I have been very frustrated with the proliferation of identity politics, especially when it's just used to make ad hominem attacks and shut down conversations. Recently, I've seen a growing number of marginalized people, including women, LGBTQ people, and people of color trying to articulate why the core affirmations of our faith, such as those contained in the Nicene Creed, are very important to them and why they would like to preserve the Creed and require candidates for the priesthood to subscribe to it. However, a lot of the more liberal theologists who are against the imposition of any creed or doctrine that could makes someone feel unwelcome have been shouting them down with unwarranted accusations of racism, sexism, white supremacy, et al. Naturally, I felt a need to stand up for them just as I always stand up for minorities and I got shouted down too. One man accused me of being "alt-right." I actually lean pretty far to the left, politically speaking, and I never approved of the alt-right because it's just identity politics for white people. I feel that people nowadays try to make a social justice crusade out of every single disagreement and difference of opinion when most of the time it's just not applicable to the situation at hand. In the past, I have not always been very orthodox. I went through a neo-orthodox phase, a liberal phase, and a phase when I was even professing Socinianism. There was a brief time that I thought about converting to Reform Judaism. However, the Holy Spirit has been powerfully convicting me of my sins, and I have gotten to the point where I truly feel the weight and depth and misery of my sins and my need for a Savior. However, the more I take refuge in the blood of Christ, the more I realize that our whole scheme of grace and forgiveness doesn't work without the theology underlying the Creeds. I deactivated my Twitter account because obviously that's where you see this kind of stuff the most. I'm currently rethinking my online presence in general. I have to question the good faith and motivations of people who make those kinds of arguments, and it really just seems like an elaborate ad hominem dressed up in social justice rhetoric. Nobody has ever demonstrated what specifically is racist, or sexist, or white supremacist about the Nicene Creed. So, I am just tired of that being the go-to argument for every single issue, and I noticed that a lot of other people on the left, including the far left, are getting fed up with it too because they're seeing how the neoliberal corporatist state and the war machine easily deploy identity politics to dupe liberals into going along with things they would absolutely condemn if a Republican were in the White House. A lot of them are talking about rainbow capitalism, the rainbow CIA, and the pinkwashing of American foreign policy (pretending that our wars are really about women's rights or gay rights or something like that). The good news is that I hardly ever see or hear this stuff in real life unless I'm the one who brings it up. Our parish is very welcoming and supportive of everyone, and we still recite the Nicene Creed every Sunday. I was never made to feel unwelcome when I first began to attend, even though I was vocal about my doubts, and it was an internal struggle to get to the point where I could recite the Creed with any conviction. But it has grown on me especially since I have been studying the early Church Fathers, the scholastics, and the Reformers and trying to give them the same empathy and understanding that we're told we should have for everyone else.
Glad to hear that you have left those Twits to their own devices. No use trying to change their ways with reason if all they want to do is accuse you of false motives.
Unfortunately, many Christians have abandoned the faith we were given by God and replaced it with the twenty-first century Western secular zeitgeist. Forget the fact that the Nicene Creed is a complete statement of the Christian Faith instead you must do what today's current trend is. I cannot find a single thing in the Nicence Creed that would be offensive if you are not a Western, white and heterosexual male. I have no idea how it is offensive to non-Westerners*, females, people of colour and those who are not heterosexual. *I admit some Eastern Christians may be offended by the Filioque clause.
What puzzles me is what in the Nicene, Apostles, or Athanasian creeds might be offensive to ANY liberally minded person. Extremists might be a different matter. What possible objections might those who love liberty find in any of those ancient creeds? Surely wherever the Spirit is, there is freedom, not anarchy. .