Rising Christian nationalism: a threat to us all

[IwantToRetire]

Article by Humanist UK, so doesn't really reflect on the impact on women although does mention abortion rights.

But I do think that our politics are far more influenced by the US, not for any deep reasons, but so much of our TV is now americanised.

And some of the fundamentalist UD christian groups have very regressive attitude towards women.

https://humanists.uk/2025/09/17/rising-christian-nationalism-a-threat-to-us-all/

Weirdly enough, I was just thinking about papal infallibility, because I checked the news this morning and saw that the Mormon prophet, Russell Nelson, has died at 101. There's an old LDS joke which isn't correct about Catholic doctrine but is still funny - that Catholics believe the Pope is infallible but nobody acts like it, while Mormons believe the Prophet is fallible but nobody acts like it.

That bit of Mormon doctrine goes right back to Joseph Smith, who taught, don't take my word for anything, pray to God and ask for confirmation that I'm right.

But the second half of the joke works perfectly. Sometimes I look at the LDS subreddits, and when the conversation comes around to Brigham Young's theological innovations, almost all of which are disavowed by church leadership, you still can't find anyone who will admit that Brigham was wrong. The standard answer is that he was inspired in his time, and the current leaders have got improved inspiration.

It seems that a top-down leadership style (and the late Russell Nelson was a surgeon before he was a church leader, so he was definitely top-down in his style) and a conformist culture beats formal doctrine any time.

I have theories about conformism in Irish culture. As we know, it hasn't gone away with the collapse of Catholicism, it's just taken a different form.

Someone mentioned in the thread that Christians were unwilling to accept the Roman practice of exposing infants. Their attitude to abortion is from the exact same roots, they did not consider a human being not yet born differernt from any other human being, in the same way they did not consider one not yet accepted as a family member to be not a real person yet.

I'm slightly dubious about how much it would have been possible to have hard and fast rules either way.

I think humans, like other animals have a drive to care for their young from birth because if they didn't no baby would survive. How on earth would you get through the first year of child birth or even caring for a toddler if you weren't driven by something instinctive?

On the other hand, people would have known that sometimes (perhaps often?) a baby would not survive, or that caring for an additional baby would be at the expense of the survival of the rest of the family.

I think there's definitely a push, at least online, for people to consider NFP, with some valid reasons, also bc it requires a lot of effort to be reliable (so more chance of oops babies). Maybe the government will try and restrict dating apps given how they've caused havoc.

Coparenting & other solutions mean that it's easier for lesbians especially to have children. I think the government should copy Germany, who have websites for gay men and lesbians to connect and get to know to see if coparenting will work. Surrogacy is banned so gay men aren't tempted. That way the child knows both biological parents, whereas sperm/egg donated children often are saddened to not have had that experience.

Hopefully the government will try & bring back stuff like SureStart and make streets etc more child friendly.

I have read that the distance some mothers may feel towards babies in the early days may be a holdover from ancient times when abandoning the baby might have been necessary for the rest to survive. Disturbing and not sure how accurate, but may be a little truth...

Given the likelihood of infant mortality in those days I expect the whole.emotional landscape was very different to say the least.

I look at things in a fairly black and white way. In my view either you follow what the Catholic Church says (including contraception and abortion bad) or I don't understand why you would say you're a catholic.

I can understand religions evolving a little, but if you're claiming god says contraception and abortion are bad, then the story changes completely, then I don't see how the religion (or denomination) survives with any credibility at all.

I don't see why someone would claim to love football, but then argue that the rules should be changed so you're allowed to use your hands. If you want to use you hands play rugby!

To be honest I find the idea that god exists and we know roughly what he wants to be pretty ludicrous, without adding "and not only that, us Catholics have it correct, unlike the Protestants". If I were a Christian I can imagine myself thinking of myself as a follower of the key message of Jesus, nothing more. I might attend whatever local church that felt most right, but I cannot imagine myself claiming that I'm a particular denomination.

Or I might say the Catholic church has been around since St Peter, and the ruling on contraception was in the 1960s, so I'll balance out over 1900 years, and the centuries before that are recorded in Scripture, against the last 50 years.

It's not as if the OT or NT make a huge thing of contraception being a sin. There is Onan I suppose...but that's not exactly unambiguous.
It's true a lot of early Church fathers did condemn contraception, but the Bible itself is vaguer

In addition, Jewish tradition did see it as acceptable in some circumstances for a long way back.

Onan refused to impregnate his dead brother's widow Tamar (and died for that) thereby obliging her, years later, to dress up as a prostitute and get her father-in-law to do the needful, thus earning her place in the genealogy of Jesus.

The Bible is ACTION PACKED.

But has nothing to say about contraception, or I think abortion, though it is quite critical of people killing pregnant women.

sorry, edited to reduce the therebys

Yes, despite the OT being gruesome in parts I do like the larger-than-life saga elements a lot. Agree about Onan, the issue was more about refusing to give her children, rather than just about wasting seed. Poor Tamar having to do that. Not as bad as Lot's daughters having to sleep with their father, at least!

I'll need to check on abortion but yes I does seem less than obvious on either.

Theologians like Aquinas were opposed to contraception/early abortion for the same reason they were against masturbation. It was a crime against nature - basically sex/satisfying sexual urges for reasons other than procreation. (Hence why Aquinas thought rape was a sin but less of a sin than masturbation because rape could still theoretically result in pregnancy so wasn't a unnatural act in the way that masturbation was). The Catholic church is still against masturbation officially, but it seems to be used less often as an "Ahah gotcha" than contraception is. I'm not a Catholic, but I wouldn't insist that Catholics can't really be Catholics if they also masturbate or ever have sex with their spouse just for fun. It's weirdly overinvested in someone else's life apart from anything else. And I don't think would go down in a conversation well. At the end of the day, other people have their own relationship with God and with their religion/faith that is complicated and personal to them. I don't like leaning in from outside with the assumption they just haven't thought about the issues properly

I also dislike the veneration of people like Aquinas. He was a beautiful thinker. Probably one of the greatest thinkers from that time period and hugely influential in how later generations thought about faith. But he wasn't infallible. He was a man of his time, writing with all the limits and prejudices of his time. But he gets quoted out of context nowadays in debates, and Twitter arguments as if he was the voice of God..he wasn't. He was just someone who thought deeply about god and religion.

Rant over.

Totally agree. I remember learning that about Aquinas & rape in RS and everyone feeling a bit ill. I agree he said a lot of wise things
-my opinion on people like Aquinas is simular to people like Gandhi - ascetic/hermit types who mean well & have great spirituality/insight but at the same time seem detached somewhat from everyday life. I also think his Five Proofs are a bit overrated as Catholic apologetics.

thinking, didn't he say at the end of his life that he'd had a vision and wouldn't write again as everything he had written 'looked like straw'? Must check that...

I agree about masturbation. I've read about seminarians being told even recently in Italy & possibly elsewhere that's it's awful and will even make you blind. It does seem esp harsh for priests who have to be celibate otherwise. I know some are happy that way but I don't think the celibacy rule is good overall.

It's also hard for the Old Testament to communicate clear ideas about abortion that fit with our understanding today, because people had a different understanding of how babies were made compared to niw...

People in the ancient world didn't have the technology we have so they didnt have any way of knowing that conception happens when the sperm meets the egg or that half the genetic material comes from the father and half from the mother. There was debate, but men like Aristotle assumed it was most likely that the man contributed all the actual essence (Id say DNA but they didn't know what DNA was) and women were basically the container (for want of a better word sorry) it grows in.
Early theologians like Augustine also went with this line. It sounds sexist but they had no way of knowing otherwise. What that meant though was that there was debate about when life/the soul actually begins. They didn't think life began "at conception" because they didn't know about conception (as we define it). So usually the line at which "life began" was put at 40 days into the pregnancy for baby boys. This continued into medieval times.
Contraception/abortions might have been considered sins in.the time of the early church/medieval times. But not because it was murder, instead because of the fornication element. "Life starts at conception" "abortion is murder" only became a thing once people realised women contributed half the genetic material. No-one mainstream thought male sperm was life before then because, well, then men would be committing genocide on a regular basis.

Lots of people I respect believe life starts at conception. That's a really valid thing to think. And it's one of those personal judgements people have to make for themselves. But it's not the case that the Bible has always taught this. Looking through the Bible for winning quotes to win an argument is a bit of a fools stand anyway.

Exactly. Similarly I think Judaism has always seen the foetus as becoming a baby halfway down the birth canal, so traditionally Judaism has not been fraught by abortion debates the way Christianity has

Otoh I've read accounts by Jewish women who said rabbis didn't seem to understand how upsetting early miscarriages were due to this understanding. It's such a tough issue..

I agree the extreme certainty in the US on both sides of the debate does seem odd when the Bible is vague.

The celibacy/masturbation thing never seemed that healthy to me either (not that your average Catholic priests would/should care what I think). It's almost like setting someone up to fail. I sort of understand Augustine of Hippo's argument that it being difficult is part of the point-its about putting god at the centre and that takes sacrifice. But it also seems to lead to women needing to cover themselves so as not to tempt men which surely negates the point of the sacrifice/personal struggle with the self on behalf of God.
Whether or not I understand it though, if that's how people want to live their lives/that's how they feel they should to feel closer to God then let them. I just don't want it interfering with my rights.

Oh and on Aquinus- it's almost as if Aquinus- himself understood the limits of his own intellect/understanding within the vastness of creation and the impossibility of adequately describing god/the religious experience with human language. But many of the people that went on to quote him didn't. That's my interpretation anyway.

I have no idea if the surveys are accurate. I won't judge as to whether or not these people are 'proper Catholics'.

The Catholic Church's teachings regarding contraception are clear though.

We refer to 'broad churches' when we talk about political parties that can include people with a range of views, and from what I understand the C of E is intentionally a broad church.

If you want to be strict, a Christian must believe in the Nicene creed, but I think that relates more to faith than practice.

Also re: Catholics, I'm happy to be corrected on this, but if you are a Catholic, isn't the point more that you are just a bog standard Christian and everyone else is a splitter?

Yes.

But the Orthodox church would say that's them.

Not if you happen to live in an African country, it isn’t.

When Christians aren't worrying about being murdered or their daughters being kidnapped from school.

Don’t imagine those things are being done by homosexuals.

We are talking about the UK, that is the whole premise of the thread.