justice, compassion and peace.
And I was always wondering how come Republicans are perceiving themselves as devout Christians while the political party they support is openly opposing those virtues and if this doesn't make them hypocrites?
For them the mortal enemy are the lefties who are all about social justice, helping the vulnerable and the not so fortunate and peace.
Christianity sounds to me a lot more like socialist utopia.
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Christianity is not about compassion and peace.
Forget utilitarian ethics altogether. Think of a twisted version of virtue ethics, where the only virtue is power.
Narcissism and sociopathy flows downwards from the top, submission and people-pleasing flows upwards from the bottom.
From the top down, having power makes you virtuous, and exercising power reflects that virtue.
If you are in a position of privilege and power, if you can kill people and take their stuff and get away with it, that marks you as powerful and to-be-feared, and therefore admirable.
If you are some kind of peasant, the opposite applies: you must be a submissive people-pleaser or face severe punishment.
If you're somewhere inbetween, you do both: oppress those below you, and grovel to those above you. This is virtue on both fronts.
That's conservative morality in a nutshell.
Christianity endorses this structure wholesale. It pats the peasants on the head and tells them they'll be rewarded (one day, not today) for being good little people-pleasers, and puts a final boss at the very top of the org chart so that the powerful can do some token groveling-upwards, and so the peasants have someone else to grovel to when nobody's around. It fits hand-in-glove with everything conservatives love.
Compassion-mercy-and-peace is just marketing spin clipped from the instructions for people-pleasing. Go along to get along, be helpful, don't rock the boat.
You'll notice that the core concept of christianity is earning tolerance from the powerful despite complete degradation. You are utterly worthless garbage and deserve to be tortured with fire forever; only via the sacrifice of an actual god can you can be promoted to salvage - though of course this status remains a completely undeserved gift that you should be overwhelmed with gratitude for.
Like a cop deciding not to murder you this time round: you are so blessed, now pick up that can.
Of course they love it.
That's a very simple and incorrect view of Christianity. Has the overwhelming majority of Christian history been an example of all the antisocial behavior you described? Yes.
That said, whoever the historical Jesus was, the early followers of his movement were radicals who were opposed to the existing power structure and who said you should love your neighbor as yourself. That if someone strikes you on one cheek you should turn and let them strike the other. That might sound trite now, but that's because it's been a very successful idea. And I'm not saying that it's original to Christianity or whoever Jesus was. But Christianity certainly did a lot to popularize it.
That strain of radical pro-social behavior has been woven all throughout Christian history, but at the same time every type of atrocity and abuse of power has been done in the name of Christianity because it was very quickly adopted and co-opted by the powerful.
Even if we grant that Christianity had a powerful message of love, it was inevitable it wouldn't be sustainable, because having an incorrect model of the world ("there is an all powerful creator of the world who is personally interested in my day to day life") will result in counterproductive behavior ("I should follow directions from this guy who says he's in direct communication with the creator"). But I wrote all this because the idea of loving other people and offering them grace is valuable, it's one thing we can think of as positive from Christianity, and it can thrive in other ecosystems of ideas besides theism.
"Slaves, obey your masters" is not radically opposing the existing power structure. Nowhere will you find a single instruction to disobey the powerful, or hold them to account.
Like I say, people-pleasing behaviour is definitely in there; Matthew 5 is all about not having any boundaries. But you'll notice it's not aimed at powers or principalities, nowhere does it suggest that masters should not beat their slaves or that kings should not retaliate to acts of war - and they're certainly not for god himself, who absolutely would not forgive anyone for their ancestors' disobedience without a major blood sacrifice, thus that whole crucifixion thing you might be vaguely aware of (though admittedly it's pretty niche, hidden deep in the lore somewhere). Those instructions are for the little people, to keep them in their lane.
Which is not, to be extremely clear, to suggest that I'm some kind of randroid fuck who considers altruism to be a weakness; very much the opposite. We could have a much better world if more people would be nicer to each other even when they didn't have to be.
It's just that one-way altruism imposed in the context of a rigidly-endorsed social hierarchy just ain't it. If the poor have to do all the heavy nice-peopling while a bunch of rich untouchable assholes work them to death and torture them for lulz, that would fit more into your whole late-stage-capitalism kind of bullshit - and christianity does not one fucking thing to combat that, while actively propping it up round the edges.
To be clear, I'm an atheist now, and don't endorse Christianity.
You're right that Jesus was not calling for violent resistance. Neither was Gandhi or MLK, but that wasn't an endorsement of those in power.
Christian teachings were radical in their time because they rejected eye for an eye and taught that it wasn't enough to love someone who loves you, but to love your enemies.
"For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’"
Of course then he goes on to talk about people who didn't help those in need being punished in the afterlife.
As I commented and you're well aware, Christianity does not result in an overall sustainable world view. And if you want someone who says "we should forcefully overthrow those in power" then no, Jesus didn't say that. But his ideas (or whoever they really came from) are transformational, and the OP is justified in asking, "hey why is Christianity like this now?" My argument is that it's because the set of ideas was flawed from the start, rather than that it's a set of ideas made with the intention to dominate and exploit from the beginning.