"Persecuted" St Paul MN Church Teaches that Empathy is a "sin"

[Get_off_my_lawn]

@Nyarlathotep

@mordant

The state recognizes whatever the celebrant’s faith community recognizes, as legitimate marriage.

Sounds like… a theocracy

Not according to the dictionary;

government of a state by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided

A theocracy has priests or a priest-class as supreme rulers (as in Iran, Afghanistan). But the state’s recognition of marriages being valid if officiated by whatever religion the couples choose does not fit that pattern. Rather, it is acommodating religious people, licensing them (whatever religion) to do duties that would be the governing body’s work. Here (Norway) licensed religious officials can officiate marriages, and the government recognise them. This does not mean that Norway is a theocracy. The recognition of religious marriages does not mean those are the only options. You can also get married at a courthouse, by a judge. Or you can go abroad and get married in whatever way, as long as it is an officially recognised way.

@Nyarlathotep

It is a place where members of certain religions have additional formal legal rights. That isn’t a democracy in my book; it is kind of the opposite. Sure Christians get away with a lot where I live, but their advantages are not written into the laws.

Here, the biggest humanist organisation can also officiate marriages. Haven’t checked if any of the smaller ones can do it also, but there would be nothing stopping them if they wanted to. A marriage is basically a legal contract. It is up to the people getting married which variant they choose, and who they want to officiate or witness the signing of the contract, with whatever rituals they choose. They can go fully religious, or they can do it secularly through an organisation, or at a courthouse. It’s still basically just a legal contract, witnessed by whatever licensed persons of their choosing. I don’t see what this has to do with democracy or not. And I certainly cannot see anything undemocratic in it.

But of course, if you want your religion or your religious family to recognise that you are actually married, you might have to go through the extra steps of promising stuff to a sky god. But as far as official records go, it’s just some signatures on a contract conforming to certain legal formalities.

Edit: yes, they dress those contracts up with flowery language and shit. But that’s more for shits and giggles, and because people feel better about it. But they still conform to the legal requirements. Which is the important part.

[Nyarlathotep]

@Get_off_my_lawn

Here (Norway) licensed religious officials can officiate marriages

Can you legally marry someone who doesn’t follow the same religion? You can’t do that in Israel. Does Norway have different property laws based on your religion? Israel does. Does Norway have different immigration laws based on your religion? Israel does.

So yeah, Israel claims to be a democracy, and it isn’t a claim I take seriously. So maybe it is an religious ethnocentric state instead of a theocracy; but that is a Fisher Price difference imo.

[Sheldon]

@mordant

Among Cities Church’s pastors is Joe Rigney, who has recently become a MAGA media darling because he, along with podcaster Allie Beth Stuckey, has been pushing the idea that empathy is a sin.

Ironically I have no sympathy for him or his church, so for once it seems they can’t call me sinful, not that I’d be bothered, as claims about supernatural curses get the same raised eyebrow as alien abduction stories.

@mordant

pastor who has praised race relations under slavery and denounced women’s suffrage,

Both have biblical support of course, so all part of god’s plan yada yada yada…This is one of those occasions where I a) don’t believe any claim to moral authority as objective, let alone absolute, and b) if such a deity existed, and espoused the same turpitude, it’d get a cheery fuck right off.

@mordant

including when he denounced empathy as evidence that “feminism is a cancer”

Well isn’t he just a thin slice of heaven, you have to wonder what the women in his church think about such proclamations. Maybe rabid racism trumps (no pun intended) their gag reflex when hearing such sexist garbage?

@mordant

One reason this plays so well is that their Christian Nationalist base has been taught to NEVER EVER discomfit or “disrespect” authority, which, even when it is “imperfect” is constituted and ordained by God Himself.

The ultimate appeal to authority, the long arm of the lord. It’s ironic how the march towards autocracy can seem to encompass different ideologies, and yet the result is the same.

[mordant]

@Sheldon

you have to wonder what the women in his church think about such proclamations

They have been socialized from the cradle to submit to their fathers and husbands and defer to any man really. It is their role – the “submissive wife”. The ones that truly chafe at it leave. Not all husbands take advantage of the patriarchy to treat their wives poorly, but enough do that it’s not a good place for women. Particularly when they are told to support and submit to their husbands no matter how they act.

Ironically I got a weird sort of equal opportunity treatment as a man when my first wife was mentally unstable and abusive to myself and to my children. I was told that “god makes even a bad marriage right” if we just “have faith in him”. I took the children and left her anyway. Waking up with your wife in a catatonic state holding a butcher knife really clarifies your thinking.

I did get support for that action from an influential church leader but then I was a man, too.