Thread by @vhobbs5

#csbvcon21 Currently listening to Matthew Feldman beginning to talk about "the virus of Christianism"

"Our faith can no longer serve merely as a happiness pill" @matthew_feldman quoting Merton to Paolo Alceu Amoroso Lima, 1961

@matthew_feldman talking about the significance of religious language in discourse connected to the atomic bomb.

"We imagine that we are of all generations the most enlightened, the most objective, the most scientific, the most progressive, and the most humane ... We worship ourselves in this image." @matthew_feldman quoting Thomas Mertin, 1966, Events and Pseudo-Events

"There is a totally inadequate notion of sin which was, and still is, popular among Christians who have not really understood their religion." - Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, 1966

"The unbelief of believers ... a despiritualised Christianity"

@matthew_feldman quoting The Economist, 22 May 2021, "[all] but the most determined pessimist would concede that racism has declined since Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968."

#csbvcon21
"It is the language of 'double talk, tautology, ambiguous cliche, self-righteous & doctrinaire pomposity, and pseudoscientific jargon that masks a total callousness and moral insensitivity, indeed a basic contempt for man." - Mertin, War and the Crisis of Language 1967

@matthew_feldman shifts to talk about present-day Christianism, "a more radical, revolutionary approach to secular politics" "a secular, this-worldly doctrine of salvation"

"Supremacy is the very hallmark of extremism" @matthew_feldman

[Parenting duties interrupting live tweeting] 🙂

@matthew_feldman referring to a @CSBibleViolence post from earlier this year, on Christian white supremacy in connection with violence at the US Capitol

csbvbristol.org.uk/2021/01/12/qan…

"Christianism -- an ideological appropriation of Christianity, based upon a secular vision of redemption through political violence against perceived enemies." @matthew_feldman