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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023

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Since religion is also part of culture wars, it is time for sharing some latest religious culture war battles, this time on Judeo-Christian front, originating from the crucified bird site.

1/ Case of Lizzie Marbach

Lizzie Marbach, Republican and anti abortion activist from Ohio, person with 7k followers and otherwise not notable, posted this.

There's no hope for any of us outside of having faith in Jesus Christ alone.

This is Christianity 101, this is exactly what Christian is supposed to say and believe. There is no reason for anyone to be surprised.

Except Max Miller, Jewish Republican representative of Ohio with 52k followers who was not amused.

This is one of the most bigoted tweets I have ever seen

Mega dead bird storm ensued, and many people came to Lizzie's side to support her.

Including Ilhan Omar.

Things went so far that Max Miller was forced to apologize.

GOP lawmaker apologizes for ‘religious freedom’ tweet

But, nevertheless, Lizzie Marbach lost her job.

Pro Life Advocacy Group Fires Comms Director After GOP Rep Called Her A ‘Bigot’ For Sharing Her Faith

By sheer coincidence, Miller’s wife, Emily Moreno Miller, sits on the board of Ohio Right to Life.

This thing will continue, and it is not looking good for official GOP.

2/ Case of Darryl Cooper, rather lighter one.

Darryl Cooper, known as Martyr Made on the interwebs, substacker, podcaster on several sites and dead birder with 173k followers.

So this is rather important person, in internet terms, who suddenly decided that this is the time, of all things, to preach to Jewish people and convert them to Christianity.

It turned out that lot of his followers are Jews who do not appreciate being evangelized, especially by such D- apologetic piece. Massive dead bird storm ensued, and DC doubled, quartupled and octupled his efforts.

Darryl Cooper himself seems to be rather unorthodox Christian of somewhat Marcionite tinge. This makes the whole thing more confusing, what exactly are his Jewish followers supposed to convert to?

What have these cases in common? They illustrate the difficulty of actual interfaith cooperation between sincere believers in different faiths. If you really believe in truth of your religion, it is realy hard to desist from preaching and evangelizing, and even harder to do not take offence if you are (or perceive to be) preached at and evangelized by your fellows.

For a Congressman to be so boisterously confrontational about religion as a member of a religion that constitutes only ~1-2% of a nation's population speaks volumes about some combination of American religious tolerance or the cultural supremacy of that Congressman's religion. I cannot imagine a Hindu or Buddhist Congresscritter acting this way. Muslim, perhaps, which is interesting in its own right.

I just don’t see how it would be controversial or more properly how backward people’s understanding of religion must be to be upset about the tenets of a religion or religious people stating them. To be a Muslim means thinking that everyone should become Muslim. To be Christian means believing that Christianity is the only way. Jews believe they were directly given a covenant by god himself giving them all of Israel. You can disagree, fine, but stating the facts of what your religion says, and especially believing in what the religion says is not bigotry.

But it’s part and parcel in my view of the decline of discourse in America that stating something as true that other people don’t want to be true is now seen as bigotry or hate or similar. It’s something that makes me fear for the future because we’ve completely lost ideas like truth, rationality, and honesty in favor of whispering comforting falsehoods. No society can last long when everyone is offended by truth.