Exile Excitement: Some Fundamentalists Seek Escape From Decadent Society

[SecularMotion]

OK, now we’ve done it. Those of us who advocate things like separation of church and state, secular government, LGBT rights and self-determination when it comes to issues of sexuality have really torqued off the Religious Right – so much so that some of them are thinking of going into exile.

Don’t get too excited. It’s not like they are going to flee en masse to some forgotten island or anything. Rather, some folks on the far, far right of the theological spectrum seem to be contemplating a type of “internal exile.” They’d hole up in a fundamentalist denomination until this current age of wickedness blows over.

David Gibson of Religion News Service described this phenomenon recently. Gibson wrote that a strain of Religious Right activists is “feeling increasingly alienated and even persecuted in the society they once claimed as their own. They’re shifting to another favorite image from Scripture – that of the Babylonian exile, preparing, as the ancient Judeans did, to preserve their faith in a hostile world.”

Gibson quoted Carl Trueman, a professor of church history at Westminster Theological Seminary in Glenside, Pa. Picking up on the Religious Right’s increasingly popular persecution theme, Trueman carped, “We live in a time of exile. At least those of us do who hold to traditional Christian beliefs.”

https://www.au.org/blogs/wall-of-separation/exile-excitement-some-fundamentalists-seek-escape-from-decadent-society

[trotsky]

1. Good, they can get out of the way of social progress.

Hopefully it won't end up with another Branch Davidian incident.

[AtheistCrusader]

3. "I'm taking my toys and going home" Good. Good motherfucker.

Because their toys are made of broken glass, lead, asbestos, orphans tears, and have a great big American flag painted in the middle of it, with a little 'made in china' in the corner where they never notice it even if someone points at it, painted on by an 11 year old in hellish conditions, working 16hr days, with a life expectancy of 15-20 from all the cadmium and shit they are ingesting.

Society will be better off without these cretins.

I too hope for a non-Waco repeat, but only because it makes the government look like assholes, when the real assholes were already front and center, talking to the camera crews about how society rejecting their bigotry is oppressive to them. They want to light themselves on fire on their own time, fine by me.

[AtheistCrusader]

2. Good. GTFO and stop voting.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Worryingly, Trueman picks out 17th century Scottish Presbyterians and English Puritans as ones

to emulate. You know, the people who were on one side of the British Civil Wars. "Exiles" such as Oliver Cromwell. All those people he had executed didn't see him as an 'exile', I suspect.

[Brettongarcia]

5. He supports Calvinists. Who say that we are all - even Calvinists themselves - "totally depraved."

"Depraved" is the "T" in TULIP; the acronym for the core of Calvinist doctrine.

He is worrisome; another Brit like Rupert Murdoch, come to the United States to interfere with domestic politics.

This new wave of interest in Calvinism though, might be good. When Christians believe they themselves are "totally depraved," that can help their humility slightly.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. We're not taking any blame for Murdoch - he was an Australian, not a Brit

Sorry about Trueman, though.

[Marrah_G]

7. Jonestown