Nov 5
To W. Robert Godfrey and his lesson about what is going on today. In this lesson, discussed gender identification and what happens when the Church aligns itself with or obtains great wealth. This was posted on the Abounding Grace website (see https://agradio.org )
Should note two things here. First, the idea of there are more than two genders is not exclusive to today's Western Civilization. Some Native American tribes recognized up to 5 different genders. We should note that their different gender identifications do not necessarily translate easily into the model being employed now in America.
The different gender identifications found among the Native Americans should partially help us in understanding gender identification in our own society. It should at least tell us that gender identification issues aren't unique to the current course of Western Civilization. But we should also note one other thing. That is that though one's biological sex plays a factor in gender identification, it isn't the only source of influence on one's gender identification. And that has been shown in multiple civilizations. Thus, and this applies to both sides of the debate, we can't equate biological sex with gender identification. That while one's biological sex is based solely on the physical, one's gender identification is based on factors in addition to one's biological sex.
The other point should be made is this. While Godfrey rightly talks negatively about the problems that occur when the Church has or is closely connected to great wealth, today's religiously conservative American Christians, through their loyalty to the Republican Party, are politically siding with great wealth. So how is it that religiously conservative Christians in America have escaped the trap, which Godfrey mentions, that has captured the Church in the past? Here we should note that the dominant branches of the Church in some of the nations that experienced revolutions in the past few centuries were siding with wealth and power at the time. Three examples of that siding occurred in the pre-revolutionary times of France, Russia, and Spain.
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Nov 9
To Bradley Birzer and his article on freedom and the beginning of Western Civilization. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative Blog.
For all of the nobility ascribed to Western Civilization, it is clear that there is a great disconnect between that and our history.
If we take America for example and how it was allegedly based on Judeo-Christian tradition, on what part of that tradition was white supremacy based? In seeking more and more land at the expense of the way of life and even the lives of Native Americans, what was the good being sought? For each Black person who was brought or born here to be bought and owned as property, what ideals were being pursued? Or when Jim Crow replaced Slavery or when systemic racism still lingered after the end of Jim Crow, what morals were being pursued?
And what should we say about Europe with its constant wars over land and religion? What about European imperialism and colonization? What should we say about England's separation of Church and state when people came here to escape its religious persecution only to start persecuting those from other denominations once they got here?
Why is it that the above article only associates idealism with Western Civilization and neglects to mention that horrific atrocities were part of history of Western Civilization? Why is that? Perhaps it is because we long to pray the prayer of the Pharisee from the parable of the two men praying (Luke 18:9-14). For it seems that the only freedom being sought by apologists for Western Civilization is the freedom from having to look into a non-magic mirror. For the measure of our nobility is found not in how we treat our own, but in how we treat others.
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