Keeping Them Clueless: Dumbing Down Religion Has It's Consequences

[Joanne98]

Hey, everyone knows I have to take a snipe at today's mass of "faithful." O.K., so I'll qualify myself: most (but not all) of today's Christians don't have the slightest knowledge of their own religion. They know nothing of early Christianity except the part about Romans and lions. They know nothing about Christianity's founders past a ragtag group of apostles whom most cannot name. They think that the Bible was always composed of the same number of books from day one (Christ's birth on December 25th). They're in the dark about the Dark Ages. They may have heard about Martin Luther and his split from Rome, but about popes even Catholics know very little. They know that some Christians in history were a bit anti-Semitic, but that's where their knowledge of Jewish persecution ends. They may have heard about the Crusades and how brave, chivalrous knights tried to sweep away Muslims from the Holy Land, but they don't know that the roots of Christianity and Islam come from the same source and that, like Judasim, they are Abrahamic religions. Witch burnings and the like, of course, they save for Halloween and Hell Houses. Read Gary Laderman's account of Christianity throughout America's history. Lederman is the Director of Religion Dispatches and Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Religion at Emory University. He really gives a case for Christianity being a dangerous religion.


Neveretheless, today's Christians DO know that - whatever it is - Christianity is the ONLY, TRUE religion. That's what puts them a notch higher than everyone else. Whatever Christians did in the past, there was a Divine Reason. The TRUE religion doesn't have to apologize for anything. The TRUE religion is always right in whatever it believes. God loves Christians and has (at most) a kind of benign contempt for everyone else.



But don't all of those vagaries give today's Christians a rather skewed vision of their own religion? Of course. It could then be argued that the more narrow and self-righteous view a people have of their own religion, the better it is to control them. As with the contradictions and complexity of the Bible, a simple but very narrow, very definitive construct is the best way to keep control: today's Southern Baptist preacher, for example, would never encourage scholarship in any form from his congregation. To do so would mean answering questions which threaten to make Christianity look less unique. Instead, tell them that the Bible is the exact word of God and tell them to forget all that history stuff.


In other words, keep 'em stupid.


Glenn Beck's recent Restore Honor rally gave a wake-up call to some Christian leaders, however: maybe they've let Christians in America become too stupid.


Russell D. Moore of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary:

It's taken us a long time to get here, in this plummet from Francis Schaeffer to Glenn Beck. In order to be this gullible, American Christians have had to endure years of vacuous talk about undefined "revival" and "turning America back to God" that was less about anything uniquely Christian than about, at best, a generically theistic civil religion and, at worst, some partisan political movement.

The point that Rev. Moore touches on (but marginally) is what I've said in several past articles: America has made a religion out of entertainment and an entertainment out of religion. And in being dumbed down, today's masses of the Christian Right look more like Coliseum Romans being entertained at the sight of other people being denied rights or discriminated against. Francis Schaeffer's own own, Frank Schaeffer has soundly denounced today's Christian Right:


"In the mid 1980s I left the Religious Right, after I realized just how very anti-American they are."

Different perceptions.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Keeping-Them-Clueless-Dum-by-Daniel-Vojir-100901-100.html

[DonCoquixote]

1. Sadly

This is true of all religions, but especially the ones descended from "Abraham." The Abraham based religions are easily "weaponized", since they encourage and glamorize acting without thinking. Do not forget, there are tons of parables where God rewards people for being willing to kill and die, despite their morals or common sense, like when God demanded Abraham be willing to kill his son (Isaac for Jews, Ishmael for Muslims) which is why they are still very good at killing children.

[wookie72]

4. Actually, most scholars would disagree with you.

We look at the Abraham story now and say "how barbaric," but many scholars believe that the story was an attempt to *stop* human sacrifices (because "the Lord stayed his hand.")

Similarly, we look at "Eye for an eye" as needlessly harsh, when at the time it was actually "NOT MORE than an eye for an eye." In other words, "if he kills your brother, kill only him." Nasty, but an improvement over "if he kills your brother, kill his whole family."

Douglas Rushkoff has written about Judaism as an "open source" religion, and there has always been a tradition of commenting and interpreting the scriptures, something that Christianity could use.

[The Wizard]

2. Religion is a crutch for

people who can't handle drugs and alcohol.

[Demeter]

3. In 9th Grade, I Was Enrolled in a Catholic School

and we studied World History that year.

It was amazing how we completely ignored the Reformation....It was as if the 16th century never happened.

[Liberal Gramma]

5. Could there be a relationship between that ignorance and the fact that

most of the fundamentalist denominations do not require their pastors to be educated. The mainstream churches educate their ministers/priests at seminary schools; fundamentalists need only to be willing. Kind of like the difference between a professional and a volunteer.

[DonCoquixote]

6. not really

I say this as someone who was supposed to be a Jesuit, a better educated apologist, a more sophisticated clergy, very often means a more admantly conservative clergy, that is made strong by the fact that they THINK they really understand the opposite side, and are trained to do nothing more but dismantle arguments against the faith. The Jesuits are some of the best educated clergy in the world, and yet, they are the Pope's main defenders. If the Baptist preacher is a hitman, the more educated clergy are Military grade snipers.