Arkady
President
As an outsider looking in, I find it strange which religious taboos conservative Christians decide to turn into organizing principles of their politics. Abortion is an obvious example, as is homosexuality. To a lesser extent, so are birth control and pornography. What's odd is that many of these things have no real basis in scripture. The Bible never speaks about abortion (unless you start with the conclusion that it amounts to forbidden killing). It also only speaks against one specific form of birth control, and I'm not aware of any mention of pornography. It does, of course, speak against homosexuality, but does so most clearly in a book full of countless other taboos which are now generally disregarded.
Think of all the clear scriptural rules that are now generally disregarded by believers. There are all the dietary rules, for example (which believers conveniently argue were repealed by Peter, though the passage they rely on is not at all clear about that). There's the commandment about getting circumcized. There are rules against women wearing pants, people having braids in their hair, wearing clothes of two different fabrics, planting fields of two different crops, making images of anything in heaven, calling people names, and getting tattoos. There are all sorts of required feast days that are no longer observed, and rules about making animal sacrifices, not charging interest, and doing no work on the Sabbath:
http://www.salon.com/2013/11/11/amazon_just_ruined_sunday_morning/
Some of these rules have been largely ignored since very early in the history of Christianity (when the dietary and circumcision laws were blurred for the sake of making it easier to convert gentiles who were attracted to the faith but not enough to give up bacon or have the tip of their penises cut off). But others were observed strictly (sometimes in a modified form), until historically quite recently, like the idea you shouldn't be working on the Sabbath. Yet, today, nearly all that clear scriptural authority is either dispensed with without even need for a theological fig leaf, or, at the very minimum, it forms no basis for political organization (you won't, for example, hear those who are up in arms about the business of pornography also organizing to fight Sunday deliveries by Amazon.com, even though the latter is much more clearly a problem under scripture). And you'll never see the politicized evangelical Christians mobilizing against policies designed to make it easier to acquire and maintain wealth, even though Jesus made very clear that having wealth made it essentially impossible for a person to get into Heaven.
If you look at the list of theological principles that do form the basis for political organization among the religious, they all have a sexual component: rules against abortion, homosexuality, birth control, and pornography. Yet, not all religious issues touching on sexuality are organizing principles for politics among believers. Take divorce, for example. The New Testament takes a clear stance against divorce, and for nearly a millenium and a half from the time of Jesus, this was strictly observed as a rule against the dissolution of marriages. Only when a king found this inconvenient for his designs to marry his mistress did a new church arise to permit such divorces. And, even after that, the Catholics, in terms of dogma, stuck to the strict rule, and most other Christian faiths heavily frowned on divorced, such that it was almost unknown, until very recently. Yet, these days, evangelical Protestant divorce is incredibly widespread and little remarked upon, and even among Catholics it's not an organizing political principle (the Catholics who organize to block access to birth control, discriminate against gays, censor pornography, and ban abortion generally regard divorce as a question of personal choice, where they won't try legally to force their dogma on those whose faiths lack the persistent Catholic taboo against divorce).
So, the only key I can see for what causes some taboos to become politicized and some not is the reproductive goal. Each of the politicized theological taboos is something where enforcement of the taboo can be expected to boost birth rates. The rule against abortion, does this directly, as does the rule against birth control. Indirectly, the rules against homosexuality and pornography, since those otherwise offer non-procreative outlets for the sex drive. This would also explain why evangelical Christians often get worked up about masturbation. Divorce, by comparison, isn't a block to rampant reproduction -- in fact, encouraging divorce encourages the creation of more kids, since it breaks up couples where one partner may be sterile, and often new spouses want children together, even if one or the other thought they were done having children with their prior spouse.
Thus, perhaps it's simple social Darwinism. The taboos that had no particular survival benefit have been worked out of the system (nobody protests outside Red Lobster, any more, to voice opposition to the abomination of a shellfish dinner), whereas taboos that served to benefit the expansion of the churches that promoted them have remained features of political life.
Think of all the clear scriptural rules that are now generally disregarded by believers. There are all the dietary rules, for example (which believers conveniently argue were repealed by Peter, though the passage they rely on is not at all clear about that). There's the commandment about getting circumcized. There are rules against women wearing pants, people having braids in their hair, wearing clothes of two different fabrics, planting fields of two different crops, making images of anything in heaven, calling people names, and getting tattoos. There are all sorts of required feast days that are no longer observed, and rules about making animal sacrifices, not charging interest, and doing no work on the Sabbath:
http://www.salon.com/2013/11/11/amazon_just_ruined_sunday_morning/
Some of these rules have been largely ignored since very early in the history of Christianity (when the dietary and circumcision laws were blurred for the sake of making it easier to convert gentiles who were attracted to the faith but not enough to give up bacon or have the tip of their penises cut off). But others were observed strictly (sometimes in a modified form), until historically quite recently, like the idea you shouldn't be working on the Sabbath. Yet, today, nearly all that clear scriptural authority is either dispensed with without even need for a theological fig leaf, or, at the very minimum, it forms no basis for political organization (you won't, for example, hear those who are up in arms about the business of pornography also organizing to fight Sunday deliveries by Amazon.com, even though the latter is much more clearly a problem under scripture). And you'll never see the politicized evangelical Christians mobilizing against policies designed to make it easier to acquire and maintain wealth, even though Jesus made very clear that having wealth made it essentially impossible for a person to get into Heaven.
If you look at the list of theological principles that do form the basis for political organization among the religious, they all have a sexual component: rules against abortion, homosexuality, birth control, and pornography. Yet, not all religious issues touching on sexuality are organizing principles for politics among believers. Take divorce, for example. The New Testament takes a clear stance against divorce, and for nearly a millenium and a half from the time of Jesus, this was strictly observed as a rule against the dissolution of marriages. Only when a king found this inconvenient for his designs to marry his mistress did a new church arise to permit such divorces. And, even after that, the Catholics, in terms of dogma, stuck to the strict rule, and most other Christian faiths heavily frowned on divorced, such that it was almost unknown, until very recently. Yet, these days, evangelical Protestant divorce is incredibly widespread and little remarked upon, and even among Catholics it's not an organizing political principle (the Catholics who organize to block access to birth control, discriminate against gays, censor pornography, and ban abortion generally regard divorce as a question of personal choice, where they won't try legally to force their dogma on those whose faiths lack the persistent Catholic taboo against divorce).
So, the only key I can see for what causes some taboos to become politicized and some not is the reproductive goal. Each of the politicized theological taboos is something where enforcement of the taboo can be expected to boost birth rates. The rule against abortion, does this directly, as does the rule against birth control. Indirectly, the rules against homosexuality and pornography, since those otherwise offer non-procreative outlets for the sex drive. This would also explain why evangelical Christians often get worked up about masturbation. Divorce, by comparison, isn't a block to rampant reproduction -- in fact, encouraging divorce encourages the creation of more kids, since it breaks up couples where one partner may be sterile, and often new spouses want children together, even if one or the other thought they were done having children with their prior spouse.
Thus, perhaps it's simple social Darwinism. The taboos that had no particular survival benefit have been worked out of the system (nobody protests outside Red Lobster, any more, to voice opposition to the abomination of a shellfish dinner), whereas taboos that served to benefit the expansion of the churches that promoted them have remained features of political life.
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