THE ARROGANCE OF THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT FLIES STRAIGHT IN THE FACE OF THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS!
LET THE COURTS DEAL WITH ISSUES OF THE LAW AND WOMEN AND THEIR DOCTORS WITH ISSUES OF THEIR BODIES.
What The Religious Right Needs is a Good dose of Humble Pie. They are not as Important as They Believe Themselves to be. Its Size is not as Big as its Voice is Loud.
A group of militant Christians invaded the Hilton Hotel in downtown Washington, D. C. to listen to several of the GOP candidates for president appeal for their votes in the upcoming primaries.
The audacity of the group of is clearly spelled out in the theme of the two-day conference “Value Voter Summit” sponsored by the single-issue group of fundamentalists who call themselves the Family Research Council headed by its president, Tony Perkins.
What angers me about such meetings is that first of all they consider themselves to be the one, true and only group of believers in family values, and more condescendingly that their values are the only proper Christian values—neither of which is true.
Reinhold Niebuhr, the great theologian preached that the essence of all sin was pride. This group is one of the many fundamentalist groups in the world that suffer mightily from pride. They seem to be saying that they are the only ones who know of what Christian values consist, and finally, they are the only organization that embodies those values.
I said earlier that they were a single-issue organization. They are opposed to the right of abortion. Not only are they personally opposed to abortion, but it is their ultimate goal to impose their opposition to abortion upon the entire nation, 70% of who fiercely disagree with them. They want to elect a president who will ramrod a constitutional amendment through Congress and the fifty states that defines marriage as a union between a male and a female. But utmost on their agenda is to elect a president who will clog the Supreme Court with judges who will vote to declare Roe v Wade, the court ruling which made abortion legal in this country, null and void. From their perspective, many of these people will vote for a person strictly because he or she is anti-right to abortion.
First of all, abortion is but a minor issue confronting this nation whose docket is crowded with vital issues to the survival of the nation, i.e. the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the threat of Iran’s nuclear weapon development, the Syrian and Iranian coalition that is feeding the fires of insurgency in Iraq and prolonging the war there for American troops. The renewed tension between Russia and the U. S; the problems with North Korea, Darfur; hunger and lack of medical care in two thirds of the world are among some of the more urgent items the world and the president of our country must address. With the disastrous foreign policy fiasco of the Bush Administration, the next president must be wise in the ways of international affairs.
Not to mention the domestic issues such as stem cell research at top of the list for anybody with a member of their family suffering from Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, spinal cord injuries, HIV, various forms of cancer, and other diseases and injuries yet to be identified; infrastructure that is failing to withstand the strain of age and the increase in highway traffic such as bridges, water system, sewage system; and educational system that is failing at every level; Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security; and certainly all the problems associated with the environment which must take top priority after the 2009 inauguration.
How in the name of God can anyone focus their attention and their resources on one-single issue when our world is in such a dreadful condition brought on in many ways by George W. Bush who, like these evangelical, fundamentalist and Pentecostal types, call themselves born-again Christians (a concept foreign to the teachings of Jesus). There are millions of these people who can tell you the day and the hour that they were born into a new life. The fact of the matter is that the New Testament sees the Kingdom of God or the Rule of Love as an on-going process. Once one attempts to bring his life in line with the agape expounded in the teachings of Jesus, that is but the beginning of a long, arduous journey to eternal life. One day at a time—that is how we are saved—one day at a time. The word saved in Greek means to be made whole, to become healthy. It is not a once and for all experience, it is a now and forever event we must encounter every day we breath.
The Roman Catholic Church started this misinterpretation of the New Testament by basing far too much of its theology on the teachings of Paul rather than the words of Jesus. Many of the Protestant Church have followed in the same wrong path.
Jesus never saw the New Testament. He had no idea what was in it and had he caught a glimpse I feel certain he would have referred to the modern day Pharisees, the strict constructionists, the fundamentalists and the like in the same way he treated the Pharisees of his day. While his message was non-judgmental, he tore into the Pharisees and said in words I am certain they clearly understood—“You are like dead men’s tombs, white and pure on the outside, but inside you are full of dead men’s bones and all matter of filth. You hypocrites, you brood of vipers, how can you; being evil, speak what is good? For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart.”
The Pharisees were judgmental, cold hearted men who would stone a young son to death for cursing at his father or a woman caught in the act of adultery. Jesus stepped in and asked the group of angry and pompous men with stones griped tightly in their hands—"let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”
I must say to the Family Research Council and their Values Voters Summit, you remind me too much of the Pharisees who love to make a show of your faith.
One of my favorite stories is Jesus having a conversation with a young man outside the synagogue and attempting to teach him how to pray. In the front of the temple, a fancily dressed man of means was making quite a show of his praying so that everyone in the synagogue could see and hear him. Jesus said to the young man, do not pray as that Pharisee is praying. He prays in pubic to be seen by men. When you pray go into the closet and pray to God so that He understands you are praying just for Him.
I fear I must come to the conclusion that the Family Research Council is not a Christian organization devoted to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth; it has become the right arm of the Republican National Committee. And many of the issues this group refers to as family values are simply an agenda, not of God, not of Jesus, but of men who are anal retentive and like the Roman Catholic Church is so far lost from the gospel, it can not even recruit enough priests to fill its parishes and have lost so many of their priests to the illness of pedophilia.
While the fundamentalists are growing, it is primarily because they over simplify the profundity of the New Testament. Their mega churches with five basketball courts, restaurants, with 10, 15 or 20 thousand in attendance on Sunday morning are missing the whole point of Jesus’ imperative to “feed my sheep.” He did not say feed my sheep pabulum.
There is a legal or if you will a constitutional dimension to many of the Fundamentalists and Evangelicals agenda. There is part of the First Amendment that they do not fully appreciate and it is this sentence: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or PROHIBITING THE FREE EXERCISE THEREOF.
My wife and I share the same religious values and are repulsed by other theological precepts and practices. Because I know that the Bible was never written to be accepted word for word. Because through over fifty-four years of study, I have come to challenge some of the basic tenets of theology Roman Catholicism constructed under the pressure and influence of Constantine whose rather selfish purpose for insisting on the construction of one book that could be used by all of minions of Christian communities as a symbol a new religion for his empire and as the talking points for their faith.
For example, I believe the world virgin has nine different meanings in Greek, the original language of the New Testament, one of which is young woman. Fulfilling the needs of the Jewish adherents to the new faith, sexual intercourse was considered sinful and therefore the Son of God, the Messiah could not be born of human entercourse.
Because I understand that the word saved in Greek means to be made whole, to be made healthy, salvation which is a term that has been so overused that it has lost its impact, takes a life-time to reach. You may not say, “I am saved”; or have been saved, you are required by the correct translation of the word in Greek to say, “I am in the process of becoming whole and healthy.”
You will recall that a very famous Harvard Psychologist, Gordon Allport, wrote a book entitled Becoming beautifully and sensitively explaining the psychological transformation that takes place as the infant crawls slowly but surely into adulthood. It is this concept that captures the teachings of Jesus on “being saved.” We are not saved from, or saved to, we are simply always and forever in the process every day in every way of becoming… all that we can be.
Now when it comes to the quarrelsome issues that are eating at the heart of the church and dividing it into a thousand different pieces today, I have found my answers in the New Testament in general, and in the words of Jesus, specifically and merged them with our constitution’s understanding of what the founders met when they wrote those words we hear all too seldom, “PROHIBITING THE FREE EXERCISE THEREOF.”
All the effort exerted by the Roman Catholics and the Evangelicals to halt abortion is unconstitutional when viewed through the prism of the legal system. Our founders went to great lengths to insure that this government did not take off where England left off.
The King was viewed as God’s agent on earth. Those who were chosen by the King and were obedient to the King’s every demand were granted privileges and titles that brought with it great sums of money and great expanses of land. Those who disagreed with the King or were for some other reason out of favor with the King, were left to their own ends.
The King was head of the Church. It was the King who determined what the people did and did not believe. It was the King who sent his soldiers to the door to collect the tithes that had not been pay in weeks. In time, it was the King whose soldiers came to the home and dragged the man from his hearth, home and family out into the streets where he was placed in penal van and haul off to prison until his tithe was paid in full.
Our founders did not want any connection between the Church and the State.
To the surprise of many of you, contrary to popular opinion, the United States of American was not founded as a Christian nation. Four out of the first five presidents were not Christians; they were Deists. They believed in a God who was a creator and after creation turned the running of day to day life over to his creations. George Washington testified on numerous occasions that this was not created as a Christian nation. I would be grateful if some of the Fundamentalist preaches like Hagee, Robertson, Dobson and others would get it straight.
I do not want the government telling me in what I should believe and should not believe. Freedom of Religion must be absolute. As Thomas Jefferson explained it; there must be a wall built between the church and state that can never be traversed by either entity.
In an interview recently, I heard the infamous Kenneth Starr say that one of the best ways to ease the fervent tension between various divisions of the churches, the Supreme Court should say no to the matter of faith and allow those matters to be worked out by the churches themselves.
The Courts across the land have become too engaged in matters of faith and not issues of the law. I believe this is precisely what Jesus had in mind when he said, “Give unto Caesar those things that are Caesar’s and to God those things that are God’s.”
My wife and I believe that abortion is necessary from time to time even into the trimester of pregnancy. But we believe that is matter for the woman and her doctor to resolve, not a law, not a church not a bunch of wild eyed idealists who insist that everyone must believe as they believe.
I do not believe we should force a woman to have an abortion which was suggested several years ago by a group of Southern gentlemen who thought it a sin for a woman to be on welfare and continue to have children.
On the other hand, I do not want my wife prevented from having an abortion if her health and welfare is at stake. If we abide by the Constitution’s First Amendment that is the way it should and will be; Courts and legislatures will do nothing prohibiting the Free practice there of.”
The principle holds in the matter of stem cell research. The court should stay our of the battle and allow the man, woman and their doctor reach a decision that is in harmony with their faith; because the government must do nothing that will prohibit the free practice thereof.
Do we really need a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman? I do not think so! I am perfectly convinced by scientific evidence that homosexuals are born and not made, although family and environmental influences do play a minor role. But people cannot be cured. People cannot be treated and anybody who says they can, do not understand dynamics of this aspect of human biology.
Birth control is definitely a decision that must be made by a man and a woman. It was the Catholic Church and its warped view of sex that initiated this farce. It is good for population control. It is good for the decrease in sexually transmitted diseases and it is one of the most personal decisions a couple can make strictly on their own.
If the court will learn to say “no” as Kenneth Starr suggests, it will bring down the scorching heat that turns reasonable and open discussions into physical battle and in some cases, totally unnecessary deaths. The other thing, various groups must put a halter and a gag on the mouths of some of their leaders who were born to confound.
Randall Terry has been one of the most disruptive elements in the Anti-Abortion Rights fight. He opposes same sex marriage, birth control and fights for every social issue on the Catholic menu. Three years ago, he became aware that his adopted son was gay. Randall is not alone. Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney, Phyllis Schlafly and many others on the far right are struggling with gay family members. Having worked as a counselor with gay teen males in my early years, I understand to some degree the conflicting feeling that they must be experiencing. What I do not understand is why they continue to fight against right for gay couples. You have to have a very hardened heart not to be able to love and accept a family member who is going through a trial of his/her own and be unwilling to give them the ultimate right to be involved in the only form of relationship they have available to them.
And finally, the military must stop the stupid practice of “don’t ask, don’t tell” Homosexuals are not more intrusive in their sexuality than heterosexuals. This foolish rule agreed on by President Clinton and the Generals is a disgrace. It has cost of millions of dollars in lost talent vital to the war in Iraq. For example, we need interpreters in Arabic and Farsi and we dismissed around a dozen or more qualified interpreters because they were gay at a time we needed them the most.
I look to those who align themselves with the Family Research Council to learn the love of agape, the love that gives without expecting anything in return as you deal with your own personal war.
This coming election will be the most important election in decades. So much damage has been done to our country under the leader-less-ship of George W. Bush that it will take decades to restore the United States of America to the whole and healthy nation it once was.
2:10:35 PM 
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