Korn Guitarist Finds God, Leaves Band

Donna Summer finding God was kind of a lose-lose, too.

-- latebloomer: HE WHOM DUELS THE DRAFGON IN ENDLESS DANCE (posercore24...), February 23rd, 2005.

"Korn Guitarist Finds Marilyn Manson, Leaves Band"

If you were a fan, would you go? I'm fascinated by stories of vision and catharsis. This may be the first time I've ever been interested by anything having to do with Korn.

I hate that this actually makes me side with Korn.

-- eman (masses7...), February 23rd, 2005 5:33 AM. (link)

Alledgedly it's Korn's mic stand, designed by none other than H.R. Giger!

http://www.hrgiger.com/music/korn.htm

Unsurprisingly, I am going to reserve judgement on this until dude pulls a Ma$e and comes back.

Korn guitarist leaves God, finds band.

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/51aNS+x7o0L._SS500_.jpg

uhhh...ok.

i would not want that man to preach to me.

well he looks like a happy well-adjusted chap

I really, really hate this Intense Guy staple of getting childishly overinvolved in every single thing and then acting like there's wisdom in it -- you know, "Here I am doing lots of drugs and getting sleeve tattoos, because I was WILD, but then I figured it out and found god and stopped doing drugs and so I've really EXPERIENCED LIFE and LEARNED SOME SHIT." Meanwhile, everyone else in the world learned to avoid being a functional drug addict and sorted out their relationship with god by about age 18.

EXXTREEEEEEME

I kind of wish he'd found smooth jazz instead

How I Found Smoothness, Quit Dynamic Noise Compression, Kicked Snowboarding, and Lived to Tell the Story

nabisco though you know it's hardly a new paradigm - "the road of excess leads to the palace of widsom" 'n' all that

or wisdom, even

Hence my calling it a "staple!"

But what if you're already IN the palace of wisdom, and the wisdom in question is "hey, don't go down the road of excess, that's for douchebags?"

well, Blake's argument would have been that you're not in the palace of wisdom unless/until you got there by the right road, and I don't think it's an entirely vacuous argument - the old Xian saw about having to sin to get saved, and how to know God you must be forgiven and you can't really be forgiven unless you first do something wrong. Modern-day evangelicals, wanting to raise their children in their faith, have tried to work around this (by having kids get born again and repent of such terrible sins as not working hard enough in school, etc - sometimes you'll see a 12-year-old on TBN talking about what he was like before he got saved, and it's very bizarre) but I don't know that it's possible.

Certainly one can reject this definition of "wisdom" wholesale - but note that it doesn't equate to "intelligence," "savvy," "learnedness" etc I don't think

Yeah, it's not like we've sorted out what "wisdom" is exactly, and so can confidently say these guys are "douchebags" for it. I mean if you have cool, it would put me out of work, but I'd like to know.

sometimes you'll see a 12-year-old on TBN talking about what he was like before he got saved, and it's very bizarre

Youtube links plz?

just watch Jesus Camp there's plenty of that shit in there

I think he is a douchebag.

Q: You're starting a solo musical career and have created a new website. What are your plans to use your musical gifts for God's glory?

Brian "Head" Welch: "I don't know if I'm still a musician. I do know I am a soldier for Christ. I ask god to put me in trials so that I can move up in rank faster than any man on earth when I pass the trials. He has rewarded me with answers to my prayers. He now sends me to different pastors to get different things off every one of them, because every church has something different to offer and they all judge the other in some way or another....every church judges. The book of life says it's not our job to judge it's God's job. So when I wake up in the morning I ask that He uses me to glorify Him more than any man in history. Whether it's through music or not, I don't care either way, so I don't know my plans because my plans aren't my plans they're His. I know I'm new, but the power of prayer is very underestimated. God has blessed me with insight to the big picture, because I live my life with Christ all day every day. I call myself 'of the way' of Christ now. And that means I'm a child of God. A REAL Christian or child of God loves all males and females the same so much that they're willing to die for any person. That's me. I feel like our flesh (earth suits) are our devil. All my life's desicions are made from divine inspiration from God. He has all power..... I have none. And I guarantee that almost every person that is now trippin' on me and mocking me, will be following me in a few months. Then they'll soon relize they're not following me, they're following Christ. This all surpasses the human brain. Our brains have failed us and now it's time to think and listen with our hearts. That's what I pray for. Watch what happens. Smile and 'head to christ.' There is some time left but only our heavenly father knows how much... and I submitted the answer to that in prayer too. 'Keep the wind in your face and the sun on your back.'"

A REAL Christian or child of God loves all males and females the same

I am simple-minded, and yet I cannot help but laugh.

get this guy into HM Magazine stat

Meanwhile, everyone else in the world learned to avoid being a functional drug addict and sorted out their relationship with god by about age 18.

Whoops. WAY past my deadline.

just watch Jesus Camp there's plenty of that shit in there

While I abhor the tired Christian melodrama where people adopt this feigned speechlessness about the amazing glory of God that they discovered when they were "saved", I think I am starting to hate the obnoxious "look how scary these Christians are" schtick that many publicly spew out ("Jesus Camp" being a prime example).

Much like everything else in the world, Christianity is a belief system, and it's counter-productive for the so-called cultural elite to pretend that they are bleached clean of the same sorts of illogical and emotional responses to their own chosen sets of fears and beliefs.

let ye who is without sin cast the first stone

(I am totally down with Jesus btw)

I think you might be buying into some of that obnoxiousness, actually, by choosing to view something like Jesus Camp as a lens on Christianity in some general sense, and not on specific and newsworthy strains and movements within it.

the fact is fundamentalists of all stripes are scary. the specific beliefs don't really matter.

(also - I couldn't even watch all of Jesus Camp, I got kinda bored by it)

Jesus is just all right with me. No more, no less.

I think you might be buying into some of that obnoxiousness, actually, by choosing to view something like Jesus Camp as a lens on Christianity in some general sense, and not on specific and newsworthy strains and movements within it.

Actually, I don't see it as representing mainstream Christianity at all-- and maybe that's part of what bothers me so much about it. But I feel like that's how it tends to be spun these days. I get the sense that many people, especially those on the political left, like to portray Christians as part of a dangerous cult, and as crazy nutjobs who like to make self-congratulatory gestures on their own righteousness and claim that the earth is 5000 years old. And while I've seen no shortage of such people in my life (many of whom have been really fucking hateful to me, and have stated in no uncertain terms that I'm going to hell), I know a number of Christians who couldn't be further from that. I just find it sort of silly how much people on the political left try to map that extreme demeanor onto everyone who is either Christian or conservative. I'm just saying that the kind of judgments and logical conclusions that people will draw from "Jesus Camp" (or most likely already have before they watch it) are reductionist and filled with the same sort of empty-headed prejudices that they themselves accuse Christians of harboring. And that's coming from me, a pretty staunch liberal.

Much like everything else in the world, Christianity is a belief system, and it's counter-productive for the so-called cultural elite to pretend that they are bleached clean of the same sorts of illogical and emotional responses to their own chosen sets of fears and beliefs.

Can I just call out a super-nonsense phrase you have in this bit, please? The phrase in question is "so-called cultural elite." The adjective "so-called" implies that someone with whom you disagree identifies as a member of the "cultural elite"; that people set themselves up as "the cultural elite," and are calling themselves that falsely. That someone, however, is a really pernicious strawman. The only people who use terms like "cultural elite" are those who seek to demonize/marginalize/trivialize/otherwise dismiss a whole host of opinions by stuffing them all into the same caricature. "So-called" here is a disingenuous bit of shell-game. Identify your actual targets, or admit that you have none, but don't invent one to knock it down. That's unsporting.

Not at all, Richard -- the idea that people perceive such stuff as representing all of Christianity is coming out of YOUR head here. Over 80% of Americans identify themselves as Christians, which necessarily encompasses a lot of the "political left" you're talking about; these people know quite well that most Christians aren't like that, because they are Christians who aren't like that.

And the reason attention is paid to Jesus Camp style evangelicals isn't because a bunch of liberals are singling them out in order to smear the religion as a whole -- it's because that form of Christianity has itself organized itself around political and social action in a way that makes it significant and newsworthy. It's ridiculous to act as if people are stereotyping a religion by intentionally focusing on its nuts: the truth is that the nuts are very purposefully and effectively injecting themselves into public issues, in a way that makes it perfectly legitimate for everyone else to pay attention to what they're like and where they're coming from.

And for the record, I'd say something like Jesus Camp is of interest to people less in the sense that "LOL Christians are nuts," and more because it examines a fairly bold effort on the part of organized Christian groups to regiment and mold children for actions and belief systems that go beyond the sectarian and into the political -- i.e., it's an example of exactly the kind of organized, purposeful mobilization that's giving a small segment of Christian fundamentalism a bigger presence in and influence on our society than the number of people really subscribing to it should allow.

if anything the nuts are trying to present THEMSELVES as legit/mainstream Xtianity by monopolizing the political discourse.

I don't have any illusions about Jesus Campers being representative of anything more than the radical fringe they are.

(or Nabisco OTM x-post)

I'd go so far as to say these people are barely even Christian - politics and dogma trump theology for them every time.

Maybe it's the part of the country I live in, but most of the people I know who identify as Christian don't, to use one example, believe the science of evolution.

yeah but Jesus didn't have shit to say about abortion. Or evolution.

those issues have been deliberately targeted and conflated with Xtianity for political purposes - they don't actually have anything to do with anything Jesus actually said or did. The abortion/gays/evolution shit is actually primarily rooted in the OLD Testament.

and we all dutifully follow all the instructions in Leviticus don't we?

(By the way I think I owe you a few asses cuz I coveted your brother's wife the other day)

Better that than owing us a few wives for coveting our brother's ass.

J0hn, very nice bit of semantic parsing there several xposts. I almost cheered.

It's rather difficult to label this target simply without bringing in a number of stereotypes, typical character traits, and attitudes... and while I will readily admit that I am relying on those to create this composite, I personally know any number of such people in real life-- and I'm sure most people here do too. It's just very hard to condense them into a few letters on a message board or give them an effective, non-dismissive label... But to give an idea of who I mean: they tend to identify with left-wing politics, are into 'high-brow' culture and art, are well educated, and tend to establish a polar division between intelligence and religion. People who are, well, a lot like me. I know because a lot the people I'm railing about are my friends.

But anyway, I'm not going to get sucked into another academic friggin' message board flame war. I don't have the time or the PhD to respond to Nabisco and John Darnielle's psychological deconstructions. Let's just say that I'm annoyed, and apparently I'm unable to account for it.

xpost Richard I think we all know people like that, yeah -- I was more objecting to the idea that films like Jesus Camp or perceptions of Christians in general are like that. That's random grouches, more or less, and I'd guess that a good portion of them would probably tell you (for instance) that their Christian parents are nothing like that.

The fact that this stuff is creeping into more conventional/mainstream Christian thinking is just another testament to how well the fringe has mobilized and kinda stolen the spotlight. As of the 1970s, major protestant churches were officially pro-choice and generally checked out on a lot of culture-war issues -- it's through the late 70s and early 80s that this big turn toward reactionary, dogmatic political action really took over, as much because of key figures creating that as because of grass-roots culture-war discontents.

There is a level on which I'd suggest that fundamentalist Christianity became a replacement for the political energy and reactionary attitudes that had spent the previous decades fighting integration -- it's kinda just after that battle became obsolete that a bunch of people who'd cut their teeth defending segregation (both in politics and in religion) turned a similar fervor in this direction. (Obv. Falwell one of the major ones here.)

wow that is some seriously scary megalomania going on in that interview posted above.

as nabisco said, it's amusing and expasperating to see people go from one form of extreme childish self-involvement to another...

there is a LOT of kneejerk lazy "LOL at christians" stuff all around though--whether this includes jesus camp or not--i doubt most people see that stuff as a savvy investigation into a particularly politically regressive form of christianity.

Jesus Camp is of interest to people less in the sense that "LOL Christians are nuts," and more because it examines a fairly bold effort on the part of organized Christian groups to regiment and mold children for actions and belief systems that go beyond the sectarian and into the political

i mean, REALLY? i'll take your word for it, but im skeptical about this claim. or maybe it's not JUST the LOLs that people are drawn to? does Jesus Camp, or things like it, help you understand why these christian groups operate in this, why christians in general feel the way they do, or does it make you feel afraid of them, or alientated from them in the way a lot of the Left likes to encourage in the "im moving to canada if bush gets elected" sense?

I don't think it gets to the whys of anything, but the political operation of these groups are def. a central focus

im guess what im saying, is that the kind of stuff like Jesus Camp or the recent spate of anti-religion books doesnt strike me as dispassionate or objective studies of how religion and politics intertwine--but instead as pretty bold frontal political attacks in themselves. they are not objective in any way, nor should they pretend to be (tho i guess the pretense of objectivity is standard political argument procedure).

x-post: well i should shut up then. i havent seen jesus camp.

Ryan, once again the problem is in slippages of the word "Christian" -- people might be alienated by this stuff as a growing and increasingly problematic subculture, and they may use shorthand and refer to these people as "Christians," but if questioned on the semantics they are typically within the 80% of people in this country who self-identify as Christian, and they know that the stuff they're watching in Jesus Camp is not particularly descriptive of everyday Presbytarians, or Catholics, or the vast mainstream of Americans who are Christian.

What people are snobbish about, if anything, is less the category of "Christian" and very clearly cultural, political, even geographical and class-related stuff: it's a social dynamic, not something that anyone apart from fundamentalists themselves seriously believes boils down to being-Christian versus not-being-Christian. It's their own insistence that it DOES equate to that that makes "Christianity" a frequently used shorthand for the type of people we're talking about.

the recent spate of anti-religion books doesnt strike me as dispassionate or objective studies of how religion and politics intertwine

ryan if yr referring to Hitchens' and Dawkins' best-sellers I'm in total agreement about their lack of depth/accuracy and misguided motivations - there are a couple really long atheism threads on ILE about this

I so totally want to get this book when I can find it for $2 used. It'll go right next to The Long Hard Road Out of Hell on the shelf.

if its anything like that interview its probably really funny

well this 80% number is a bit misleading, no? id guess the 20% is (statistically speaking) over-represented in the moving-making, documentary-making, and book-writing sectors. this probably accounts for the perception among christians, especially fundamentalists, of a "cultural elite".

im sure there are books by christians attacking fundamentalism, and im sure they'd be careful to make these distinctions between christians--but i just dont see it that much, in the media or anywhere really. it's christians vs. seculars, always.

i should also add the 20% is prob also over-represented in the AUDIENCE for all of this media...

I'm surprised kingfish hasn't popped up on this thread yet, but you should check out this guy Jim Wallis and his group the Sojourners. They were one of the sponsors of the last Democratic Prez debat.

(debate)

i'd guess the 20% is (statistically speaking) over-represented in the moving-making, documentary-making, and book-writing sectors.

Umm I know you don't mean this as a "Jews run media" thing -- let's be clear that the 20% is not "atheists" but just "people who don't identify as Christian."

But the point isn't even where they're represented: these people are not retarded. Apart from a few really provincial urban spaces and closed social scenes (and Europeans), they know that average Christians do not really subscribe to this stuff. They know that because some of the 80% of Christians in this country have presumably mentioned it to them, including their parents and neighbors and countless public figures. They know Bill Clinton is a Christian. They know Catholics aren't part of this culture. They know black churches aren't typically part of this culture. They know Methodists aren't much like this. Etc. etc.

Point being no matter how much shorthand slippage there is between "Christians" and "this particular socio-religious-political culture," pretty much anyone who's not an idiot knows that not ALL Christians are like this; at worst they might vastly overestimate the percentage of Christians who are, mostly because that culture vastly over-presents ITSELF as more significant than its numbers should make it. (Another dynamic here is that some people can conceive of mainstream Christians as not needing the description "Christian," because religion isn't an overwhelming part of their identity -- whereas anyone who presents first and foremost as Christian as a basic of identity probably IS a part of the subculture we're talking about.)

http://thor.mirtna.org/features/titular_movie_themes_limahl.jpg

The fact that this stuff is creeping into more conventional/mainstream Christian thinking is just another testament to how well the fringe has mobilized and kinda stolen the spotlight. As of the 1970s, major protestant churches were officially pro-choice and generally checked out on a lot of culture-war issues -- it's through the late 70s and early 80s that this big turn toward reactionary, dogmatic political action really took over, as much because of key figures creating that as because of grass-roots culture-war discontents.

nabisco, what's your source on this? I ask because I hear a lot of (what sounds to me like) romanticization of some Great Liberal Christian Past. It's no secret: I wish Christianity would just wither and die overnight; I hate it with a passion. So, cards on the table there. (This despite glorying in the beauty of the book of Job last night, reveling in its weight.) Having said that, it often seems like people on the left posit some version of the church - often presented as "the real deal," the one that's been usurped or upstaged by The Crazies (Falwell/Haggard/Swaggart/Hinn/who-have-you). But I don't think this more-genuine Xity ever really existed, or, if it did, that it was always an attempt to smuggle radicalism into a governing social trope. It's my position that the liberal/progressive strain of Christianity has always been the more marginal concern, although it's occasionally come to the forefront; desegregation and worker's rights, both 20th century phenomena, are two commonly-cited examples of this more radical Christianity. But it seems clear, glaringly obvious even, that this is an undercurrent within the faith, not "its true face" nor its once-and-future face; the faith, generally speaking, has been more about marginalization and colonization and lots of other unpalatable -tions. Or isn't it so?

I think you could point to some of the Christian founders of this country for concrete evidence - Roger Williams for one, or William Penn and the Quakers for another. But defining the "true face" of any faith is a hopeless enterprise. It cannot be done, and majority beliefs are in a constant state of flux.

I mean, I don't think its helpful to distinguish any strain or denomination as "more genuine" than another - I know which strains I sympathize with and would like to nurture, and I don't have any issues with stressing that they are as legitimate as any other strain.

of course there's also all the radical Christians that agitated against slavery, shouldn't forget them either (are they more or less "genuine" than Falwell?)

is no one following the mlb draft??? i know theyre not marketable players but it still concerns me

isnt the liberal-left ideal of the Enlightenment, or what's left of it post-postmodernism, just as much an outcome of christianity as fundamentalism? in fact any desire to avoid marginalization and colonization, instead of mercilessly destroying all Others, isnt that in fact a christian ethics? (honest question!)

part of the issue is whether christanity is a driving force for marginalization and colonization, or just merely ethical "cover" for it...a chicken or egg question which is unanswerable i guess.

to the (political) point: arguing for a Liberal Christian Past (which really does exist, however marginal IT is) is a much more effective and worthwhile way to effect political change than to merely dismiss christianity as stupid bigotry and offer a liberal utopia in return...

nabisco, what's your source on this? I ask because I hear a lot of (what sounds to me like) romanticization of some Great Liberal Christian Past. It's no secret: I wish Christianity would just wither and die overnight; I hate it with a passion. So, cards on the table there. (This despite glorying in the beauty of the book of Job last night, reveling in its weight.) Having said that, it often seems like people on the left posit some version of the church - often presented as "the real deal," the one that's been usurped or upstaged by The Crazies (Falwell/Haggard/Swaggart/Hinn/who-have-you). But I don't think this more-genuine Xity ever really existed, or, if it did, that it was always an attempt to smuggle radicalism into a governing social trope. It's my position that the liberal/progressive strain of Christianity has always been the more marginal concern, although it's occasionally come to the forefront; desegregation and worker's rights, both 20th century phenomena, are two commonly-cited examples of this more radical Christianity. But it seems clear, glaringly obvious even, that this is an undercurrent within the faith, not "its true face" nor its once-and-future face; the faith, generally speaking, has been more about marginalization and colonization and lots of other unpalatable -tions.

OTFM

John, I'm not saying there was some grand liberal/progressive past -- just that prior to the big mobilization around the start of the Reagan era, the official church heirarchies did not seem hugely invested in politics and culture-war stuff. (True, though -- I should probably be careful about the use of "fringe" here, because it's like that their congregants were invested in those things, even if the church structures were not.)

I'm not saying fundamentalists co-opted those major church heirarchies, either, because they didn't -- their politics and fervor just lent an energy to growing non-mainstream churches, and at a point where mainstream protestant churches were dropping off just through lack of committal and the usual "football is on" stuff.

Point being there seems like a clear moment there where specific people harnessed / mobilized / collected this culture together, and with political objectives overwhelming theological ones. Source-wise I was mostly thinking of the Southern Baptist church having a fairly middling stance on abortion through the 70s; I can't seem to think up (or quick-google) the article I was reading about this after Falwell's death, but it was a response to / elaboration on a Guardian article making the same statement.

well if yr thinkin of Fallwell's transition from pro-segregationist asshole to Moral Majority asshole that's pretty well documented. He had fucking Lester Maddox on his TV show for fuck's sake.

sorry Fallwell brings out the swearin preacher in me

xxxxpost If you are using the ARIS study, which is where this 80% figure proably came from, then 15% were "no religion/aetheist/agnostic. Also, the largest portion of Christians were Roman Catholics, outnumbering the Southern Baptists by about 400%. 10% were "protestant with no denomination" which probably means they do not belong to a church. etc etc. My point is that the 80% figure is a bit hyperbolic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_States

I mean, this is why these people don't belong to long-running recognizable church groups with international heirarchies and whatnot -- they belong to church networks built in the last 30 years with names like "United Bible Church" and "American Church of Christ Jesus" and whatnot! You can say it was existing grass-roots religious / culture-war fervor they grew from, and that's probably true, but they weren't working this way before a particular point -- this particular rotten phase of it looks to have hatched big at the end of the 70s, picked up steam in the 80s, and actually spent the 90s normalizing itself to look like a mainstream patriotic American existence, with the weird new congregation suddenly building the Superchurch that dominates yr small town.

xpost I pulled the figure out of basically nowhere and don't much care about fine-tuning it: even if it were actually 60%, that'd still be enough to allow people in 99% of the country to differentiate between middling mainstream Christians and fervent evangelicals. P.S. yes Catholics are Christians, which is another thing people know, even when they're slipping in their shorthand use of the word.

yeah, no question, they got organized in the wake of (I'd suggest) Anita Bryant's crusade - that seems like a defining moment there in the early 70s, the broader church reacting to the chaotic social developments of the late sixties. But in response to Mo, I always like to lean on Christ Himself - "by their fruits shall ye know them" - for every counter-slavery movement, there are a dozen preserve-the-white-male-hegemony movements within the Body of Christ; you can choose to focus on the positive if you like, and God bless you for it, but history's history and seems pretty unambiguous on this point: Christianity occasionally produces leaders of remarkably forward-looking vision and compassion, but generally reinforces the white male property-owning status quo (or as in the case of the colonial project, one of Christianity's most horrendous legacies, posits & then reinforces a white male property-owning status quo)

those issues have been deliberately targeted and conflated with Xtianity for political purposes - they don't actually have anything to do with anything Jesus actually said or did. The abortion/gays/evolution shit is actually primarily rooted in the OLD Testament.

yes but it's shortsighted at best and disingenuous at worst to ignore Matthew 5:17-19: "Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets: (3) I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass away from the Law, until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and so teaches other shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven: but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven."

which = "all that old shit still applies, no matter how desperately future leaders may wanna put some distance between them and it"

oh shit, in the Old Testament it's bad to have a nocturnal emmission!

and we all dutifully follow all the instructions in Leviticus don't we?

The more thoughtful Christians with a conservative theology will provide some sort of account for that. They at least see it as something to account for. And it's not as if there aren't saying from Jesus in which he affirmed the continuity of his teaching with those of the prophets, not to mention that if you go beyond "just Jesus," as most Christians do, and consider Paul authoritative to some extent, then you have to deal with that whole portion of the New Testament that makes theological connection to the Old Testament (sin came into the world through one man, etc. etc.). So I don't see why it should just be presumed that there's something odd about people who call themselves Christians depending extensively on Old Testament sources.

(Posted before I'd read now to J0hn's response.)

(now: down)

I'd like to thank the Korn guitarist for finding god because in prompting this thread discussion has turned into one of the most intelligent discussions of modern American Christianity I've read!

Matthew 5:17-19: "Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets: (3) I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass away from the Law, until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and so teaches other shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven: but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven."

The flaming sword shit in Second Thessalonians should be of greater concern to us, though.

uh isn't a LOT of the motivation of those parts that he's trying to say "HEY, I am a RABBI, you jews should LISTEN UP"?

that may well be his motivation, but it hardly negates the content of what he's saying: Jesus is specifically cautioning against the teaching that the fulfillment of the old covenant somehow exempts His followers from its rigors. For two thousand years, there's been much glossing-over of this point; I find only one argument persuavsive, to wit, that Christ say "It is finished" right before He dies. One can take "it is finished" to mean a number of things, from the obvious ("I will now die") to the cosmic ("the old covenant, made flesh in Me, is now completed and annulled"). So there's that. But as bassace observes, this isn't the only time Jesus says that people have to follow the Mosaic law. It's a theme of His teaching, especially in Matthew (I think, I haven't hit the books in a while - I could mean Mark). Either way, Christians are pretty shameless about ignoring or glossing or cleverly parsing this stuff so that they don't have to keep kosher, etc, and socially progressive Christians meanwhile would prefer to forget that the message is clearly: "This here's Leviticus: I'm Jesus Christ, and I endorse this book."

say = says

well yeah, the rest of matthew is christ cleverly parsing the old law and showing the decadence of modern jews, right?

like for example matthew 12:

1 At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath; his disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. 2 But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, "Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath." 3 He said to them, "Have you not read what David did, when he was hungry, and those who were with him: 4 how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? 5 Or have you not read in the law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are guiltless? 6 I tell you, something greater than the temple is here.

i admit i am schooled in an islamic reading of the bible: sure, jesus is endorsing the old testament, but with the caveat that it has become distorted with age. what he's doing is establishing himself as a successor to that law, OK he agrees with the spirit of the law but not necessarily big swathes of the letter (how big is up to you) ...

FWIW i think maybe we get farther along if we stick to the just discussing the church

It's my position that the liberal/progressive strain of Christianity has always been the more marginal concern, although it's occasionally come to the forefront; desegregation and worker's rights, both 20th century phenomena, are two commonly-cited examples of this more radical Christianity

i do agree with this, but isn't it sort of like "the nose causes the dog" argument?

hey, by definition radical/progresive culture have always been a marginal element - pointing out that a "mainstream" religious force props up the status quo seems sorta tautological. was ryan getting at this upthread??

interestng side question: how would US history have been different if the founding fathers had been zoroastrian??

yes its a total tautology - and I have no reservations (or illusions) about enthusiastically supporting and endorsing what are traditionally minority, yet no less legitimate, interpretations of the major religions (sufis vs. radical sunnis for ex., or quakers vs. fundies)

(which is not meant to imply that fundies or radical sunnis are actually mainstream - they are not)

ONE TRICK GOAT

One can't compare Christianity to other religions ("If people said 'I hate Islam' it wouldn't be acceptable, how come it's acceptable for people to say 'I hate Christians'?") because no other religion has done nearly as much damage. There isn't a culture in the world that hasn't had the dubious pleasure of missionaries landing on its shores singing Kum-Ba-Ya and distributing bread & fishes all the while whining about the terrible peril in which these savage souls live daily so long as they haven't yet given their hearts to Christ. If Islam, or the Yoruba religion, or Eckankar, or any other religion for that matter should happen to effect an Inquisition, carry out "crusades," support the Third Reich, and actively conspire to deny the women of the third world decent resproductive health care, managing in the meanwhile to become an institution so dominant that it's impossible to go through one twenty-four hour period without somehow being reminded of its total ideological triumph over perfectly tenable systems whose adherents were perfectly happy without the vampire that rose from the grave on Easter, well, then I'll talk about how much I hate Moslems, or the Yoruba, or Eckankar.
But there's only one religion that's ever been so arrogant as to think that the whole world has to suffer its piety, and that's Christianity, and it's always cool to resent your oppressor.

-- J0hn Darn13ll3 (J0hn Darn13ll3), Friday, December 20, 2002 5:35 AM (4 years ago)

I ask because I hear a lot of (what sounds to me like) romanticization of some Great Liberal Christian Past.

You're right to an extent, but there definitely was one. Reading books by Harry Emerson Fosdick is reading today's rhetoric in a book that's eighty years old. From full endorsement of evolution and socialist sympathy to cautioning people about worshiping Jesus and saying that morality tends to create "hang-ups"; it's what the left wants Christianity to be today but written before your parents were born. You can also see the man all but invent the self-help genre as we know it and popularize the "authenticity cult" along the way.

But I don't think this more-genuine Xity ever really existed, or, if it did, that it was always an attempt to smuggle radicalism into a governing social trope. It's my position that the liberal/progressive strain of Christianity has always been the more marginal concern, although it's occasionally come to the forefront; desegregation and worker's rights, both 20th century phenomena, are two commonly-cited examples of this more radical Christianity.

for every counter-slavery movement, there are a dozen preserve-the-white-male-hegemony movements within the Body of Christ...history's history and seems pretty unambiguous on this point:

Umm...the biggest abolitionist group in England was initially run by what would today be called "extreme right-wing" people who, along with "radically" opposing slavery and getting the word out like they meant it, also espoused the censorship of enlightenment intellectuals and ideas.

You only make things worse by imposing your left-liberalism circa 2007 and its extremely narrow concepts of what constitutes a "progressive" on previous times and peoples. People who simultaneously epitomized a liberalism towards new standards and a conservation of others get a raw deal. You begrudgingly give a compliment to the "beacons of light" Christians who moved towards your notion of progress and condemn what you find to be the inertial simpletons who held it back without realizing that they were one and the same at times.

The fact that one of the key factors in stamping out slavery in the 19th century so quickly and so vastly was the will of the British empire (and Big Business by proxy) is doubly ironic. In many cases you had raw, old-fashioned Western imperialism bossing the rest of the world around (including the Africans) to stop the slave trade and the general practice of slavery. How do you classify those people?

That being said, you are right that the idea of America having this equally famous leftist brand of Christianity isn't really correct. Only with the shifting of cultural norms has what would've been considered to be completely moderate forms of religious devotion and service been inflated into religious "zealotry" and "fundamentalism." Many of the more liberal forms of Christianity in the past still took a fundamentalist approach to reading the Bible (i.e. divinely inspired, miracles happened, etc). Quakers v.s. Fundies can't be construed too much as some sort of 19th century equivalent of left v.s. right. Even the most radical of Christians from that era would be regarded as reactionary today and would probably be disgusted with even the most right-leaning American's lapse of devotion to God. You're playing pretend when you try to bring their world into our modern ideological games and vice versa.

I also think that abusing the definition of fundamentalist is no different than the abuse of "Islamic fascism." Both are, in many ways, cop-outs that allows someone to condemn a doctrine for being too "out there" without having to actually look at the doctrine itself and what it says. What is Christianity? Is it "fundamentalist"? Does Islam promote the violence that its followers engage in? Let's look at these things instead of leaving all religions essentially blank and blaming all of the undesired outcomes these religions produce on a few bad eggs who had to ruin the party for everybody else. It reminds me of people who say that Lenin or Hitler "hijacked" the otherwise benevolent concepts of Marxism and fascism. Only when things turn out unexpectedly bad do people blame bad rulers and non-compliant followers, as if we are to dogmatically believe that if everybody were to obey the party/religious rules that things would've turned out fine.

I respect you for looking at a religion (in this case Christianity) and its teachings and making a damn judgment on it though (regardless of your judgement), and not just playing the game of, "you can take anything from any source to mean anything."

If Islam.... should happen to effect an Inquisition, carry out "crusades," support the Third Reich, and actively conspire to deny the women of the third world decent resproductive health care, managing in the meanwhile to become an institution so dominant that it's impossible to go through one twenty-four hour period without somehow being reminded of its total ideological triumph over perfectly tenable systems whose adherents were perfectly happy without the vampire that rose from the grave on Easter....

waitaminit, Islam IS guilty of most of this! Certainly at their height Islamic empires violently converted (or attempted to) every other culture they came into contact with - they supported the Third Reich; their track record on women's health and rights is STILL as equally abominable as the worst of Christianity; the culture silences dissension and the scientific method; it condoned, supported, and facilitated slavery just as much (and for longer) than Christianity (technically there's no real proscription against slavery in Islam - slavery of non-Muslims was considered perfectly legitimate well into the 20th century in certain places). Laying all of this shit exclusively at the feet of Christianity (as opposed to, say, specifically the Catholic Church) seems woefully misguided to me...

J0hn: ordinarily Acts 9:10-16 is taken to sanction the view that with the Resurrection the law at least was "transformed", if not abolished it altogether. This is where Peter gets hungry and falls asleep, having a dream of all this food, including lots that was "unclean" according to Levitical law; but a "voice" in the dream tells him something to the effect of "You should no longer consider unoly what God has made clean".

Whether or not this ought to be read this way is another matter. This is how things stand if you take Acts to be a legit authority: they stand unclear, but but matters are certainly not as clear as you make them out to be.

gershy your stalking skills are quite impressive

do be sure to let me know what else I said five years ago that interests you & always make sure to mention the mountain goats whenever you can, it's quite witty to do so

"omg! he was interested in Christianity five years ago, and he is still interested in this subject!"

Christianity is so passe.

Euler, Acts 19 (and all of Acts, really) is a really convenient way of ignoring what Christ taught, it seems to me - I mean, on the one hand, it can be argued that Christianity itself springs from Acts as much as from the Gospels, since it's Paul's conversion that's the signal moment for making Xity a world religion instead of a sort of Jewish mystery cult* - so it'd be pretty precious for me to say that Acts isn't canonical. At the same time, Peter's dream does seem to contradict what Christ explictly taught, which seems a little unsporting ("sure He said what we all heard Him say, but then after He died, He said something else...to me personally...in a dream!")

*nb to people who think I'm hating here: a "mystery cult" is a specific historical phenomenon, not a term of a abuse or dismissal

wow, my spelling was terrible in what I just wrote. Sorry!

But yeah, J0hn, it's hard to reconcile that part of Acts with the passages you quoted. That's one reason why there's been this dream for a long time of finding the "true" Christianity underneath all the "constructed" texts. I guess the idea is that whatever "true" account of human life / the cosmos / whatever there is, it'll be logically coherent. If you're committed to this, you can either finesse the texts themselves, or just dismiss them as frauds. If you're willing to give this up, you can claim that God isn't bound by logical coherence, or you can still dismiss the texts as frauds.

One thing that's interesting about fundamentalists today, I think, is that they're giving up on the old logical requirements on belief, reading the texts "straightforwardly" (whatever that means) but accepting their logical incoherence. Fundamentalism is totally post-modern this way. That's one reason why it's natural for them to reject science.

I am all about mystery cults (also Elaine Pagels - who's very helpful in parsing the roots of the various contradictory viewpoints expressed in the new testament)

Magical mystery cult?

To chime in late and come back to the original point, I think that there still exists a reasonably-sized populace who have a day-to-day morality that aligns with the mainstream and thinks that current conventions and laws are working just fine. I mean, we have the strawman Christian that Richard resents that, to some extent, exists but in small quantities. On the other side, we have strawman atheists that are dismissive, a category the Dawkins types of the world might fall into. I'm a lot less likely to dismiss the latter group out of hand, but that doesn't mean that I won't get tired and walk away from either because the rhetoric and viewpoint are just so obnoxious and unsustainable when applied to my daily life.

What the left wants, what the right wants, etc. are voters. That's about it, because you notice while there are some political figures with religious ties, we never ended up with a Falwell, Robertson, or the like in actual office. I have no idea if the dramatizations of Bush who claim he actually has that mindset are true, but in the past I'd say we've had a strong relationship between a group of religious leaders who have consolidated power and play up to the government to push divisive bullshit on key social issues, and actual politicans who will cozy up to them in the hopes of getting votes. Maybe religion is much more key than I try to believe, but I can look at guys like this Korn guitarist and realize that he could have this same personal journey without any mention of God.

One thing that's interesting about fundamentalists today, I think, is that they're giving up on the old logical requirements on belief, reading the texts "straightforwardly" (whatever that means) but accepting their logical incoherence. Fundamentalism is totally post-modern this way. That's one reason why it's natural for them to reject science.

I don't think fundamentalists accept that their sacred texts are logically incoherent. What they are likely to believe is that every word is directly inspired by God and infallible, and that if something appears logically inconsistent, that is because it is either a divine mystery which is too exalted for us to understand, or else we are reading it incorrectly. In the case of whether or not the Old Testament law is still in effect, I think they would say that it is not, and that when Jesus said that he did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it, he was making a subtle distinction but that, in effect, by fulfilling it, he removed the requirement for his followers to abide by its every specific rule - though it is still a valuable source of ethics and wisdom, as long as one doesn't get too literal about it.

except that all their pet political issues are based on literal interpretations of the Old Testament, specifically Leviticus as ref'd above

Jesus didn't stone no queers, btw

Well, that's the infuriating thing about fundamentalists - entire central doctrines of their beliefs are based on ambiguous vague images from the Old Testament, and things that Christ seemed to state very clearly are routinely ignored or explained away.

Most of the Jesus-inspired teachings involve either concrete things that are very social stressing because they're hard to completely address -- there's always poverty somewhere, it's difficult to address it in your own backyard due to emotional baggage, and caring for others is a very personal thing, when it comes down to it. Not that I even existed before the late 70s/early 80s, but really I think what the moral majority movement succeeded in was finding "moral issues" that could be easily quantified and put into law, and then decided those were the most important. Doing so abdicates a lot of the responsibility from personally helping others and makes for great talking points.

It would be fun if fundamentalists would take up Levitical law as pet political issues! I'm thinking of the anti-mildew crusade that would ensue (as of Leviticus 13:47ff). Come to think of it, Clorox (American bleach company) would love this. So maybe that means this is coming to a politician near you/me!

ehhh fuck it

people are always gonna pretend Christ shared their distaste for Leviticus but there is nothing in the texts to suggest it's so

Euler, yeah, maybe if we'd followed the laws in Leviticus I wouldn't have these fucking mold allergies.

You know who I think is very good on the way liberal Christian soft-pedal certain aspects of the Bible: Edmund D. Cohen, in The Mind of the Bible Believer (a Prometheus Books book that is actually worth reading). He has his own somewhat cranky ideas about some things, but some of his analysis is very sharp. (He went to the same seminary that my brother-in-law attended, so he is familiar with a milieu that's quite close to home for me.)

(FWIW--and I've probably said it before--, I find Bart Ehrman's Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, the most convincing account of what the historical Jesus was probably on about. One reason I find it so persuasive is that he zeros in on so many things that seem obvious once they are pointed out, but which I learned to gloss over. On the other hand, I haven't read that extensively on the subject. Haven't even kept up with Ehrman who has since become more famous than he was when I originally read him.)

hmm sounds interesting

I don't think you would agree with Ehrman (or Cohen, for that matter, but you might find either one, yeah, interesting at least). Ehrman's Jesus is definitely not a Gnostic Jesus. (OTOH, he's also definitely not a member of the moral majority.)

I don't care if I agree with him or not (I do read people I don't agree with y'know, like, say, Bernard Lewis) - I'm interested in the scholarship.

I'm sure you do. Sorry. I guess it's more like: I don't want to leave you interested for the wrong reason.

I know this is ILM and so this discussion probably seems a bit out of place, but screw it, I'm interested and you get what you pay for.

The whole emphasis on the law thing is just one thread of Christian history. Another thread emphasizes instead one's aspirations to approach God...that is, following our own inner devotion to God; you see this in guys like Wesley, founder of Methodism. The thread emphasing following the law tends to shun inner devotion as deceptive. You see the same thing in Islamic history btw: Sufis versus those who emphasize the following of sharia.

So it's wrong to think that devotion to the law is what Christianity (or Islam) amounts to. These are old tricky debates though, and it's hard when your framework is one of those threads to see the good in the other.

Wow, the quote that's was posted earlier in this thread is a remarkable display of hubris.
I love the image of him wandering from mas^H^H^Hpastor to pastor hear what the different churches have to say, so he can become the supreme Warrior Of God. It's just like those old kung fu movies, where a dude's learning all the different techniques.
Suspect that fellow watched a lot of Bruce Lee on the tour bus.

J0hn I assume you're gonna get into this territory in your Sabbath book. I mean, how could you not?

I'm watching this thread in awe. Thanks, guys. I'm in way over my head, having been raised in a family that never set foot in a church or mentioned God.

My entire theological inheritance from my parents amounts to the following two-line conversation when I was, errr, maybe 9:

Me: Do we have a religion?

Mom: We're Protestants.

http://www.cbsnews.com/images/2005/03/05/image678340x.jpg

*slow clap*

But really, great stuff everybody.

I really, really hate this Intense Guy staple of getting childishly overinvolved in every single thing and then acting like there's wisdom in it -- you know, "Here I am doing lots of drugs and getting sleeve tattoos, because I was WILD, but then I figured it out and found god and stopped doing drugs and so I've really EXPERIENCED LIFE and LEARNED SOME SHIT."

I think this is really interesting. I do agree that this whole "I will dedicate myself totally and humorlessly to some cause" thing is really boyish. It's the same thing that really turns me off to certain young middle class leftist types who are always talking about how fucking autodidactic and self motivated they are.

In the case of this guy, it's almost as if his Christianity is fueled by the same complex that made him want to be a rock star. He needs to believe that not only is he a Christian, he is studying from all the world's churches and will soon be THE BEST CHRISTIAN OF ALL TIME. There are aspects of modern Christianity that cater especially to this type of ego satisfaction in a way that other religions do not. When you get really into Judaism you're in for hours of study and reading, debating the Talmud and observing a kosher lifestyle. When you get really into Christianity you're joining some everlasting war against satan. Even Matisyahu isn't getting his ego fed to that degree.

don't blame jesus, blame extreme sports

I remember going to a Jesus Camp-style summer program in the mid-90s and the most frequent exhoratation we got was to "be EXTREEEME for Jesus!"

Why is Jesus so much more unkempt than anyone else? Does the Son of God not deserve a greasy widows peak?

at least you got the being EXTREEEME part down

korn bassist finds excuse to be elsewhere, is replaced by 12-year-old

Korn have announced that the 12-year-old son of Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo will tour South America with them later this month.

Tye Trujillo plays in the band The Helmets and will fill in for regular bassist Fieldy who can’t make the dates next month in Columbia, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Peru “due to unforeseen circumstances.”

I have many questions about this.

"Man you people are all old."

rob trujillo's 12-year-old is totally stealing wolfgang van halen's thunder as pubescent bass artiste

Fieldy can’t make the dates next month because he opened the door and there was a bag on fire.