Daily Archives: November 18, 2011

Fundamentalism and Religion win long term.

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This is a comment from Mangan’s and it comes in the context of Dalrocks’ argument that over the last 40 years the conservatives have accomodated women’s wishes (particularly their daughter’s wishes) without any condemnation until we have ended up in a situation where men are walking away.

Commentator Dan said

There is a solution, and it is as radical as feminism. That solution is hard religious orthodoxy to the point of fundamentalism.

I am in a religious marriage and I would have to call myself thoroughly happy. I went to an Ivy League University and graduated with honors. I am a fairly successful federal employee. We will soon have four kids so far and she is just thirty. There are no plans yet to stop having kids. My tribe is increasing. My parents delightedly help with every bone in their body. They love the grandkids.

My wife is much better looking at me, is college educated and can answer many more jeopardy questions than me.

And so it will be in the world. Nature bats last and she bats 1.000. Demographics is destiny. Liberal ‘mainline’ Christian denominations were 2/3 of American Christianity

a century ago, and that is now down to 1/3, with more fundamentalist Churches making up the difference. In Israel the Ultra Orthodox are shooting upward from a fringe to the group that politically owns the country.

Men can take control of this. Just don’t be afraid to be single for a while. Work your butt off to get degrees and a good job and otherwise become desirable and then make traditional-mindedness a core criterion. Don’t dabble with dating anybody who is not a good candidate your traditional wife. And tell her your plans for her to be your stay-at-home-while-the-kids-are-small motherly wife clear early. If it scares her away or freaks her out, good. She won’t waste your time or your money.

via Mangan’s: The Backlash Against Feminism.

Well Dan is correct. For the young Christian man… only marry a woman who is prepared to live a traditional life, and be in a church where being a traditional wife is actively supported, divorce is shunned, and putting down husbands is also shunned.

However… you have to isolate yourselves from the poison. And here I don’t mean HBO (close to porn) or romantic novesl (porn) or Porn porn. I mean the whispers. The romantic comedies about finding oneself, The idea that you can get fat, go pagan, and you will be swept off your feet by a younger, tighter Romeo. You have to shut your roaming eye.

And this message needs to be taken on board by women. Men know that. They agree to cleave to her and her alone. While they guard their eyes, women have to guard their ears. From the co worker who puts down men. From the stories of divorce being justified. From the rationalisation that the kids will do OK.

You both need to be fundamentalist, Liberalism is dying out. You must take a religious beleif to confront and beat ideologies of this world and the religions that will oppress and destroy you for your faith. A lax beleif is as lethal as bringing a knife to a gun fight.

The demographic writing is on the wall. We need to be more like the Amish or the Hasidim than the current Archbishop of Canterbury.

Confrontation is needed, or people get lost.

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We have a duty to correct one another. Sometimes this is about trivial things — such as my tendency to play Ani diFranco (who once satirised feminists as “those righteous babes that have their panties on too tight”: my habit of reading the Spectator, and liking (some) Americans.
However, those are trivial. Much more important is confronting the entrenched biases within the church that put women on a pedestal (bad for them) and men in the outhouse (worse, because they leave), water down the gospel, and do not confront when we sin.
Because Jesus does not want any of the flock lost

Matthew 18:10-20

10“Take care that you do not despise one of these little ones; for, I tell you, in heaven their angels continually see the face of my Father in heaven. 12What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? 13And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. 14So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.

15“If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. 16But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. 18Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. 19Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. 20For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

Now there is a lot in this passage. There is a clear instruction that you do not need a quorum, or a bishop, or a structure to act in this manner. It is the duty of all to correct. What has tended to happen is that it is dumped onto the professionals and hierarchies — to the ridiculous situation where the Pope is blamed for events that happened 20 years ago that he was opposing (as a priest and theologian), frequently in dioceses that were ignoring the teaching of the pope and were functionally not merely protestant but heretical. Or blaming the moderator of the Presbyterian Church for events when it is a post you hold for but one year.

The church in the West is corrupt and flawed. Across many or most branches. Our errors include:

  • A tolerance of divorce and other sexual sin.
  •  We tolerate people,and praise them as successes, who succeed in businesses that harm or damage people. We may shun slavers and pornographers, but accept those that oppress their workers or charge usurious rates of interest.
  • A weakening of the gospel. No one preaches the hard passages. No one talks about hell. Jesus is not seen as a man opening a way for us to reconcile from our inevitable damnation through his death and resurrection but as a good teacher. There is a move to functional unitarianism and reducing Christianity to the level of Buddhism — a good philosophy that increases your happiness rather than the means of salvation.
  • A lack of external witness. The church is always being broken by scandals. We need to be influencing the culture around us by our behaviour (from fidelity and modesty to financial probity) not be shunted to one side because of the bad behaviour of a minority.
  • A move to what C. S. Lewis called “Christianity and”.  Socialist Christians. Feminist Christians. Conservative Christians. Traditionalist Christians. If the ideology is greater than the faith and all the hard sayings in the gospel — indeed the gospel itself — is filtered by the ideology, one is in error. And yes, there is now a Men’s Rights version of this, which can equally be an error.
  • A lack of reading. We have two thousand years of writings from believers who had to work through the difficulties of that day. We have their writings. We can use their writings as a check on our behaviour and work out how to deal with issues because what we face has come before and will come again. This is the reason that I quote from Calvin so much — it is online and he was living in  a self ruling city, facing some of the same issues. It is the reason that the Catholics look at the church fathers so much (Calvin, by the way, does discuss the church fathers extensively. Those who followed him less so.)

We need to regather the means of correction. Men don’t mind their brother doing this. Women have to learn to accept it from women. For none of us are completely pure. We all sin. We all are in error. The spirit is with the Church, true, but the church is not one person. It is people. And these people are commanded to correct each other.