Blog VIb: my thoughts on The Great Awakening: Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (Chapter 12 - Chapter 15)

These chapters really summarized many of the reasons for both my dislike for Evangelical Christianity and my admiration. Evangelical Christianity generally has no respect for other cultures and religions. This is shown in the fact that they want to convert all who are different then they. They automatically assume that their belief system is completely correct and everyone else’s is useless gibber gabber. However they do make one assumption I admire them for, they assume that everyone can go to hell. Now this might sound strange but it is that assumption that lead to later rights movements. You see that assumption means that everyone has a soul and is equal in eyes of God. This means that if there are any God given (or natural) rights then everyone has them. I firmly believe in the value truly equal rights so I guess I should admire the basic philosophy of Evangelical Christians. Now I kind of want to rant… so the part in ** is the rant skip it if you so wish. **Ok so Evangelical Christians know next to nothing about the original formation of their own religion… Way back in Rome. If the know the story then good for you if you don’t then here are a few links: (http://www.tcr.org/tcr/essays/Web_Constantine.pdf) (http://www.gotquestions.org/Constantine-Bible.html) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea) … as you can see the bible, or rather the new Testament was not exactly written by God or even by the direct followers of Jesus. But it is Evangelical’s assumption that if you do not believe in the New Testament and the Trinity you are going to hell (a really bad place if you listen to Dante), that motivates them to convert others (and to devalue those who refuse to convert). In other word they believe that everyone’s souls are equal…. But then the go on to say that their view of the higher power and the afterlife is the only one that is correct and what’s more is that their view if so correct that if you question it then you are most likely going to hell. I really think that this rant is poorly worded and not very thought out… but it is a rant so I guess that is ok. This rant is also not done... but I did run out of steam so I guess it is good enough for now.** Have a good day :)