Friday, December 4, 2009

Fundamentalist hathos

These sorts of things give Christianity a bad name. Especially the first one. I realize it's a fairly small percentage who actually claim that they literally believe every single word of the Bible (and a nearly nonexistent portion that actually put all of them into practice, I suspect), but I never thought I'd hear people try to argue that the Bible's actual words need to be changed because it's too liberal. Having grown up around my fair share of fundamentalists, I can tell you that that's a new one to me. If you're a Christian and you think that the Bible is too liberal, the chances are that you're not liberal enough, however you're defining these terms.

I just don't even know what else to say on the subject. I think it's fundamentally (ugh!) improper to try to change words in Biblical translations in a way that is seemingly disconnected from any sort of rigorous scholarship, but that is rather coming purely from a political perspective. It's censorship, basically. Conservatives were right, political correctness really is truly out of control!

The Man, The Myth, The Bio

East Bay, California, United States
Problem: I have lots of opinions on politics and culture that I need to vent. If I do not do this I will wind up muttering to myself, and that's only like one or two steps away from being a hobo. Solution: I write two blogs. A political blog that has some evident sympathies (pro-Obama, mostly liberal though I dissent on some issues, like guns and trade) and a culture blog that does, well, cultural essays in a more long-form manner. My particular thing is taking overrated things (movies, mostly, but other things too) down a peg and putting underrated things up a peg. I'm sort of the court of last resort, and I tend to focus on more obscure cultural phenomena.