God and Trump in Rural Alabama

[SLD]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...e-meaning-of-morality/?utm_term=.826590643c37

I travel through Luverne every so often. It’s a sleepy town on the way to the beaches south of Montgomery. Like most other small towns it is dominated by its big Baptist Church. It’s not a place to stay and enjoy. There’s not much there.

The article illustrates though the major and continuing problem in this country: religion. Religion sucks the life out of these people. It forces them to vote against their own economic interests. It sucks up all their critical thinking skills. It demands their obedience to their one view of the world and removes all possibilities of rationale debate over the proper future of the country.

SLD

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...e-meaning-of-morality/?utm_term=.826590643c37

I travel through Luverne every so often. It’s a sleepy town on the way to the beaches south of Montgomery. Like most other small towns it is dominated by its big Baptist Church. It’s not a place to stay and enjoy. There’s not much there.

The article illustrates though the major and continuing problem in this country: religion. Religion sucks the life out of these people. It forces them to vote against their own economic interests. It sucks up all their critical thinking skills. It demands their obedience to their one view of the world and removes all possibilities of rationale debate over the proper future of the country.

SLD

But is religion a cause or a result?

If I can outgrow religious need that does not mean everyone can.

 

[Jobar]

What I find most hopeful about that article, which is otherwise damn depressing and disgusting- the very first photo shows a group of people whose average age has got to be in the sixties. We can hope that such churches will continue to die out by natural attrition. Maybe we can hope that the Republican Party goes the same way.

Also, from a link I gave in another thread:

I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes,—a justifier of the most appalling barbarity,—a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds,—and a dark shelter under, which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection. Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to that enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me. For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others. It was my unhappy lot not only to belong to a religious slaveholder, but to live in a community of such religionists. Very near Mr. Freeland lived the Rev. Daniel Weeden, and in the same neighborhood lived the Rev. Rigby Hopkins. These were members and ministers in the Reformed Methodist Church. Mr. Weeden owned, among others, a woman slave, whose name I have forgotten. This woman’s back, for weeks, was kept literally raw, made so by the lash of this merciless, religious wretch. He used to hire hands. His maxim was, Behave well or behave ill, it is the duty of a master occasionally to whip a slave, to remind him of his master’s authority. Such was his theory, and such his practice.

The Southern Baptists and Methodists have much to answer for, both in the past, and today.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

What I find most hopeful about that article, which is otherwise damn depressing and disgusting- the very first photo shows a group of people whose average age has got to be in the sixties. We can hope that such churches will continue to die out by natural attrition. Maybe we can hope that the Republican Party goes the same way.

Also, from a link I gave in another thread:

I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes,—a justifier of the most appalling barbarity,—a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds,—and a dark shelter under, which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection. Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to that enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me. For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others. It was my unhappy lot not only to belong to a religious slaveholder, but to live in a community of such religionists. Very near Mr. Freeland lived the Rev. Daniel Weeden, and in the same neighborhood lived the Rev. Rigby Hopkins. These were members and ministers in the Reformed Methodist Church. Mr. Weeden owned, among others, a woman slave, whose name I have forgotten. This woman’s back, for weeks, was kept literally raw, made so by the lash of this merciless, religious wretch. He used to hire hands. His maxim was, Behave well or behave ill, it is the duty of a master occasionally to whip a slave, to remind him of his master’s authority. Such was his theory, and such his practice.

The Southern Baptists and Methodists have much to answer for, both in the past, and today.

You're forgetting that the christian religion loves a sinner. It needs and welcomes hypocrites and cheats and murderers who love their Jesus.