A couple of days ago I vented on a posting by a comfortable Western conservative Christian who found the idea of democracy not to his taste. His problem - based on Calvinist ideology - was, and is, with human freedom. People simply can't be trusted. The iron grip of authoritarian regimes is, for those who hold this mindset, safer than empowering men and women to have a hand in determining their own destinies. Autocracy is their response to a sense of self-loathing writ large.
Who, you might ask, has the right to deprive the citizens of Egypt or Tunisia of self determination? Democracy in the world of realpolitik might not live up to the ideals it proclaims, but it's preferable to any other system, and infinitely better than those where presbyters, preachers and mullahs arrogate unto themselves the determination of right and wrong. Calvin's Geneva was a pig-pen of human oppression, as were the temple states of antiquity and a thousand variations on that theme down through the ages. Today in the secular West Christians too have been liberated as much as anyone else from the tyranny of Christendom. May it never return.
John Shuck (a man who uses his real name, unlike the previous commentator) also stands in the Reformed tradition, though not in the shadow of its dark side. Having linked to that earlier item, this one provides a welcome counterbalance.
Today in the secular West Christians too have been liberated as much as anyone else from the tyranny of Christendom. May it never return.
ReplyDeleteIt won't be from lack of trying and by the more idiotic elements of Christendom at that - the evangelical fundies.
Not that the mainstream would be any better, it's all tyranny when you get right down to it.
Thanks Gavin!
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