{"id":994,"date":"2010-04-26T10:16:38","date_gmt":"2010-04-26T15:16:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=994"},"modified":"2010-04-26T10:16:38","modified_gmt":"2010-04-26T15:16:38","slug":"progressive-christian-proves-my-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=994","title":{"rendered":"Progressive Christian Proves My Point"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s blog needs a little back story. A few years ago when I was interested in working with progressive Christians on our shared goals, I read a book by progressive Christians and founder of Sojourners Magazine, Jim Wallis. After reading his book, God\u2019s Politics<\/em>, I realized that he wasn\u2019t much better than the fundamentalists and definitely not an ally. In fact, I have become slightly obsessed with him because he is the leading voice of progressive Christians and is not actually all that progressive.<\/p>\n

The Washington Post online has a section called \u201cOn Faith\u201d<\/a> in which they bring up a topic of conversation related to religion once a week and asks prominent people from various religions and atheists to comment on it. In addition to my daily blog here on Dangerous Talk, I also write for the Examiner.com<\/a> and I have made a point of responding to the \u201cOn Faith\u201d topic every week on Examiner.<\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, the \u201cOn Faith\u201d topic mentioned Jim Wallis and I had the opportunity expose him<\/a> for the fundamentalist he is. It was then that I originally got the idea to look Jim Wallis up on facebook<\/a> and add him as a friend.<\/p>\n

Last week\u2019s \u201cOn Faith\u201d topic had to do with whether religion can handle sex. I of course wrote my response<\/a> to the topic and for a goof and maybe ever to get a conversation going, I posted a link to the article on Jim Wallis\u2019s facebook page. This is where things get interesting.<\/p>\n

Obviously, my response highlighted the fact that religion (Abrahamic religion) cannot handle sex, sexuality, or nudity. In any case, I got an facebook message from Matt Hildreth, the Interactive Media Producer for I assume Sojourners.<\/p>\n

Here is part of the message that Matt sent me:<\/p>\n

\u201cI have removed you comment not because of the content of the article, but because of the image that had accompanied it. I am afraid that many of our community members will view the cartoon as inappropriate. Feel free to re-post the article without the thumbnail.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The cartoon in question was titled, \u201cWhat Atheists Cry Out During Sex\u201d and showed a couple having sex crying out, \u201cOh Scientific Method,\u201d and \u201cMath.\u201d Here is the cartoon:<\/p>\n

\"atheist-sex2\"<\/p>\n

Of course this only proves the whole point of the article. Religion really can\u2019t handle sex, sexuality, or nudity. Christianity even the progressive Christians still get up tight about cartoons dealing with sexual themes. While Sojourners hasn\u2019t threatened to kill me over this cartoon like a Muslim group might have done, but still these guys are supposed to be the progressive Christians.<\/p>\n

Matt also wrote in his message to me, \u201cWe hope that our online community can be a place where people of different beliefs can interact in a welcoming environment.\u201d From the context of the message, Matt seemed to be inviting me to start a conversation. After all, he did say they were a \u201cwelcoming environment\u201d and that I should \u201cfeel free to re-post the article without the thumbnail.\u201d So that is exactly what I did.<\/p>\n

I reposted the article without the thumbnail and added a comment that the request to remove the thumbnail proves the point of the article. All of a sudden those welcoming progressive Christians deleted the link and blocked me from posting on Jim Wallis\u2019s facebook wall<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What if a Christian were to post a Christian article on my wall? I would probably read it and respond. I would feel no need to request that the thumbnail picture no matter what it was be removed (unless it was child porn\u2026 you gotta be careful with those Catholics). Now, I can understand if I got a ton of articles from Christians. That would be different. Then I would probably take some kind of action, but one article by one atheist seemed to really scare someone over at Sojourners. For the record, I don\u2019t think Matt Hildreth was the one who blocked me. He seemed cool enough, but you never know. I did point out that he proved the point of my article.
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