Tag: Christianity

Pimps of false hope and salvation by materialism

lakewood_chProsperity’s slap-happy belief system evolved from a spiritual imperative to accumulate wealth found in the end-times view known as postmillennialism. It holds that God promises 1,000 years of Christian dominion will precede his return; thus, wealth accumulation is a tool of evangelism, and a materialism arms race is the harbinger of Armageddon (a good thing in the Christian view). Today’s Prosperity movement has shed postmillennialism’s eschatological literal-mindedness, recasting it at times in rosier phraseology, like optimillennialism, best said with Osteen’s aw-shucks smile, but not abandoning the groundwork it laid for the unencumbered pursuit of success of “Prosperity Theology”

via How will Prosperity Gospel ride out the hard economic times? – By Clint Rainey – Slate Magazine.

As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God

The answer given by Sir Edmund Hillary to the question: Why climb the mountain? “Because it’s there,” he said.

To the rural African mind, this is an explanation of why one would not climb the mountain. It’s… well, there. Just there. Why interfere? Nothing to be done about it, or with it. Hillary’s further explanation – that nobody else had climbed it – would stand as a second reason for passivity.

Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I’ve just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.

I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and that it suppresses individuality. People think collectively; first in terms of the community, extended family and tribe. This rural-traditional mindset feeds into the “big man” and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated respect for a swaggering leader, and the (literal) inability to understand the whole idea of loyal opposition.

via As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God | Matthew Parris – Times Online.