It’s always puzzled me and reading a thread on reddit just how has reignited that puzzlement. Someone on reddit asked people opposed to universal healthcare to explain why and the conservatives in the thread have given reasons like they don’t want to wait their turn for treatment, and that people don’t have an intrinsic right to live, along with the usual “WHY shOUld i PAy fOR YouR HealTHcarE?”
Christians seem to lead the charge with objections such as these. And in my experience of asking for help accessing food, Christians were the cruellest and the least likely to help.
I just don’t understand how someone claims to follow Jesus but holds beliefs like this. When Jesus handed out the loaves and fishes, did he check everyone’s employment and tax status first, and only feed those who were working and paying tax? When he healed the sick and disabled, did he make sure they had health insurance first and refuse to treat those who couldn’t pay?
What makes these people such incredible hypocrites?
John Calvin happened. Economic success is a sign of god’s favor, poor people are poor because they’re just bad people destined for hell. Of course this is the line of thought that would dominate the charity-focused ones under capitalism.
My roommate is a somewhat christian socialist and the rants I have heard from him about calvinism are legendary
I’ve been getting on this same train lately. Calvinism and its offshoots are outright heresy in my opinion, so antithetical to Christ’s actual message are they. What the fuck happened to “it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into Heaven”?
(And don’t even get me started on, “what you do to the least of these, you do also to me”)
The catholic church as an institution and as a method of spreading the system of the roman empire and its culture is already antithetical to Christ and his messages.
True, but they seem to have at least retained more of the caring-for-the-poor concept, even if their actual methods of doing so have, historically, often been horrific, and even though their massive wealth has made their efforts hypocritical at best and has similarly situated them on the wrong side of Christ’s ideas. (Not trying to defend the Catholic Church here at all, really–I also take great issue with the obsession with sexual purity in both protestant and Catholic churches; that all comes from Paul, who, last I checked, was not Jesus.)
Saying that the Catholic Church is antithetical to the “message of Christ” is like saying Tolkien is antithetical to the messages of Frodo and Bilbo Baggins. The former is the closest thing to a primary source for your understanding of the latter. Christian doctrine is full of internal contradictions no matter how “originalist” one claims to be in reference to a particular revision of a particular translation of a curated selection of secondhand accounts of an original message.
It can be positive to the extent that people choose to see in those contradictions things that inspire them to act in service of humanity, and negative to the extent that people choose to see in it things that license them to act in their own self-interest at the expense of others.
Christians have existed before the council of Nicaea and Chalcedon - how is the catholic church the primary source? Yet Jesus fought against Babylon and was murdered by it and then Constantine made Jesus into the symbol of Babylon. Jesus’ teachings remain anathema towards empire, and the catholic church is not forth dying for.
I’m not aware of any modern self-identified Christian denominations that can show evidence of having existed continuously since before the Catholic Church, which is generally accepted to have originated in the 1st century CE.
I was raised in an American evangelical Protestant tradition (you probably know the one), so I’m familiar with the argument that (for example), the English King James Bible is the one true literal word of god that predates both King James, the English language, and the Catholic Church. I’m not here to tell you what your spiritual truth is, but as a Marxist with an evidence-based perspective rooted in historical materialism, I don’t find any of the retroactive claims of modern Protestants to be the “true” or “original” form of Christianity any more or less valid than Mormons deciding in the 1830s that they’re actually the original Christians and settled North America in 600 BCE.
I’m not trying to belittle whatever specific faith you hold or tradition you practice if the material result is that you’re doing good in the world. I just wanted to share an outside perspective that, in the context of a post predominantly about the ideological origins of the more antisocial flavors of Christianity, claims from Anglophones that amount to “everyone else got it wrong, and I know what Jesus really said” sound absolutely indistinguishable from every other form of modern Protestantism.
I am not an english prot and I never claimed that there are Christians that survived the ages intact and “unspoiled” by the catholic church, thats you assumings things I never claimed, and I was never raised to believe that protestants are the OG Christians, in the first place. The oriental church of Armenia and Ethiopia are the oldest branches of Christianity.
I stated that Christians existed before the creating of the catholic church as an institution and that jesus message being used to destroy and colonize countries and peoples is already anathema to his message, As a fellow marxist, not only should you realize that the catholic church as a institution cannot exist (unlike Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Protestantism) with a socialist or communist state (there are a bunch of papal encyclicals which are very condemning of socialism and declare incompatible with “human nature”) but also that just because americans & the english were racist towards italians and the irish, doesnt make catholicism into the based “liberation theory” socialist institution (liberation theory is a frince element and not official doctrine).
It was their extremely stupid attempt to resolve the contradiction of “God is all powerful, knows everything, has seen all that was and will be” with “I have free will.”
Their resolution? Get rid of the free will part. A not so subtle solution to an inherent contradiction or inadequacy of a mortal pondering the divine.
You ever had so much difficulty doing something that you just toss all your progress in the trash and start over with a simpler thing? That was the move.
They don’t take their religion seriously. It’s a cultural marker for them, nothing more.
What other people said, but also white chauvinism. Black Methodist churches and Roman Catholic churches aren’t socialist, but they don’t advocate against social welfare or healthcare. (Some would very much like that.)
It’s the white Evangelists and similar Protestant groups that rally against anything good for people. Any sort of government assistance will help minorities, so it must be stopped to preserve white hegemony. Even if poor whites will also massively be helped, that’s less important than preserving racial hierarchy.
Also add in a dash of Cold War propaganda associating any social welfare with “atheist socialism.” The West spent a lot of time and money boosting conservative Christians to make socialism evil.
Thanks to Calvinism (and other factors) American “Christianity” is it’s own religion that wears the mask of Christianity like a flayed skin
This is not an endorsement of Christianity but American Christians specifically fail to uphold basically every single one of Christ’s teachings
I live in the UK and I have found British Christians to be just as unkind. They literally turned me away from the church when I asked for help accessing food.
Could go back to the Puritans then? Not sure if that energy had a place in the uk back in the day
Max Weber isn’t perfect, but the analysis of the calling and the way that Calvinism allays the anxiety of the believer through earthly blessings is spot on.
Thus, charity should only be exercised by the elect (i.e. rich) rather than socialized.
Reformed Christianity also has a complicated relationship with Anglicanism, the branch of Christianity originating in the Church of England. The Anglican confessions are considered Protestant, and more specifically, Reformed, and leaders of the English Reformation were influenced by Calvinist rather than Lutheran theologians. Still the Church of England retained elements of Catholicism such as bishops and vestments, unlike continental Reformed churches, and thus was sometimes called “but halfly Reformed.” Beginning in the 17th century, Anglicanism broadened to the extent that Reformed theology is no longer dominant in Anglicanism.
Scotland is definitely a centre of reformed & Calvinist thought and is therefore to reason, a major influence on american hegemonic culture.
Because they don’t read their own holy book. If they do, they read cherry picked approved sections of it. And they rely on preachers to interpret the rest.
I was raised non denominational. Woods religion. My preacher looked like a member of the Manson Family. I read the King James version 4 times cover to cover before I was 14 years old. And the Jesus in that book would turn from his supposed followers today. “And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you. Depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” They share nothing with their God beyond the aesthetic.
Old testament…apocalypse. Jesus = Death / The Cross.
The lesson learned: Empathy is the prophet (profit) killer.
Americanized Christianity (and what is in Canada as well) was HEAVILY formed by the puritans and other offshoots from England, a hated cult of masochists that believed individual suffering was divine punishment wrought by one’s own moral failings and that a community should only be present to punish people that step out of line and not actually work together to survive. It is a religious belief set alien to catholic doctrine that usually leads to radicalized priests wanting material changes but instead is one that is perfectly suited to be nested alongside capitalism as a propaganda piece.
That’s an overly rosy view of Catholicism (we have plenty of situations where priests have sided with the rich and been generally shitty, the Spanish Civil War as just one example) but yeah, most of the time the greater theological unity holds back the worst impulses because a priest can’t rules lawyer his way into thinking god owes him a Learjet
Oh yeah it aint absolving Catholicism of siding with fascists or propping up governments that keep them in power, but it’s interesting how Christianity in America is so much worse and riddled with lots of brainworms.
Lotta good stuff being said here but I do have another angle that Ive had to deal with coming from an evangelical family:
On a very deep level they simply decide to believe that only God can come and make things better. Evangelicals are often obsessed with their own zany end of the world bullshit and they will simply fall back on that when pushed on the way their own religious/spiritual beliefs don’t align with their political ideology. As far as they are concerned you simply cannot make a system more equitable than capitalism because that’s really something only God returning can do. My father is obsessed with the evangelical version of the end of the world (he literally writes his own papers on his theory, last I checked he was trying to tell me we were actually in year 4 or 5 of the last seven years) and while I can get him to agree with socialism in many ways, at the end of the day he doesn’t think any of it can manifest without a biblical kingdom on earth scenario.
- Take a group of Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
- Allow them to develop a form of Judaism on their own that prioritizes their own wants, needs, and outlook
- Let it cook for 300 years
Just imagine how deranged that form of Judaism would be. But in some ways that would be unfair to say the primary problem is religion when all that religion did was facilitate the racism and white supremacy that was existent, and was fueled by their material interests. That’s basically the story of White Evangelical Christianity in America, but I’m using the settler example to show how it originates and grows.
I’m not even a fan of any form of Christianity, but the reality is that the form of White Evangelical Christianity that makes up ~25% of the US population is just part of the superstructure built on settler colonialism and white supremacy.
That Puritanical & Calvinistic thinking is a hell of a drug
Because reading the Bible or any other holy book is the quickest route to atheism. The logical inconsistencies become quickly apparent, and you either change your religion to something more vaguely spiritual in an endless back-and-forth game, or abandon it entirely.
Religious zealotry isn’t a measure of morality or even religiosity, it’s a measure of gullibility.
People have said Calvinism and that is definitely part of it. But even in the Anglosphere you don’t see the vehemence you see in the US. US Catholics are anti poor people in a way even the most foaming tradcath isn’t anywhere else, though the attitude is spreading as all American shit tends to do.
One thing I don’t think anybody has mentioned is the normalization of American Christianity’s worst impulses plus its tight bond with the GOP and white supremacy. It’s been happening for many decades. Fox News to televangelists have normalized greed (and the prosperity gospel), intolerance, hatred, racism, etc. When I read a news article or watch tv and somebody says “As a Christian…” or “I’m a republican so I think…” - I get mad because I know they’re going to say something awful and the news anchor or whoever is going to both sides it.
The public is supposed to accept the nonsense idea that they have license to be terrible people because they are a Christian or a republican. It makes me insane. If somebody is a horrible person I don’t want to hear a crap excuse that is supposed to justify it. It makes as much sense to me as somebody saying “I don’t like vanilla ice cream so I am 100% against gay marriage.”
The reality is that they hate anybody that’s not them. And they want others to suffer and be forced to conform to their terrible reality. Before Trump - they couldn’t be direct. They tended to never say what they truly feel. One reason Christians and/or republicans love Trump is that they can - in their mind - finally be openly horrible people.
I think that for many of them - being a Christian or being a republican is mostly a life style branding thing. Their horrible beliefs are the key thing in their life. The labels are just a convenient excuse. That’s why Trump can do pretty much anything. They are so seething in their hatred and intolerance they can’t seem to understand s simple fact. If Trump destroys the economy and massively defunds the social programs (from the largest to the smallest) - the others will suffer but many of them and people just like them will suffer too.
“WHY shOUld i PAy fOR YouR HealTHcarE?”
To save money on healthcare. United we bargain, silly goose
“Why should I pay for your healthcare?” Mfs when you say that you shouldn’t have to buy car insurance if you don’t want to. (Btw to my fbi agent, this is a joke. You’re not getting my ass that easily.)
.
Calvinism is a hell of a drug
Fully brainwashed / mind virused into Prosperity Gospel bullshit. You’re poor because you’re a bad person who deserves to suffer / poor life choices, and the more money someone has means the more God approves of them.
