Quote Originally Posted by Pannonian View Post
It's easy to get confused when you set out to be confused in order to win an argument.

1. PVC said that the devout Islamists, long championed by liberals as the opposite of the conservative Christians, actually has more in common with the far right than with the left.
2. AFAICS you then argued that it's no surprise that religions that stretch back before the existence of a left should be distinctly rightist.
3. I then pointed out that the British left has its roots in the CofE, which both stretches back before the existence of a left, yet has been distinctly leftist in the past couple of hundred years (when the left did exist).

Are you still confused? Do you want me to further break down these bullet points?
No, thank you, I really did not understand what exactly you were saying, maybe I was just too tired.

As for the church of England, it is protestant, no? Didn't Protestantism come up around the same time as many of these (other) leftist ideas?
Although technically Protestantism was the attempt to get all these wrong rightist ideas out of Jesus' church which had been added later.

As for the early church fathers being some sort of standard as PVC says, remember that even the early churches were often criticized and corrected by Paul because they strayed from the right path, introduced their own ideas and had too much infighting etc. The catholic church apparently introduced a lot of things relatively early that were later criticized by the reformers as not being compatible with the teachings of Jesus. So I would actually say that the teachings of Jesus were rather leftist (not entirely, gay rights can hardly be found), but the way the catholic church and the majority of Christians implemented them for centuries was rather rightist. The old testament is also far more on the right with harsh punishments, strict rules etc. I would assume the CoE went with the protestant, more leftist views relatively early, but even today not all protestants are entirely leftist, a lot of movements seem to have stopped before gay rights and so on because this is really hard to justify when the bible says men laying with men is an abomination unto god.