JustAsking said:
I agree. Why are the conservative Christians such enemies of freedom?
I'd like to expand on this and see if we can't see a fallacy of argument, here. Something doesn't seem right, and I think I know what it is.
When the United States of America was born in 1776 and G. Washington became president a little later, we had a congress full of ordained ministers, almost totally Christian, but as you pointed out correctly, some Deists, too. The reason these boys were ministers, is because the ministry in colonial days were the best educated Americans in the country, by and large.
We would say by comparison, today, that these fellows were the epitome of "Conservative." But they were not religionists. That means, their opinions didn't come from denominational bias, but a mutual fear and love of the Lord and His principles. They all seemed to have that in common.
Go back to the Congressional Record in those formative years and see exactly what I'm talking about. You'd be dumbfounded what you read. They would read the King James Bible passages into the Record as source for their own position, and others, who had an opposing position would often be persuaded to join them, having seen it differently. They could be corrected.
Unfortunately today, large religious organizations whose correctness DOES come from denominational bias all consider themselves "Conservative." What they mean is, if you don't try to stretch the philosophy, water down the doctrine, correct the leaders, and cover up all the bad stuff, then you are conservative.
The problem comes when we accept their self-awarded label and then apply "Conservatism" to all the individuals who consider themselves Christian. By so doing, we made a mistake! We take a corporate term (which is false, anyway) and apply it to every individual within that corporation.
TRUE Conservatism has NEVER BEEN "Follow the leader mind-numbed robotic indoctrinated self-protecting religionists." We really know that fact, but don't like to admit it. That's what our Founding Fathers taught us by example. Do you think that the Catholic Scandal involving the sodomizing of thousands of young boys is being paid off and kept quiet by "conservatives?" They are perverts and they flatter themselves by a conservative label, but actually, they are liberals. They are wolves in sheep's clothing. They stretch church philosophy and bend doctrine until it breaks, or just ignore it all-together. Then they know they will be protected by the "conservative spirit."
When you use the label that these perverts give themselves you cannot help but misdefine the problem, and as a result, misdiagnose the situation entirely. They are NOT conservative Christians. They are bigoted, corrupt liberal Religionists involved in cover-ups and pay-offs, and self-protection at any cost. And they equate their liberalism with FREEDOM! They lie. They are not free. They are in chains and fetters spiritually, with no way of escape.
Compare them to the good men who founded the United States. Those were your conservatives., both politically and principally. They were not religionists, so they were not "conservative Christian," as we call it, today. Granted, they also had their hang-ups and misgivings, too. After all, they were just people. But they weren't raping altar boys and calling it the love of Christ, were they?
Just because a political conservative is defined as a Constitutional Constructionist, that doesn't equate to a Denominational Religionist Doctrinalist who believes to the scorn and exclusion of everybody else. Don't make the mistake that such are conservatives, in the "Constitutional" sense. They are absolutely not, in the sense of the signers of our Constitution.
If the inequities, bad judgment, fraud, corruption, hypocrisy, and self-serving double-dealing that goes on in many churches today were to have happened in the Colonial Congress, we would not have a country today that resembles the United States. Were such churches in fact "conservative," they would have long ago kicked every one of those people out of their church, just like Paul set the example.
A true conservative never goes by written doctrine, per se, but by the principles of good judgment. Christian is as Christian does.
So the truth is this: Only INDIVIDUALS, here and there, can be "Christian." A body of believers is not a "Christian." Salvation is individually determined and a membership means nothing. The true church is in fact invisible. All the churches of Asia fell away, even before Paul died, but the "TRUE CHURCH" lived on, and the gates of hell did not prevail against it. Yet they were kicking the true Christians out of their groups, according to Paul. You can say anything you want about the hypocrisy of this or that church. It means nothing at all to me. No church is a "Christian." Only a few of its members, if any at all. But let's not demean the principles, throw the baby out with the bathwater, and label all who would admire and follow those principles as hypocrites, just because we haven't learned to spot the difference, yet.