wtf does "judeo-christian" mean?

uh this isn't that hard to figure out

why don't you explain it then, smart guy

http://www.neozionist.com/uploaded_images/star-and-cross-796503.jpg

too bad theres no wikipedia article on it

In an appearance at Kalamazoo Christian High School today, Republican presidential candidate John McCain today urged that voters keep in mind that this is a "Judeo-Christian nation."

it's a discussion thread, smart-ass. i know what it literally means.

too bad theres no wikipedia article on it

lolz

countdown to unmitigated thread clusterfuck ... 9 ... 8 ...

as i understand it: basically what is broadly considered "Western" cultural values and ethics. Like, starting with Abraham and the ten commandments and on to Jesus. etc.

what is there to discuss exactly...? Its a fairly precise term for a particular school of thought/cultural mindset (one that also explicitly excludes Islam as being in that tradition, not to mention Hinduism etc)

ie, a culture built around the old and new testaments. (xpost)

exactly

and yes, it is ethnocentric as all get out...though it does have a lot of use as a descriptive term for that ethnocentric mindset.

its also a secret code way to say "christian" without seeming to exclude others

yeah.

it's got something to do with world banking

that's it I'm reporting you to the Elders of Zion

you can expect to be out of a job within the week

i bet you anything this is a post-ww2 invention. "christendom" restated, now that anti-semitism is publicly taboo

xps

i would actually love to know the origin...

...to get real conspiratorial, the Great 70s Neocon Flip probably had something to do with it, podhoretz, kristol etc

mccain uses this term a lot when talking about illegal immigrants. I think it is to cloak his somewhat moderate position from the more conservative minutemen nutballs.

yeah those pesky non-judeo-christian illegal immigrants I bet there's a ton of those coming over the southern border aren't there

how is it substantially different from east asian values and morality?

The earliest uses of the terms "Judeo-Christian" and "Judeo-Christianity" cited by the Oxford English Dictionary are 1899 and 1910 respectively, both discussing theories of the emergence of Christianity.[9]
The term gained much greater currency particularly in the political sphere from the 1920s and 1930s, promoted by liberal groups which evolved into the National Conference of Christians and Jews, to fight antisemitism by expressing a more inclusive idea of the United States of America than the previously dominant rhetoric of the nation as a specifically Christian Protestant country.;[10][11] By 1952 President-Elect Dwight Eisenhower was speaking of the "Judeo-Christian concept" being the "deeply religious faith" on which "our sense of government... is founded".[12]
By the 1980s the description of the United States as built on a core Judeo-Christian culture had become ingrained, and no longer controversial.

it's more in the WWJD sense.

yeah the controversial stance that a mexican is a child of god!

xp hm guess i'm wrong then. the story does have a funny Pledge of Allegiance parallel: an early progressive idea ending up as a conservative hobby horse

how is it substantially different from east asian values and morality?

probably not a lot - all the major religions have pretty similar basic tenets when it comes to moral behavior (don't kill, don't steal, family is important, adultery is bad, etc.)

No matter what McCain says, though, it's descriptive more than normative in terms of the actual founding documents of the Republic.

yeah, Founding Fathers not so into Jews

mccain uses this term a lot when talking about illegal immigrants.

i think he uses this as code for "i still hate the fucking vietnamese".

he doesn't really bother with codes when it comes to that

He's Just Not That Into Jew

hilarious thread so far.

if jew have to ask.......

how is it substantially different from east asian values and morality?

Does Judeo-Christianity stress concepts analogous to 'non-attachment' or dharma? (Genuine questions. I actually don't know.) I would think that values concerning the treatment of animals would differ from at least some forms of Buddhism and Hinduism (if not Buddhism-as-actually-practiced-in-most-places).

Does Judeo-Christianity stress concepts analogous to 'non-attachment' or dharma? (Genuine questions. I actually don't know.)

I would say Judaism definitely doesn't. Judaism is closer to Islam in its acceptance of the material world and its workings (sex and money aren't bad, it is good to work and be an active member of your community, etc.) Christianity is more of a grey area, what with that whole despising the material world/flesh and sex are evil unless yr procreating angle...

DID JEW EAT? JEW? GETTIT, MAX? JEW?!

http://www.movieactors.com/freezeframes22/anniehall137.jpeg

narrow meaning = "shared" religious/ethical tradition of Judaism/Christianity
common sloppy meaning = "western culture" including non Judeo-Christian stuff like Greek/Roman antiquity
code meaning = crappy ill-considered identity politics for mainstream white American Christian heterosexuals fearing erosion of cultural hegemony

Yeah, I was going to say, this is a coded thing. I'm rather curious to see if this term either become increasingly used, or if they find some other shorthand/dogwhistle phrase.

One thing I always found interesting was when Roma(& Byzantium, by ext) changed to Christianity about, what 700 years into its existence? Then even after the empire declined, you still had a continent-wide network of christian institutions keeping the faith, as it were, for another 1000 years til things got interesting again.

Eh, I don't know if it's any kind of big sinister dog-whistle thing, a code word for some coherent agenda. But it definitely serves as a soft, vague, not to exclusive-sounding way to refer to what lots of people imagine as the central culture of the U.S. as a sort of white western-culture Anglo Christian nation or whatever.

The term "Judeo-Christian" makes it sound (a) sort of broad and inclusive and harmless, mostly because it makes it sound (b) like some sort of philosophical and moral ethos, some passed-along bedrock of values. (As if to say "it's not about your identity or race or even religion, it's just a time-tested set of values we all agree on.") Whereas saying something like "this is a white Christian nation" sounds far more explicitly exclusive and identity-based, even though both of them can be used in soft/harmless ways and both can be used in sinister ones.

jiu-jitsu for jesus movement in the judo-christian tradition

"Judeo-Christian" is oftne used by pundits who want to be inclusive. Thirty years ago they would have "Christians" and left it at that.

I don't think the term Judeo-Christian is generally used to exclude based on race.

as I understand it, the term is used to refer to the modern Western moral order (not like gunslingers and Boot Hill and shit like that mind you).

yeah i'd venture 97% of the blacks in a 30 mile radius of me would self identify as Judeo-Christian

xp

'Judeo-Christian' always sounds to me like the latest in a certain kind of selective American inclusiveness that has generally tended to elide national origin and then religion provided the people included were from a recognizable Western religious tradition and weren't Native American or Asian. If 'white' (and generally by default Xtian) is an amalgam of all the fair skinned European immigants, then 'judeo-christian' is more racially inclusive provided the non-whites assimilated to the majority language/religion/mores.

Euler -

But the fact that "Judeo-Christian" is now a moniker suggests a new understanding of how Judaism influenced Christianity. Call it post-anti-semitism.

I don't think the term Judeo-Christian is generally used to exclude based on race.

well I already ref'd upthread who it most obviously excludes, particularly in modern contexts: Islam and Asians.

and let's face it, modifying "Christendom" to "judeo-Christian" isn't all that inclusive since us Jews are what, 3% of the American population? gee thanks for thinking of us.

Alfred, that's a good point. I'm curious about the origins of the term. And Shakey, it's better than just "the Christian ethic", no?

It's not just right-wingers who use the term. Barbara Ehrenreich uses it in her interesting article in the Nation in 2004, "The Faith Factor", here.

I prefer the expression "people of the book", which I gather is Islamic in origin.

yeah I would hesitate to characterize it as exclusively right-wing; it's fairly accurate in its way, and not explicitly ideological.

it's also used by O'Reilly types in a sneaky way: "America was foundedo on Judeo-Christian principles," etc.

but that is mostly true! well I suppose you could quibble that since America's model is primarily Rome and ancient Greece those don't have much to do with Judaism or Xtianity - however I daresay there's nary a pagan Greek or Roman among the Founding Fathers.

Though he doesn't use the term Judeo-Christian, I've understood what's generally meant by this term to be articulated well in Robert Bellah's (at this point classic) article "Civil Religion in America", here. The gist is that presidential/governmental references to religion have been around in the US since its birth (e.g. Kennedy's inaugural, Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address), but that they represent a civil religion amounting to a kind of deism, rather than a specifically Christian religion. I take the recent adoption of the term Judeo-Christian to acknowledge this, since there's very little doctrine to civil religion (though it's not atheistic either).

but that is mostly true! well I suppose you could quibble that since America's model is primarily Rome and ancient Greece those don't have much to do with Judaism or Xtianity - however I daresay there's nary a pagan Greek or Roman among the Founding Fathers.

true, but in the semaphore of conservatism this means "the Founding Fathers wanted the Ten Commandments on courthouse walls."

holding up the founding fathers as paradigms of Christianity shows a lack of understanding of Christianity. But I guess Americans are pretty lol history so this kind of lie gets traction.

pretty sure Jefferson was not down with that

x-post

holding up the founding fathers as paradigms of Christianity shows a lack of understanding of Christianity

well, some were and some weren't, they weren't monolithic by any means.

well I already ref'd upthread who it most obviously excludes, particularly in modern contexts: Islam and Asians.

Don't forget us filthy atheists.

http://www.garnersclassics.com/pics/2001/monolith.jpg

excellent article in Harper's a year or so back about the current fundamentalist/ born-again agenda to rewrite history reclaiming the founding fathers as mighty Christian Soldiers

crepey

yeah, this rewriting of history that article gets into would be a lot harder if Americans were more fluent in their own history. The paradox is that part of our strength as a nation has been our ignorance of history, because we don't realize what didn't work in the past and so are unafraid to try again.

that last clause is brilliant, Euler.

'Judeo-Christian' always sounds to me like the latest in a certain kind of selective American inclusiveness that has generally tended to elide national origin and then religion provided the people included were from a recognizable Western religious tradition and weren't Native American or Asian.

This is exactly right, and I might even take out the caveats at the end: part of what's interesting about the term is that it gets used in this broad sloppy way that begins to refer to a general vision of what America is (or should be) like, so that even in its code sense anyone can fit into Judeo-Christian America, all you have to do is assimilate and keep your lawn mowed.

It's not a right-wing term, but I'd venture that the left tends to use it more narrowly and accurately -- i.e., to describe a religion/ethical tradition -- whereas the right sometimes uses it as a replacement for this vision-of-what-America-is stuff.

a religion/ethical tradition vs. vision-of-what-America-is stuff

and what is the difference between these two uses exactly...? cuz they sound pretty interchangeable to me.

i like how ethan is now tearing his hair out: "FUCK, here I thought I had the best idea for a clusterfuck thread and everyone just EXPLAINS it to me. FUCK FUCK FUCK."

Judeo-Christian as it is employed these days is also an attempt to blur the lines of where the authority of "Christian" values stops; it's like a way of saying "even if you're not one of us you still have to do as we say" (and it's not just directed at Jews obv.)

hence: urged that voters keep in mind that this is a "Judeo-Christian nation."

Ethan probably thought I'd post or something.

louis do you prefer Muslims or Judeo-Christians?

Well, there's that famous Gore Vidal quote (as used on the cover of Julian Cope's latest record) about the "sky-god" religions and their systematic suppression of women. I can only concur. Both dud.

he likes graeco-roman polytheism doesn't he? hope he's including those in that category.

art of what's interesting about the term is that it gets used in this broad sloppy way that begins to refer to a general vision of what America is (or should be) like, so that even in its code sense anyone can fit into Judeo-Christian America, all you have to do is assimilate and keep your lawn mowed.

Yeah. This is what I was trying to say.