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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.

I'm a little bit surprised that Ilhan Omar came to Marbach's defense.

Optimistically, I'd like to think she actually believes that stuff about freedom of religion.

Cynically, I suspect she is just anticipating a fight over what her religion believes about LGBT folks.

Even more cynically, I wonder if she just saw an opportunity to slag a Republican Jew.

But I am often surprised that people are surprised that yes, orthodox Christians do in fact believe you (yes, you) are going to go to hell if you do not accept Jesus Christ. Yes, that means they literally believe every last atheist and Muslim and Jew and pagan and Hindu and Buddhist is going to burn in hell forever. (And a lot of the Protestant denominations include Catholics, Mormons, and JWs in that bucket.)

It's almost as amusing as watching liberals in Virginia discover recently that mainstream Muslims are mostly not, in fact, "queer-friendly."

Mainstream Christians of any description do not like to talk about the salvation of Jews, but the bounds of catholic doctrine on the subject isn’t notably different from other denominations despite what liberal catholic apologists would like to pretend.

It is notably different, there is no salvation for those to deny Jesus according to the church, except for the Jews, and the reason for that is a "mystery." It's not really a mystery, though.

That the Jews are participants in God’s salvation is theologically unquestionable, but how that can be possible without confessing Christ explicitly, is and remains an unfathomable divine mystery.

It would be a theological problem if God reneged on His old covenant, even if He introduced a new one.

The Catholic position is that the only way through heaven is through Christ, Jesus himself said so quite directly- "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me". There is no other path. That is, except when it comes to being Jewish, that is apparently the second path. But the Catholics still don't say there are two paths, they only say there is one path, through Christ, and then say that a separate rule for Jews is just a mystery we cannot comprehend.

The Catholic position is that the only way through heaven is through Christ, Jesus himself said so quite directly- "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me". There is no other path. That is, except when it comes to being Jewish, that is apparently the second path. But the Catholics still don't say there are two paths, they only say there is one path, through Christ, and then say that a separate rule for Jews is just a mystery we cannot comprehend.

"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" is John 14:6. It's not a Catholic doctrine; it's straight from the Bible. Catholics and Protestants have slightly different takes on the verse, but it's the core basis for what is known as the doctrine of Exclusive Salvation. Some Protestants believe in exclusive salvation, some don't, and Catholics kinda sorta do with asterisks. (Said asterisks not applying solely to Jews.) So no, what you are saying is flatly inaccurate. The sarcastic "just a mystery we cannot comprehend" (wink wink nudge nudge somethingsomething Jews) appears to me to be more intentional than an inability to grasp theological nuances and contradictions.

Quoting scripture is a very Protestant way of thinking.

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