To Evangelicals, Catholics, Mormons, Jehova Wits and Muslims are cults.

I don't get this thing about Bush courting the Catholic vote and I further don't get that Catholics support Bush. i attended an evangelical church and attended one of the biggest Bible studies summer program in OK a few years ago. For the life of me, I had to turn these people lose...they almost made me give up my own beliefs. They only regard Christian funddies and the traditional Christain groups like Methodists, Baptists, etc. as real Christians. The rest, including Catholics, are regarded by most as heathen and cults.

Go figure. :shrug:

:scared:

And that is one thing I keep trying to drill into my mother's head(who has gotten FAR more conservative as she has aged and often spouts the conservative line about things like prayer in school). These people are NO friends to anyone but their own radical fundamentalist selves.

... Christian Fundamentalists place all their beliefs in the Bible (the Old Testament).

As a Catholic, I can tell you that the Old Testament has virtually no place in Catholic liturgy except for a few lovely psalms.

It's strictly New Testament and the message of Jesus.

told me a few years back he was tired of trying to get me to the Lord and satan is a force to be reckoned with. He stopped short of saying I was Linda Blair, but said I was Hell-bound nonetheless.

He always told me that ALL people who are not fundamentalist are going to Hell, and they have a particular aversion to Catholics and Mormons.

That is why I cannot for the life of me, understand why someone does not call Chimpy on this. Since he is a fundy, why is he trying to woo satan worshipping cults such as the Catholics? That's what they believe, and trust me, talking to them, it's black and white.

people who hate you and think you are hell-bound no matter what.

doesn't matter....the votes do...

piss off his psychotic Fundie base. Fundies are just mean, bitter people trying to pretend they are not.

Because Bush supports the groups that think Catholics aren't true Christians, are a cult, and are going to Hell. Evangelicals and fundies in the like of Bob Jones U. all think this of Catholics. Bush supports them. Thus, Bush hates Catholics.

Many Catholics are supporting Kerry over Bush because of this reason.

in the catholic church. They are being infiltrated by the same dominionists who are infecting the protestant churches. Around here the catholics distribute voter guides right before election day.

I'm in the Northeast and Catholics here are very different from Fundies. Most Catholics I know are Dems, but that's probably because I'm in Mass.

..."Evangelical Catholics", the Opus Dei types, and even over-active KoC-ers.

...in their "outreach to Catholics". Just couldn't put aside their "holier than thou" habits and reach across the divide.

Bush, being a better politician than theologian, is better equipped to try it, and he has a whole PR apparatus working with conservative Catholic groups to help smooth over the dividing lines.

They may even succeed in the short term, but it's doomed in the long term: I've argued that if they actually won the fight over abortion, gays, women's rights, etc., they'd be right back to complaining about Jews, Catholics, and anyone else who wasn't their particular brand of belief.

i would say evangelicals are included.

Seems to me the popular definition of "cult" is essentially any religious organization with less than, say, about 1,000,000 Members. Over that number, whammo- it's a respectable religion.

As far as I'm concerned, if you're going to call any religion a cult, they all are.

More than 100 years old.

It's that simple.

I agree that the word "cult" is thrown around too much, but we shouldn't dispose of it entirely. There needs to be a word that describes the fundamental (ha ha) difference between Quakers and Jim Jones' followers, or Unitarians and Scientologists.

I mean, I understand what you're getting at, but-- in terms of objectively differentiating between "real" religions and so-called "cults", I would argue it's pretty hard to draw a hard and fast line.. Are "cults" religions that cause people to do crazy things and/or hurt themselves or others, like the Jim Jones people? Okay, sure, but there are lots of crazy things that people are doing to themselves and others right now in the name of the big Western religions, as well... Sure, some of the tenets of Scientology are weird.. and so are some of the tenets of Mormonism. And there's some pretty odd metaphysics in the Roman Catholic worldview, if you sit down and parse it out. From where I, as a non-believer (at least in any western style deity) sit, I'm hard pressed to call some people's belief-- without evidence-- in an invisible man (or being) who controls everything "real" religion, while labeling essentially the same thing in the minds of others a "cult"

except for other fundies. Got kind of tiring. Don't see much of her any more. Thankfully she never did it in front of her Catholic siblings and inlaws.

I don't get the Bush thing either. If this is a systemic belief, that other religions are cults or at least not "true" religions, then what on earth are the Catholics thinking?

Of course I know about 10 Catholics who won't be voting for him anyway.

...The truth is, most Catholics are in places where they don't have to deal with this attitude on a regular basis, so much so that many have a hard time believing this sort of naked bigotry still exists. And for those who do know, they want someone who pays lip service to their pet causes just as much as the evangelicals do, so in the absence of overt Catholic-bashing, they're willing to pretend that's all in the past and blind themselves to their allies actual rhetoric.

Okay, I buy that. Never thought about the generally closed religious world most people live in.

...but the first time someone recite the anti-Catholic rant, I was just stunned. It was as if they had accused me of stealing their souls by taking their picture. I'd only read about stuff like that in history books.

This is an outrageous example of intolerance!

Except for the Jehova's Witnesses -- those guys are nuts.


:)

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

who represents the 'Christian' perspective on TV----Falwell, Robertson, or someone from the So Bapt Conv.

their Catholic relatives are all going to hell. One even believes his wife is "unsaved". They believe there has to be a public profession of faith and a baptism afterwards, and only the fundies and baptists and a few protestant churches do this. Around here, they think Methodists and Presbyterians are too liberal. They think Mormons and Catholics are a cult.

My grandmother is a Baptist and very liberal in her politics, she says that the people in the church she attends are insane.

My brother, also a Baptist, is having his wife homeschool their children so they never come in contact with any "nonbelievers". Sadly, this includes my wonderful children, who are not being raised as strict fundamentalist Baptists and thus are not allowed to play with their cousins.

My aunt and uncle, also fundie Baptists think that Lutherans, Catholics, JW's, Mormons, Methodists, Jews, Muslims, well, come to think of it any one they see as the "others" are not only hell-bound but are, in my uncle's words, 'subhuman unbelievers'.

Then there's my husband's family. Evangelical Lutherans of the Wisconsin Synod. They are nice people, but most of them (I have one extremely liberal BIL) think that any one who is not a WI Synod Lutheran is a cultist and bent on destroying the world.

I am particularly feared and every chance they get they try to whip a little religion on my poor children (who are only 2 and 3 years old!).

Oh, and they are not allowed to pray with anyone who is not a WI Synod Lutheran. WTF is that about?

Luckily, my DH doesn't buy into any of this!

Scary people.

Religion can bring great comfort to some and I respect that, to others it is simply a means to rationalize oppressing others.

eom

Although, if I may be so bold, GOOD Catholics would read Jesus' teachings of compassion, humility, and forgiveness, and would recogize where the Bushies stack up when held to THAT standard...

The "evangelicals" consider anyone not adhering to their Taliban like belief system to be Satan's spawn and condemned to the tender mercies of a benevolent God who will cast them down on the eternal barbecue.

I suspect that, in their eyes, most of us here will be on the hottest part of the grill.

If anyone hasn't seen Chick comics yet, take some time to visit the most extreme and unintentionally hilarious website I've ever seen:

http://www.chick.com/catalog/tractlist.asp

It's like "Colors" storyboarded by third-grade Vacation Bible School students - ROFLMAO!!

Our UU minister once held a similar position in Florida. He caught a twelve-year-old boy vandalizing his church. He asked why, and the boy said, "Because my (fundie) pastor says you're a Satanic cult."

:scared:

Want to know why an anti-gay initiative failed in conservative Idaho a couple of years ago? The makers of the video The Gay Agenda also sell some seriously nasty videos trashing Mormons, which they advertised in the credits of The Gay Agenda. Some gay activists blew up a still of the ads and sent it around to all the Mormon bishops. Buhbye initiative!

but is is good to put the info out there.

I love that bumper sticker :-)

I never did get the religion thing. I've just never understood why it would take a belief in something as irrational as a god to bring good stuff like compassion, awe and commitment into one's life. The two just never seemed connected to me.

When I learned about the social-control role of religion it all began to make sense. From what I can tell, the "love thy neighbor" stuff acts like the matador's cape - it's purpose is to distract the bull and conceal the sword. The attitudes being discussed in this thread are what make all theocracies so fundamentally anti-human.

To disabuse real religions from the fake ones (any religion that
organizes itself out of a book rather than one's direct experience
of life).

Bush would spit on the real jesus christ who's work with the homeless
in los angeles is the very antithesis of bush'ism. Jesus christ was
a cult leader in his day, and like we treat cults today, he and his
people were horribly repressed.

Same shit, different millenium. Ya think "christians" would have
learned.... instead, they are the very heathens they claim to be
above... typical rabble.

Is the far right a cult? They for sure engage in cult like behavior -- or so some of the items on this checklist would indicate:

"Keep in mind that this checklist is meant to stimulate thought, not "diagnose" groups.

• The group is focused on a living leader to whom members seem to display excessively zealous, unquestioning commitment.

• Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.

• The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s), and members (for example: the leader is considered the Messiah or an avatar; the group and/or the leader has a special mission to save humanity).

• The group has a polarized us- versus-them mentality, which causes conflict with the wider society.

• The group's leader is not accountable to any authorities (as are, for example, military commanders and ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream denominations).

• The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify means that members would have considered unethical before joining the group (for example: collecting money for bogus charities)."

http://www.csj.org/infoserv_cult101/checklis.htm