Christianists: Evacuation Of The Titanic A Model Of Christian Charity

I realize that I tend to bash the Christian Right extremists all the time, but honestly, they just keep on providing so much incredible fodder for highlighting their hypocrisy and utter perversion of the Gospel message. Last week I noted that a group inappropriately named Truth In Action had put together a video clip (Right Wing Watch had highlighted to insanity) that likened America to the Titanic about to strike the iceberg except in the video clip, it was us gays who constitute the iceberg. Apparently not content with simply attacking gays and instilling anti-gay hate, Truth In Action has expanded the Titanic theme to also attack evolution and modernity in general in a radio message. What puts the piece over the top is that the chaotic and class driven evacuation of the Titanic is held up as a model of "Christian charity." Seriously, I kid you not. A situation where the wealthy were given first priority - Sir Cosmo Duff-Gord0n and his wife left the ship with ten others in a boat that could have accommodated another 28 people while all eight members of the Goodwin family in third class, including all six children, died. In fact, many in steerage were literally barred from passing through first class areas as they tried to escape from below decks. And this demonstrates "Christian charity"? Only in the bizarre alternate universe world of the Christianists. Right Wing Watch looks at this latest batshitery:

While Truth in Action Ministries recently informed us that the “radical homosexual agenda” is the iceberg out to sink the ship that is America, it turns out that the plot is even thicker, as it appears that feminism and evolution are also culprits in the country’s devastation. Today on the group’s flagship radio program Truth that Transforms, Doug Phillips of Vision Forum appeared to discuss an event he organized in Branson, Missouri, “to celebrate [the] Christian Legacy of Titanic’s sinking.”

“Though more than 1,500 people died in this international tragedy, the Darwinian notion of the ‘survival of the fittest’ was rejected in favor of the age-old Christian doctrine that the ‘strong sacrifice for the weak,’” Phillips said in a statement.

As Julie Ingersoll in Religion Dispatches notes, “as is often the case with ‘providential history,’ the actual history is distorted to make specific theological points”:

By percentage, twice as many women in third class died as did women in first class; children in first class had nearly three times the survival rate of those in third. One would only use "raw numbers" if one was trying to make a point not supported by the numbers.

In biblical patriarchy, the refrain of "women and children first" hides an agenda whereby the women are "first" only insofar as they keep their place which is subordinate to men.

On Truth that Transforms, Phillips pointed to an 1898 shipwreck on the French ship La Bourgogne where hundreds of women and children died, blaming it on “a culture that embraced evolution” and “the French Revolution which had rejected biblical Christianity and embraced paganism.” He went on to argue that the theory of evolution ultimately leads to the growth of feminism, and the “result is babies are killed en masse, women are treated like chattel and men no longer take on their masculine role as defenders.” The host, former Concerned Women for America president Carmen Pate, later bemoaned that evolution and feminism have “infiltrated” almost all aspects of society:

Phillips: People that were on board the deck of the Titanic at that time were individuals that grew up in a culture which was distinctively Christian in its perspective of the role of men and women and there’s an interesting contrast because in the year 1898 a French vessel called La Bourgogne sunk and when it sunk the sailors and the officers literally threw women and children into the water, beat them over the head, and the men lived and the women died. It sent shockwaves throughout the entire world, people said, ‘how could such a thing happen?’ And in trying to understand why that happened, the commentary was, they grew up in a culture that embraced evolution, it was the struggle of the survival of the fittest, they grew up in the culture of the French Revolution which had rejected biblical Christianity and embraced paganism and the consequences were that men treat women horrifically.

Now we flash forward to the year 2012 and this year our president has finally taken us over the abyss and we have full-fledged commitment to women in the frontlines of combat in overseas battles, we need to understand that that’s the first time in the history of the West that any nation has formally endorsed such a thing and it represents a radical departure from the values that were on board the ship in 1912.

Phillips: Evolution says the struggle of the survival of the fittest, there are no differences between men and women, there is no charity, there is no deference, and in an evolutionary world feminism reaches its height and we see no distinctions. The result is babies are killed en masse, women are treated like chattel and men no longer take on their masculine role as defenders.

The irony, of course, is that it is the Christianist who want women to be treated as chattel and preferably kept barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. And as for there being "no charity," no one seems better defined by unrelenting greed and hatred towards others than today's conservative Christians. And people wonder what I don't want to be called Christian?