Here’s an examination by Jim Wright of what people mean by the phrase “Judeo-Christian Values” — touted as “under attack” by our President last week — and how extremely slippery a phrase that is to pin down to what it actually means. Slippery, in fact, to the point of ultimately being a sloppy (but expedient) short-hand for “Our Values,” or even “My Values,” which both boil down to “What I think is proper at the moment for you to be doing (so you better do it).”
None of this means that values are unimportant, but the vague call-out to “Judeo-Christian Values” — the assertion that there is a singular list of values unique to all (or even most) Jews and Christians (and that one can even find agreement as to the definition of those particular sectarian labels) — is generally so unclear as to what is being referenced that use of the phrase these days is either deeply ignorant, a nickname for something else, or a disingenuous dogwhistle looking for a tribal response.
Muddying the waters drastically is that there's followers of Biblical Jesus, and followers of Republican Jesus….
+Valdis Klētnieks Who Jesus was and what constitutes following him is far more complex than that, but, yes, as very, very broad categorizations, those are at least two different things.
(That the Republicans love headlining an obscure verse in Thessalonians as a reason to kick poor people to the curb is a key identifier for the latter brand of Christian.)
Wow! +Dave Hill is back! Yay!
Religion is confusion by design – and those who excel in the clergy are those who can make it even more confusing for those who join in – this way confusion spreads to people who was previously not confused – Soon the entire world is confused, not only the religious are now confused, so are the non religious. So vote religious or non religious and be equally confused and ignorant with all voters who vote for a more orderly confusion.
Excuse me, What was we talking about again?
I've always heard the dog whistle of "Judeo-Christian" as being as long as everybody does whatever the evangelicals want, hate muslims and atheists, and know that they are going to throw the "Judeo" part under the bus as soon as they fulfill there part of the book of revelations then everything is cool.
Juj and Majuj are in battle now. And they are destroying them self by hating and attacking others… This brings judgment on the soldiers just participating – those who are set apart and set them self apart from helter skelter are the chosen ones – they are the only ones sane enough to receive the prize of the final battle
+Stan Pedzick The "Judeo" is a relatively late addition to the formula (https://goo.gl/uRMRLQ, https://goo.gl/LMdm6j). It first shows up post-WW2, takes a big surge right around the mid-70s, but seemed to peak in the mid-90s. Who knows where it will go?
Interestingly enough "Christian Values" only seems to appear on the scene around 1900. It has a small surge during WW2, another during the Cold War, another in that same mid-70s Religious Right push, but it, too, had started to decline in the mid-90s a bit. But it shows up a lot more in the corpus Google analyzes than "Judeo-Christian Values," which I daresay is meaningful.
Once upon a time, say in that 40s-60s realm, neither term was meant so much in an evangelical fashion; instead, it was used as a synonym for "Western values" or "American values". With similar vagueness and handwaving and ill-defined terms, but usually with a somewhat more benign nature — they were meant to embrace personal liberty, reject totalitarianism (fascist or communist), with maybe a soupcon of entrepreneurial capitalism. Any of which is a stretch to extrapolate from the Bible as well, but …