Bush and Christian Fundamentalists

[digital goldfish]

Saw this in the Guardian today.. Scary, Scary stuff!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1195568,00.html

Their beliefs are bonkers, but they are at the heart of power US Christian fundamentalists are driving Bush's Middle East policy.

In the United States, several million people have succumbed to an extraordinary delusion. In the 19th century, two immigrant preachers cobbled together a series of unrelated passages from the Bible to create what appears to be a consistent narrative: Jesus will return to Earth when certain preconditions have been met. The first of these was the establishment of a state of Israel. The next involves Israel's occupation of the rest of its "biblical lands" (most of the Middle East), and the rebuilding of the Third Temple on the site now occupied by the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosques. The legions of the antichrist will then be deployed against Israel, and their war will lead to a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. The Jews will either burn or convert to Christianity, and the Messiah will return to Earth.

 

[Hutch]

I'll bump this one along because it touches on one of the reasons I will vote to get Bush out of office...even if Kerry isn't the most exciting replacement.

While I doubt the Pres. is Hell-Bent (pun intended) to bring out the Rapture, he sure is dedicated to seeing that Church and State get mixed. Government funds for religious schools (vouchers), etc. And I'd love to hear what his preacher is preaching or what TV channels he's watching in the evening--somehow I doubt it's the Discovery Channel.

And considering that some of those old folks on the Supreme Court will be retired (or embalmed) sooner or later, I would rather have a Democrat (checked by Republicans and socially conservative Democrats in the Congress) that Bush, Cheney, and Ashcroft picking 2-3 clones of Scalia and Thomas. That possibilty may warm the hearts of strict constructionists, but should be a 'firebell in the night' to most everybody else.

Anyway, I may have to develop the Supremes in another thread. Right now, somebody who can think about the world without wondering how it will affect his Rapture chances will be my preferred candidate.

 

[Tony]

In the long run, I think the rapture fad will end up backfiring on the christian-political movement.

 

[Luke T.]

Bush is a Methodist, for crying out loud. Very middle of the road. Not a rapture-ready loon.

Kerry's a Catholic. What do you think about that?

 

[Tmy]

I think Kerrys a jew now. I cant keep up.

As for catholics. Heres a little secret...........we dont take the rules seriously. Thats why we have pre marital sex and still eat meat on lentin Fridays. Its all lip service to make our grandmas happy.

Plus the church is no pal of Kerry. There was talk of refusing him the jesus wafer cause he support abortion.

 

[Hexxenhammer]

Bush is a Methodist, for crying out loud. Very middle of the road. Not a rapture-ready loon.

Kerry's a Catholic. What do you think about that?

Luke, just yesterday Bush was here in Minneapolis at a community college conference (before he went to a $25,000 a plate fundraiser in our richest suburb) and he couldn't help but throw in something about freedom coming from the god almighty blah, blah...Bush is always sucking up to the nutty fundies or using his cronies to do it.

I would often be tempted to vote republican if I wasn't sure that that would bite me in the @$$ when a church-state/prayer in school/creationism-ID issue came up.

Bush is VERY methodist. Kerry is a plain old catholic who's getting in trouble with his own church over his abortion position.

I don't understand how the atheist/agnostic/deist conservatives on this board can stand to support christian fundamentalist politicians.

 

[Mr Manifesto]

Bush is a Methodist, for crying out loud. Very middle of the road. Not a rapture-ready loon.

That's why he uses the word 'evil' in every second sentence and frames America's role in international politics as a holy crusader bringing good to the evil lands. Because he's so middle-of-the-road.

 

[Luke T.]

The message that needs to be sent to religious people should not be a hostile one. That will only increase their resistance and shut them off from reason. I keep seeing a totally wrong approach being taken when dealing with religious people.

I happen to think religion does more good than harm, but only when it is completely separated from government. I think religion is better off when separated from government and actually is more successful in those conditions.

I initially was in favor of the government giving money to faith-based charities, but now oppose it because it will make those charities too dependent on the government, and it wouldn't be long before the government began to dictate terms to those charities and may end up causing them to compromise their principles.

And all one has to do is look to Iran or Palistine or Israel or Afghanistan to see the grievous error of religion being in control of government.

Here is how I think some Christians in America think:

1. Iran/Palistine/Afghanistan are Muslim countries. And they are evil countries. Therefore, Muslims are evil.

2. There are a lot of Muslims in America.

3. The Muslims are going to try to take over America.

4. We must take over America before the Muslims do.

There is a huge gap in their plan. By demanding the ten commandments be placed in a courthouse, for example, they have absolutely no argument to prevent representation of Muslim religious symbols in a courthouse or in the town hall or wherever. When presented with a "fair play" argument, they have no other recourse but to state in bold racist terms that they want Muslims excluded. There is no escaping it. And so they have become the same evil they fear.

The best protection Christianity can do to save itself in America is to shore up the barriers between the state and religion. Religion is one of the parents of the principles of liberty and freedom and equality. The current actions of some religious people are disinheriting them from this great heritage.


This is the argument that needs to be driven home. Expose the flaws and dangers and inevitable results of their current thinking.

This should be something secularists and religious people actually agree upon. There is no reason why they can't work together.

 

[specious_reasons]

Bush is a Methodist, for crying out loud. Very middle of the road. Not a rapture-ready loon.

Kerry's a Catholic. What do you think about that?

All of the following is strictly my opinion:

Bush was "born again" in his late adulthood. He seems to me to have more alignment to the evangelical movement rather than the Methodist church he was brought up in. Bush the elder seems more aligned with the Methodist teachings than his son.

Being a Catholic doesn't mean much, or it means everything. I'll bet Kerry is a liberal Catholic, and I think it doesn't mean much.

 

[pgwenthold]

I don't understand how the atheist/agnostic/deist conservatives on this board can stand to support christian fundamentalist politicians.

It's not just that they are fundamentalist that is the problem. I can handle religious folk who keep it to themselves. However, when it pervades everything they do they way it does with these guys, then I get bothered by it.

 

[Mr Manifesto]

All of the following is strictly my opinion:

Bush was "born again" in his late adulthood. He seems to me to have more alignment to the evangelical movement rather than the Methodist church he was brought up in. Bush the elder seems more aligned with the Methodist teachings than his son.

Being a Catholic doesn't mean much, or it means everything. I'll bet Kerry is a liberal Catholic, and I think it doesn't mean much.

Let's not forget that Bush was inspired, before running for pres, by none other than Billy Graham, a prominent <strike>loony</strike> "middle-of-the-road" evangelist.

 

[pgwenthold]

Being a Catholic doesn't mean much, or it means everything. I'll bet Kerry is a liberal Catholic, and I think it doesn't mean much.

As Hexxanhammer notes, he is in trouble with the Pope for being too liberal. And on the grand scheme of things, outside of abortion the catholic church is far more liberal than fundamentalists. By not being bible literalists, they have far more freedom in their opinions. Of course, they are supposed to be Papal literalists, but very few care what he thinks (unless it agrees with what they think in the first place)

 

[Samus]

I don't know, that news article seems a little... out there. Bush is trying to bring on the rapture? That's making a lot of assumptions, not the least of which is the plausibility of the rapture scenario.

Besides, I thought Bush was influenced by the Project for the New American Century, and is just trying to spread U.S. culture into places it shouldn't be spread, for no other reason than "we're right".

I can't keep up with the Bush conspiracy theories these days.

 

[Luke T.]

Luke, just yesterday Bush was here in Minneapolis at a community college conference (before he went to a $25,000 a plate fundraiser in our richest suburb) and he couldn't help but throw in something about freedom coming from the god almighty blah, blah...Bush is always sucking up to the nutty fundies or using his cronies to do it.

I would often be tempted to vote republican if I wasn't sure that that would bite me in the @$$ when a church-state/prayer in school/creationism-ID issue came up.

Bush is VERY methodist. Kerry is a plain old catholic who's getting in trouble with his own church over his abortion position.

I don't understand how the atheist/agnostic/deist conservatives on this board can stand to support christian fundamentalist politicians.

Is there a politician out there who doesn't mention God in speeches? Maybe the rare atheist politician here and there.

I think the media is trying to paint Bush as more of a fundy than he is. It is the same old "remembering the hits and forgetting the misses" kind of thing.

 

[Brown]

Luke, just yesterday Bush was here in Minneapolis at a community college conference (before he went to a $25,000 a plate fundraiser in our richest suburb) and he couldn't help but throw in something about freedom coming from the god almighty blah, blah...Bush is always sucking up to the nutty fundies or using his cronies to do it.

According to the whitehouse.gov web site, the president said:

I believe that freedom is not America's gift to the world, freedom is the almighty God's gift to each man and woman in this world, and free societies will be peaceful societies.

This remark, which appears to be a part of the president's standard "stump speech," was followed by applause. How sweet.

 

[Ziggurat]

Saw this in the Guardian today.. Scary, Scary stuff!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1195568,00.html

Yeah, it is scary. Too bad it's also full of crap.

"To understand what is happening in the Middle East, you must first understand what is happening in Texas. To understand what is happening there, you should read the resolutions passed at the state's Republican party conventions last month."

The texas republican party "platform" has long been used as a venue for the most extreme right-wing ranting to come out of that state. But it also has little relevance to what actually happens in government, even when republicans are in control. For example, it has called for a return to the gold standard. But not only is that never going to happen, it's so far from happening that people don't even bother to discuss it. Simply put, the state republican party platform simply doesn't matter, even to texas republicans. So the Guardian seems to be basing their whole article on the notion that it gives insight into Bush, and British readers are almost all not going to be able to evaluate what a state party platform really means in US politics. Sure, the texas republican party platform is full of raving lunatic ideas, but it simply doesn't matter, because nobody cares about the party "platform".

There are other miscellaneous problems as well, including such misleading statements as "That their beliefs are bonkers does not mean they are marginal. American pollsters believe that 15-18% of US voters belong to churches or movements which subscribe to these teachings." Aside from being quite vague as to what "these teachings" are (is it that the world is about to end as in the bible? Or that it will end as in the bible eventually? Or what?), this implies that all these churchgoers believe in everything their church teaches. And that's simply not the case.

Of course, I don't ever expect to read unbiased reporting about US politics from the Guardian. But this is bad even for them, it's just sensationalistic pap, there's almost no real relevant content.

 

[Luke T.]

Some excerpts from a Kerry speech at a Baptist church:

Thank you for inviting me to this house of God and home of good works.

Thank you my good friend, Lacy Clay, and Bishop Ellis, for your light and leadership in this community.

The scriptures say: “It is not enough, my brother, to say you have faith, when there are no deeds.”

So let us pray.

Another Kerry speech:

President Kennedy reminded us that "here on earth, God's work must truly be our own." And the Bible tells us: "Blessed are the peacemakers."

A headline in the L.A. Times for the Kerry speech at the Baptist church read "Kerry Cites Scripture, Appeals for 'Works of Compassion'"

The L.A. Times requires a subscription, but Kerry was so proud of it, he put it on his website
here.

See? You can paint anyone as a "fundy."

 

[Luke T.]

And now a report from AlJazeera:

Although President George Bush and Senator John Kerry have different religious backgrounds, both presidential candidates will have to utilise a faith-based message in their campaigns to win the election, experts say.

Many feel Kerry faces the bigger challenge because of the widespread belief that liberal voters on the far left are less religious and more easily disenchanted by the use of religion in a political campaign.

Yet, many Democrats, like Republicans, believe faith and values are closely linked when it comes to a presidential candidate.

'Fine line'

"That is precisely the fine line that [Kerry] has to walk," said Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, a research organisation in Washington.

"He cannot sound so religious that he turns off the section of the Democratic Party that is secular," he said.

Some experts, however, said the president has a more complex balancing act to perform.

His conservative base, of which evangelical Christians are a significant part, have already pulled Bush "further to the right than he wants to be", said Alan Wolfe, director of The Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College.

 

[Hexxenhammer]

Luke, I know all politicians have to walk the religious walk. It was painfull to watch Howard Dean scramble to fix his flub of insinuating he wasn't a religious person and then have to cover it up by talking about his "personal relationship with Jesus." What obvious pandering from a guy who's probably as religious as most of us here.

Still, I'll vote for the guy who is more secular and acts a little religious rather than the guy who is religious, and panders to the even more religious.

 

[specious_reasons]

Some excerpts from a Kerry speech at a Baptist church:

Another Kerry speech:

A headline in the L.A. Times for the Kerry speech at the Baptist church read "Kerry Cites Scripture, Appeals for 'Works of Compassion'"

The L.A. Times requires a subscription, but Kerry was so proud of it, he put it on his website
here.

See? You can paint anyone as a "fundy."

The example points to the difference between Kerry and GWB: Kerry speaks about his religion in church. GWB used the "freedom is the almighty God's gift" line in his last news conference.