njlauren
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Joined: 10/1/2011
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The Nicene and Apostolic creeds simply state what they believed Jesus to be, but typical of the religious wrong they try and narrow down Christianity to believing that Jesus was the trinity, died for our sins on the cross, absolving sins, rose to the right hand of the father, and that is all you have to believe and you are a Christian.
First of all, those creeds were man made, they came about in the 4th century and are not in the bible, they represent what the Bishops at Nicea decided Jesus was when Augustine chartered them to decide between all the competing visions of Christ to decide which was true (at the time, there were roughly 200 Christian sects in existence, with varying views of who Christ was and what he was teaching)
The problem is the bible itself has 4 main canonical texts that talk about a lot more than that, despite the uncomfortable truth to this type of person who wants to turn Christianity into simply believing Christ was the son of god, etc.
See, the problem is, that the GOP and their right wing buddies have created a really, really interesting kind of theology, and the Pope was directly commenting on this. First of all, that the RC in the US and many other right wing religious types, have turned Christianity into being primarily about being anti abortion and anti gay. The Catholic Bishops, for example, whose church teachings, bible and founder (Christ) said that blessed are the poor, that the poor and powerless are the duty of all Christians to help, instead threaten politicians who are pro choice and pro same sex marriage, and yet remain amazingly silent when Catholic politicians like Paul Ryan and Rick Santorum basically preach the writings of Ayn Rand, who is the opposite of Christian or what Christ taught. We have the religious right that preach the prosperity gospel, that "Jesus wants us to be millionaires" according to Joel Osteen, or that "Christ was kidding when he said a rich man would have a harder time going to heaven then a camel passing through the eye of the needle". It is the Catholic Bishops censoring a group of nuns who spend all their time helping the poor and powerless, instead of yelling and screaming about abortion and same sex marriage (imagine that, helping the poor, how shocking!). It is someone like Mitt Romney talking about the 47% percent of Americans who pay no taxes and calling them freeloaders (both of which are bullshit but whatever), it is the evangelicals, who claim to be born again and following Jesus, who so corrupted themselves with power that when the GOP proposes slashing spending on poor and old people, they either stay silent or actively support that, or support the idea that cutting taxes on the rich is good, because they are 'blessed by God' (talk about perverted theology!). Basically, what he is saying is reducing Christianity to being anti abortion and anti gay or focusing on sexuality is a perversion, and he is right, because Christ made very clear what Christians were supposed to do in leading their lives, and it wasn't chasing political power, it wasn't working to elect politicians, it certainly wasn't making sure the rich get even richer, it wasn't turning global warming into a crusade to fight against......
The GOP annointed itself the party of the faithful 30 years ago, and in order to promote the agenda of the evangelicals in terms of social issues and to make people like the Koch brothers or Trevor Norquist happy, they created a perverted idea of Christ and Christianity that while demonizing gays, trying to ban teaching evolution and making abortion the only thing that is important, also created this theology that supports the notion that the poor are lazy and are parasites, that the rich are blessed and that Jesus wants us all to be rich, which I guess could be called "Republican Jesus". The pope is Christians should be down in the streets and dirty, fighting for the poor and helpless, not sucking up to the rich and obsessing about ideology while watching politicians and businesses cause misery with unbridled greed. The last two Popes, with the incredibly widening gap between the very rich and everyone else, the exploitation of third world labor, basically did or said nothing because they wanted the support of the rich and powerful in their quest to make abortion and gays Christianity IMO, and this pope is a breath of fresh air.
I think he also realizes that the last two Popes, despite all the claims, have turned more and more people away from the church, as the religious right turned people off of evangelicals. The head of the Southern Baptists recently came out and said that they had no right to fight legal recognition of same sex marriage and that they had gotten too chummy with politicians, and needed to focus more time on loving Jesus and helping others rather than trying to fight the culture wars..and one of the big reasons is evangelicals have the same problems the church does, they have turned off the young people, and the Southern Baptists have seen a major decline in adult baptisms and are losing members, as are the Catholic Church. The head of the Southern Baptists went on to say the same thing as the Pope, that they needed to bring Jesus to the people, not hit them over the head with it like sledgehammer.
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RE: Why does Pope Francis hate Republican Jesus? - 
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