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/

I think your first comment here though is really the reason for the historic differernces in how abortion and contraception were understood. The principles were fairly clear, being:

Sex outside the controlling purpose of reproduction is off limits, in much the same way eating without the controlling purpose of nutrition is. (So, to eat or have sex for fun is fine, but if you do that outside the bounds of the biological end of the activity you are a kind of glutton and the activity will likely have negative results.) From this perspective contraception or masturbation are problematic in the same way that using diet pills to allow you to over-eat would be. Spiritually it would be seen as unhealthy, and represent a loss of important self-disapline, but are also likely to result in poor health and social outcomes.

For theologians who thought sperm were essentially tiny people, they also saw contraception and masturbation the same as abortion. That's a scientific error though, not a theological one.

Abortion was simply disallowed because it was seen as killing a person, which is to say, a separate human being. They question of when there was a separate person was quite mysterious however, again, a scientific question. Quickening was a common belief for I think obvious reasons. Today it's conception because that is when, scientifically, you have a human being.

The theological side which says that any human being is a person is a pretty well established Christian principle which gives rise to Christian views on slavery, abortion, treatment of infants and children, the ill, the deformed or medically fragile, and euthanasia, among other things.

It's not the only defensible principle, but I think it's actually a lot more difficult to put limits around it in one area, without compromising another, than a lot of people think. i.e, if a fetus which is a human being but not a person, what other kinds of human beings might not be persons?

I think the thing is, and I have said this before, most of the people who go to marches don't really pay much attention to the details of who organised them. In this case, I don't think many cared much about TR, or Musk, and it wasn't really on their radar.

This seems totally unbelievable to the sort of people who get their knickers in a twist about political purity, but I suspect it really represents the vast majority of people.

How many people on the left did we see complaining about those who went on BLM protests because of the ideas and behaviour of the leaders of the BLM organisation?

"For theologians who thought sperm were essentially tiny people..."

Why on earth did theologians think it was sperm who were tiny people? Why did they not instead think eggs were tiny people?

"if a fetus which is a human being but not a person, what other kinds of human beings might not be persons"

My starting point would be to see which other "humans", not including foetuses, have never lived outside the body of a woman who they rely on for absolutely everything and have thus never taken a single breath of air.

How many TRAs refuse to stand besides Baker or those making death threats?

I agree broadly with your post. From what I know most people could not see or hear the speeches, and weren't bothered. I suspect a lot of people there think Musk is an utter knob with some really bad aspects to his personality. IMHO his only redeeming features is making twitter free speech(ish).

Robinson I think is much more complex. Some see him as a hero, targeted by the state. Others see him as a flawed hero. I think the key thing to remember about him is that he doesn;t seem to seek power - he's more of your KJK type, happy to be seen as controversial, happy to be hated by people he would say are fools, just wants to get his message across and have conversations (I actually think he probably wants conversations more than KJK does... KJK is more focussed on her clear simple and undoubtedly correct message, whereas I think the issues Robison talks about are more complex and more in need of conversation to find the right path through the minefield).

Because you can see sperm without dissecting someone? Human ovum, according to Dr Google, were first observed in 1928. Human sperm was probably first observed when Adam hit puberty.

I would suggest the meaningless drivel 'Humanist UK' is made up of is more of a threat to civilised society. I'd choose Christianity any day over that nonsensical guff.

Actually you can't see sperm without a microscope.
AI Overview

The First Person To See Sperm Wished He Could Unsee It ...
Sperm, or spermatozoa, were first discovered and observed in 1677 by the Dutch scientist and microscopist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek using his self-made microscopes. He documented observing "animalcules" in semen and, through his and his assistant's work, made significant observations about these structures, 0although the role of sperm in fertilization was not fully understood until much later.

They didn't know about eggs until somewhat later.

Even before sperm were discovered, some thought that semen was essentially full of little people, while the mother supplied the physical matter to make the bodies grow, menstrual period were interpreted as the blood that would feed the tiny people. So in that sense, the child was "of" the mother, just not in the same way.

It was all very speculative though, people were largely making what seemed like reasonable guesses.

I once read about a tribe of people, in the Amazon if I recall correctly, who believed that semen was what fed the growing baby. So couples were expected to have sex several times a night while pregnant.

As far as your starting point, that seems fairly arbitrary, why would taking a breath of air make someone a person? I'm not suggesting it's an indefensible position, but it doesn't seem in any way obvious. It would mean that being a human being is not, in itself, enough to make someone a person. It could suggest that people no longer able able to breath or care for themselves might be less human - after all, if being independent is the key, do we remain persons after we aren't? There are cultures who believe that. Or would it mean that it could be ok to kill a newborn if you did so before it took a breath - there have been people that believed that as well.

Yeah, I'd agree. I also think TR is in no way a systematic thinker. So you can't really extrapolate a coherent set of ideas from the things he says. That's a real limit to his thinking, but it also means that while logically, some of the things he says or does might seem to indicate some larger belief set, in reality it may well be that it doesn't indicate anything much beyond the stated idea. He doesn't much seem to mind holding together some ideas that don't seem compatible.

And some stuff he does and says seems to be to make a fuss.

The point stands though. Sperm were observed a long time before eggs, because you can stick them under a microscope without any kind of invasive procedure, and there is something obvious to think, let's look at that under the microscope!

Although it's interesting that people didn't seem to make the leap from animals like frogs or fish where you can see the eggs? But maybe they were still interpreting it as a form/matter thing which would make sense if your instincts were Aristotelian. I am sure some science historian would know about how this developed.

Galen theory involved a two-seed system, where both male and female contributed semen, which then mixed in the uterus to form the embryo.
Ithink it also needed both partners to organise (which is a plus)

Orgasm not organise!

They could see the goo though. (Ewwww)
The term "seed" was because it sort of seemed to work the same way seeds do. All the plant is in the seed but you put the seed in the soil to make it grow. Which sparks a philosophical question: is a sunflower seed already a sunflower plant? And if it isn't, at what point does it become a proper sunflower plant - when it sprouts roots, when the first green shoot appears etc. Same philosophical argument for humans in the ancient world.

@TempestTost I think there was like one weird cult type thing who did take the line that because sperm is the essence of life, masturbation is murder. Most of the people in ancient times who assumed it was the essential living part, didn't extrapolate from that to it being therefore murder. It is interesting the different spins people put on it.

Augustine's objection to sex without the purpose of procreation went a bit further than it just being like gluttony/lack of self control. It's probably linked to his early Manichean influences https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism or he just had issues. But either way, even within a marriage concupiscence was a problem and a potential barrier between the soul and god.

I think Aquinus built on this with his idea of unnatural sin. Which was much worse than gluttony, eating too much. There has been, and still is, a tension within the Christian religion where on the one hand motherhood, marriage are good ("go forth and multiply"). But on the other hand celibacy is sometimes seen as purer. Basically under that logic even sex within marriage for the purpose of making babies is a necessary evil but sex for anything else was just evil. (Usually religious movements that took this logic too far died out fairly quickly for obvious reasons). I blame the Manicheans.

But the idea that early abortions are bad because they were murder just wasn't a thing for a very long time in the early Christian church. We know Augustine was explicitly concerned with the killing of babies because he wrote about it - but this was always in the context of poorer parents abandoning their newborns when they couldn't afford them. He never connected this to early abortion because it just wasn't seen like that at the time.

Even today, a lot of the language around abortion is connected to promiscuity etc. I don't think feminists are wrong for suspecting that at least some (not all) of the "abortion is murder" people are motivated more by a dislike of women not facing the "consequences" of sex than a genuinely held belief that Zygotes are equal to human life.

But basically knowing when life begins is always a thorny problem. It's never been settled. It probs never will be.

The Augustinian prayer
“Lord, Give me chastity and continency... But not yet"

Duplicate

I mean you're completely wrong there. We absolutely have a protocol for when to declare someone dead. We don't have any idea when conception occurs for a single pregnancy, therefore you belief that "life" begins at conception, a moment we have no idea of, is invalid when it comes to policy decisions around abortion.

ETA: As a man who is not going to be affected personally by an issue, I think it's good you're hesitant to share your opinion and should probably hesitate further tbh. That you believe in life at conception, when you're not even aware of when conception is, really means FA to women who will actually go through these things.

I wondered!

Augustine rejected Manichean dualism pretty forcefully, so I would be hesitant to assume he just didn't think about it in the case of sex.

My suspicion is just that it''s a lot harder, on a social level and often on a personal level, to control sexual desire. Compared to something like food. (Though maybe in the 21st century gluttony is not far off?) Augustine seemed to be aware of that as a problem from his own experience and I don't think he is particularly unusual in feeling that way.

And the consequences of unfettered sex, personally and socially, are so much greater than gluttony. Children without parents. Children without fathers. Abandoned mothers. Children born with congenital STIs. Adults riddled with sexual disease. Rampant prostitution. All of these things have a massive social cost.

When you look at the discussions different churches had about contraception when it first became wildly available in the 20th century. a lot of what they talked about were the negative consequences of making sex so easy. In terms of pressures to have sex, the growth of prostitution, pornography, things like that.

Which have in fact largely come true. People seem to be willing to go to pretty extreme lengths to get their rocks off.

I am not sure why you are going on about anyone "being a man" unless you believe that women don't share RapidOnsets perspective? THat simply isn't true however, owmen are about as likely, maybe more likely, to be conservative on abortion issues as men.

In any case, not knowing the exat time when conception occurs in a particular pregnancy is not the same as not knowing that it is at conception you have a separate human life. These are very differernt statements.

Having a protocol to declare someone dead is also not at all the same as being able to pinpoint when death occurs. I would think that fairly obvious tbh

Certainly I would be wary of even sensible seeming Palestine marches given the kinds of things that have happened at those.

I've seen RapidOnset before on these boards. They are male, they've said so, I. Suppose pp knew that.

Nearly all pro-lifers accept that if a pregnancy puts a woman's life in danger, her life should be prioritised. Therefore nearly all agree there is some difference between a Unborn baby's life & the life of someone already in the world

Do you agree?

STDs can at least be treated & prevented better now,including with condoms which are ofc themselves contraceptives. I agree sex is inherently dangerous & should be controlled.

Prostitution is much more a function of poverty than sex though? Poorer countries have much more as women generally do it from need not out of sexual desire

After all, sexually controlled societies where women don't have much premarital sex tend to have more prostitution as an outlet, something Aquinas acknowledged.

But surely the fact that most pro lifers support abortion if it saves the mother's life shows that nearly everyone sees an unborn baby as different from a born person?

But thinkers like Aquinus- thought as prostitution as a necessary evil because it let men satisfy their urges (even though giving into those urges is inherently sinful). Basically their thinking was sort of all over the place because it is a complicated subject and even very clever, holy men aren't thinking about the matter objectively but from a subjective (male) human position.
So it's more complicated than thinkers like Aquinus were against contraception for purely pragmatic reasons because of the social ills of promiscuity and prostitution. Or that they were against early abortion because it's murder.
I think it's fine for it to be complicated and to have quite idiosyncratic personal beliefs. I just don't think the idea that the church has always viewed abortion as murder and that not thinking this is a modern deviation is accurate. Abortion being wrong because it's murder is if anything the more recent development.