this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2024
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[Disclaimer] - I am not an American and I consider myself atheist, I am Caucasian and born in a pre-dominantly Christian country.

Based on my limited knowledge of Christianity, it is all about social justice, compassion and peace.

And I was always wondering how come Republicans are perceiving themselves as devout Christians while the political party they support is openly opposing those virtues and if this doesn't make them hypocrites?

For them the mortal enemy are the lefties who are all about social justice, helping the vulnerable and the not so fortunate and peace.

Christianity sounds to me a lot more like socialist utopia.

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[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Because moral values don’t come from religious texts. They are transmitted socially and economically. The texts are then used to justify whatever belief system the believer subscribes to.

The real origin of these right-wing beliefs is an interesting question. They arise from a complex cultural and historical process that stems from the material conditions of both ancestral and present-day cultural groupings. My suspicion is that they arose because in these societies, the most successful reproductive and political strategies center around dominance hierarchies. Materially successful people are able to out-compete, out-reproduce, kill, or otherwise coerce people in their societies to adopt values and norms that justify and protect their social dominance and oppression. Even those on the bottom of these hierarchies, like women or the poor must adopt such values or be excluded or attacked.

There are also competing groups that either oppose such hierarchies or have adopted them to a lesser extent. It is from these groups that many Christian ideas originated. In general they tend to originate in urban areas—I suspect this is because there are more opportunities for people to escape from others who wish to dominate them as compared to agrarian societies where access to land or livestock can be monopolized by the powerful. Anonymity and cultural diversity in cities also allow the weak to more easily inflict violence on their dominators without suffering social consequences.

But over time, Christianity spread widely enough that people with different values adopted them. In other cases, the descendants of these anti-hierarchical Christians adopted hierarchical values for various reasons listed above. As the economic and political conditions of society change, people must adapt or die. Unfortunately, some of these adaptations can be harmful to society as a whole even as they benefit their adopters.

[–] TruthAintEasy@kbin.social 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I got a lot of these ideas from the What is Politics podcast/YouTube series. If you’d like to hear more like this, I highly recommend it. Kind of an odd presentation style, and I don’t agree with all of the takes but overall it’s very well researched and thought provoking. It’s not specifically about Christianity but the same forces are at play.

[–] TruthAintEasy@kbin.social 2 points 8 months ago

Well well, a new thing for me! Hopefully we can trade: have you heard of 'some more news' also of youtube? I really like the cody showdy