Christopher Hitchens on the religious Right

Posted by Matra on May 05, 2005, 11:48 AM | #

jonjayray - “Like the Leftist he once was”

That’s the only line I can disagree with from this article: Hitchens is still a leftist.

jonjayray - “Well into the 20th century, Britain was both an almost universally Christian country and also a great beacon of individual liberty and tolerance”

Exactly. So was the US, Canada, and many other Western societies. The agenda of the Religious Right - banning abortion, allowing prayer in schools, decency on the public airwaves - sounds to me like life in the English-speaking world as recently as the 1970s, even the 80s. I was just a child then but other than occasional annoyance at some N Ireland public swimming pools being closed on a Sunday I don’t recall anyone claiming life was horrible and that the laws were oppressive. In liberal Canada we stood for the Lord’s Prayer at state schools well into the 1980s and there were some abortion restrictions and no gay marriages. Am I supposed to look back on this and believe I lived in a theocracy?

Christopher Hitchens is just showing his true colours when he launches his bitter attacks on Christianity. Now if some writer were to make equally hostile remarks about Judaism I wonder how he’d respond?

Posted by who on May 05, 2005, 04:46 PM | #

In regards to the stoning of homosexuals; you must not be familiar with the writings of R.J. Rushdoony and his followers.  Old Testament law is Old Testament law regardless of whether it is Christian or Muslim who are following it.

You discount Hitchens interpretations of these passages, but people have been arguing over the interpretation for hundreds of years—now you come along and say that it is your interpretation and yours only.  Sounds like you are playing a little god on the side.

Posted by Geoff Beck on May 05, 2005, 05:08 PM | #

After the political class in the US squeezes all the political juice out of Christian social conservatives, expect Bush, neoconservatives, and etc… to scape goat them and whip up a public furor against Christians.

Then lefties like C. Hitchens will be far more effective and deadly.

Ulitmately, you need to blame this on Falwell, Land, Robertson and the others that made a deal with the devil.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on May 07, 2005, 10:27 AM | #

You’re right about that, Geoff:  Bush would turn on Christians in an instant if it served his political purposes which are, first and foremost, advancing the interests of the Mexican billionaire oligarch class with which his own family fortunes are intimately intertwined both financially and politically.  (That in a president is called high treason, incidentally—I point that out for those MR.com readers who may live in Rio Linda ...)

And I don’t know who Land is but Robertson and Falwell certainly did stab their country in the back by not protesting its deliberate, forced racial transformation from white to non-white against the people’s will.  Billy Graham, Robert Schuler, the Catholics, and the heads of all mainline Protestant denominations are also guilty of course.  As for the Jewish establishment, many of them see this racial transformation as what they’ve been waiting for, hoping for, praying for, for two thousand years—the destruction of their white Christian nemesis—so can scarcely be expected to protest.

Posted by Geoff Beck on May 07, 2005, 10:40 AM | #

Fred,

Who is Richard Land?

If/when this war in Iraq war collapses, and the public figures it out, expect the political class to blame it on the evangelical Christians - which in some significant part they are responsible, if only being duped.

Posted by Phil Peterson on May 07, 2005, 05:34 PM | #

Fred, Geoff,

Don’t want to butt in on the discussion which is on a subject both of you are far more familiar with.

However, its a strange thing about the Evangelicals in the South. There was this preacher in the South named W A Criswell. Criswell was actually a strict segregationist (he was a bit of a nutter actually because he was also very anti-Catholic apparently). But he was, also, in a weird way very very Pro-Israel in almost the exact same way that Falwell and Robertson also are. This guy was a carbon copy of the insanely pro-Israel, waiting for Armageddon types among America’s current Evangelicals.

And, for all the noise Criswell made supposedly on behalf of the so called “far right”, he actually said nothing about the immigration mess. Nothing. (I am willing to be contradicted by anyone more knowledgeable on this subject)

Posted by Phil Peterson on May 07, 2005, 05:38 PM | #

More on Criswell.

Posted by Geoff Beck on May 07, 2005, 09:45 PM | #

Phil,

There’s been a sea change in protestant congregations in the last 30 years.

The old bourgeiose protestants died and their children largely left the faith. I can attest these congregations were rigidly racially separated, and overall were hostile to Rome. ( A thinking process we inherited from protestant factions in England, remember the your revolution? ).

Anyway, to your point - philosemitism.

This subject of dispensationsationalism (philosemitism) has caught fire with protestants. It was unknown when I was raised in a Presbyterian church.

Immigration really became an issue after 1965 and slowly built until it exploded in the 1990s.

As far as Hispanics, I assure where I lived Hispanic where UNKNOWN. Nobody in the church cared a rat’s as for the subject.