{"id":5691,"date":"2009-09-15T19:24:04","date_gmt":"2009-09-15T23:24:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/anglicansamizdat.wordpress.com\/?p=5691"},"modified":"2009-09-15T19:24:04","modified_gmt":"2009-09-15T23:24:04","slug":"christianity-the-religion-of-exclusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/christianity-the-religion-of-exclusion\/","title":{"rendered":"Christianity, the religion of exclusion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Christianity, and Judaism before it, is unique in its demand for exclusive loyalty. There is one God and he is a jealous God: he will not share allegiance with other gods. Not because he is an egoist, but because other so-called <em>gods<\/em> are not God and, if they exist at all, they are malicious not beneficent. This was something that disturbed the pagan world; as David Bentley Hart says of the early church,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>And, while of course \u201cmiracles\u201d might also be produced on behalf of gods other than the Christian, the signs and wonders wielded by the Christian evangelists were associated with a cult that was <strong>unprecedentedly exclusive of all other religious loyalties<\/strong>; <strong>and so, uniquely, the miracles of the Christians destroyed faith even as they created faith. In this way, from the first, Christianity was engaged in extinguishing all rival faiths. <\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Sadly, in contemporary Western Christianity this is no longer the case. The Anglican, Lutheran, United and most other non-Roman mainline denominations have reverted to the pagan notion that gods are interchangeable and \u2013 may the best god win. Thus, we have the god of sex &#8211; Xochipilli &#8211; the god of reproductive rights \u2013 Moloch \u2013 the god of ecology \u2013 Gaia \u2013 all cavorting unrestrained in the hallowed cathedrals of contemporary Christianity-lite.<\/p>\n<p>God is not mocked, of course and, just as a dog flees its own excrement, so members of mainline denominations are bolting as fast as possible to exclusive Roman, evangelical and congregational churches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christianity, and Judaism before it, is unique in its demand for exclusive loyalty. There is one God and he is a jealous God: he will not share allegiance with other gods. Not because he is an egoist, but because other &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/christianity-the-religion-of-exclusion\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[2080],"class_list":["post-5691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","tag-christianity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5691\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}