Bearing Witness

[zeborah]

If you're a Christian and you're subscribed to me then chances are you're sick of how the vast majority of Christians who make it into the media are saying things that really don't represent our actual faith. Like, really don't represent it. Like, they're bashing the very groups of people Jesus was best buddies with. They're perverting his message of "Love your neighbour as yourself" by hedging it about with "except" and "unless". And when we're silent, we're letting them do it.

So me and julesjones and alex_beecroft have decided to speak up. This Pentecost (Sunday May 23rd) we're going to each write a blogpost aimed at explaining to the more 'fundamentalist' of our fellow Christians why we think it's fundamental to Christianity to be pro-choice, pro-LGBTQ rights, pro-immigration, pro-healthcare, pro-taxes -- in short, pro-love.

And if you're a fellow Christian, we'd love it if you'd join us in making your own blogpost and/or spreading the word around. --Note in particular: We're not aiming to convert any non-Christians to Christianity. (I might end up writing about why I think seeking converts nowadays is downright wrong.) We're aiming to convert fellow Christians into love.

We have a Dreamwidth community and a LiveJournal community. (Current settings are just pending a chance for us to chat when we're all awake, yay timezones.) Our official blurb-thing is in the profile. Feel free to gank my icon here, or any of the ones Alex made, or make your own.

Comments

[firecat]

I was raised Christian but when I was 13 I chose not to be confirmed, partly because of some of the stuff you're talking about. So I'm glad you're doing this. (Also, great icon.)

[zeborah]

It was probably (at least partly) a kind of luck that made Christianity become personally important to me before I really noticed that kind of stuff going on.

Thank you!

[joycemocha.livejournal.com]

I've currently got a sub in to the LJ community and I'll participate over there (Yes, I have a DW account, no, I'm not using it for various reasons including time issues). I'll plan to post something sometime on Sunday. Thanks for starting this, all of you!

[zeborah]

Thank you - it'll be all the people who join us who'll really make it. :-)

[gwyn_bywyd]

A Big Huzzah for the plan! I will most definitely be joining in.

Ummm, just a word about the icon. I've only recently become aware, and I've been doing my best to change my speech habits, that using 'insane' in a derogatory fashion is ableist. The use of the word 'sane' in the icon suggests that the fundamentalists are 'insane'. Hateful? yes. Disgusting? Yes. Unbiblical? Yes. But to bring mental health into it, that is beside the point. And it is harming people, even if that is not my intention in using that language.

This blog post makes the point far more eloquently than I can.
http://disabledfeminists.com/2010/03/04/this-is-why-were-always-on-about-language/

The author concludes "we shouldn’t have to be the metaphors for our own oppressions."

[zeborah]

I was thinking about that this morning, actually. If it were just "sane" by itself I think there'd be no question that it'd be better to seek another word. Here though it's embedded in the set idiom "safe, sane and consensual" (the Wikipedia article contains a NSFW image) which means that either changing or removing it would damage the (only somewhat jocular) parallel I'm drawing between religion and kink.

( <considers a "Your religion is not my religion but your religion is okay" icon< )

Which doesn't make it all okay, if only because people unfamiliar with the term will only see the ableism, but does mean that I'm a lot less sure what to do about it.

I'm mildly relieved that a google on {"safe sane and consensual" ableist} turns up with people using the term in the same conversation as other people talking about unrelated ableist language - ie I can't see people complaining about that term in particular. Which again doesn't make it all okay, but. It definitely goes on my mental "Keep thinking about this" pile.

[annathepiper]

Wow. Thank you very much for doing this. I'm agnostic, but I very much appreciate seeing this kind of speech from Christan folks.

[zeborah]

Thank you for the support!

[annathepiper]

You're most welcome!

[aquaeri]

I'm not Christian (but raised in a Christian culture) but I completely support you and other like-minded Christians doing this. I'd much rather be not a Christian in a world where your definition of Christianity is the dominant one, if you follow.

[zeborah]

I definitely follow, and thank you!

[green_knight]

Thank you, all of you, for standing up to be counted. I _know_ that not all Christians share the attitudes of the fundamentalists, but sensible folks are all too often invisible.

[zeborah]

Thank you!

[aquaeri]

I thought this list (that is apparently unspeakably offensive to even suggest) would be a good discussion point for you - as PZ Myers points out, they're generally quite sensible things.

I'm still not sure if I belong in bearing_witness or not - sorry I kinda abandoned our last religious discussion but it was getting stressful for me.

[zeborah]

Thanks! Whenever I see talk of UK civil servants I think of Yes, Minister, which makes me suspect that the person who has been "transferred to other duties" has in fact been flogged with a wet noodle and shuffled laterally to a position more or less identical to the old one. Certainly I hope so: they even say it was just a brainstorming document, for goodness' sake. You're supposed to come up with brilliant-but-unlikely ideas in brainstorming.

And that's completely understood. If you ever want to pick it up at any random time, or come at it from any other angle, I'd be quite happy, but if you don't then that's absolutely cool too. (And besides, goodness knows I've got an inbox full of correspondence left hanging myself for no reason but procrastination.)

[aquaeri]

Oh, yes, I really hope it was a wet-noodle flogging.

I also thought this was interesting, particularly:

At 1962's Vatican II, most Cardinals actually favored liberalizing Catholic doctrine on contraception.

Gibbs writes,

Leaked reports of the commission's findings suggested that nearly all its theologians and a majority of the Cardinals favored changing the church's teaching on the immorality of contraception - but the following year, Paul VI issued his encyclical Humanae Vitae, in which he sided with the minority. The teaching against contraception stayed in place. Hundreds of American theologians issued a statement that this was not an infallible teaching and that Catholics could in good conscience dissent. And in any event, it was too late to reverse the trend; by 1970, two-thirds of Catholic women were using birth control, more than a quarter of those the Pill.

Makes that whole "Catholic Church's long-term faith to its principles" look so much more solid, yeah, that's the word.

I'm happy with our discussion just being an intermittent thing when I have enough energy to deal with it.