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Lesigner Girl Profile
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Registered: 11-2005
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Re: I love it.


In the U.S., we have people who feel that they are in the one True Church™ and believe it's their mission from God to go around to people of different denominations and bring them all around to the "correct" one (theirs). This creates competition, with one church trying to outdo another, putting religion front and center in a lot of cases.

Richard Dawkins says that religiosity isn't very prevalent in England and actually attributes it to the fact that they have a state religion. With one state religion, one church is pretty much the same as the next and there's no competition to gain converts. People go to church because it's part of the culture, then go about their lives without thinking much, if anything, about religion throughout the rest of the week.

If your own experience is different, it could just be a city/rural or regional difference, just as the "Bible Belt" is vastly different from, say, New York City.



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3/15/2009, 3:02 am Link to this post Send Email to Lesigner Girl   Send PM to Lesigner Girl Blog
 
Morwen Oronor Profile
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Re: I love it.


That's only until you get onto a board where, when they discuss politics, it always degrades into Muslim-bashing. And their excuse for doing this, "we are a Christian country, their religion is not the religion of our country, so they must either conform or go live in a Muslim country".
Then when you ask how often they actually go to church they say that they are Christians who don't have to go to church because their culture is "Christian culture", whatever that is?
3/15/2009, 4:40 am Link to this post Send PM to Morwen Oronor Blog
 
jinzleftbuttcheek Profile
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Re: I love it.


 I know it won't make you feel any better MO but those people aren't christians, they are Haters. They hate anyone who don't look, act or believe as they do; even other christians. Unfortunately there will always be those kind of people in the world (of all types of backgrounds) who hate just for the sake of hating.

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3/15/2009, 9:28 am Link to this post Send Email to jinzleftbuttcheek   Send PM to jinzleftbuttcheek Yahoo
 
Stormdog Profile
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Re: I love it.


quote:

Morwen Oronor wrote:


We still have God in our anthem though, Grrr.



Yes, we do too. It's a Whiteman's Arrogance hold-over - suggesting that we're special, God is on our side, and his power can be harnessed for our country's sake.

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3/15/2009, 10:48 am Link to this post Send Email to Stormdog   Send PM to Stormdog
 
Morwen Oronor Profile
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Re: I love it.


Here is the brand of Christian arrogance from South Africa. When the pioneers trekked inland (Voortrekkers) in the middle of the 17th century, they took nothing with them except Bibles and their families. There were a few preachers among the groups and they were also the teachers. The children on the trek learned to read from Bible and it was their sole education tool, and particularly the Old Testament.
They saw themselves on a new Exodus and thought of themselves as Israelites going to a new promised land. Of course when you look at pictures of the South African landscape on the other side of the semi-desert between Cape Town and the Wilderness, you'll understand the awe they felt when they saw it. (If you look under South Africa on the League of Nations, there are lots of photos and links there).
But they also came across really very black people. They were used to the Khoisan and the 'coloureds' and Malays in the Cape (the early settlers imported slaves from Malaysia because the Khoisan people were nomad cattle herders and couldn't be tamed1). These 'coloureds' were the result of interbreeding between the early settlers and the 'slaves'. So when they saw the first Xhosas and then the Zulus, very proud people who had herds of cattle that they moved around from winter to summer grazing in the area, they thought that they had found the sons of Ham and decided it was God's will that they subdue them and use them as 'water carriers' and of course they had cattle so they would be great 'herders of cattle' too.
They grabbed land like crazy, laying out farms, putting up fences and building homesteads on them.
They prayed, built churches and thanks God for giving them the 'land of milk and honey'. They were able to grow crops which grew with little effort and life was good. Can you imagine how much more entrenched their beliefs became.
But then the indigenous people revolted. Their fences were blocking their grazing paths and they didn't want to work and stay in one place without any herds of their own or their own families with them. They therefore embarked on a process of killing and burning. The trekkers didn't understand this and then drought came and they truly thought God was punishing them and that they hadn't suffered enough for the real land they were supposed to reach. So they packed up again and moved on.
Then they found the land across the Orange River with more amenable tribes and less scenic green land, and they settled there. This became the stronghold of Christianity in SA, the Orange Free State, which at one time allowed Indians (eastern Indians imported to work the cane fields) to only move through the area, they weren't allowed to stay for longer than 24 hours.
These are the people who formulated Apartheid, the policy that was based on the belief that the darker the skin, the nearer they were to Ham, the son of Noah who was thrown into the wilderness because he uncovered his father's nakedness.
Racism is still practised by these people, they still believe that people who are not 'white' are not godly no matter how religious. There are two crimes in the minds of these racists that are totally unforgivable, the one is inter-racial marriage (yet their ancestors are the ancestors of the Cape Coloureds) and homosexuality.

Sorry about the long history lesson, I thought you'd find it interesting.
3/15/2009, 11:56 am Link to this post Send PM to Morwen Oronor Blog
 


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