Christian delusions are driving the GOP insane

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Or so says Salon.

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/10/christian_delusions_are_driving_the_gop_insane/

[Tetro Kornbluth]

The best and worst part of the shutdown: The Amateur Psychoanaylsis.

[All Along The Watchtower]

The Tea Party is more an expression of some relatively dominant (or historically dominant) groups' utter contempt for and woeful lack of empathy towards lower status and vulnerable groups in society.

These people use Christianity as a legitimizing tool and a way to make their political message seem holy and just.

Look at the right-wing neo-fundamentalist groups as political organizations, first and foremost.

[tik 🪀✨]

Hey, uh, if anything fundamentalist Christians would be trying to encourage the second coming of Christ. They WANT it to happen. They support Israel because they want the Temple rebuilt. They send out missionaries to the furthest corners of the earth because a verse in Matthew declares the whole world must hear the Gospel before Christ returns. They don't support the Obama Antichrist because they want to be persecuted for standing up to the great evil. Obama doesn't even fulfill the prerequisites for Antichristdom but plenty aren't even aware of what those are. They are dangerous, paranoid narcissists with delusions of grandeur. What's more - every new leader with an opposing worldview will be the Antichrist. It will perpetuate and feed into itself, festering until they each snap. Jesus Christ himself would be appalled at their shortsighted lack of empathy. They will probably be discredited in the short term, but they will pop up again every generation, like a virus with a new mutation.

[H. Ross Peron]

More accurately Premillennial/Rapturist/too much Left Behind delusiions.

[memphis]

In other news, water is wet, fire is hot, and bacon is delicious.

[DC Al Fine]

More accurately Premillennial/Rapturist/too much Left Behind delusiions.

THANK YOU!

[useful idiot]

First of all the piece is ridiculous because it presumes that most of these politicians deep down really do believe the stuff they peddle to increasingly irrelevant "Christian" Coalition type groups during campaigns. Evangelicals (not to mention traditional fundamentalists) have less influence on politics than they've had in decades, including in the Republican Party. Most of these Tea Party guys that are vocal about their "Christianity" are into David Barton/Wallbuilders/FoundersKeepers Glenn Beck-esque stuff; in that world their "faith" is subservient to the political agenda, not the other way around. They don't arrive at their position because of their Christianity, they develop a version of "Christianity" to fit their preconceived ideas about government. They are "Christians" because they are conservatives (or constitutionalists or whatever the hell they want to call themselves), not vice-versa. Therefore, to say that their religion is what is at the core of their insane behavior is bass ackwards.

The Pretrib/Left Behind stuff is also fairly dead and outdated. It's always been largely irrelevant within the big evangelical institutions, and the fundamentalists who still cling to that nonsense are in full retreat mode if anything. Those people, as Tik pointed out, want things to get worse anyway.

American Christianity is simply too fractured to have a genuinely significant influence on politics in the future. So both the Religious Right and the secularists who use them as their boogeyman need to find another line of work...

[afleitch]

First of all the piece is ridiculous because it presumes that most of these politicians deep down really do believe the stuff they peddle to increasingly irrelevant "Christian" Coalition type groups during campaigns. Evangelicals (not to mention traditional fundamentalists) have less influence on politics than they've had in decades, including in the Republican Party. Most of these Tea Party guys that are vocal about their "Christianity" are into David Barton/Wallbuilders/FoundersKeepers Glenn Beck-esque stuff; in that world their "faith" is subservient to the political agenda, not the other way around. They don't arrive at their position because of their Christianity, they develop a version of "Christianity" to fit their preconceived ideas about government. They are "Christians" because they are conservatives (or constitutionalists or whatever the hell they want to call themselves), not vice-versa. Therefore, to say that their religion is what is at the core of their insane behavior is bass ackwards.

The Pretrib/Left Behind stuff is also fairly dead and outdated. It's always been largely irrelevant within the big evangelical institutions, and the fundamentalists who still cling to that nonsense are in full retreat mode if anything. Those people, as Tik pointed out, want things to get worse anyway.

American Christianity is simply too fractured to have a genuinely significant influence on politics in the future. So both the Religious Right and the secularists who use them as their boogeyman need to find another line of work...

Oh crap. You're back