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Why Religion Matters More than Race


Dubayoo
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https://www.fox25boston.com/news/clergy-leaders-send-iconic-message-by-renaming-faneuil-hall/760994771

On the surface, this seems like a typical situation where a white religious figure is just having his name stripped from a religious building by a social justice group. The group's motives are probably that just as well in the name of opposing slavery...

...but there's a major problem. Boston is an Irish Catholic city, and the historical figure is a French Huguenot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Faneuil

If you know anything about history, then you know Huguenots were Protestants instead of Catholics, and they were Calvinists at that.

Likewise, if you've studied the Protestant work ethic, then you know Calvinism is the source of slavery in judging people's performance of good works to represent a predestined calling to determine if they're chosen by God to be elected for salvation or not...

...so should there really be a problem with changing the building's name?

History is valuable to make sure people don't forget past mistakes, but in this case, the name represents an evil ideology - a variant of Christianity which emphasizes emotivism, functionalism, fatalism, and behaviorism.

If you know the devil in the details, then you know there really shouldn't be any reason to remember this guy at all.

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Be fair - he built the thing, I think he gets to choose the name

 

Ok so it is a flippant response - just can't be bothered to get into a 'if you forget history you'll repeat it' debate

Edited by Mandystalin
added a bit
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Blaming Calvinism for slavery ignores that slavery existed for thousands of years before Calvinism. If you wanted to make the argument that the guy himself was a slave trader, it'd be understandable, albeit a debate unto itself; but playing the game that all calvinists are complicit in slavery is wildly off course.

 

It also raises a question of when exactly the cut off point for going after people who had nasty behaviors in history by way of a damnatio memoriae makes sense still. We are going to have a lot of sanitizing to do if everyone that owned a slave or participated in the slave trade throughout history is going to have to be scrubbed out. This might seem like a reductio ad absurdem, but at this point we're digging up people that died 275 years ago before this country was even founded. We're already reduced to the absurd.

 

EDIT: Worth noting he seems to have belonged to an Anglican church. Your case that he's a huguenot lies in his ancestry.. Ironically, you'd be implying that his racial background matters more than his religion in this analysis.

Edited by Auctor
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  • 4 years later...

It seems to me that in religion, we are all equal. In the Bible, no one divided people into races; everyone was equal. I recently started attending services at First Church Love For You. And the biggest surprise for me was that the pastor said that all people are equal regardless of skin color, and the church respects any Christian, regardless of the color of his skin. This gave me the idea that all people should think this way, and it would be useful for many to think about it

Edited by larisaguseeva
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  • 7 months later...

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

 Galatians 3:28

It means before God, all Christians have the same rights and privileges of salvation. 
This idea is one reason why human rights and equality are important, and arguably the reason why society has any concept of human rights at all. 

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Holy shit that was some pretty impressive reaching in the OP.

I was just there last Weds, ate some Regina Pizzeria (solid pizza, Bostonian's overrate it tho, like they do with their sports teams! BOOM ROASTED!)

If they want to rename it after Crispus Attucks, then go for it.

 

 

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