Religion
In reply to the discussion: How can religious moderates be said to enable hateful fundamentalists? [View all]dmallind
(10,437 posts)A few decades ago when fundamentalism started peeking its nose out of the tar-paper shack roadside churches that spawned it and began snuffling toward the town hall and the schoolhouse, enabling would have been a good description. By pearl-clutching furiously at any criticism of religion and insisting that God had a special place in his heart for Power Cable, Nebraska, the politer sane congregations indeed enabled the raving loons to cuckoo into their own veneer of sense and decency.
But that was long ago. Cuckoos kick the original bird out of the nest, and that's what the fundies did too. For at least 40 years and maybe more the slavering right wing has spoken for God in America, has pushed its own twisted evil hate under the divine trademark so consistently and so unchallenged that that's what God and Christianity stands for now in the country. If I were a believer I would have howled about this nonstop my entire life, as loudly and widely as possible, because to any sane even vaguely reflective believer, it simply must be an outrage and blasphemy to end all such crimes - to co-opt God himself as a bigoted, spiteful, exclusionary monster. I doubt I would have done much good. I'm not charismatic or photogenic so I would have been almost as ignored as a believer as I am an atheist. But for fuck's sake there are supposedly nine figures of liberal Christians. There isn't one, hasn't been one for a half century and more, that felt that outrage and had the media savvy to broadcast it to the nation? How so when Robertson and Falwell and Graham and McPherson and Dobson and Warren and Coughlin and Haggard and Fuller and Van Impe and Bakker and Swaggart and Jones and Roberts and Osteen managed to ensnare millions, raise billions, and speak for God essentially unopposed?
So now where are we? The enabling proper is long gone, no more needed than Mike Tyson still needs his mother to protect him. What we have now is more like a civilian cover for terrorists - but a cover that, mostly, willingly surrounds the jihadists, that indignantly shrieks "Bigot! Militant atheist! Hater!" when you point out that the bombers and the killers are snugly enveloped within them, indistinguishable and safe.
We're not talking about enablers any more. The dog wags the tail after all. What we have now is useful, mostly voluntary, human shields.