WHAT'S NEW

About
My Other Blog
Blog Schedule
Activism
Past Blog Posts
Various &
a Sundry Blogs
Favorite
Websites
My Stuff
On The Web
Audio-Visual
Library
Favorite
Articles
This Month's Scripture Verse:

But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.
2 Timothy 3:1-5

SEARCH THIS BLOG

Wednesday, August 14, 2019

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For August 14, 2019

Aug 10

To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost on mass shootings and his attempt to single out broken families as the key factor in those who practice such violence. (This appeared in Heidelblog).

We need to consider other factors when looking at mass shootings. That factor is national location. It isn't that America is the only nation where there is divorce on demand or the other factors mentioned.  For example, I heard of one minister attribute the increase in mass shootings in our nation to the increased secular influence on society. But, again, other nations have an even greater secular influence on society while experiencing a fraction of problems with  mass shooting. And unless people want to argue population size, a block of Western Europe that has a comparable population to the US still has a fraction of U.S. mass shootings.

We might also note that the majority of mass shooters are white males (see https://www.statista.com/statistics/476456/mass-shootings-in-the-us-by-shooter-s-race/ )and a large number of domestic terrorism from 1993 to 2017 was conducted by right-wing groups. Such groups include white supremacists, anti-government groups, and anti-abortion extremists (see https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/CR_5154_25YRS%20RightWing%20Terrorism_V5.pdf ). Though some might protest that because of population, it would make sense that the majority of mass shooters are whites, the percentage of white mass shooters exceeds the percentage of whites by a few percentage points. And there is also a larger percentage of black mass shooters vs the percentage of Blacks in the population. Here we should note the privilege that whites have over Blacks in society.

Also, though some would note that we switched gears from mass shootings to domestic acts of terrorism, the two groups are not disjoint. Mass shootings can be included as acts of domestic terrorism. And we should also note that the use of explosives and arson are included in acts of domestic terrorism. However, we should also note that domestic terrorist attacks include attacks where the death toll is lower than what qualifies as a mass shooting.

We might also note that the number of deaths that determine whether a mass shooting took place has been changed from 4 to 3 during Obama's Presidency. A source for statistics on mass shootings in the US can be found at Mother Jones (see https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data/ ). Using that database, we should note that the number of yearly mass shootings has increased during President Trump's Presidency so that it is only under Trump's Presidency that we have a double digit number of mass shootings per year (for the years 2017 and 2018, there are currently 8 mass shootings for the year 2019).

Thus, despite what was reported in Scott's article on mass shootings, there are connections to make between certain acts of violence and race along certain acts of violence and ideology. Since just after 9/11 to 2016, just short of 73% of domestic terrorist attacks were conducted by right-wing groups. Beliefs involved in right-wing attacks include:
 

    ---  Fiercely Nationalistic
    ---  Anti-gobal
    ---  Suspicious of Federal Authority
    ---  Reverent of individual liberty (especially the right to own guns, be free of taxes)
    ---  Belief in conspiracy theories that involve a grave threat to national sovereignty and/or personal liberty
    ---  Belief that one's own personal and/or national "way of life" is under attack
    ---  Belief in the need to be prepared for an attack


In addition, 23% [CORRECTION: the number is right but it is not the percentage, I made a mistake in the comment, it should be 27% because of 23 incidents out of 85] of domestic terrorist attacks have been conducted by Muslim extremist groups (for that of statistics see  https://www.gao.gov/assets/690/683984.pdf ).

Thus, the emphatic effort of the above article to try to blame the bulk of mass shootings or other acts of violence to that of broken families seems to stem from more from ideological concerns than from a wider view of the problems with violence and the evidence.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To Rosaria Butterfield and her message given on Abounding Grace Radio on how Christians should react to Intersectionality. She rejects Intersectionality as being anti-Christian. She also views the Celibate Gay Christian movement to be a contradiction to the Gospel. This was a recorded message posted on bounding Grace Radio.

Also posted on heidelblog at https://heidelblog.net/2019/08/agr-conference-audio-intersectionality-what-it-is-and-why-it-matters/
 

Note that the comment below was sent to both sites.

A few observations are necessary here.  First, when Rosaria talks about Intersectionality's rejection of the Christian metanarrative, she is not being precise enough. For Intersectionality does not have a monopoly on rejecting the Christian metanarrative, both Modernism and Post Modernism reject the Christian metanarrative. But here we should note that the Christian metanarrative is simply a subset of Pre Modernism. Modernism rejects the faith metanarrative of Pre Modernism while Post Modernism rejects the metanarratives of both Pre Modernism and Modernism.
Since Intersectionality is child of Post Modernism, it too rejects the Christian metanarrative. But why is this the case? The root of Post Modernism's rejection of Pre Modernism's metanarrative is not ideologically based as it is observationally based. That is because of many forms of human exploitation and persecution practiced by standard bearers of Pre Modernism (including Christian standard bearers), Post Modernism rejects the Pre Modernism's metanarratives. But lest Pre Modernism feels too marginalized, Post Modernism has the same reaction to Modernism.
This points to the kind of truth system employed by  Post Modernism. It is an outcome-based truth system where truth is determined by whether one's tenets has been used in the exploitation or oppression of others.

Right away we should note the kind of thinking involved in Post Modernism. That thinking  fails to distinguish between the consistent outcomes of how a metanarrative determines how we treat others from misattributed or inconsistent ones. This failure to make such important distinctions is the hallmark of black-white thinking. And we need to look at whether, in her reaction to Intersectionality as well as the Celibate Gay Christian Movement, Rosaria employs the same type of thinking.

Another observation involves the fact that Christians live in two different worlds that have connections. I am not talking about some 2 Kingdom model of thought here. Rather, I am talking about the world of the Church and how the Christian should expect  the Church treat people and Society and how the Christian should expect Society to treat people. Should the Christian expect both Society and the Church to treat people the same or differently? Should we Christians confuse Society with the Church or vice-versa? What we have today are very conservative Christians and very liberal Christians providing mirror images of each other. This is where while some Christians judge Society by how it treats and regards people with how the Church should while others employ the converse.

Which way should we judge? We could answer that question with an analogy. In America, while we expect the Church to demand that its members believe in Christ alone as God and Savior, we expect society to make no such demand. Thus, we expect the Church and Society to act differently from each other. Thus regarding LGBT concerns. the issue becomes whether we should expect the Church and Society to behave differently or the same toward the LGBT community.  This issue is not explicitly expressed explicitly Rosaria's comments though it seems that she gives some indication that she believes  Society and the Church to treat and regard the LGBT community much  in the same way.
Finally, whether we religiously conservative Christians can see partial value in Intersectionality depends on whether we can escape the conservative-liberal versions of confusing the Church with Society.


No comments: