Well... It's No Wonder Christian Fundamentalists Dislike PBS

[arwalden]

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week534/jgreen.html
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week534/p-jgreen.html

OBSERVANT, TOLERANT, AND IGNORANT? The contrast in this poll between high levels of religious observance and high levels of religious tolerance is most interesting. Both observance and tolerance are probably a bit overstated (they usually are in polls), but the results are striking.

The United States is both a religious and a tolerant country. For starters, this suggests that the threat to religious conservatism may be overstated and, by the same token, the fear of religious conservatives that religion is threatened by modern society may also be overblown.

COMMENT: The myopic paranoia among zealot fundamentalists is probably more harmful to their cause from within than ANY external forces. --- Clearly some of these folks don't CARE how they are perceived, or they simply don't realize how damning it can be for themselves when they do only those things that perpetuate the appearance of their own hypocrisy, paranoia, and intolerance.

<SNIP>

The born again Christians are less tolerant than other groups and most likely to believe their faith is the only true one. They are the most threatened by religious diversity, but here black Protestants are a close second.

COMMENT: This explains a lot about how and why the folks in Alabama are behaving they way they are when it comes to that monument to the 10-Commandments.


<SNIP>

(Born agains) are also the most likely to stress the importance of doctrines and beliefs. And when asked about a duty to convert others to Christianity, born agains (37%) and black Protestants (32%) put the most stress on conversion.

COMMENT: And they wonder why so many folks are opposed to "faith-based" initiatives. Whenever I marvel at the importance that some fundamentalists place on converting everyone, it often makes me recall a sound-byte .wav file over at Landover Baptist that I just love... "I must convert you... or kill you" or something like that.


<SNIP>

Born again Christians demonstrate a special dislike of both popular culture (59%) and a nonreligious world view (53%), and they join with white Catholics in disliking materialism (both over 60%).

COMMENT: Yet they don't understand how Muslims can also dislike materialism and popular culture... in some regards the similarities are striking... yet the obvious is conveniently ignored.

I've been searching for an "official rebuttal" or other commentary relating to this survey/article/story, but haven't found one yet. Let me know if you see anything online.


-- Allen

[searchingforlight]

1. One of my ex-girlfriends is a born again christian and she

and her husband are the biggest aquisitors I know. They think that God brings them "things" to take care of. The breaking straw was when they filed bankrupcy because they couldn't pay their credit card bills ($100,000) because of all the business expenses they had charged. (Their reasoning.) The truth was they charged the business/travel expenses and didn't pay them because every actual dollar they had went for "things".

Want to know the joke? They came out of bankrupcy without paying a dime on anything and kept their three houses and their Mercedes, all of their artwork, all of their antiques, everything they had. Makes you wonder doesn't it.

And, oh, by the way, they love GWB.

[Az]

3. In debates I love to hit materialist christians

with Luke 6:30.

Just so I will not be percieved as antichristian I will state that I only use this tactic when I am invited to debate or attacked. The attack happens far more often than it should.

Luke 6:30 Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again.

The materialist christians hear this one and immediately start searching for an escape route. The usual. Its out of context. I advise them to read the entire chapter. Its interpretted wrong. I ask them to intrepret it. It typically turns into them just standing there refusing to acknowledge Jesus' words and hanging onto their posessions. Things I have asked for are typically items like a bullhorn, a protest sign, etc. Never was one relenquished.

[searchingforlight]

4. You are right on with that.

They act like you're the devil if you suggest that they should be separated from their belongings - any of them. And believe me it is sect wide.

If they actually believed in the Bible, they would be living in moderate homes and building 1500 sf homes for the homeless or using their five couches to furnish four other homes.

I was watching Oprah once and she had on a woman who was the leader of a bible group. She and he husband and two children live in a 7000+ sf house. Now tell me how you even find your two children in a 7000+ sf house? Is that family values?

[mrbill]

2. the christian fundies recently bought my local pbs station

poor kdnt, channel 7.

until this, didn't know that you that could sell a public tv channel.

beware marcus and joanie lamb, they fill the airways with crap.