While right-wing groups are mobilizing angry mobs to yell at school board members that parents have the right to control what their children are taught, evangelical pollster George Barna told religious-right activists at the Family Research Council’s “Pray Vote Stand” summit Thursday that it is their duty to try to indoctrinate other people’s children into a “biblical worldview.”
Barna, one of the first senior fellows at FRC’s recently established Center for Biblical Worldview, specializes in studying what he calls “SAGE Cons”—Spiritually Active Governance Engaged Conservative Christians. What is most striking about FRC and Barna’s “worldview” project is how few people—and how few conservative evangelicals—measure up to their right-wing “biblical worldview” standard.
When the Center for Biblical Worldview launched in May, FRC President Tony Perkins said that a biblical worldview “is only achieved when a person believes that the Bible is true, authoritative, and then taught how it is applicable to every area of life, which enables them to live out those beliefs.”
Barna told “Pray Vote Stand” attendees that only 6 percent of American adults measure up to that standard of a biblical worldview—and only one out of five people who attend an evangelical church.
Evangelicals don’t think that gay people should not exist, they think people shouldn’t do gay stuff. I don’t know what it is with the left, and especially the alphabet mafia, but you guys have a habit of characterizing the slightest disagreement as “they are trying to erase our existence.” That’s not what’s happening. Lighten up a bit. It’s a conversation.
Nobody is trying to strip you of any fundamental civil rights. Perhaps you’re trying to characterize the violation of other people’s fundamental civil rights as your own civil rights, and what you’re sensing is the civil rights of the innocent being protected, which sometimes necessitates not letting you do what you want to do.
Yes, evangelicals, by definition, do not leave people alone. Yes, they are given to harassment, and they need to be checked against it. But what you see at planned parenthood isn’t your typical evangelical, those are activists. And yes, they can be violent, and that needs to be checked. People are free to hold signs, advocate, and form picket lines, but they are not free to interfere with people’s movement, hit people, or project bodily fluids on them. But again, that’s not evangelicals.
Religion doesn’t inflict damage and pain — people do. Conversely, you don’t seem to be able to look at religion and see the structures and advancement it has enabled. It’s not that you can’t know, it’s that you don’t want to.
You basically contradict yourself in the first sentence… They’re fine with gay people existing as long as they’re not gay? The mental gymnastics you’re going through in this whole thing would be hilarious if it wasn’t scary how many people think like you. First off you don’t even know what group I fall into when it comes to civil rights so it’s pretty presumptuous of you to assume my civil rights aren’t being hampered. I’m honestly sorry you have lived a life that has put you on a path to hate and I hope one day you can see we are all humans and we are allowed to be different. You’re allowed to not like it but it’s not your place to tell consenting adults who they can love. That’s a you problem not an us problem.
I was just giving you an example of something evangelicals do such as protesting planned Parenthood clinics. I don’t see how picking up a sign would change an evangelical to just be an activist and no longer be an evangelical Christian. Possible for them to try and fill both roles at the same time.
Once again presuming that I don’t want to know something. It seems to me you’re the one with the blinders on. You claim religion doesn’t inflict damage and pain? Because people do? Yeah those people do it in the name of their religion… I feel like it’s hard to have a conversation with somebody who seemed to have slept through all of their history classes. I also never stated that religion can’t be positive in somebody’s life. Spirituality can be very good and very beneficial for some people and that’s great and I’m happy for people who find some kind of relief in the world that we live in. What I have a problem with is religious people trying to push their ideas on others and using their gods as an excuse to commit atrocities against those around them.
It doesn’t seem like you and me can see eye to eye on these subjects because we’re not looking through the same lens. I’m sure we have other areas we could agree on and could make progress on. However, when it comes to having empathy for other humans I think that’s where we fundamental differ. We could make this world such a better place for all of us.