Prevailing Winds "For the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom . . ." 2 Cor. 3:17, TNIV

September 19, 2011

This Is A Long One, And Worth Your Time In Reading It (And Be Sure To Scroll Down For A Comment On Driscoll)

Filed under: Uncategorized — keelyem @ 6:22 pm

OK, so you might want to hit the bathroom before you start, but this is the most cogent, insightful, and courageous analysis of the modern GOP — from a Republican apitol Hill staffer — I’ve ever read:

http://www.truth-out.org/goodbye-all-reflections-gop-operative-who-left-cult/1314907779

Yes, he calls the Religious Right/Tea Party-controlled GOP a cult, and I agree with him. Now, I don’t use the word “cult,” in either its sociological or religious sense, carelessly; I’ve never, for example, referred to Doug Wilson’s various organizations (“ministries” just doesn’t fit) as “cults.” There’s enough there to object to without wrongly, in my mind, jumping to the conclusion that any weird or objectionable religious group is a cult. It’s enough to be weird or, as is more the case with Wilson, objectionable; it needn’t be a cult.

But the modern GOP meets the sociological definition, I think, of a cultish movement; that is, a group that adheres to a rigid, fundamentalist — politically and religiously, in this case — ideology and imposes strict litmus tests of ideological purity to determine who’s in and who’s out. It also utterly marginalizes the sociological “Other” and uses the vitriol it spews to energize its followers. While I had not previously thought of the GOP as a cult (content as I was to simply believe them to be obnoxious, ignorant, and entirely dangerous to the future of this country), I concede the writer’s point. The GOP has become more a cult than a political party, and it’s an exceedingly dangerous one.

Read the whole article, and I’ll likely follow up with some thoughts of my own, now that the Driscoll Macho Circus has left town. And a note to erstwhile correspondent Rob: As I said in responding to your comment, you evidently are unaware that the Grace Agenda was a guy thing, and you probably don’t realize my strong objection to sex-segregated theological and ecclesiastical conferences. But I wouldn’t attend the Dangerous Woman sideshow for two reasons: One, most of the women there would recognize me, and I have no right to upset their plans, no matter how offensive I find them to be. Two, I would never pay money to attend a conference whose entire existence is predicated on the idea that I’d have nothing at all to learn from the “men’s conference,” which, dealing as it does with the subject of grace, ought never to have been a guy thing anyway.

That should clear it up.

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