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Religion in the US has become too political. When I was a kid in the Midwest, the church told us to avoid politics. Then, almost overnight, "abortion" became an

Religion in the US has become too political. When I was a kid in the Midwest, the church told us to avoid politics. Then, almost overnight, "abortion" became an issue, and religious beliefs were no longer confined to church. Now we were supposed to get out and vote. Ever since it's just felt more like a PAC than anything else.

smackeyacky 5y ago
Religion was always political. We're still in living memory of highly sectarian societies where, for example in Australia, a Catholic was a lower social grade than Church of England and being a Methodist was something else entirely. All of these groups voted differently, associated differently and married differently. This hung on longer in small towns in Australia but was a definite societal attribute right up until the mid-1960s where it started to break down. We had waves of social change that barely shook that structure: Catholic churches and schools were once almost exclusively Irish, but the immigration from Italy during the 1940s/1950s changed that ethnic mixture significantly with barely a murmur to the social structure or how those people voted (predominantly aligned with the left for working class reasons). The church publically told them how to vote and they did it. As older churches like the Methodists disappeared (or were subsumed into more liberal church traditions) and the left started embracing social reforms (no-fault divorce, womens liberation, abortion, birth control, the breakdown of racial segregation) the religious part of society bifurcated: the more religious folk went to the right and the less religious folk just started walking away from church. That division was the end of organised religion as a driving social force. Now, the thing most christians seem to despise the most is other christians of a slightly different faith. Most organised religions have only themselves to blame for their quickly falling church attendance for that reason.
- somethoughts 5y ago
  I'd layer on that "Religion was always political... but in the US it didn't need to be overtly political". By that I'd say since the silent majority of the population was Protestant then dominant Protestant religion would freely be intertwined with government. It's only when there is no longer a dominant Protestant religion that Religion becomes visible in politics.
  - smackeyacky 5y ago
    I can't say I've had much direct experience of the religious-political nexus in the US but as an external observer one thing that stands out to me was the objection to John F. Kennedy becoming president because he was Catholic and would be "beholden" to the papacy. In one respect though, the US and Australia share the history that our leaders have predominantly been protestant. I think that's far more a social class structure artifact than anything blatantly religious though. The denomination of the leader doesn't always dictate who gets the ear of the party in our political system though - Gough Whitlam was famously coerced into including the catholic schools into our public funded school system because they were "broke" - a somewhat laughable assertion even at the time, when the Catholic church was, and is, one of the richest institutions on the planet.
    - Kye 5y ago
      Our media has never been representative of the population's views. It was always spinning an image that looked like the people doing the presenting, even when they didn't mean to. I doubt many people actually cared about the president's religion. They might for a brief moment while the media was making a big deal out of it, but they forgot they ever cared as quickly as they took the issue up. The memory hole in 1984 wasn't just something Orwell made up from nothing.
stevenwoo 5y ago
In the larger picture outside of the midwest, being anti-abortion was just the fundamentalist switch from being pro-segregation after trying out several other issues. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/ https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-ri...
QuarterReptile 5y ago
May I ask why the scare quotes on abortion?
- forgotmyoldname 5y ago
  Probably because a some churches will put a disproportionate amount of political rallying around banning something that Numbers 5:11-31 requires in some cases, but absolutely never mention marching or voting to feed the poor, help children, or other things. Some undeniably do care about abortion. Some have financial ties to politics and abortion is the easiest wedge issue that they can claim to religiously justify.
eadmund 5y ago
> Then, almost overnight, "abortion" became an issue, and religious beliefs were no longer confined to church. Before that, the political issue churches were supporting was civil rights; a century before that, it was the abolition of slavery. I don't think it is possible for anyone who takes positions on right or wrong to be truly apolitical: 'I avoid politics' mostly means 'I find the status quo tolerable.'
- trasz 5y ago
  Except that civil rights were an actual problem, as was slavery. Abortion, on the other hand, is not - it's an artificial problem invented for political reasons.
  - floor2 5y ago
    Ironically, abortion is in fact a continuation of civil rights, society is just still in the dark ages on it. Society has been dehumanizing people to deny them basic rights forever, the civil rights movement has been the fight against that, and today the most dehumanized group is unwanted babies. The civil rights struggle has largely been about society coming to terms with oppressed groups being worthy of having equal human rights, whether that was on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, nationality, religion, disability, whatever. Suggesting that a fetus doesn't deserve a right to live is no different than suggesting that any other marginalized, dehumanized group doesn't. In essence, human rights for the unborn today are where human rights for Black people were in the 1850s. Hopefully someday we'll treat young life with the same respect we treat old life.
    - trasz 5y ago
      Quite the opposite: abortion ban dehumanises woman by denying them their basic human right: the right to decide about their body. Abortion ban isn't fundamentally any different from mandatory organ donation from living donors. (This of course ignores the fact that the ideological basis for abortion ban is literally just stupid; it was Acquinas himself who explained how flawed the idea of "life from conception" was.)
kylehotchkiss 5y ago
ugh, this was the biggest thing that pushed me out of church. It was back when you-know-who was running for president and attending events with church members and hearing them justify how he was a great candidate on a faith basis really killed me inside. It wasn’t even a “less of two evils” for them, it was a sincere belief that he would rally in a new era for Christians. Of course that didn’t happen.

smackeyacky 5y ago

Religion was always political. We're still in living memory of highly sectarian societies where, for example in Australia, a Catholic was a lower social grade than Church of England and being a Methodist was something else entirely. All of these groups voted differently, associated differently and married differently. This hung on longer in small towns in Australia but was a definite societal attribute right up until the mid-1960s where it started to break down. We had waves of social change that barely shook that structure: Catholic churches and schools were once almost exclusively Irish, but the immigration from Italy during the 1940s/1950s changed that ethnic mixture significantly with barely a murmur to the social structure or how those people voted (predominantly aligned with the left for working class reasons). The church publically told them how to vote and they did it. As older churches like the Methodists disappeared (or were subsumed into more liberal church traditions) and the left started embracing social reforms (no-fault divorce, womens liberation, abortion, birth control, the breakdown of racial segregation) the religious part of society bifurcated: the more religious folk went to the right and the less religious folk just started walking away from church. That division was the end of organised religion as a driving social force. Now, the thing most christians seem to despise the most is other christians of a slightly different faith. Most organised religions have only themselves to blame for their quickly falling church attendance for that reason.

somethoughts 5y ago
I'd layer on that "Religion was always political... but in the US it didn't need to be overtly political". By that I'd say since the silent majority of the population was Protestant then dominant Protestant religion would freely be intertwined with government. It's only when there is no longer a dominant Protestant religion that Religion becomes visible in politics.
- smackeyacky 5y ago
  I can't say I've had much direct experience of the religious-political nexus in the US but as an external observer one thing that stands out to me was the objection to John F. Kennedy becoming president because he was Catholic and would be "beholden" to the papacy. In one respect though, the US and Australia share the history that our leaders have predominantly been protestant. I think that's far more a social class structure artifact than anything blatantly religious though. The denomination of the leader doesn't always dictate who gets the ear of the party in our political system though - Gough Whitlam was famously coerced into including the catholic schools into our public funded school system because they were "broke" - a somewhat laughable assertion even at the time, when the Catholic church was, and is, one of the richest institutions on the planet.
  - Kye 5y ago
    Our media has never been representative of the population's views. It was always spinning an image that looked like the people doing the presenting, even when they didn't mean to. I doubt many people actually cared about the president's religion. They might for a brief moment while the media was making a big deal out of it, but they forgot they ever cared as quickly as they took the issue up. The memory hole in 1984 wasn't just something Orwell made up from nothing.

stevenwoo 5y ago

In the larger picture outside of the midwest, being anti-abortion was just the fundamentalist switch from being pro-segregation after trying out several other issues. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/ https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-ri...

QuarterReptile 5y ago

May I ask why the scare quotes on abortion?

forgotmyoldname 5y ago
Probably because a some churches will put a disproportionate amount of political rallying around banning something that Numbers 5:11-31 requires in some cases, but absolutely never mention marching or voting to feed the poor, help children, or other things. Some undeniably do care about abortion. Some have financial ties to politics and abortion is the easiest wedge issue that they can claim to religiously justify.

eadmund 5y ago

> Then, almost overnight, "abortion" became an issue, and religious beliefs were no longer confined to church. Before that, the political issue churches were supporting was civil rights; a century before that, it was the abolition of slavery. I don't think it is possible for anyone who takes positions on right or wrong to be truly apolitical: 'I avoid politics' mostly means 'I find the status quo tolerable.'

trasz 5y ago
Except that civil rights were an actual problem, as was slavery. Abortion, on the other hand, is not - it's an artificial problem invented for political reasons.
- floor2 5y ago
  Ironically, abortion is in fact a continuation of civil rights, society is just still in the dark ages on it. Society has been dehumanizing people to deny them basic rights forever, the civil rights movement has been the fight against that, and today the most dehumanized group is unwanted babies. The civil rights struggle has largely been about society coming to terms with oppressed groups being worthy of having equal human rights, whether that was on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, nationality, religion, disability, whatever. Suggesting that a fetus doesn't deserve a right to live is no different than suggesting that any other marginalized, dehumanized group doesn't. In essence, human rights for the unborn today are where human rights for Black people were in the 1850s. Hopefully someday we'll treat young life with the same respect we treat old life.
  - trasz 5y ago
    Quite the opposite: abortion ban dehumanises woman by denying them their basic human right: the right to decide about their body. Abortion ban isn't fundamentally any different from mandatory organ donation from living donors. (This of course ignores the fact that the ideological basis for abortion ban is literally just stupid; it was Acquinas himself who explained how flawed the idea of "life from conception" was.)

kylehotchkiss 5y ago

ugh, this was the biggest thing that pushed me out of church. It was back when you-know-who was running for president and attending events with church members and hearing them justify how he was a great candidate on a faith basis really killed me inside. It wasn’t even a “less of two evils” for them, it was a sincere belief that he would rally in a new era for Christians. Of course that didn’t happen.