Top Trump administration officials will address a mass prayer meeting in the heart of Washington Sunday – an event organisers bill as reclaiming the country’s religious foundations, but critics say is a quasi-official rally for Christian nationalism.
Despite some of it being in the Bible, socialism and humanitarianism isn’t on the agenda for the major Christian players. There are absolutely some churches that do great work in their communities, but that’s tarnished by the bigger groups who use the power of religion to control the masses and are not interested in considering the softer sides of messages from Jesus.
And the US was founded by a mix of believers, with the intention of being secular for the protection of all beliefs. They knew first hand from history and their current situation what mixing religion and politics does, and also what drawing a line for some beliefs and not others does. Fighting about religion was often between sects of Christianity, and a secular protection helped everyone. It was idealistic, never was 100% and drifted a lot away from that goal, and how far it is seems to correlate with the problems we have.
The point is though, Christianity has influenced and given credence to progressive viewpoints at several junctures throughout American history, so we can sit here and wish upon a star that Jefferson’s vision for a secular America truly emerged, or we can acknowledge that it’s never been quite that simple and that we too can use Christianity for our purposes now just as we have historically. Religion is a weapon and a tool the left has simply given up, and now we’re like “I can’t believe the other side is successfully using this to hurt us.” Find the progressive faith communities, empower them, let them go do spiritual battle for us, see if we make more progress in winning hearts and minds - I bet we do.
I wish the better sides of religion would take arms against the ones using it for their own gain. I think they have that responsibility. They aren’t.
I get what you’re saying, use the same tools but for a greater good. I’d just like us to do things because they’re the right thing to do, and not because some book said or implied it. Because in the end even if you take the broad idea of loving and helping each other from a book, that doesn’t get into how to do that, and often times people with similar goals end up fighting over the details and undoing any progress simply because they can’t agree on the HOW.
There isn’t a better side of religion, there is religious or not. The left hasn’t given up on religion as a tool, they simply aren’t religious. We need less religion dominating peoples lives, not more.