Reply #21: Well, for a long time on DU, 'freedom of religion' [View All]

[Philostopher]

also included 'freedom from religion.' There's nothing like losing an election (whether honestly or not) and having the SCLM (so-called liberal media) trumpet that Kerry lost on 'values' and that Christians were the dominant cultural force in the country because they were manipulated into coming out in larger percentages to vote for gay hate amendments in 11 states. Further investigation into these claims, of course, has revealed that the issue was much more complex than simply religion, but that was, as always, softpedaled.

And so for the past few weeks, 'freedom of religion' apparently means (at least to some significant portion of believers here) that non-theists are supposed to shut up and let the liberal Christians tell themselves and each other that Christianity in general -- and, consequently, some of the things they believe -- isn't being corrupted by people who don't respect it, and used as a bludgeon against them and those of us who don't believe in it anyway.

As I noted farther upthread, I think they're disgusted and scared of what's happening, too, but most of them have believed this stuff all their lives. When somebody criticizes what's happening, I think they internalize the criticism to be personal when it isn't intended to be. But because our language isn't a 'language of faith' -- maybe we say things that they can't comprehend other than as attacks on their faith, I don't know. I haven't considered myself Christian for a couple of decades, so I don't know anymore what would have offended me or struck me as a 'broad brush' statement.

There have always been those here who take any criticism of religion personally. In some cases, they have every right -- I will say that back when it started coming out that some Catholic churches had covered up molestations by priests, some people were pretty hard on the rank-and-file Catholics here, which wasn't fair at all, since they didn't make the decisions to cover the molestations up themselves, and were as disgusted by it as the rest of us. But I don't think it was all agnostics and atheists who said those things about the Catholic church -- I think there were some Protestants here who were pretty willing to kick the Catholics when they were down, too.