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Religion Thread: ...and suddenly, everyone's a theology scholar

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Re: Religion Thread: ...and suddenly, everyone's a theology scholar

Well here is an interesting quote:
Is it ever acceptable for a Catholic to criticize the Church or disagree with Church teaching? The answer can be found in the contrast between Mary and Peter. Mary is the model of the Church. Peter is the model of the hierarchy...
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The whole article is here:

https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2017/09/17/disagreeing-with-the-church/
 
Re: Religion Thread: ...and suddenly, everyone's a theology scholar

Nuts gonna nut.

“With the advent of Trump as the commander in chief of our armed forces, MRFF has experienced a massive influx of new military and civilian personnel complaints of religion-based prejudice and bigotry, most of them coming from non-fundamentalist Christians being persecuted by their military superiors for not being ‘Christian enough,’” Weinstein tells Newsweek.

He says noncommissioned officers at one Air Force base reported that their superiors told them Trump would make it USAF policy that in order for “disbelieving Jews” to be allowed into the USAF or deemed fit for promotions, they would have to show via objectively established behavior that they were at least honestly “considering the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

At another base, the wife of a combat-decorated Muslim U.S. Naval officer, who was wearing a Muslim headscarf, was surrounded in the commissary and spit upon and cursed as not being a “true American and being a spy and a terrorist.” She was with her children at the time.
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Numerous other complaints remain unaddressed. For example, 36 Air Force Global Strike Command personnel complained in March about a plan to include prayer among the activities in its “Year of the Family” program. The AFGSC has approximately 31,000 personnel at Barksdale Air Force Base near Shreveport, Louisiana. It is responsible for the nation’s three intercontinental ballistic nuclear missile wings, the Air Force’s bomber force and operational and maintenance support for organizations within the nuclear enterprise.

More than 100 service members also complained in March when Army Major General Julie Bentz, vice director of the multiservice Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Organization, gave a speech at the 56th Annual Kansas Prayer Breakfast, during which she stated, “But my greatest privilege is standing in front of my king and my God, carrying every member of my organization to his throne and asking for his protection, his mercy, his love on each of them and their families and whatever are their concerns and burdens of the day.”
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The U.S. military has long been seeded with radical Christian fundamentalists—sometimes called Christian Dominionists or Christian Reconstructionists—who believe a “Warrior Jesus” has their backs while they fight against Islam. They believe they are establishing a “Kingdom of God” on earth, starting with the United States, and are predictably anti-LGBT and unfriendly to females among their ranks.

The MRFF was founded in 2005 by Weinstein to counter that spread and advocate for broad religious freedom and freedom from religion within the military. More than 50,000 complaints have been filed with the foundation, the vast majority coming from Protestants offended by being hectored with radical interpretations of their own religion. Since last November, there’s been a spike in anti-Semitism and attacks on minority religious views.

The MRFF estimates that 84 percent of military chaplains are evangelicals, and about a third of them are fundamentalists, defined by the MRFF as Christians who have decided that their evangelizing and proselytizing need not conform to the U.S. Constitution, case law or any DoD directives restricting their behavior.
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Weinstein also shared with Newsweek dozens of hate-filled emails directed to him from former and current service members, stating that they pray for his death and eternal life in hell. He says small victories like the one involving the Strong Bonds program last week can’t keep up with the changed tone at the top, and its effect on behavior in the middle and lower ranks among the fundamentalists in the military community.

“The reality of Trump being commander in chief has unleashed a raging battle cry along the lines of ‘There’s a new sheriff in town, and he loves white, male, straight, Christian fundamentalists one hell of a lot more than anyone else,’” Weinstein says. “The fundamentalist/Dominionist bullies have been emboldened by Trump’s own bigotry and that of his henchmen to such a profound degree that MRFF considers the dire situation to be nothing less than a full-fledged national security threat to our country.”
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We've given our apes missiles. What could go wrong?
 
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Re: Religion Thread: ...and suddenly, everyone's a theology scholar

Jimjamesak said:
Dude, the Air Force has long been a fundamentalist hellhole, ever hear the stories out of the Academy?
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I didn't know but it doesn't surprise me. Colorado Springs is ground zero for those mental midgets.

Wasn't it an AF chaplain who got booted because of his spectacularly stupid "I know we will beat the Muslim because my God is stronger than his God" oofa?
 
Re: Religion Thread: ...and suddenly, everyone's a theology scholar

Case in point, this is from 2005.

I've heard stories told to me from Air Force guys that of a similar nature. The Army and Navy are not that bad actually but the Marines to some extent and definitely the Air Force are fundamentalist breeding grounds.
 
Kepler said:
I didn't know but it doesn't surprise me. Colorado Springs is ground zero for those mental midgets.

Wasn't it an AF chaplain who got booted because of his spectacularly stupid "I know we will beat the Muslim because my God is stronger than his God" oofa?
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Oh it's beyond Colorado Springs, the Air Force as a whole has a pretty toxic culture with its fundamentalism. Best explanation I've heard, sadly, is that the Army and Navy have a lot more minorities to mitigate their effect.
 
Re: Religion Thread: ...and suddenly, everyone's a theology scholar

Jimjamesak said:
Oh it's beyond Colorado Springs, the Air Force as a whole has a pretty toxic culture with its fundamentalism. Best explanation I've heard, sadly, is that the Army and Navy have a lot more minorities to mitigate their effect.
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The Navy has an institutional history of not being down with that kind of derp. For one thing, you get traditions like this. But just in general the personnel have no time for the Thumpers. My Dad was WW2 Navy and had stories about how when they'd get fresh meat that were good ol' boys they would have the local community standards, um, explained to them.

Part of it is just that the very worst of conservative dumbas-sery tends to come from landlocked rural Jesusland. Sod busters grovel below the CropGod. Fishermen have a wench in every port and nonsensical nautical tragedies have taught them the only divine intelligence is the sea, and She Is One Mean B-tch.

Anyway, at my work we have jarheads and squids. The former are Thumpers; the latter are libertines. They all voted for Trump because ignorant, but the former think he's some sort of instrument of the Almighty.

The latter just hate queers.
 
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Kepler said:
The Navy has an institutional history of not being down with that kind of derp. For one thing, you get traditions like this. But just in general the personnel have no time for the Thumpers. My Dad was WW2 Navy and had stories about how when they'd get fresh meat that were good ol' boys they would have the local community standards, um, explained to them.

Part of it is just that the very worst of conservative dumbas-sery tends to come from landlocked rural Jesusland. Sod busters grovel below the CropGod. Fishermen have a wench in every port and nonsensical nautical tragedies have taught them the only divine intelligence is the sea, and She Is One Mean B-tch.

Anyway, at my work we have jarheads and squids. The former are Thumpers; the latter are libertines. They all voted for Trump because ignorant, but the former think he's some sort of instrument of the Almighty.

The latter just hate queers.
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Alaska in general has a lot of ex-military so I work with plenty of ex-military folk and I've learned these generalizations:

Navy: Usually full of hilarious and/or bizarre sea stories but mostly glad to not be at sea and able to go home every day. Also ex-Navy tends to be the smartest, "you actually have to learn **** in the Navy" is a comment I hear often. And like you said, not very many fundamentalists. Nuclear science, Neptunius Rex, and Jesus don't mix.

Army: You will usually never hear from an Army guy about their service time. Nearly every Army guy I've met always says the same thing, "I couldn't wait to get out." It's rare to meet an Army guy who looks back on their time in service fondly. As for religion, most I know is it fell into the "shut up I'm trying to..." category.

Marines: "When I was in the Marine Corps..." I swear a Marine will compare everything to his time in the Corps. They're good for a funny Full Metal Jacket or Jarhead-esque story though. But they definitely have the "Jesus Warrior" spirit thing going.

Air Force: Now you have to divide the Air Force into 3 categories: 1. Air Force Pilot, which is either a Sully, a quiet, unassuming person capable of amazing ****, or an arrogant a-hole. 2. Other Air Force officer, both commissioned and non, this is the bulk of where the problems with the Air Force come from. Fundamentalist and arrogant about being "in the service" while being like a clerk, or mechanic, or technician or some other tedious job. This is where the term "Chair Force" comes from. 3. Air Force grunts. "I only have to put up with these a-holes for x more months..."
 
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