I don't want to pile on Joel Osteen too much. He's too easy of a target.
But...
the recent controversy is illustrative of a broader point.
Growing up among Republican Christians, I frequently heard the argument that Welfare shouldn't exist, because it was the church's job to take care of the poor, and not the government's.
Joel Osteen's failure on this illustrates perfectly why the church is not capable of providing for the poor, and we need organized government programs.
Tuesday, August 29, 2017
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3 comments:
To be fair (or at least attempt a semblance of the virtue), Osteen's church is about himself and what he reaffirms within the people who listen to him. There are also numerous congregations in other denominations who, in response to the disaster, are marshaling resources beyond what is generally expected of corporate gatherings in their respective sizes.
I think the "Church should provide" or "the Church provides best" argument is undone by post-Protestantism's evident incapacity to "unite," in any reasonable sense of that word, at all. Were government to abandon its service to the citizens the way the Roman Empire did its colonies, some corporate entity of some variety would have to step in and make up the difference, as the Roman Catholic Church did during the Dark Ages. It's curious to speculate who, exactly, might take a crack at it. Paul Verhoeven's films are a lot of fun that way.
Upon reflection, I'm going to have to concede both points to you.
1) You're absolutely right, I was cherry-picking my examples. Point conceded.
2) I suspect you're right again.
I'm reminded of my time in Cambodia. The Cambodian government provided no services to is citizens, so everything was done by foreign NGOs and Western Volunteer groups.
There were so many NGOs in Cambodia that not even the Cambodian government knew what projects every group was working on. As a result, they were all needlessly duplicating a lot of the same projects or services.
I suspect the many different religious denominations would do the same thing if responsibility were handed over to them.
Any Paul Verhoeven movie in particular to recommend?
Actually, I've been re-viewing the stuff from his heyday, but haven't seen anything more contemporary than Starship Troopers. I should really correct that. Elle seems to have generated a heap of controversy -- I'm keen to see that.
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