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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
...after the first couple paragraphs. Simply because, at my church, if and when we talk about the Iraq War, we pray that our leaders find a way towards peace. It's not God's job to justify our tragically mundane wars. It's our job to stop them.
Her religion is not really your business. What is you business is what kind of leader you think she would turn out to be. Gee I'd be shocked
(no not really I wouldn't, just kidding)
If some breathless progressive from Salon.com started deciding for us all which religions are acceptable for elected officials to adhere to and which are verboten.
I feel quite sure that her desire to use government power to force even teenage rape victims to continue their pregnancies agains their will
The religious extremist, like Paling Palin, believes that at the very moment a sperm penetrates an ovum the woman is no longer a citizen with rights but is instantly reduced to the status of an incubator for a single microscopic cell. And that she never has any right to try to prevent any sperm from invading her ovum. Her rights are denied in advance.
This despite the fact that Yahweh himself demanded the Jews to rip fetuses out the living wives of their enemies. The Old Testament plainly shows that God almighty went far beyond pro-choice and absolutely required abortion.
Jesus, oblivious to the very possibility of the sperm and the ovum, never expressed an opinion.
I was raised Catholic and it seems to me that there is usually a more pragmatic approach being used by many Catholics when it comes to balancing their faith with their everyday professional life. Yes, sometimes it's hypocritical, but that's between them and their God. I've also been exposed to the Pentocostal faith by marriage into a family that had a grandfather and grandmother who were preachers. They practiced faith healing, speaking in tongues (although unlike the other poster, I could detect a pattern to the vocalizations) and various other forms of being overcome with the spirit. They also took pains to attempt to enforce their religious views onto all members of the family, as did the majority of the congregation, whether they were a willing participant in that church or not. But in one of the largest acts of hypocrisy I've ever seen, they lost their congregation when they ostracized one of their daughters for entering a mixed-race marriage. You see, their was a fairly diverse church.
My point here is to say that I do have concerns about any political leader trying to force their religious views onto the country. I've rarely seen that from anyone from the Catholic faith in recent times, unlike the missionaries of old. But I have seen evidence of and experienced someone trying to force their faith on me from Pentocostals as some saw it as their task from their God to bring the sinners into the light. Of course, it may have just been a way to get more tithes to pay for that ostentatious church that they built.
Yes, in my mind, her religious views and her use of them as a guide in governing are a valid topic of inquery.
It's not God's job to justify our tragically mundane wars. It's our job to stop them.
Bravo.
On this subject you could reasonably take an even more extreme view. It is in fact the obligation of the Christian to prevent any motivation for war in the first place.
The Christian is in fact required to love his enemies. Jesus would regard Bush as an utter blasphemy.
In addition to a strongly dualistic world view of good and evil, pentacostals -- and evangelicals generally -- stress something called a "spirit of discernment." Evil in this context is not only evil, but capable of representing itself as Good. Satan posing as an angel of light. Another way of putting this is that a Lie is at the root of all sin. One is to be constantly "testing the spirits" to avoid deception.
That said, one wonders, given the well-documented record of the McPalin campaign vis-a-vis the truth, whether she's ever read (or truly believes) the words -- attributed to Jesus -- promising heavenly exclusion of "everyone who loves and practices falsehood" (rev:2215). The sickening shamelessness of her inclines me to wish for the literal eschatological fulfillment of the texts she supposedly believes. As it is, we may have to merely hope that what "goes around comes around," that somehow they will "reap what they sow."
But if all this deception is testing well with the Christian "conservatives" then where is the spirit of discernment they claim? Seems like quite another spirit is at work in this Rovian/Orwellian passion play.
She used to regale our family gatherings with a polaroid photo of herself and her mother, in which the image of Jesus could supposedly be seen reflected off an aluminum garden shed in the immediate background. Weird, to say the least. I think that was the impression the rest of the family got as well. We just don't go in for that sort of thing.
That's all I know about AoG, and all I ever cared to find out. My suspicion though, is that many garden-variety Catholics and Protestants will find her outre religious practices rather alarming. My mom is fairly churchy Lutheran, but she's repulsed by the shout-and-holler Pentacostals. As she told me last week "I just can't condone that." My Catholic dad simply called her a "snake handler."
"filled with the Holy Spirit" and able to "speak in other tongues."
This is what happened at Pentecost.
The Bible makes it plain that speaking in other tongues means that native speakers of languages unknown to the spirit filled Christian will hear their own language.
It is not a lot of random gibberish. That is just carney talk.
Most Pentecostal churches ignore the truth.
I grew up in California in the 60s & like Sarah Palin "nothing freaks me out." But the statement of Assemblies of God's "Commission on Doctrinal Purity, etc." does seem particularly backward.
"Today in our American culture, many people have turned their adoration from the Creator to the creation. They have gone to the extreme and are now worshiping the earth. We believe worship of the land, the sea, the oceans, and other attributes of the earth is an abomination to God the Creator."
It still amazes me that those, who can't find their ass with both hands, presume to speak so authoritatively for the Mainspring of All Creation. One must make Creation very small to be so very important.
Imagine the public policy that such moral clarity might produce.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
