deconcentrate's Pre-Election Day Rant

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY morchades)

I figured his post would be of interest to this community:

As many of you know, I am a Christian. This means I believe in many things, most of them scientifically improbable, and I'm okay with that. It also means that many of my beliefs, quite frankly, are more than a little bizarre to say the least. Actually, I would say most Christians would find my mindset a little cockeyed, too. As C.S. Lewis once called himself, I label myself in return: "a converted pagan among apostate Puritans". I enjoy getting into debates about faith and religion, and I'm seriously considering buying a copy of Dawkins' new book, simply because it does sound fascinating.

That's who I am. I'm not going to say I'm a good Christian, because that would be absurd - who's the one checking? - but I do my best.

Which is why I'm going to say that if any of you vote for a supposedly "Christian conservative" candidate this year, I am going to scream.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY nebris)

"The right wing in America likes to think that the United States government was, at its inception, highly religious, specifically highly Christian, and even more specifically highly biblical. That was not true of that government or any later government—until 2000, when the fiction of the past became the reality of the present. George W. Bush was not only born-again, like Jimmy Carter. His religious conversion came late, and took place in the political setting of Billy Graham's ministry to the powerful. He was converted during a stroll with Graham on his father's Kennebunkport compound. It is true that Dwight Eisenhower was guided to baptism by Graham. But Eisenhower was a famous and formed man, the principal military figure of World War II, the leader of NATO, the president of Columbia University—his change in religious orientation was just an addition to many prior achievements. Bush's conversion at a comparatively young stage in his life was a wrenching away from mainly wasted years. He joined a Bible study culture in Texas that was unlike anything Eisenhower bought into."

..the above is a hyperlink..

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY nebris)

( Governor shares views following sermon; rivals pounce )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY velvetpage)

http://www.christianpost.com/article/20061107/25857.htm

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY exotic_princess)

Newsweek's cover story


( Sex or social justice? The war between the religious right and believers who want to go broader. )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Found a few interesting articles of interest. Here they are, in no particular order:

Evangelicals vs. the Religious Right

"Bible Belt" Boosts Bush & Republicans

A Country Ruled by Faith

The Wages of Ted Haggard's Sins (Day pass or subscription required)

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY nebris)

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2006/pages/results/states/OH/G/00/epolls.0.html

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY nebris)

From Salon.com/Broadsheet

Our friends at EvangelicalRight.com knew we'd be eager to hear about this response to Ted Haggard's scandal, from our old pal/nemesis Pastor Mark Driscoll. Driscoll leads Seattle's Mars Hill Church, and a good portion of the larger evangelical youth movement, teaching the doctrine of wifely submission to Christians nationwide. (To learn more about Driscoll, you can read Salon's excerpt from my book "Righteous: Dispatches From the Evangelical Youth Movement" here.)

Driscoll blames Haggard's affair with a male escort not on the former pastor's homosexuality -- which he abhors as much as that other spawn of Satan, feminism, -- but on his wife, Gayle Haggard. Why? 'Cause, he says, Gayle let herself go.

"At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one for the team on this," he wrote on his blog. "It is not uncommon to meet pastors' wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband's sin, but she may not be helping him either."

As we all know, this argument is as illogical -- that a man would have sex with another man because he was turned off by his aging wife, and not because he's gay -- as it is demeaning. How she looks should have no bearing on this. But, I must rise to Mrs. Haggard's defense, if only to point out that Driscoll is obviously using her as an opportunity for frat-boy girl-bashing of the highest right, guys? high-five! order. Find a picture of Gayle Haggard. It's easy to do this week, with her husband's fall from grace splashed over the front pages. And look at her. Come on: She looks fabulous.

Her failing is not in too few hours on the treadmill, but in her beliefs. First, that she should submit to her husband, as she has preached to her women's ministry in Colorado Springs, and as she and Ted wrote in a book they published this year called "From This Day Forward: Making Your Vows Last a Lifetime." (It's still for sale today at the New Life Church bookstore, and available for your ironic viewing at Amazon.) And second, that he can be healed of his "sickness" -- that under the close watch of Focus on the Family's James Dobson, God can cast the gay out, and the girl-crazy boy she married will be hers once more.

With Jesus' help, her faith asserts, Haggard can be just as straight as the aggressively heterosexual pastor Mark Driscoll, who, on his blog, is quick to explain that his fidelity to his wife -- and, thus, the Lord -- has everything to do with his blonde bride's hotness, lest we think he would have married a woman who wouldn't keep herself up to his specifications. Otherwise how could he have resisted the women who ache to provide him with earthly pleasures?

He writes, "I started the church ten years ago when I was twenty-five years of age. Thankfully, I was married to a beautiful woman. I met my lovely wife Grace when we were seventeen, married her at twenty-one, and by God's grace have been faithful to her in every way since the day we met. I have, however, seen some very overt opportunities for sin. On one occasion I actually had a young woman put a note into my shirt pocket while I was serving communion with my wife, asking me to have dinner, a massage, and sex with her. On another occasion a young woman emailed me a photo of herself topless and wanted to know if I liked her body." Yeah, dude!

-Lauren Sandler

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY rechan)

Santorum is out of a job.

Been waiting twenty minutes for this link after I heard the news. Wanted to be first.