{"id":5295,"date":"2017-01-02T07:22:03","date_gmt":"2017-01-02T12:22:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=5295"},"modified":"2017-01-02T07:22:03","modified_gmt":"2017-01-02T12:22:03","slug":"upholding-family-values","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=5295","title":{"rendered":"Upholding family values"},"content":{"rendered":"

Though it appears as a comment on a blog post about (at least nominally) an unrelated topic, Jeri Massi makes an observation<\/a> about fundamentalist ‘family values’ that jibes nicely with something I’ve said repeatedly over the years:<\/p>\n

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For some odd reason, Fundamentalism considers itself family friendly, but it consistently pushes for families to break apart …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You need only to keep in mind that the 1st-century Christian church was a despised cult, and it required total, unmixed devotion in order to survive. With respect to family, fundamentalist Christianity teaches exactly what Scientology teaches: The group comes first, and your family can make-do with the leftovers.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, as the number of ‘nones’ increases and churches compete for an ever-diminishing pool of believers, that stringency is seeping into once-mainstream evangelical denominations such as the Southern Baptists. It is not<\/b><\/i> merely an odd, unhappy coincidence that evangelicals have the highest divorce rate — and every other pathology — in society; it is a direct and predictable consequence of what is taught in their churches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Though it appears as a comment on a blog post about (at least nominally) an unrelated topic, Jeri Massi makes an observation about fundamentalist ‘family values’ that jibes nicely with something I’ve said repeatedly over the years: For some odd … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5295"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5295"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5300,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5295\/revisions\/5300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}