Too many devout believers claim a righteous mandate to say and do things that are truly horrible.
Christians may be a super majority in the U.S. They may control the U.S. Congress and, as we all were reminded recently, the Supreme Court. But that hasn’t stopped Bible believers from preparing their children for martyrdom. Web resources abound for church youth leaders who want to make sure their young charges are ready when the lions come for them. Titles include, “ Expect to be Persecuted ” “ Persecution Equals Reward ” and “ Adventure Game—Persecution of Christians and Paul of Tarsus .”
Stuff Fundies Like is a blog by and for people coming out of the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist tradition. Recently one former Baptist told how his high school youth group had been divided into two groups, assigned to play the roles of persecutors and martyrs. In 2012 a youth pastor in Pennsylvania made international news by staging the kidnapping of his young charges to help prepare them for the horrors to come.
The Christian persecution complex is absurd. Modern American Christians are not persecuted or under attack. But for Christians who are truly concerned about hostility toward their faith, I have a bit of advice: Don’t be evil. And don’t let your co-religionists get away with being evil either.
No, really.
In the book of Matthew, Jesus gives his disciples a lot of contradictory advice. Modern day followers pick and choose, but one piece that often gets ignored is this: Be harmless as doves . This advice is not only profoundly moral; it is profoundly self-protective. Far fewer people would be entertaining themselves with fantasies about lions if more Christians took this little nugget seriously. A huge part of the antagonism that even moderate Christians face from outsiders is due to the fact that too many devout believers claim a righteous mandate to say and do things that are truly horrible.
Let me spell it out.
1. Opposing protections and rights for children is evil. Thanks to the influence of biblical Christianity, the U.S. stands alone with Somalia in failing to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child . Why? Because the Bible instructs parents to hit their children, among other things. Laws that give rights to children go head to head with biblical texts which say in no uncertain terms that children are the property of their fathers, to be punished or even killed in accordance with the father’s religious beliefs and other priorities.
When a Muslim father in Tunisia recently burned his 13 year old daughter to death for walking home with a male classmate, Christians were rightfully appalled. What many fail to acknowledge is that their insistence on elevating religion above universal ethical principles, human rights, and secular laws regularly costs children their lives , not just children with Muslim parents governed by Muslim theocracies, but also children with Christian parents in towns across America .
2. Denying young people accurate information about their bodies is evil. The U.S. government just spent a decade and a billion dollars on failed abstinence-only education programs concocted by Bible believers who live in some delusional world where prohibition works and virginity is next to godliness. Thanks to their influence, straight-faced educators tell teens that a girl who has had sex is a licked lollipop . Instead of medically accurate information and thoughtful conversation about intimacy and childbearing, teens get promise rings and slut shame.
The result? Here in the U.S., more than one in four girls gets pregnant before she turns 20, often with heartbreaking multigenerational consequences for women, children and whole communities. More than half of girls who give birth during high school drop out, permanently. Only two percent ever graduate college.
3. Demeaning and subjugating women is evil. When it comes to dignity and equality for women, instead of acting as moral torchbearers, Bible believers have been at the back of the pack for generations, along with conservative factions from other Abrahamic traditions ranging from Islam to Mormonism. The American Quiverfull movement, “ complementarianism ,” the expulsion of Southern Baptist women who were making inroads into the clergy, the Mormon Patriarchy’s threats to excommunicate women who seek equality, the Vatican’s decision to crush nuns who thought poverty was a bigger problem than abortion . . . Need I say more?
4. Obstructing humanity’s transition to more thoughtful, intentional childbearing is evil. “If a woman dies in [child]bearing, let her die; she is there to do it.” So spoke Martin Luther. But beyond the horrors of women dying after days of labor or bleeding out after unwanted childbirth, lies the incontrovertible evidence that children, families and whole communities do better when parents can plan their families. As one medical student put it , “The failure of any sect to support the benefits to humanity that could be obtained through the use of contraceptive technology is blasphemy.”
If evidence-based compassion— the intersection of truth and love —was at the top of Christian priorities, hunger and destitution would be vastly diminished because millions of mothers would be able to plan and prepare for their babies. But for two generations, Christian patriarchs have been fighting against public health advocates every step of the way. In June alone, Christians in the U.S. congress voted to slash family planning aid by 25 percent, and the five Catholic men on the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the “religious freedom” of corporations is more important than the right of working women to care for their health and their families.
5. Undermining science is evil. Science has been called what we know about how not to fool ourselves. The discovery of empiricism and falsification—a method of inquiry that forces scholars to ask the questions that could show them wrong—is what has differentiated modernity from the Middle Ages. It’s the reason most of our children don’t die before hitting the age of five. It’s the reason broken legs heal straight, sky scrapers don’t collapse, and our houses are warm in the winter. It is what alerted us to the fact that our carbon consumption has become an existential threat.
But the scientific method has also become an existential threat to Bible belief. We know now that the Genesis creation story is myth, neurotransmitters rather than demons cause mental illness, mandrake roots and dove blood don’t improve female fertility or cure skin diseases, and the cognitive structures of the human mind predispose us to certain kinds of religious belief.
It may boggle moral credibility that believers intent on propping up the Bible would sacrifice humanity’s best hope of beating the enormous threats we face, threats like resource depletion, food and water shortages, climate change, and rapidly evolving superbugs . But if there’s any overarching theme to Christian history it is this: the end justifies the means.
6. Promoting holy war is evil. What first flipped my bit, what transformed me from an agnostic into an outspoken full-time antagonist of Bible worship was a conversation with my Evangelical relatives about the Iraq war. From the vantage of my relatives and my childhood church “family,” George Bush needed no diplomatic or cultural expertise; he was Born Again. He didn’t need to seek input from his earthly father about the invasion, because he asked his Heavenly Father. Besides, Jesus is coming soon and war in the Middle East is predicted in the Bible. That makes it not only inevitable, but—in a manner of speaking—desirable.
Evangelical Christians have spent tens of millions of dollars funding the “return” of Jews to Israel and settlements in the West Bank “as it is written in the scripture”—with the perverse expectation that their presence will one day cause blood to flow in the streets as high as a horse’s bridle .
7. Abusing and killing queers is evil. The Bible’s clobber verses may be open to interpretation, but the fact that those verses have caused centuries of suffering is not. For much of American history, the common term for queer was the biblical “sodomite,” implying that gays are so offensive to God that they pose a threat to society as a whole. Thanks to Christian missionaries, African and Latin American queers also have now lived for centuries now under the threat of violent death. As progressive Anglican Gay Clark Jennings observes , “There is no getting around the Bible when searching for the origins of the homophobia that is rampant in many African cultures. What’s more, Europeans and North Americans bear much of the historical responsibility for this sad state of affairs.”
It would be bad enough if we were simply talking about history. But homophobic American Christians, thwarted at home, have turned to inciting oppression in Uganda and Nigeria where their hatred still finds fertile ground.
8. Destroying Earth’s web of life and impoverishing future generations is evil. The book of Genesis may say that only man is made in the image of God and that God gave man dominion over everything that grows or walks the earth. The book of Matthew may say that the return of Jesus is imminent and that his disciples shouldn’t worry about tomorrow , which will take care of itself . The book of Revelation may teach that this world is just a prelude to streets of gold.
But some of us think the lives and loves of other species have moral weight of their own. And some of us think that the intricate web that gave us birth is both precious and precarious, and that the wellbeing of future generations matters. And we think those verses in Genesis and Matthew and Revelation reveal more about the hubris and flawed humanity of the Bible writers (and of Bible believers) than they do about divinity.
9. Trying to suck vulnerable people into your poorly researched worldview is evil. It’s one thing to latch onto the supernatural worldview you were raised in or the one that first triggered for you some radically cool temporal lobe micro-seizure or similar altered state . But then failing to do your homework before using your position of adult American privilege to foist your religion on kindergarteners , or families who live in desperate poverty , or people who just got hit by a natural disaster —in other words people who trust you because you are older or richer or more powerful or have more access to the very information that you have failed to use —now we’re talking about a violation of ethics. Just because something is legal doesn’t make it right.
Really.
Some reader is bound to say that without God anything goes and so as a nontheist I have no basis for calling anything evil. A short snarky retort has been making its way around the internet: If you can’t tell right from wrong without appealing to an authority or a sacred text, what you lack is not religion but compassion. The long answer, meaning the evidence showing we really can recognize evil and good without gods , is available in neuroscience , sociology , developmental psychology , and in the lives of individual atheists including the Dalai Lama .
I realize that many Christians are not Bible believers, but rather people who glean through the Christian tradition to claim what seems timeless and wise. I also realize that most Bible believers aren’t trying to do harm—in fact the opposite. I know because I’ve been there . But, when you treat the words of our Iron Age ancestors as if they flowed straight from the mouth of God, you end up putting your life energy, whether you see it that way or not, into bringing back the Iron Age.
The Iron Age was a time of incredible brutality—tribalism, warfare, destitution, disease, murder, misogyny, sexual slavery and superstition of biblical proportions. Most of us would rather not go back, thank you very much. Christians who want a better future are welcome to join in the inquiry and teamwork it will take to get there, and many do. For the rest of you: please forgive the fact that your Iron Age fantasies trigger some of us to experience wry Iron Age fantasies of our own.
https://www.alternet.org/belief/9-truly-evil-things-right-wing-christians-do
Bad right wing !
Bad right wing !
"If thine reicht wing offendeth thee, vote Democratic"...
Gee John, you are really pissed this morning.
I'll sum up my feelings quickly. Though I myself am a heathen, I find no fault with true believers (as long as they don't attempt to convert me). Hypocritical believers on the other hand serve no one but themselves.
As my Sainted mother would say: Practice what you preach.
Most adherents to religion especially the Abrahamic followers seriously doubt a great deal of what they profess, they follow out of fear of the unknown and the desire to have something to cling to about the afterlife. The idea that when you die it's lights out and you simply are no more just like before you were born terrifies the shit out of them, which is why it is such an easy sell to promise them something to hang their hopes on. Ever notice how many churches name themselves along the lines of Hope or Everlasting, which if they were honest it would be simply pay here pray here. A large percentage of the faithful are such out of good intention, the rest not so much.
Yes. I have always been amazed by the funeral sermons proclaiming that the deceased is now enjoying bliss in Paradise instead of being shackled to a disease riddled body when I know that the deceased had endured months of intense medical torture to avoid "enjoying bliss in Paradise". It proves that they did not have the faith that they said they had.....or that they believed that they would really be deservedly spending an eternity in Hell.
Also, there is using the Bible to justify whatever atrocities they commit and then using the Bible as a platform to demand forgiveness for the atrocities they committed that cannot be justified by using the Bible. The teaching of "forgiving" abusive men is especially detrimental to women who are abused. It causes them to stay in relationships/marriages that are detrimental to their mental and physical health.
My pet peeve......Being told you're going to hell or you'll have to answer to God and then pointing out that not all believe in "their" God (which of course in their mind is the only God) or any God, then being told you're still going to hell. Circular logic.
I am Christian and a proud conservative... I do not push any religion on those who chose not to follow. I find it crazy that within the title itself automatically defines all right wing people to be evil. If one does not follow faith, define good vs evil. Hey, besides all that good to see y’all from newsvine. Look forward to getting back into it.
AR
I don't see where it says "all" ... and it probably should have said "some"...
That said, welcome "back"
"to the show that never ends"...
hey thanks Split appreciate that
No, it doesn't. It declares some actions to be evil.
Which faith? Do all agree on what is good, and what is evil?
9 Truly Evil Things Right-Wing Christians Do
That pretty much says Right Wing Christians to me
Which faith ? How about any.
AR
Evil is an adjective describing the actions, not the people.
As far as any faith - they don't all hold the same actions to be good or evil.
WELL, you SHOULD be scared. Come to think of it, we were discussing abortion just the other day, and figured out 20 uses for a fresh fetus. Oddly, 16 of them involved recipes. It was just luck that trouts backed out at the last minute or I'd had to reveal my 5 times back great aunt's (from Salem, mass.) recipe for "placenta and fetus parts" soup.
We haven't gotten around to recipes for post-birth babies, children and adults. Yet.
I'm still perfecting my "MI-5 Agent with Dill Sauce" recipe
Sounds spicy enough to blow your face off. Looking forward to the recipe, after it's been defused.
"blow your face offf"
now that's funny and my first real belly laugh of the day
Check into Heartland American's seeds and let us know what you think.
Why is that?
I will leave that for you to figure out.
Ok thanks John
Let me explain.
John feels that Homelands articles are the flip side of this article. He is trying to make the point that both serve no purpose other than to irritate.
Thanks Perrie, pretty much clears it up.
AR
It's Heartland, not Homeland. You're toeing the CoC. Consider yourself warned and think about suspending yourself over the weekend.
considering the blatant vitriol of the articles/blogs posted, this attempt at trying to riducule another member is laughable.
oh please
Lol what lol
I beg your pardon.
NO ONE else on this site does now or has EVER posted articles about a particular political ideology the way XX Jefferson (Heartland American) does. For years now he has been posting articles, just about daily , that are pure venom about "liberals", leftists", and"progressives" . He has seeded countless numbers of such articles, and lately, because his seeding has been restricted, that is all he seeds. People are fed the fuck up with it.
I have never seeded many articles at all attacking "conservatives" for their ideology. On rare occasion I seed something about libertarians and their messed up ideology.
XX does this every single day.
I do seed about Trump, but he is an individual that many conservatives don't even accept, so attacking him is not attacking the ideology. He is an individual who is simply not qualified to be president of the United States. He's not honest, he's not ethical, he is profoundly ignorant of the issues, and he is a bully. Not fit to serve.
If Heartland American insists on seeding his crap every day, we may need to see what it is like to have the other side post the same sort of articles all the time. That may be the only thing that will get through to some of you who support him.
Heartland only seeds that crap to get a rise out of us. We need to stop feeding his bullshit. Ignore his seeds
I ignore his seeds as much as anyone does.
But seriously, that will not work. First of all, he is a true believer in that horseshit and would seed it even if it didnt get any comments, and secondly, there will always be more than enough people who won't "ignore" it.
Nobody is telling you to stop commenting. If the liberals would stop trying to "educate" him, he would probably slink back to his own private groups.
I know you ignore them, but the thing is, he can't be "educated" even by the greatest Einstiens on Newstalkers. He's a true believer and maybe he will continue his games, but you and I both know he only posts that trash to start food fights
Somehow I knew that...
Do you want one?
Heartland America/Cornhusker floods the forum every evening with threads of his particular ideology. I assumed that he owned this place the way that he posted threads.
He always provides plenty of comments (and votes) on his own seeds.....lol
He did get sick of the blowback on NV before he quit and came to NT.
So there's hope...
Freedom of speech - You don't like it?
I love it...and I'm finding it easier and easier to ignore stuff around here
There is no freedom of speech on private property that you don't own, so unless the US government owns Newstalkers...........
You also don't have the right not to be criticized so put on your big boys pants.
Is Trump a political ideology?
Why is that any skin off your nose? Just like the T.V., if you don't like it, change the channel. Others don't need to know and they don't particualy care for your suggested reading (or not-reading, as the case may be) list.
You post the same ole, same ole most days of the week with a few words changed and yet you campaign against someone else for doing the same thing form the other direction.
What is the point? Opposing Trump is not opposing a political ideology. IMO, Trump does not represent conservativism, liberalism, libertarianism, or really any political ideology. He represents nepotism, racism, authoritarianism, and egotism, but those are not specifically conservative traits. There is a reason that many true conservatives don't support him - they have integrity.
I'm glad you got that off your chest
Can I get an Amen?
Cooperation vs domination.
Religion is divisive and causes conflicts over which gods and rules to follow.
Some brief history on the evolution of mankind and violence.
You do have a point. In the end, it is all tied together... good vs evil. Religion, warfare, politics, life will always be tied together. And that’s why this is a sensitive subject... all of it. A curse on us and the worldly ways. Anyhow, thanks for the info Mocowgirl.
AR
Quest for domination of others is evil.
Religion, warfare, and politics are some of the methods used to achieve domination of others.
Some of it is .., yes... and if one is following their faith correctly, they should not be pushing Christianity on others, it’s a simple choice. There are other religions that strictly dictate pushing their beliefs on others and dominating the planet ... one comes to mind directly but why waste the time lol.
i can think of more than just one
Agreed about not pushing religion.
But it is not a "choice". According to the directions of the New Testament, the adherents of the Christian religion have the duty to preach the "truth" and "save" others.
I have been watching videos about the English monarchy which evolves from the "divine right" of kings to rule to the fact that monarchs are not "divine" but mere mortals who should be ruled by others instead of rule others.
The following episode about English history is very interesting when it comes to religion and the attempts of the Catholic church to regain control of the English throne when the last Stuart king converts to Catholicism after taking the throne. English royals have the right to convert to Catholicism, but in doing so, they must relinquish their claim to the English throne.
Love watching all these videos regarding the old English kings and Queens, especially the war of the roses and Henry VIII (his poor wives).
Sad that religion played such a dominant role in that time period - Wolsey and Cromwell were pure evil to me.
Church of England was the only acceptable religion for many years.
If you like something on the lighter side....you might like watching Victoria on Masterpiece. It has been very good.
I have been watching and I agree that is has been very good. I have been watching videos on youtube about Victoria, also.
Absolutely fascinating, thanks !!!
Thanks Mocowgirl for more information....
I am fascinated by English history, especially the Civil War and the War of the Roses.
One has to appreciate the irony.
The English were brutal to each other, the Irish and the Scotts,
then act all surprised by the American Revolution,
in particular the non standard military practices of the likes of Francis Marion and others.
In true form, more American rebels died in English prisons (mostly anchored ships) from starvation and disease,
than on the great and small battlefields of our Revolution.
That isn't what "divine right" meant, no one was claiming they were demigods. It should be noted we still have a Queen as our head of State.
English royals have the right to convert to Catholicism, but in doing so, they must relinquish their claim to the English throne.
This was down to religious bigotry.
I believe it might have something to do with not wanting the Pope in Rome to control English monarchs.
The history of religion is filled with power struggles, atrocities and war in the name of various religious sects, but none compare to that of the Roman Catholic church.
Being Catholic didn't mean controlled by the Pope, this was one of the Protestant churches big lies. Even until a few decades ago this was still believed, and cries of popery could still be heard, it was nonsense.
It was religious bigotry leftover from the religious wars that tormented Europe.
The history of religion is filled with power struggles, atrocities and war in the name of various religious sects, but none compare to that of the Roman Catholic church.
Try the Islamic conquest of India, the death toll runs from 8,000,000 to 60,000,000 depending who you listen to. It's perhaps the largest genocide in history.
There are claims of an even larger death toll, but I'm not including them, as they seem far fetched.
As for the Divine right of Kings, as your evidence shows, it was a "theological justification for absolute monarchy" not a claim they were divine, as suggested in your post.
Marriages had to be to other Catholics....children had to be raised Catholic....divorces had to be approved by Pope.
If that is not "control" then what is it?
Really, that's what you call control!
We're talking about running kingdoms!
You could have used the loss of tax on land willed to the church, or the Popes intrigues and political machinations, but you came back with marriages, and divorce.
I suggest you read up on the Protestant/Catholic wars in Europe and get back to me.
I know the history of wealth and power of the Roman Catholic church. So do the men who wrote laws that at one time prohibited Catholics from holding office in the US.
Holding power over the government and/or heads of governments allows the RCC to control the country.
Not after independence at the Federal level. The prohibitions on office stemmed from Britain, as I said this based on religious hatred, and later a need to justify/uphold a change in Monarchs.
Follow the link read it and learn.
I already knew all of that.
Why should anyone have to have the Roman Catholic Church's permission to marry or divorce? Who /what gave the RCC that kind of authority? What other Christian sect rivals the power (and atrocities committed) of the RCC? Not so long ago, the RCC was the wealthiest organization in the world and may still be because the Vatican goes to great lengths to keep its true wealth hidden.
The RCC is more intent on accumulating wealth in this existence instead of Heaven.
Maybe, you need to acquaint yourself with the historical practices of the Roman Catholic Church or maybe you already know how the RCC has accumulated vast wealth and used it to provide the Pope and his male subordinates opulent lifestyles.
How is that any less a degree of control? When you can control eligibility for marriage for large parts of the population, force those who are married to have many children and indoctrinate them to increase the numbers of those you control, legally prevent them from leaving, even tell them what they can eat on different days of the week - that's control. I'd call it totalitarianism. Much more invasive, IMO, than controlling a king or prime minister who doesn't care what people eat on Friday, or how many kids they have.
I already knew all of that.
Really, then kindly explain why you posted
I believe it might have something to do with not wanting the Pope in Rome to control English monarchs.
If you already knew all the information in the link why would you claim the above, when you knew it to be incorrect?
Why should anyone have to have the Roman Catholic Church's permission to marry or divorce?
You are joking here?
I thought you claimed you knew the information within the link I provided, so the above has to be an attempt at a joke
I'll operate on the basis that you're unfamiliar with European history, and explain in a way I think you'll understand
Think of it as a private club, with various rankings of membership
It provided services to it's members
The more powerful you were the better the services.
In short it was in the vested interests of the powerful/rulers to be part of it.
Let me ask you a direct question, why do you think the Pope refused Henry a divorce?
Actually, the church placed itself as the rulers of the Earth. So unless a person wanted to be ruled by a dictatorship there is really nothing of value for anyone to subjugate themselves to the Pope and his henchmen.
The church justified the social order of the day, it supported the rulers right to govern, but to claim the church held the whip is mostly nonsense. Yes under a few strong Popes, faced with weak or ineffectual rulers the balance could be tilted, but more often the shoe was on the other foot. I'll give you an example, even a very minor power like Scotland could and did ignore the Pope.
Actually, the church placed itself as the rulers of the Earth.
The last time I heard rubbish like this was from Ian Paisley, usually his face would be red from the strain of shouting b/s about the pope!
So unless a person wanted to be ruled by a dictatorship there is really nothing of value for anyone to subjugate themselves to the Pope and his henchmen.
At that point in time Western Europe was governed mostly by Nobles, and absolute Monarchs, the church supported their right to rule, we've already covered this!
You even used the term the divine right of Kings, are you developing a selective memory?
You didn't answer the question at the end of my post, do you need more time to look up the answer?
I noticed that you qualified that with "mostly". I wonder if it is because that is 99.9 percent nonsense?
The Pope tried to overthrow the queen of England.
I know why the Pope refused Henry a divorce. According to Church doctrine, Henry did not have grounds for a divorce.
Read the entire post, the answer for the "mostly" is contained within it, but then you already know that!
Stop taking things out of context, it's dishonest.
Not at all.
Dishonest is the Pope trying to overthrow Elizabeth I and place one of his minions on the English throne.
Queen Elizabeth I was one of England's longest serving Monarchs, but then you'd really should have known that if you knew anything about history!
A Golden Age
In November 1558, after the death of Mary I, Elizabeth succeeded to the throne. Some see Elizabeth’s 45 year reign as a golden age of English history. She was a shrewd and intelligent woman who was fluent in six languages.
Congratulations, you've chosen one of the worst examples you could for the power of the Pope
It didn't work, what part of this can't you grasp?
As I've said you picked one of the worst possible example, it's almost as if you wanted to torpedo your argument, or that you didn't know English history.
No, he argued that she was his sister in law (he already received a bull to marry her) the Popes problem was
1) He'd already bent the rules to allow the wedding
2) He was afraid of insulting Charles V, who was Catherine's nephew.
It supported a ruler's right to govern, so long as that ruler governed in agreement with the Church.
And yes, monarchs could ignore interdictions, but the church made sure to take it out on their subjects - refusing sacraments to those who had been indoctrinated into believing that they needed them.
Ask King John about that. He effectively gave control of England to Rome.
Ask the non-Catholic subjects of Queen Mary about the church's power over their lives, and deaths.
Elizabeth I was content to let Catholics live relatively unbothered, until some of her Catholic subjects, with the support of the Pope, attempted to rebel against her. Her hand was forced - in order to maintain her rule, she had to come down hard on the Catholics whose loyalty was to Rome, when Rome demanded that they oppose her.
Is there some religious bigotry against Catholics? Of course. At the time that laws were written excluding Catholics from government, however, there were very real reasons to do so, as independence from Rome had not yet been firmly established.
I imagine it's much like those who fear that allowing Muslims to hold office today would open their country to being subject to a caliphate.
Does that erase the attempt?
The Pope overplayed his hand, and Catholics in England suffered for it.
No, the Church made out of it as well, but the reality is the Church couldn't stand up to powerful monarchs
Pope Clement V then became involved and, according to Vatican historians, tried to intervene to save the Templars in France.
In 1308 he received a formal act of repentance from a group of senior knights and absolved them of heresy.
But at the Council of Vienne in 1312 the Pope disbanded the Templars and issued arrest warrants for all remaining members, in order to keep peace with France and prevent a schism in the Church.
Clement issued a Papal Bull which granted the lands of the Templars to the Knights Hospitaller, also known as the Knights of St John of Malta.
Ask King John about that. He effectively gave control of England to Rome.
No, he didn't, he allowed Rome to name Stephen Langton as Archbishop, he was instrumental in arranging Magna Carta.
Why, the threat of a French invasion.
At the time that laws were written excluding Catholics from government, however, there were very real reasons to do so, as independence from Rome had not yet been firmly established.
Under Elizabeth the Act of Supremacy was pasted, as was the Act of Uniformity a scant year after she was crowned, church attendance became mandatory.
The Papal attempt to remove her was over a decade later.
Under the 1701 Act of Settlement Catholics where banned from taking the throne
Act of Settlement , (June 12, 1701), act of Parliament that, since 1701, has regulated the succession to the throne of Great Britain.
Toward the end of 1700 William III was ill and childless; his sister-in-law, the prospective queen, Anne , had just lost her only surviving child; and abroad the supporters of the exiled king, James II , were numerous and active. The need for the act was obvious. It decreed that, in default of issue to either William or Anne, the crown was to pass to Sophia , electress of Hanover and granddaughter of James I, and to “the heirs of her body being Protestants.” The act was thus responsible for the accession of Sophia’s son George I in 1714—notwithstanding the claims of 57 persons closer by the rules of inheritance than Sophia and George.
In addition to settling the crown, the act contained some important constitutional provisions: (1) all future monarchs must join in communion with the Church of England;
Not because of the Pope, because of James II.
It should be noted that Henry's break from Rome was over 160 years earlier.
King John's own words:
Yes, he did.
The Pope was emboldened by a small, ineffective Catholic uprising in northern England. He thought public sentiment was on his side, at least enough to attempt to remove Elizabeth from the throne. Had he been content with ruling the Catholic Church, which no longer had an official presence in England, Catholics in England would have been left mostly alone, so long as they kept their heads down. As far as mandatory church attendance - it was mandatory for everyone, not just Catholics. Anti-Catholic laws were seldom enforced, until it was clear that rebellion by those Catholics still loyal to the Pope was a threat to the throne.
James II's exile did not occur in an historical vacuum. The attempts by the RCC to regain control of England would have been fairly recent history at the time. Bloody Mary, the Papal bull against Elizabeth, opposition to James I's accession, the Gunpowder Plot - all would have contributed to anti-Catholic feeling at the time.
Henry's break from Rome was more or less undone by his older daughter, at least temporarily.
Yes, he did.
Did you bother reading it first
we, wishing to humiliate ourselves for Him who humiliated Himself for us unto death, the grace of the Holy Spirit inspiring, not induced by force or compelled by fear, but of our own good and spontaneous will and by the common counsel of our barons, do offer and freely concede to God and His holy apostles Peter and Paul and to our mother the holy Roman church, and to our lord pope Innocent and to his Catholic successors, the whole kingdom of England and the whole kingdom Ireland, with all their rights and appurtenances, for the remission of our own sins and of those of our whole race as well for the living as for the dead; and now receiving and holding them, as it were a vassal, from God and the Roman church, in the presence of that prudent man Pandulph, subdeacon and of the household of the lord pope, we perform and swear fealty for them to him our aforesaid lord pope Innocent, and his catholic successors and the Roman church, according to the form appended; and in the presence of the lord pope, if we shall be able to come before him, we shall do liege homage to him; binding our successors aid our heirs by our wife forever, in similar manner to perform fealty and show homage to him who shall be chief pontiff at that time, and to the Roman church without demur
This is a lie, it was induced, with the threat of invasion from France. Given that this is a lie, how much faith are you willing to put into the rest.
Stephen Langton , (died July 9, 1228, Slindon, Sussex , Eng.), English cardinal whose appointment as archbishop of Canterbury precipitated King John’s quarrel with Pope Innocent III and played an important part in the Magna Carta crisis.
Langton, son of a lord of a manor in Lincolnshire , became early in his career a prebendary of York. He then ( c. 1181) went to Paris and, having graduated from that university, he served there for 25 years and established a reputation as a great preacher and a major scholar and theologian. Pope Innocent III then summoned him to Rome and in 1206 created him cardinal-priest of St. Chrysogonus. Immediately afterward Langton was drawn into the vortex of English politics.
After the death of Hubert Walter (1205), a dispute immediately arose as to who should be the new archbishop of Canterbury; but after two years of political turmoil involving king and clergy, the Pope suggested that the suffragans of Canterbury elect Langton, who was consecrated at Viterbo on June 17, 1207. King John, however, refused to allow the new archbishop access to his province, seized the revenues of Canterbury, and banished the monks; Innocent replied by laying England under an interdict (March 1208). Langton crossed to Dover (October 1209) in an attempt to achieve negotiation with the king, but John would go no nearer than Chilham, Kent, and after a week the archbishop left the country, and John’s excommunication was published (November 1209).
By 1212 John was seriously planning the recovery of the French territories lost to Philip II in 1204. The need to embark on this enterprise unhampered by ecclesiastical censure , Innocent’s threat of deposing him, and the news that Philip was planning (April 1213) an invasion of England finally caused John to submit. He at once agreed to receive the archbishop, and Langton, who had been residing mainly at the Cistercian abbey of Pontigny, crossed to England (July 1213) and absolved the king.
Langton was not only associated with the baronial opposition against King John; he advised and supported it, suggesting that the barons take their stand on the coronation oath and the charter of Henry I. Later he withdrew, disapproving violent means, and at Runnymede (June 1215) appeared as one of the king’s commissioners. He therefore probably influenced such “non baronial” clauses of Magna Carta as the one confirming ecclesiastical liberties. During 1218–28 he supported Henry III’s party, being responsible for the 1225 reissue of Magna Carta, and that year convened a clerics’ council to determine a grant to the king. He was responsible for the recall of the papal legate , and during his life no other one resided in England, thus strengthening the archbishop of Canterbury’s claim to be legatus natus (a legate in his own right). In 1222 he also promulgated some important constitutions.
The surrender was symbolic, all it amounted to was a small yearly payment, and even that wasn't paid regularly
The Pope didn't Run England.
The Pope was emboldened by a small, ineffective Catholic uprising in northern England.
The Papal Bull was issued in 1570, over ten years after Elizabeth enacted anti Catholic laws, your post stated
Elizabeth I was content to let Catholics live relatively unbothered, until some of her Catholic subjects, with the support of the Pope, attempted to rebel against her. Her hand was forced - in order to maintain her rule, she had to come down hard on the Catholics whose loyalty was to Rome, when Rome demanded that they oppose her.
This simply wasn't the case.
James II's exile did not occur in an historical vacuum.
It wasn't about the Pope, it was a dynastic matter.
Bloody Mary, the Papal bull against Elizabeth, opposition to James I's accession, the Gunpowder Plot - all would have contributed to anti-Catholic feeling at the time.
The latest one of these was over 90 years before, there is no escaping this.
Queen Mary 1553-1558, so that's still over 140 years
You did not ask what Henry's argument was or I would have answered differently.
You asked why the POPE would not give Henry a divorce. I also knew the political angle of the church alliances in Europe.
I don't know what Bible the Catholics use, but according to the Bible that I was raised with, Henry was obligated to marry his brother's widow and give her a child.
Nor is it acceptable that the Pope tried to overthrow the English government so he could control the country.
Do you consider overthrowing governments to be "Christ like"?
What would Jesus do? Overthrow governments?
Strange you never mentioned them then.
You did not ask what Henry's argument was or I would have answered differently.
This was in response to your claim, it wasn't the question, please don't pretend it was.
Really?
You claim to be know the history of the Catholic church.
How many people throughout the history of the church were tortured and died at the hands of the Pope's followers in Europe, Africa, North and South America and other lands that the church controlled or laid claim to?
1) It was a particular English monarch.
2) It wasn't so he could control the country, it was to bring it back to what he saw as the true faith.
3) It didn't work, so much for the vaunted power of the Pope!
You all seem obsessed with the Pope wanting to control England, very Ian Paisley.
Do you consider overthrowing governments to be "Christ like"?
This sort of rubbish isn't going to work with me, I'm not a Christian, so you're barking up the wrong tree,
So you are just viewing this from a Games of Thrones angle instead of a religious one?
Where did I claim that?
I think you'll find my comments on historical knowledge surround the apparent lack in your posts.
How many people throughout the history of the church were tortured and died at the hands of the Pope's followers in Europe, Africa, North and South America and other lands that the church controlled or laid claim to?
This is entirely irrelevant to Elizabeth being a successful English Monarch despite the Pope.
No, I'm viewing it from an historical angle free of rabid religious bigotry.
On that note I've something else to do, I'll get back to this tomorrow.
Okay.
So the RCC's history of intolerance to ALL other Christian sects, torture and violence is acceptable because the Pope believe that he was only doing what Yahweh/Yeshua demanded in order to be their representative on Earth?
Valid question. It is entirely pertinent to how the RCC operated and why people fought to be free of the RCC.
Yes, that definitely shows us that the Pope had no power.
Which went largely unenforced. If an English Catholic did not choose loyalty to the Pope over loyalty to the Queen, that Catholic was pretty safe. When loyalty to the Pope superseded, well, that was a problem.
Yes, recent history at the time. But you have your dates wrong. The Bill of Rights, prohibiting a Catholic from being monarch of England, was enacted in 1689. The Gunpowder Plot occurred in 1605.
Um, no, it was more than one monarch.
Henry VIII
Elizabeth I
James I (VI of Scotland)
heads up, you can bash Baptist, Protestants, Lutherans, Mormons, etc, but not Catholicism, Islam, or any Native American religion.
Actually, that's not the point, but thanks for playing.
Thanks sunshine
I only bash Pentecostals and Assembly of God and that's because those people are nuts
I'm a Pentecostal Assembly of God. Explain to me exactly why we're nuts.
You really shouldn't unless they come after you specifically. All faiths or non faiths should respect each other.
Not true. As I just said to trout, all faiths should be respected here on the site.
No problem. I won't bash them here but I will continue to bash them in real life.
Still want to know why we're nuts.
All that holy rollering and screaming....not for me. As a matter of fact it scares the beejeebus out of me. I stay away from them
I don't do well with Charismatics at all.
looking for a date or something
Lol
Ahh, something else we can agree on! My parents made me attend Assembly of God when I was a child, it's why now that I'm an adult, I do not take part in organized religion
I went to AoG services when I was in grade school. They had some crazy girl scout-like organization. I went to some conference with this group and the late night worship service was bizarre, with all the "praise jesus" and hallejahs constantly interrupting the service. My mother made me stop going because I got home so late and had to go to school the next day. I was only in 6th grade.
Lol. Are you new here? Find me one conservative here who respects Islam.
John listed the actual behavior he considered evil. It wasn't merely based on whether someone believed in god or not. I know plenty of very wonderful people of faith who do not condemn people who make a rational choice of non-belief. And I don't care what people believe as long as they don't try to impose their beliefs on anyone else--a basic founding principle of this country that seems to be dismissed by many extreme believers.
Just started watching "Gunpowder" last night on HBO. It's a three-part series about the ascent of James I after Elizabeth's death in 1603 (starring Kit Harington--vavavoom, ladies) and the brutal repression of Catholicism in England. Those familiar with the title's term will instantly realize that it's leading up to the Gunpowder Plot-- the attempt by Catholics to blow up Parliament and the King led by Robert Catesby (Harington) and the more remembered name of Guy Fawkes and others. Warning: executions scenes are vivid, horrific and I think historically accurate in case that might deter some from watching. The first one involves the pressing to death of a woman for harboring priests and it gets much more graphic and sanguinary with the priests. Ah, good times, good times. Funny, Ren Faires seem to leave that part out.
Make up our minds about what? Can you be more specific? Is it really imperative that we choose to decide between equal evils?
Well said.
I'm sure it was the Bronze age when the Old Testament was written.
Late Bronze age / early Iron age is the current consensus. Many of the stories existed well before then so I would agree that Bronze age is likely more accurate.
Do you have some interesting info regarding when the Old Testament was written?
I believe that was the point.
Nonsense.
LOL.
The bottom line, as most real christians know, We are not perfect, we are not expected to be perfect, we are expected to strive to be as good as we can be, as perfect as we can be. People do to various levels as they can or choose to, but as far as I'm concerned, God is about love and forgiveness-a love that transcends the love we feel towards others. This God waits to forgive us our transgressions. Churches are constructs of men.....
But do you know when to back off when your imperfections are obviously injurious to others, is the question.
Most non-christians know this, also - about themselves and about christians.
As long as we are on the subject: