Sunday, October 13, 2013

Just Because

Midterms are coming up. I'm pretty worried this time. For ASL I have to sign a book report. I'm not nearly fluent enough yet to feel comfortable doing that. Also, my webcam seems to have a time limit that is roughly 20% of the time I need to sign everything. It's making me pretty nervous.

For my Experiences in Diversity course, I have to do a presentation on one aspect of American culture. I decided to do it on "Capitalist Calvinism," having come to the conclusion during my research of Orthodoxy that Calvinist "Christianity" is at the root of much that is wrong with our society. I guess it was pretty silly of me to think I was the first person to recognize that; at any rate, I found an overwhelming amount of writing on the subject when I began to research. Some of it is pretty intensive. I found a long article about the Dutch West India Company, examining the writings of the directors and their religious affiliations, and was both disgusted and betrayed to find that for most of the Reformed community, the New World was as much a place to overthrow Catholicism as to practice their own religion. The writings of the directors and of the leaders in early Reformed colonies are anything but reminiscent of a desire for freedom. Quite the contrary, they are as self-righteous and oppressive towards others as anything ever said by the Roman church. It's very hard, after reading their writings and about their political practices, to think of them as anything but a pack of "ME-FIRST"ers pouncing on what they saw as available territory to create their own religious fiefdom.

It's very strange that so much of what the self-titled "Fundamentalists" believe is anything BUT "fundamental" to Christianity. This course is incredibly depressing.

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