Comments on: What dominionists would do with gays (disobedient children, sabbath breakers, etc.), Part 3

By: Patrocles

Patrocles — Wed, 30 May 2018 19:34:33 +0000

Imho, Warren came to the central point when he cited Halbrook/Hanson’s critique of pluralism, the underlying fear of being overwhelmed by the seculars and the feeling that “we have to impose our values to others because otherwise they impose our values to us”.
A lot of seculars would underwrite that (only exchanging the ideas
about who is “we” and who is “them”).
It’s quite useless to denounce this position which is grounded in experience. We have to admit that people feel threatened by each other and that cultural pluralism doesn’t work as well as we would hope. Pluralism has to be rethought and reformed so that people haven’t to fear each other.

By: vanmojo

vanmojo — Wed, 30 May 2018 19:34:32 +0000

No! You are not making too much of a “fringe” movement. These people are engaged in a well-organized — and well funded, I might add — war on pluralistic society.
Arguably, the best look we have had at the man behind the curtain has been the “Wedge Document” introduced at trial in the Dover v. Kitzmiller “Intelligent Design” case.
The Discovery institute, in very plain language, lays out a strategy for dismantling pluralistic society and replacing it with a theistic monoculture. The problem is that we are focusing on the potential for theocracy.
These people don’t really want a Taliban-style theocracy. They want a culture where that kind of government would be redundant and unnecessary.
mojo sends

By: Richard Willmer

Richard Willmer — Wed, 30 May 2018 18:54:52 +0000

You have a point, Patrocles: we are ‘multi-….’, yet we do need some kind of ‘social contract’ (or ‘culture’) that provides a framework that promotes the common good. Many post-industrial societies are in a ‘state of social flux’ at the moment, and this is bound to be unsettling for many. However, history teaches time and again that ‘dominionists’ (or nazis or islamists or similar) do not have ‘the answer’.

By: Jayhuck

Jayhuck — Wed, 30 May 2018 18:54:52 +0000

Mikhail,
The Bible is *literally* full of contradictions and problematic verses. I know we’ve been down this road before on this blog but I won’t mind if we have to go there again.
The problem here boils down to how you understand the Bible and what it means to you or your church when talking about how the Bible is the “inspired” Word of God. I think some Christians have taken the historical understanding of the Bible being inspired and somehow turned that into an understanding of the Bible being inerrant which is false. If you understand the Bible to be inerrant, without errors, then your faith is just a little research shy of collapsing.

By: Richard Willmer

Richard Willmer — Wed, 30 May 2018 18:54:52 +0000

I think you are looking at the Bible in completely the worng way, Mikhael.
It’s not a kind of scientific/historical ‘text book’, rather a collection of writings showing a journey. The O.T. is about how the First ‘People of God’ groped their way towards an understanding of God. But Christians believe that Christ is the ultimate revelation of God. That said, no person’s understanding of God is complete (or else God would not be God).
What I am about to write is in no way intended to show disrespect to Islam or Muslims – merely it is designed to make a very important theological point.
Islam holds that the Prophet (the person) is the Messenger, and the Quran (the book) is the Message; the Christian understanding in effect is the opposite: the messenger is the (collection of) book(s) – the Bible – and the Message is Christ. One could say that what you are doing is (theologically-speaking) ‘islamifying’ Christianity. OK – so become a Muslim if you want … but please don’t tell us that an apple is an orange!