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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   18980 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 29, 2024

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Would it be ok to ban say Christians from offices of state power? It's an easy claim that their loyalty is to God before country. And if they complain, well why do they want power so badly?

Nations are by default nationalistic and self interested. Your religion is orthogonal to your nationality.

Do I think a muslim should be allowed to be the Pope? Similarly no.

Is it? Catholics particularly were regarded as suspicious for just that reason for a long time. If you want to open that box don't be surprised at what comes out.

Do you think a Muslim should be allowed to be the pope?

I'm an atheist so as far as I am concerned, both a Muslim and the pope believe very similar fairy tales, so it would make very little difference to me. Having said that, given I am not Catholic it's not up to me. If Catholics want a Muslim pope then yes they should be allowed to do it. It's a private organization that can choose whoever it wants to be its leader. If they don't want a Muslim Pope (and I imagine they do not) then that is also entirely within their rights.

Or to put it more clearly what do you mean by "allowed"? Allowed by whom?

Allowed by the Catholics.

I, an American, would prefer if non Americans were not allowed to hold positions of power over me.

Well then sure, if Catholics want a Muslim pope then they should be allowed to have one. It's their church.

As for the non-American thing, the people we are talking about are American citizens, they just also have another citizenship. So they should meet your criteria.

My criteria, outlined in my first comment, was that would prefer if only naturally born citizens of The United States were allowed to hold office.

I'm confused by your choices of examples then. No-one is born Catholic. It has to be chosen. Baptism, Confirmation and receiving the Eucharist are I think the steps one must officially take. Presumably then you feel there should be no Pope at all, Muslim or otherwise?

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What a brilliant idea. Perhaps offices of state power should strive to resemble /r/antiwork's mod team.

I fail to see how this is a productive comment. It is inflammatory and doesn't even convey any information beyond booing an outgroup.

You have been warned for doing this sort of thing before, and the only reason I'm letting you off with a warning is because you haven't done anything particularly bad in the past few months.

I think you may be missing my point. Op posited people with with dual citizenship (due to uncertain loyalties) should not be allowed offices and if they complained it would be suspicious.

I am just pointing out that opens up vectors against any groups who might be considered to have divided loyalties. And them complaining must then also be suspicious.

I don't disagree with the idea that Christians have a dual loyalty, or a single loyalty to a non-worldly nation.

There are many ways in which being a serious Christian would be detrimental to certain functions. Just because Christian ethics were up to the last century the water of our society's fish, doesn't mean that they cannot violently clash with other ideologies that the ruling class may adopt.

These days Christian bakers get sued over their discriminatory wedding cake practices, Christian nurses get fired over their anti-abortion stance.

I don't know of any serious Christians with political aspirations, but this is essentially the tension in the far-right fringe, between those wanting an ethnostate and those wanting the kingdom of Heaven.

It just seems to me that excluding Christians from leadership positions would be shooting yourself in the foot, as it appears that Christian ethics have somehow correlated with worldly power in the last few centuries.

Perhaps some weird transhumanist society can run on reddit-moderator-tier human material and leave all the Christian baggage behind.

Having loyalties to multiple states are a special case of rival loyalties. Of course any politician is expected to be loyal to his family and his God.

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