True Left

As I have said from the beginning, the Amish are Old Testament followers just like the rest:

Experts explain complicated relationship between Amish communities and the environment: �It really isn�t [idyllic] at all�
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The post linked an article from Religion News that explored this relationship, citing certain harmful farming practices and dirty energy usage that seem to fly in the face of the perception of the environmental stewardship of these communities.
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�They believe that God gave the Earth to people for them to use,� McConnell told Religion News
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diesel and gasoline generators often serve as prime energy sources for Amish appliances and farm equipment. Burning either fuel significantly contributes to air pollution that worsens air quality and drives the overheating of our planet.

Religion News reports that the few remaining Amish households headed by farmers often use harmful pesticides and chemical fertilizers that wreak havoc on local ecosystems and pollute waterways. The Amish have been under fire in several states for farming practices that degrade vital watersheds.
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�A lot of people from the cities where I�m from look at the Amish and think, �What an idyllic sustainable lifestyle, so different from our modern one,� the original poster wrote. �Except it really isn�t [idyllic] at all, it�s a largely separate insular economy from ours, but uses and benefits from a lot of the short term extractivist and careless land practices that has got modern America into the mess its in today.�

See also:

The Amish stress strict obedience in their children, and this is taught and enforced by parents and preachers. Several passages in the Bible are used to support this view. Their children, as with all children, may resist a parent�s request. However, things such as tantrums, making faces, calling another bad names, and general disobedience are rare because the child knows that those actions will result in corporal punishment. Any youthful dissatisfactions are usually verbally expressed, but profanity is never allowed because the guilty child can expect swift punishment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish_way_of_life#Child_discipline

Indeed, one look at the high sexual dimorphism of their clothes suffices to reveal their inferiority:



Woke comments:

They are immoral weirdos that abuse the environment and kids.

They make excuses and exceptions to technology so they can benefit from it, they use horrible chemicals on their farms. All they are doing is making the average person believe they are somehow different in order to drive up sales of overpriced goods.

Christianity Today Editor: Evangelicals Call Jesus �Liberal� and �Weak�
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�When we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we�re in a crisis.�

Moore said he thinks a large part of the issue is how divisive U.S. politics are, which is now spilling over into the church. He pointed to how a lot of issues are �packaged in terms of existential threat,� leading to the belief among everyone, not just evangelical Christians, that �desperate times call for desperate measures.�

It makes sense, then, that evangelical Christians would embrace Trump, who portrayed himself as the answer to many of those supposed existential threats. Trump both campaigned and governed on a largely evangelical Christian platform. He moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem; he **** down on immigration from majority-Muslim countries; and he appointed multiple conservative judges, including to the Supreme Court, which has swung sharply right.

From the comments:

So the right is really not "Christian."  So what does that really make them?

Old Testament followers.

It's ironic.  If Jesus was actually around today, he'd be called socialist, woke, liberal, extreme, etc... The very figure that Christianity is supposed to be built on would be vilified by Christians.

Because they are not Christians. They are Old Testament followers.

They've never believed in the teachings of Jesus. They've just parlayed religion into big business, power and wealth.

Which is what the Old Testament teaches.

Conservative "Christians" will crucify Jesus again when he returns to Earth

Just like the Old Testament followers crucifed him the first time.

It's no news that the evangelicals would be the first to nail Jesus to a cross. They hate everything that he actually taught.

Just like those Old Testament followers who crucified him the first time.

"Christian"/// Nah - they're following the AntiChrist...

The Antichrist is the Messiah foretold in the Old Testament.

These people would make Jesus throw up in disgust. They are the opposite of everything Jesus stood for.

So were Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, Solomon, etc..

I left the evangelical religion of my youth 50 years ago, when I left home for college.  Even then, many of the parishioners were bigoted and mean-spirited.  Even then, most of the sermons dealt with (in this order):

1)    Battles and violence from the Old Testament.

2)    The writings of Paul

This.

The movement came into vogue during the Victorian era as a method of building character in pupils at English public schools. It is most often associated with English author Thomas Hughes and his 1857 novel Tom Brown's School Days, as well as writers Charles Kingsley and Ralph Connor.[1] American President Theodore Roosevelt was raised in a household that practised Muscular Christianity and was a prominent adherent to the movement.[2]
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Muscular Christianity can be traced back to Paul the Apostle, who used athletic metaphors to describe the challenges of a Christian life.[9]

To be fair, however, gymnastics is not specifically mentioned anywhere in this link (whereas your 'Fitness culture' link does not mention Muscular Christianity at all). If anything, football is considered to be most associated with Muscular Christianity:

An early pioneers of Muscular Christianity in the US was Amos Alonzo Stagg, a Yale-educated football coach

Sports were incorporated directly into many mission schools to promote muscular Christianity, as administrators and missionaries believed sports such as football shared many of the same values.[38] The effect mission schools like Adams College in South Africa had was seen through the demographics of football players

It was the establishment of Western-style schools across the continent that brought about Muscular Christianity along with the introduction of European football teams.

Missionary schools were among the first to incorporate football into their programs, to make sure every student was playing.

Christianity and association football � followers of Muscular Christianity established several of England's leading football teams

So why are you ignoring football and bringing up gymnastics instead??

(At least gymnastics isn't played on grass:

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/news/olympics/msg7795/#msg7795 )

Both, plus rugby.

The grass is just a side point. The main point is that you started out criticizing Muscular Christianity, which is associated with football, not with gymnastics, yet you brought up gymnastics for no apparent reason. You can criticize gymnastics separately, but it makes no sense to blame Muscular Christianity for it, given gymnastics predates Muscular Christianity.

"Turanized sports like gymnazein"

Are you referring to the pommel horse event? Let's eliminate all sports involving real horses before we worry about that!

Bodybuilding =/= gymnastics.....

"Soccer was invented by a western country"

Untrue:

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/colonialism-and-sexism/msg15360/#msg15360

it seems the first games in which the main technique involved kicking a ball originated in China. The game of Cuju was also played in Korea, Japan and Vietnam and dated back to the fourth century BC.

Westerners introduced playing it on grass (which is our main objection).

Ari Blaff: Toronto schools' anti-racism trainer demands religious blind faith

The disturbing rhetoric of Kike Ojo-Thompson during her infamous session with Toronto District School Board (TDSB) has raised concerns about what diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) facilitators are allowed to say and how they are permitted to treat people.

Now, footage of a seminar led by Ojo-Thompson for Halton Catholic District School Board in June 2020, which had been posted to YouTube by the board, includes an explicit appeal to �God and all people of colour to forgive us.�

The recording of the seminar shows board chairman Marvin Duarte leading a gathering of senior administrators in prayer before introducing Ojo-Thompson

While such invocations are common in religious school boards when it comes to collectively singing �Our Father,� for instance, the explicit appeal to heavenly bodies to rid society of the scourge of systemic racism is striking.

�With this prayer God, we acknowledged the depths of evils that have been perpetrated against Black people in North America. From slavery, to lynchings, to white supremacist laws,� Duarte reads from a black presentation slide with words emblazoned in white. �We apologize, and ask God and all people of colour to forgive us.�

It isn�t the only religiously tinged thing that happens before Ojo-Thompson speaks. Prior to Duarte�s plea, a senior administrator forces participants to sit through a �seven-and-a-half minute� recording of an Indigenous land acknowledgement with a similar bend of spiritual self-flagellation. �Let me bow down to you, my friend and sister, for the pain that you have endured for the lives lost for the injustices, for my part in the inequality and discrimination and disparity,�

When the equity consultant finally begins her session, Ojo-Thompson is somewhat muted � seemingly less self-assured in those days before anti-racist thinking became mainstreamed.

Remarkably, educators are willing and eager to challenge Ojo-Thompson, blissfully unaware that soon such questioning will be deemed white supremacist and bigoted

�The role of slavery in relation to race and racism and anti-Blackness often gets muddled into this conversation of the larger human practice of enslavement,� Ojo-Thompson responds. �The basis, so what the slavery that I�m talking about here is, uh, the transatlantic slave trade,� she continues. �Because it was the only slavery that was based on this junk science called �race� in the first place.�

�When we talk about Slavic or intercultural slavery, that would�ve been what was going on on the continent in Europe. You have people who today, for example, would be called white. Because remember: this notion of white and Black didn�t exist then, right? So, people weren�t enslaving Slavic people because they were white, for example. You could enslave people who were considered, what�s the word? Barbaric.�

However, Slavic slaves, known as Saqaliba in Arabic, were a prominent feature in the Islamic world, not only in Europe, particularly in North Africa during the Fatimid Dynasty.

Ojo-Thompson argues that Slavic enslavement �back then � was often based in who is considered civilized and who is not and that was often tied to religious affiliation.

Ojo-Thompson faces further pushback from a teacher upset by her comment equating, according to the teacher, �Catholicism and Christianity� to �power oppression,� under what Ojo-Thompson terms the racist legacy of �religious universalism.�

�I only spoke to Catholicism because they have a specific role. When we talk about Christopher Columbus, et cetera, I said that it was dominant. I didn�t say that they were bad,� Ojo-Thompson, says, apparently backpedalling. �There�s a difference between being dominant and bad, right?�

The teacher appears unconvinced. �So, you could be dominant and good?� he asks rhetorically. �Absolutely!� Ojo-Thompson replies. �Because you can�t change the fact that you�re dominant, but you can change your role!�

�Christianity is dominant. I didn�t speak to whether it was bad or good. I said it was dominant,� Ojo-Thompson explains. �I have to speak about Christianity if I�m gonna talk about power. It has power. It is dominant. That�s a fact. That�s factual.

In fact, what Ojo-Thompson said, prior to engaging with this particularly teacher, is that Christians used the idea of race to justify slavery. �They had to legitimize enslaving people. These were Christians and Catholics who were enslaving people for 400-plus years and had to legitimize it,� she said.

Ojo-Thompson interjects. �One of the ways that racism plays out is that when racism is being discussed, that people are resistant to the learnings from experts.

She then argues that the enslavement of Africans by Europeans was uniquely different. In other instances, �they did not take away name, language, religion or culture.�

�So while we had slavery in human history, it wasn�t rooted in the delegitimizing of the people�s humanity, like actually calling them subhuman. They were seen as less civil, less civilized, but they weren�t seen as subhuman.�

But what this moment is about, this moment that we�re in right now, is about people struggling with the core of what race and racism are about

Ojo-Thompson says that her work, and that of her allies, is career-endangering. �It is more dangerous to be anti-racist, meaning it costs you more in your career in education to be anti-racist than it does to be racist,� Ojo-Thompson argues.

�You know, when I say racist, I mean people who are doing active racist things, but I also mean people who are not doing anything, right?� Ojo-Thompson notes, minutes after her confrontation with the trustee. �If we�re not being anti-racist � then we are implicated in racism because it is around us.�

He then closes the class with another prayer imploring God �to enable us to see the reality of racism and free us to challenge and uproot it from our society.�

I'm not an enslaver, i have no intention or desire to enslave anyone. However there are people in the world who radiate impure and evil energies into the world, and this cannot be allowed to continue, so they must be stopped/blocked from being able to send out these energies into the world, this isn't enslaving this is purifying the air. In these times i have been tasked with opening up space and purifying the air so that Jesus is able to descend down to earth. Thanks to Judeo-christianity the subtle air of the earth has become very impure, all the angles have left and it has become a dwelling of the satans.