The most terrible force destroying the family unit, and therefore attacking all of Western Civilization, is clearly Evangelical Christianity.
In his sermon, Robinson says, “In this matter of submission, I want you to know upfront ladies, that once you get married, you are no longer your own. You are your husband’s. You understand what I’m saying? I emphasize that because I saw in court the other day on TV where a lady sued her husband for rape. And I would say to you gentlemen, the best person to rape is your wife. But then it has become legalized.”
We have a simple choice before us. Abolish Evangelical Christianity, or abolish marriage. I kinda like my marriage, so I favor the former, but I haven’t asked my wife yet. Maybe she’ll disagree. I don’t own her, so I’d have to respect her decision.
One glimmer of hope here is that even several of the wives of Kent Hovind (whom I presume are pretty hardcore evangelicals) eventually said “hell, no!” and walked away.
Well, Jesus H. Christ.
It is a toss up which was the greater evil Europeans /Americans inflicted on Africans ,and African Americans ,slavery or religion .
I suppose for the Native peoples of the new world it was the choice of either religion or genocide .
At the same time, there’s reporting about how an infamous case of a rapist Baltimore cop has ended in conviction… but the judge decided to skip a jail sentence and sentence him to 4 years of home confinement instead.
Yes, men are very, very concerned about finding and punishing rapists, I can tell.
I’d be for abolishing both Christianity and marriage. If not marriage, then for sure, weddings. They are a scam, and a meaningless, extravagant waste.
Yeah, if this is that guy’s idea of marriage, I’d never ask a woman to debase herself by getting married. Women aren’t property.
Can’t we do both?
This is just some creepy shit. Perhaps his ideas about legalized spousal rape may have a following where he is from, but I can assure you that if I gave my wife a rape ultimatum that would be the fast train to divorce court. She doesn’t belong to me. I rarely tell her what to do (except when it comes to things I know more about, like how to use an analog watch as a compass or making risotto.) Just hearing someone talk like gets my hackles up. Fuck him, fuck him, fuck everyone like him.
@R. L. Foster:
Don’t do that, you don’t know where he’s been. Quite possibly literally.
(It’s always interesting how, for people like these, fidelity is only important for the woman; if the man gets caught cheating, it’s obviously the woman’s fault for not keeping him happy enough. So for anybody who insists that the wife belongs to the husband, I take any claims of the husband’s fidelity with a shaker full of salt.)
This is by no means true of all evangelical Christians .
But it is true of evangelical Christianity as a movement. That’s the problem.
If evangelical Christians didn’t support pastors who preach this shit, pastors wouldn’t preach this shit. So they can say that they personally wouldn’t say husbands should rape wives and that you can’t expect to agree with your pastor 100% on everything or you’re talking about a cult, but how much importance does the evangelical flock who thinks husbands shouldn’t rape wives place on that disagreement?
If the flock thinks that they disagree but not enough to go looking for a new pastor or to reduce their contribution to the church or even to speak up in the church newsletter, then the amount of difference between the pastor who advocates rape and the flock member who would never say that out loud but also wouldn’t oppose that statement in any way, is literally so small as to be insignificant.
If they want to be portrayed as significantly different, then they have to act as if the difference has significance. Until then, evangelical Christianity will continue to have pastors say this crap, we’ll continue to portray it as a problem for the movement as a whole, and the individuals will continue to have to deal with the fact that this implicates them in rape in an uncomfortable way.
They have multiple ways out, if they are Christians who oppose rape. They know what to do when the house is on fire. If they get burned it’s not the fault of anyone here on FtB.
After a little research it looks as if you are correct. But I wonder how many individual evangelicals go along with the movement. Hard to imagine educated, sophisticated evangelicals believing this nonsense. E.g. Francis Collins , head of NIH, also believes in evolution as a scientific fact.
Flange is right.
I’m a superannuated male virgin atheist and am profoundly grateful for avoiding the “Incel” movement despite my own ‘Christian’ upbringing and emotional/sexual pains. (65+)
Bertrand Russell
This has been today’s episode of Brilliant People Saying Stupid-Ass Shit.
Sorry – wrong thread!
davidc1 @3:
Do you mean the Christian religion? Africans had their own religion long before Europeans set foot on the continent thank you very much.
And slavery was much worse. Christianity, arguably, has done some good when you consider its role in the Civil Rights movement. Slavery, OTOH, has done nothing except cause pain and deprivation even generations after it officially ended.
What in the name of their god is wrong with these people. Not going to watch that video, just reading about it is enough to make me puke.
chesapeake–
Francis Collins believes in evolution that god directly interfered with to make humans evolve to be exactly as we are. This is a deeply unscientific view of evolution. His appointment to the NIH was a part of a broad political move to placate evangelicals by putting them in positions of power. As head of the NIH he was behind a failed move to ban stem cell research because he put his religious beliefs ahead of the science. He’s an exceptionally good scientist in his field (genetics) and not a bad NIH director overall (one of the few prominent scientists the Republicans didn’t hound), but he’s hardly a great model for the sophisticated reasoning of evangelicals.
Walter Solomon@16–
The Confederacy was even more religiose than the Union, repeatedly quoted Christian texts to justify slavery, and openly used the secession as an excuse to de-secularise government. The official motto of the Confederacy was Deo Vindice, “God Avenges”. The Southern Baptist church only exists because southerners refused to accept the church ruling that slave-owners could not be appointed as missionaries.
I’d say the Civil War was more of a break-even for Christianity than a win.
chrislawson, Walter was referring to the Civil Rights movement (think Martin Luther King Jr, who was a Christian), not the Civil War. But, still… https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/01/15/why-so-many-white-churches-resisted-martin-luther-king-jr-s-call/
(And, of course, Africans had many religions, before the Christian
torturersmissionaries came along)Christ, what an arsehole.
“£I’d be for abolishing both Christianity and marriage. If not marriage, then for sure, weddings. They are a scam, and a meaningless, extravagant waste.”
I love a good wedding. Doesn’t need to be expensive, but it’s a great excuse for catching up, dancing, and looking nice.
The first state to outlaw marital rape in the States did so in 1975. It took until 1993 for all states to outlaw it, as hard to believe as that is. I’d say the issue isn’t limited to Evangelicals.
#5 / Flange: FWIW, I found my wedding to be a good and meaningful event.
It occurs to me fish have a better process, as the eggs are impregnated outside the body. The mom fish can dump the eggs and swim off.
Some fish have gone even further with simplification , with small males becoming female as they grow bigger.
The Amazon Molly has gone the ultimate step further, using parthenogenesis.
Addendum: I meant, the human obsession with these things is petty and stupid.
And Homo Socialmediensis is dumber than most.
I have a friend who pointed out to me that just because the Right-Wing church has taken on the term “evangelical”, it doesn’t mean that they own the term. There are evangelical Christians who still have the values of Jesus Christ as depicted in the Bible. He’s one of them.
There are the famous Right-Wing “Christian” spokesmen of the world and there are the Jimmy Carters of the world.
(Right-Wings around the world are so very similar)
@16 Well the religions and gods Africans had were of their own making ,same goes for the natives of what came to be known as the new world .
@26 Yeah ,Jimmy Carter ,one of the good guys .Who started off the American support of the religious wackaloons in Afghanistan .
Whoa, there is a god! That pastor done got his stupid ass fired! From a Seventh-day Adventist church, no less. He’s gone!
Not many. For every Francis Collins and Warren Throckmorton, there are many more people like Franklin Graham and Jay Sekulow — i.e. people in positions of power in the evangelical movement who are abuser and rapist apologists.
I mention those names because they were instrumental in the sordid “Save Saeed” campaign to free the evangelical pastor, Saeed Abedini, from Iran and tried to bully his wife, Naghmeh Panahi, into supporting the cause even though she was a victim of years of serious physical and emotional abuse at his hand. She had told them she wanted nothing to do with him until he dealt with his abusive behavior, but they kept pressuring her to reconcile to the point where Graham flew cross-country in his private jet to show up at her home unannounced with Saeed and a couple of marriage counsellors in tow. Graham also demanded to know if she had been faithful to him…
https://julieroys.com/panahi-graham-bullied-salvage-savesaeed/
I have seen multiple cases on Reddit where evangelicals have argued that spousal abuse is not cause for a Biblical divorce and that the wife should continue to attempt reconciliation. They seem completely oblivious to the fact that by doing so she risked serious injury or even death.
So while I suspect a large majority of evangelicals, if challenged, would reject the claim that spousal rape is acceptable in any shape or form, I also have little doubt that a sizeable majority of those same people have beliefs that demonstrate a general antipathy toward women which does nothing to discourage such abuses from happen, and even encourages it in some cases.
The fundie xians have higher rates of divorce than normal people do.
No surprise why that is.
They also have higher rates of any social problems you care to look at, notably child sexual abuse.
No surprise.
This is all the result of patriarchial and authoritarian social systems.
“Hard to imagine educated, sophisticated evangelicals believing […] nonsense.”
Um, …
@18xhrislawson
“ but he’s hardly a great model for the sophisticated reasoning of evangelicals.‘“
He is very sophisticated in his thinking compared to lots of fundamentalists.
I was a member of the legislative staff in California back in 1980 when a measure to outlaw spousal rape was debated. A Republican legislator stood up on his hind legs and demanded to know who he would be permitted to rape if he couldn’t rape his wife. He seemed pleased with his witty remarks. (A version of the proposal finally became law anyway, despite his brilliance.)
John Morales@20–
Thanks for the correction. I misread that as Civil War rather than Civil Rights.
However, the argument still applies. America was (and still is) both a highly religious and very perfomratively religiose country, which means that in any major political conflict there will be devout Christians on both sides almost always quoting their religious beliefs as justification. This doesn’t negate the good works of the many Christians who struggled for and were sometimes murdered for civil rights, but it does mean that we shouldn’t conflate Christianity itself with progressive politics. After all, much of the current schism in America is due to conservative Christians rebelling against progressive gains, so aggressively that they are willing to destroy the democratic process, judicial integrity and many other civic and cultural values in the process.