Frum /= right-wing
Apr. 17th, 2007 09:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lavendersparkleI'm getting rather annoyed by the insidious assumption that seems to have infiltrated most people's subconscious that frum = politically right wing. I think a large part of it is that English doesn't really have an equivalent of frum so we end up using left/right language to describe religious attitudes and practice which leads to the assumption that being theologically conservative is associated with being politically conservative.
I was reminded of this when I was bored and got Alec to take the What kind of Christian are you? test on beliefnet.com. The quiz is very silly as the majority of the questions are "Do you think [insert miraculous event] a) happened as it is described in the Bible? b) didn't happen at all and is just a symbolic story? c) happened as described in The DaVinci Code? d) some other far fetched non-miraculous explanation you've come up with (volcano/mass hallucination/it was so cold the water was frozen)? Oddly enough, Alec, who self defines as theologically conservative, gave the a) answer to most of the questions giving the quiz result that he was like Rush Limbaugh and probably read the Left Behind books (because everyone who believes the Bible is true wants to read a badly written series of novels based on bizarre interpretations of the craziest bits).
Now the quiz was deeply silly but I think it hits on a worrying common perception that anyone who thinks that the Israelites really were led through the desert by a pillar of fire or that Jesus really did miraculously walk on water must also believe that public spending is bad and gay people should be shot. This perception is beneficial to two groups of people neither of whom I particularly like. Firstly, it plays into the hands of self-righteous atheists who are deluded enough to believe that if it weren't for Big Bad Religion everyone would be a left-wing hippy who spends all day holding hands in a circle singing 'Good morning starshine'. Even more worryingly it plays into the hands of the religious right, who quite happily rest assured that the only reason people might think that tax should be more progressive or there should be less war is because they don't really believe in the Bible.
The best rebuffing of an American Conservative Christian I ever heard was a journalist asking him whether he thought Leviticus 18:22 was true and relevant today. The man answered yes and happily talked about it's importance. The journalist then asked the man, who had earlier spoken about how the right to private property ownership was a Christian value, whether Leviticus 25 was true and relevant today. Oddly enough, for some reason, in his opinion 'G@d hates fags' was still a relevant message today but 'severely constrain capitalism within a system that ensures that no individual's mistakes will affect the material welfare of him and his descendants for more than 50 years' was a historically and culturally specific instruction. It beautifully demonstrated that a politically conservative reading of the Bible is no less selective and interpretive than a politically left-wing reading of the Bible.
Anyway, I suppose the message of this is to be aware of when we are falling into the trap of accepting and perpetuating this meme rather than challenging it to promote the reality of the politically progressive potential of religious belief.
I was reminded of this when I was bored and got Alec to take the What kind of Christian are you? test on beliefnet.com. The quiz is very silly as the majority of the questions are "Do you think [insert miraculous event] a) happened as it is described in the Bible? b) didn't happen at all and is just a symbolic story? c) happened as described in The DaVinci Code? d) some other far fetched non-miraculous explanation you've come up with (volcano/mass hallucination/it was so cold the water was frozen)? Oddly enough, Alec, who self defines as theologically conservative, gave the a) answer to most of the questions giving the quiz result that he was like Rush Limbaugh and probably read the Left Behind books (because everyone who believes the Bible is true wants to read a badly written series of novels based on bizarre interpretations of the craziest bits).
Now the quiz was deeply silly but I think it hits on a worrying common perception that anyone who thinks that the Israelites really were led through the desert by a pillar of fire or that Jesus really did miraculously walk on water must also believe that public spending is bad and gay people should be shot. This perception is beneficial to two groups of people neither of whom I particularly like. Firstly, it plays into the hands of self-righteous atheists who are deluded enough to believe that if it weren't for Big Bad Religion everyone would be a left-wing hippy who spends all day holding hands in a circle singing 'Good morning starshine'. Even more worryingly it plays into the hands of the religious right, who quite happily rest assured that the only reason people might think that tax should be more progressive or there should be less war is because they don't really believe in the Bible.
The best rebuffing of an American Conservative Christian I ever heard was a journalist asking him whether he thought Leviticus 18:22 was true and relevant today. The man answered yes and happily talked about it's importance. The journalist then asked the man, who had earlier spoken about how the right to private property ownership was a Christian value, whether Leviticus 25 was true and relevant today. Oddly enough, for some reason, in his opinion 'G@d hates fags' was still a relevant message today but 'severely constrain capitalism within a system that ensures that no individual's mistakes will affect the material welfare of him and his descendants for more than 50 years' was a historically and culturally specific instruction. It beautifully demonstrated that a politically conservative reading of the Bible is no less selective and interpretive than a politically left-wing reading of the Bible.
Anyway, I suppose the message of this is to be aware of when we are falling into the trap of accepting and perpetuating this meme rather than challenging it to promote the reality of the politically progressive potential of religious belief.