Tag Archives: Fundamentalism

More thoughts in the aftermath of Paris

Posted on November 23, 2015 by Tim Hall

Like many others I’m still struggling to make sense of what happened in Paris. It’s wrong to pretend this act of terrorism has nothing to do with the Islamic world, but it’s just as wrong to try to demonise Islam itself. Most of those killed by ISIS are Muslims. I’ve tried to make sense of things by looking a parallels in Christian history; the Thirty Years War is an obvious one, and you could see parallels between Wahhabism and Calvinism if you squint hard enough.

But unlike some people I’m not going to pretend I actually know what I’m talking about.

ISIS, ISIL, Daesh, call them what you want. They’re an apocalyptic cult masquerading as a throwback to a earlier, purer version of Islam. There are many similar cults and sects in the Christian world, particularly parts of the US, who hold broadly similar beliefs, with a warped and selective interpretation of The Bible.

The only difference is those sects are not committing large-scale non-state violence at an international level. But it’s not impossible to imagine an alternative history where the American Civil War turned out differently and parts of the Old South are a patchwork of unstable failed states and oil-rich theocracies, subject to proxy wars and ham-fisted interventions by rival European powers. Such a world could easily spawn something looking very much like ISIS except for the religious symbols they display.

There are a lot of responses that would be completely wrong from a xenophobic backlash against Muslims to pretending nothing is wrong or blaming everything on the west. As someone once said on Twitter, it’s better to be a zero than a minus one, and one way to avoid being a minus one is to read up a bit more widely than blogs and op-eds that simply tell you what you want to hear. We may all need to absorb some uncomfortable truths and make some difficult collective decisions in the coming months and years.

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Sarah Palin, Pagan

Posted on May 2, 2014 by Tim Hall

Sarah Palin

It looks as though at least some of America’s Christians have finally had enough of Sarah Palin, who came out with this “joke” at the NRA convention.

“They obviously have information on plots to carry out jihad,” Palin said of terrorists. “Oh, but you can’t offend them, can’t make them feel uncomfortable, not even a smidgen. Well, if I were in charge, they would know that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists.”

The irony that an increasing number of Americans and non-Americans now consider the NRA themselves to a terrorist organisation is not lost here.

The word “blasphemy” is being used, and for once the word is appropriate. Even conservative Christian groups are now distancing themselves from these remarks.

The strongly social justice orientated “Faithful America” had this to say.

This is what we’ve come to in America: A former candidate for vice-president can equate torture and Holy Baptism, and one of the nation’s most powerful political lobbies erupts into cheers and applause. As usual, Palin’s remarks are already making international headlines, once again portraying Christianity as a religion of hatred and violence.

And this from Joe Carter of The Gospel Coalition:

Gov. Palin was attempting to appeal to the basest political populism nothing in her remarks could be construed as genuinely conservative by claiming that current U.S. counterterrorism policy is overly-tolerant and empathetic toward our enemies. Unfortunately, what Palin is proposing is a mixture of pagan ethics and civil deistic religion.

That last line says it all.

Palin, and many others on the Religious Right, are not and have never been Christian in any meaninful sense of the word. They practice what is at best a folk-religion which uses Christian symbolism in the most superficial of manners. At worst, it’s a much darker and more dangerous faith which has appropriated Christian symbols. Palin belongs to a sect that I’ve previously described as resembling a cross between the Manichean Heresy and Haitian Voudoun.

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Dawkins, Islam, Bigotry and Racism

Posted on August 10, 2013 by Tim Hall

It’s depressing to watch Richard Dawkins’ fanboys trying to defend his recent words about Islam on the grounds what he’s saying isn’t technically racism. Surely if the same words were to come out of the mouths of established bigots like Nick Griffin, Geert Wilders or Pamela Gellar they’d rightly be condemned as hate speech. It makes you wonder how many of them share his bigotry, or whether there’s some cognitive dissonance in play here.

When somebody singles out and demonises a religion that just happens, in the UK at least, to be practiced largely by non-white immigrant communities it’s splitting hairs to argue whether it’s racism or not. Whatever it is or isn’t, the one thing it is doing is furthering the agenda of the far right, and this is precisely the point many mainstream commentators I’ve read have been making.

It’s disappointing that so many people who are not by any stretch of the imagination fellow travellers of the far right fail to see this.

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Martin Niemoller, Godwin’s Law and Projection

Posted on July 17, 2013 by Tim Hall

We’re all familiar with that Martin Niemoller quote.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me–and there was no one left to speak for me.

Sadly I see this quoted more often nowadays by right-wing groups directed at opponents who represent the very opposite to the values of Nazi Germany. When it’s used by the fraudulently-named “Anglican Mainstream“, who are little more than a single-issue homophobic hate group who in no way represent the mainstream of Anglicanism, it’s stomach-churningy offensive.

I think it’s well past time to call Godwin on such toxic misrepresentation of Niemoller; when you’re effectively calling your opponents Nazis, it’s a sure sign you’ve lost the argument.

It’s a classic case of projection, something very common on the far right. I’m guessing their mindset works on the basis that everyone’s motivation is the same as their own. So those of us who believe LGBT folks deserve to be treated equally are motivated not by empathy towards fellow human beings but by an elimationist hatred of “Traditional Christians”. Complete nonsense, of course, but that does seem to be the way they think.

It’s the same mindset that leads white supremacists to claim they’re equivalent to minorities celebrating their own cultures or daring to demand equal rights with the rest of us. Or global warming deniers claiming that all scientists presenting evidence of global warming are just spinning conspiracy theories and shilling for vested interests simply because that’s the way the rightwing pundit world works.

Of course, the whole “liberal fascist” meme encapsulates this projection in just two words…

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The Equal Marriage Bill

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Tim Hall

I am getting fed up with the line taken by so many of the opponents of the equal marriage bill currently being debated in the House of Commons. I know that political and religious reactionaries always claim to speak for far more people than they actually do, but I do take strong exception to their claims to speak for all Christians. They do not speak for me.

The religious right’s cherry-picking of out-of-context Bible quotes to justify homophobia remind me a lot of the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa during the years of Apartheid. There are plenty of Old Testament verses than can be used to justify racism. Yet the overwhelming majority of churches today reject such interpretations, whatever positions they may have held in the past. Most famously the Dutch Reformed Church has publicly atoned for it’s support for Apartheid and declared it’s previous position as heretical. I fail to be convinced that one notorious verse in Leviticus is any different.

As for the ridiculous argument that equal marriage equates to some form of persecution of Christians, I suggest those making that claim go and speak to a few representatives of Pakistan’s beleaguered Christian minority, and learn what genuine persecution really means.

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The Christian Right – Neither Christian nor right?

Posted on November 10, 2012 by Tim Hall

I’ve often thought that large sections of the US religious right were about as Christian as the fictional “Golden Promise Ministries” in Charles Stross’ recent novel “The Apocalypse Codex“. No spoilers, but given that the novel is set in a world influence by H.P.Lovecraft I think you can fill in the blanks…

This quote from commenter “mds” in a very long post-election thread in Making Light. discussing the meltdowns of so many people on the American right seems to confirm at lot of this:

There are currently large swathes of fundamentalist Christianity who now embrace the Tim LaHaye-esque view that the Sermon on the Mount is only a description of the Millenial Kingdom, not a prescription for current Christian behavior. Most of the Gospels are largely ignored by my own fundamentalist family members, who are almost exclusive concerned with that one infamous verse from Leviticus; a patchwork quilt of prophetic material from Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation; the most odious excerpts from Paul’s epistles; and an utterly unsourced hysteria about abortion, which fundamentalist Protestants didn’t give two shits about until the late seventies at the earliest. Heck, the only part of 1 Corinthians 13 they seem to have taken to heart is a little piece of verse 7: “believeth all things.” The motto of a Fox News viewer.

So to me, the current substantial overlap between Birchers, Objectivists and fundamentalist Christians is explained by the fact that too many fundamentalist “Christians” aren’t actually Christians any more, in any meaningful sense of the term. It’s been reduced purely to a tribal marker.

Ah yes, Tim LaHaye. If you’ve read any of Fred Clark’s extensive dissection of “Left Behind” you’ll realise this best-selling series of terribly-written hack novels not only preaches something far removed from orthodox mainstream Christianity, but has a malign grip on America’s religious and political life. LaHaye and the writers and preachers that influenced him, such as Hal Lindsay, Cyrus Scofield and John Darby have constructed a theology of their own out of the whole cloth that has little or nothing to do with traditional Christian belief at all. As Teresa Neilsen Hayden points out further down the comment thread:

It’s stupendously heretical — a break with almost all previous Christian belief and interpretation — but it does explain a lot.

More liberal Christians are reluctant to use the word “Heresy”. It’s been too often used as a term of abuse by fundamentalists aimed at anyone that disagrees with their sometimes over-literalist reading of scripture. But for any dogma that ignores Christ’s teachings in the Gospels entirely, let alone invents an entirely imaginary Gospel According to Ayn Rand, there’s really no other word to use.

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Republican Candidate Calls For Execution of Naughty Children

Posted on October 10, 2012 by Tim Hall

Yes, an Arkansas Republican election candidate really does believe in executing rebellious children. From Charlie Fuqua’s book “God’s Law”

The maintenance of civil order in society rests on the foundation of family discipline. Therefore, a child who disrespects his parents must be permanently removed from society in a way that gives an example to all other children of the importance of respect for parents. The death penalty for rebellioius children is not something to be taken lightly. The guidelines for administering the death penalty to rebellious children are given in Deut 21:18-21:

Well, I say “book”, it looks like more a self-published stream-of-consciousness screed than something from a reputable publisher. Quotes like that give one a glimpse into the dark heart of the Dominionist movement, that element of the US religious right that wants to turn their nation into a totalitarian theocracy based on strict Old Testament law. I do wonder if Fuqua’s desire to solve the “Muslim problem” by expelling everyone of that faith from the country is because he thinks Sharia law is dangerously liberal. It’s all frightening stuff, although it’s hard to tell from this side of the Atlantic how widespread such thinking is.

What’s disturbing is this extremist lunatic is running for election with Republican support. They also have guy in the same election who appears to be pro-slavery. Yes I am aware that the US has a quite different electroral and party system to Britain, where central parties can veto candidates whose views are so out of line with the party’s values that they become an electoral liabilty.

So, for anyone in the US reading this: just how widespread is Fuqua’s thinking?

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