LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY kalibex)

" A group of ministers representing about 17 Baptist churches in the Louisville area and a national Baptist committee that supports separation of church and state yesterday called on a Louisville church to cancel its planned "Justice Sunday" tomorrow.

""We see 'Justice Sunday' as part of a larger effort to link church and state in ways not seen in America since the Puritans were hanging Quakers on Boston Commons and exiling Baptists to Rhode Island," the Rev. Joe Phelps, pastor of Highland Baptist Church, said during a news conference yesterday."

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Check out this television spot from People for the American Way. It's 25 years old, but could not be more topical if they'd tried.

Here's something interesting: a similar problem in 1980 created this ad, as well as the People For the American Way 25 years ago. Funny how history repeats itself.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This Salon article goes into detail about the new Pope and the President, and how they would like to run the world:

The new pope's burning passion is to resurrect medieval authority. He equates the Western liberal tradition, that is, the Enlightenment, with Nazism, and denigrates it as "moral relativism." He suppresses all dissent, discussion and debate within the church and concentrates power within the Vatican bureaucracy. His abhorrence of change runs past 1968 (an abhorrence he shares with George W. Bush) to the revolutions of 1848, the "springtime of nations," and 1789, the French Revolution. But, even more momentously, the alignment of the pope's Kulturkampf with the U.S. president's culture war has also set up a conflict with the American Revolution.

For the first time, an American president is politically allied with the Vatican in its doctrinal mission (except, of course, on capital punishment). In the messages and papers of the presidents from George Washington until well into those of the 20th century, there was not a single mention of the pope, except in one minor footnote. Bush's lobbying trip last year to the Vatican reflects an utterly novel turn, and Ratzinger's direct political intervention in American electoral politics ratified it.( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This article has another timely criticism of the Dominionists. In Christ's time, they were called "Pharisees". Christ didn't have a lot of good things to say about them. I would doubt that he'd hold today's Dominionists in high esteem, either.

Pharisee Nation

American Nation Brainwashed

by John Dear

02/17/05 "CommonDreams" - - Last September, I spoke to some 2,000 students during their annual lecture at a Baptist college in Pennsylvania. After a short prayer service for peace centered on the Beatitudes, I took the stage and got right to the point. “Now let me get this straight,” I said. “Jesus says, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’ which means he does not say, ‘Blessed are the warmakers,’ which means, the warmakers are not blessed, which means warmakers are cursed, which means, if you want to follow the nonviolent Jesus you have to work for peace, which means, we all have to resist this horrific, evil war on the people of Iraq.”

With that, the place exploded, and 500 students stormed out. The rest of them then started chanting, “Bush! Bush! Bush!”

So much for my speech. Not to mention the Beatitudes.

I was not at all surprised that George W. Bush was reelected president. As I travel the country speaking out against war, injustice and nuclear weapons, I see many people consciously siding with the culture of war, choosing the path of violence, supporting corporate greed, rampant militarism, and global domination. I see many others swept up in the raging current of patriotism. Since most of these people, beginning with the president, claim to be Christian, I am ashamed and appalled that they support war and systemic injustice, that they do it in the name of God, and that they feign fidelity to the nonviolent Jesus who gave his life resisting institutionalized injustice. ( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This article talks about a lot of what we discuss on this board concerning the very real 'vast right wing conspiracy' and its takeover of the US government:

VAST RIGHT-WING CONSPIRACY 1

By Peter Fredson

Recently I had occasion to review thousands of files stored from the 1990’s. The reason to look backwards was to understand the immense progress that Conservatives, both religious and political, have made in taking control of the Republican Party specifically and the United States in general

One quickly found answer was their growing familiarity with computer abilities to construct data bases, send out endless messages, seize control of media and WWW sites, and make linkages for instant communication. The hundreds of Conservative sites (perhaps thousands) is a testament to creating organization using technology. A for-instance is the recent incident when Janet Jackson showed a bit of nipple. An outraged parson had his followers send 300,000 messages nearly overnight to Michael Powell asking for relief from this horrible deed. We have many other instances when issues like gays and abortion and reelection of a president, brought instant messaging from millions of True Believers hooked up to data bases. Previous tactics of conservatives to use stealth, deceit and misinformation have now given way to raw imposition and brute display of power.

Looking at the Reagan years, we see the growing linkage of politics to religion when Ronnie made a concordat with the Vatican, and Nancy had a Court Astrologer forecast the direction this country should take. We had an influx of preachers into halls of government, when some became installed in Congress. It soon became politically correct to defer to religious pronouncements and to avoid “alienating” sensibilities of True Believers. At this time several religious organizations began their announced strategy of destroying the Separation of Church and State which made the U.S. a true democracy.

Skipping to the Clinton Administration, we see an affable intelligent well-meaning person who was also indoctrinated into Christian dogma of Arkansas flavor and made references to Biblical passages. He allowed further intrusion of Christian pretensions into the halls of government. The Christian strategists were like the fabled Camel that thrust its nose into an Arab tent and gradually forced the owner out into the night air.

But the great thrust of the merging of Christianity with government took place because Bill Clinton got sucked into sexual situations. This infuriated the sexually repressed old Republican fogies, who exerted every effort to throw the horny rascal out of office. (Partly in revenge for what happened to Tricky Dick and losing their majority in Congress.) Their horrified fascination with fallatio created panic and consternation, probably staged. Religious Conservatives began scaring the populace with stories about Satanic connection, the Road to Hell, and tales of an imaginary deity who might again unleash destruction of the earth because of his anger toward sodomites, secular humanists, and atheists. (During the 9/11 period Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell pontificated that destruction occurred because God was angry at perverts.)

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This article from Insider Magazine goes into great depth and detail about the roots and shoots of today's Dominionist movement and how it is tangled in with the US Government.

It's a long read, but worth your time.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This AlterNet article talks about religious freedom and how dangerous fundementalism is to the survival of our country.

...liberals tend to be looking for common ground, but I don't believe the right wing in this country wants common ground. To liberals and people who believe in secular government – I say forget about the fundamentalists. Appeal to the 60 or 70 percent of the American people who aren't fundamentalists – who may have lots of religious beliefs, but who also believe in secular government. Don't waste time trying to persuade people who believe that the earth was created in seven days. You're not going to persuade those people of anything.

Susan Jacoby, a fervent believer in the separation of church and state, recently spoke with BuzzFlash about America's historical roots in secularism, or freedom of religion. Her latest book, Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, is an exploration of the rich history of our secular country, a nation conceived in the "Age of Reason," in response to European religious oppression. As she argues so persuasively, our American revolution, our heroic and enlightened founders, and our unique Constitution left behind the old European model of governments founded on a fixed religious hierarchy and belief in the divine rights of monarchs. America was founded to allow religious thought and practice, not to endorse a single form of it. Trouble is, some of our most powerful leaders today would have us march right back to that pre-revolutionary, "divinely inspired" model of governing.( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY gothic_oreo)

On the role of fundementalism and the decline of America

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This article is from the Herald Mail. It talks about biblical literalism and its threat to our society.

Fundamentalism: A return to Dark Ages

by Allan Powell

Since the rise of the Moral Majority some 30 years ago, it has become increasingly clear that fundamentalist Christianity is a harmful social movement. Its numbers and power should be a source of alarm. This mass movement, composed of highly charged biblical literalists, represents an in-your-face, we are the only way, absolutely true, old time religion.

The all-pervasive influence of this hubris-filled crowd became evident during the recent presidential election when politicians courted their favor. There were frequent interviews with fundamentalist families calculated to show their clout within the Republican party. These interviews merit serious thought.

In one family scene, a child of only about 9 years of age was shown saying that their way was the only way because Jesus had said, "No man cometh unto the father but by me."

Her parents beamed with approval. But, should a child of 9 present such exclusivism? Are they intellectually prepared to be making statements about dogmatic theology while so young? When she becomes an adult will she ever be able to cooperate with other types of religious persuasions?( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

A January 13th editorial from BuzzFlash

Note: This January 13, 2005 BuzzFlash Editorial marks the thirteenth in 20 consecutive editorials BuzzFlash will be publishing through January 20th.

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

Antonin Scalia believes that America is officially a Christian nation.

John Ashcroft has declared that God is our King. George W. Bush believes that a Christian God chose him to become President and lead the nation in killing tens of thousands of people.

The Bush right wing religious base firmly believes, with few exceptions, that America was founded as a Christian country.

This is not hair splitting about "moral values." This gets to the heart of whether America was created, as Jefferson pronounced, with "a wall of separation between church and state" or whether we have an official state religion.

The Scalias, Ashcrofts, Bushes, Falwells and Robertsons are not just talking about a Christian nation; they are talking about THEIR vision of what a Christian nation should be. And a vengeful one it is.

There are many Christian denominations and interpretations of the Bible, and most of them are not radically extremist like the Bush hard core base. The Methodist Church, for example, to which Bush nominally belongs, opposed the War in Iraq, as did, it appeared, most of the major Christian groups in the United States. So the Bush religious contingent is a splinter group of fundamentalists.

Not only do the Bush religious zealots believe that there is no wall between church and state -- in contradiction to our Constitution and the intent of our founding fathers -- they believe in a radical interpretation of the Bible -- and that they are literally on a Crusade. ( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY ordos45)

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/12/29/israel.antiquities.ap/index.html

Basically the article sums up how forgeries are being made, an example being the Jesus brother of James ossuary. (The owner has been arrested.) One person that is interviewed by the AP in the article says that forgers were "trying to change history". And goes on to say they saw a market in exploiting people's faiths by giving them the physical evidence to reaffirm it.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This Common Dreams again questions the suddenly fashionable addition of religion into the government sphere.

Listen to us talk at each other, will you?

We Americans are actually debating in the public square not which policy is the most practical or most wise, or which leader is the more competent, but which is the most Christian. We have taken religion — the highest expression of human thought and spirit — and we have cheapened it by using it as a weapon to attack and belittle those with whom we disagree.

Religious leaders are even daring to instruct us in how to vote, and in some cases are suggesting that those who dare to vote contrary to their leaders' wishes risk their soul and standing with God.

This is America?

We know better than this. Or at least we used to. We used to understand that government and religion function best when they function independently, when the only link between them is the indirect link of human beings acting out their private faith through public service. We used to understand that if religion takes a direct role in government, government must inevitably take a direct role in religion, and that the long-standing wall between them was built for the protection of both institutions.

But I guess those are some of the traditional American values now under attack by the dominant political and cultural elite, the Christian right. Yes, that group still likes to depict itself as the most victimized group in American public life, but that's a mere pose, a sham designed to stroke its members' egos and satisfy their need to feel persecuted. That same group, after all, is also beating its chest, proclaiming itself as the nation's most powerful political group to which even the president and Congress must now pay homage. Logically, both self-images cannot be true.

It's too bad, really, because in a rough sense we already know how this story ends. We've seen it so many times before. There is no case in recorded human history, regardless of era or culture, in which religion and government have been intertwined without eventually compromising basic human freedoms. Inevitably, every time, that relationship gets out of control and people get hurt.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This Alternet article talks about what needs to be done to counteract the fake piousness of the righteous rightwingers:

Of all the loathsome spectacles we've endured since Nov. 2 – the vampire-like gloating of CNN commentator Robert Novak, Bush embracing his "mandate" – none are more repulsive than that of Democrats conceding the "moral values" edge to the party that brought us Abu Ghraib. The cries for Democrats to overcome their "out-of-touch-ness" and embrace the predominant faith all dodge the full horror of the situation: A criminal has been enabled to continue his bloody work with the help, in no small part, of self-identified Christians.

With their craven, breast-beating response to Bush's electoral triumph, leading Democrats only demonstrate how out of touch they really are with the religious transformation of America. Where secular-type liberals and centrists go wrong is in categorizing religion as a form of "irrationality," akin to spirituality, sports mania and emotion generally. They fail to see that the current "Christianization" of red-state America bears no resemblance to the Great Revival of the early 19th century, an ecstatic movement that filled the fields of Virginia with the rolling, shrieking and jerking bodies of the revived. In contrast, today's right-leaning Christian churches represent a coldly Calvinist tradition in which even speaking in tongues, if it occurs at all, has been increasingly routinized and restricted to the pastor. What these churches have to offer, in addition to intangibles like eternal salvation, is concrete, material assistance. They have become an alternative welfare state, whose support rests not only on "faith" but also on the loyalty of the grateful recipients.

Mainstream, even liberal, churches also provide a range of services, from soup kitchens to support groups. What makes the typical evangelicals' social welfare efforts sinister is their implicit – and sometimes not so implicit – linkage to a program for the destruction of public and secular services. This year the connecting code words were "abortion" and "gay marriage": To vote for the candidate who opposed these supposed moral atrocities, as the Christian Coalition and so many churches strongly advised, was to vote against public housing subsidies, childcare and expanded public forms of health insurance. While Hamas operates in a nonexistent welfare state, the Christian right advances by attacking the existing one.

Of course, Bush's faith-based social welfare strategy only accelerates the downward spiral toward theocracy. Not only do the right-leaning evangelical churches offer their own, shamelessly proselytizing social services; not only do they attack candidates who favor expanded public services – but they stand to gain public money by doing so. It is this dangerous positive feedback loop, and not any new spiritual or moral dimension of American life, that the Democrats have failed to comprehend: The evangelical church-based welfare system is being fed by the deliberate destruction of the secular welfare state.

***

One last lesson from the Christians – the ancient, original ones, that is. Theirs is the story of how a steadfast and heroic moral minority undermined the world's greatest empire and eventually came to power. Faced with relentless and spectacular forms of repression, they kept on meeting over their potluck dinners (the origins of later communion rituals), proselytizing and bearing witness wherever they could. For the next four years and well beyond, liberals and progressives will need to emulate these original Christians, who stood against imperial Rome with their bodies, their hearts and their souls.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY jrfrench)

http://are.as.wvu.edu/lebeau1.htm

I should say I have one issue with this series: the author refers to the Religious "Right" throughout, even though some of the positions that the group he his talking about advocated in the nineteenth century would today be considered "left-liberal". He is, in some places, discussing different groups of people. That being said, most of the information agrees with what I have found in a number of other places.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

From One Thousand Reasons, a poignant editorial with the weight of history behind it:

America Beware
By Doug Holdread

I'm angry. It's not just Islam that has been hijacked. Fundamentalists have taken over the cockpit of Christianity and are redirecting us toward totalitarianism.

"Totalitarianism" is defined as "a special version of authoritarian control - political or cultural - that invades the individual's private sphere in all aspects of life, and operates by the willing participation of the people in their own oppression."

Fundamentalists are celebrating the reelection of George Bush, their messiah, who they believe will reverse the erosion of traditional family values. They hope he'll lay olive branch aside, and be as ruthless with lesbian baby-killers and gay pedophiles as he is with terrorists.

They are unwittingly collaborating in the formulation of a totalitarian state. Christianity has been hijacked by radical militants that don't represent true Christianity. These fanatics have forgotten our history.

Early Christians lived under a totalitarian system that forced everyone to conform to pagan religion. Everyone was expected to burn incense at the altar of Caesar. Christians courageously refused and paid with their lives. They were loyal to Jesus' peaceable kingdom, not to Caesar's Empire. They refused political office and service in the Roman army.

But in the fourth century Christianity became the official state religion, and Christians were suddenly in control, able to use political power to force others to conform to their rituals and moral standards. The next thousand years were shamefully characterized by crusades and inquisitions.

Totalitarian Christianity reigned until the Reformation when courageous souls found religious freedom in the new world. In America there was room enough for polygamists and pacifists and Papists. They could practice their faith and live their lives in peace.

But now, once again we're headed toward a totalitarian system in which the state forces one religious world-view upon everyone, with a right-wing administration acting as the enforcer of conservative Christianity, even defining certain sacraments.

Some totalitarian regimes, like Chinese Communism outlaw religious expression all-together, while others, like the Taliban force the population to conform to the morality and rituals of the favored religion. Traditionally Americans have not been forced into one mold. But now religious conservatives, allied with the government are trying to bully us through laws and sanctions.

We Christians follow Christ freely, not because we are forced to. We don't need laws to make us behave and we don't need the state to force Christian behavior upon our non-Christian neighbors.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY hummingwolf)

"A skillful mixing of religion and politics helped President Bush silence critics and sell his policies on terrorism and Iraq to the nation, according to a new book that analyzes hundreds of public communications and news reports. As Bush makes his case for a second term, the research by David Domke documents how during his first term the president effectively linked religious terminology with political goals in the turbulent months after the Sept. 11 attacks."

[Edit: The University of Washington has the same article plus a graph here without the pop-up ads.]

This next link isn't strictly related to the dark side of Christianity, but some of you may find it intriguing anyway: Interview about lost Christianities--belief systems that didn't cut it.

(First link via scienceblog, second via rsschristdot)

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

The American Prospect online magazine has a couple of articles of interest.

Carter's Crusade talks about how former President Jimmy Carter explains that the Christian Right really isn't "Christian" at all.

Here's a fascinating excerpt:( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY swisscelt)

I've been thinking a lot about this, and am hoping that, together, we can flesh this out a bit: Something happened, or perhaps some things happened, in American society circa 1925 (+/- 10 years) which caused the institution of radical Christianity in this country. Here's a partial list of the social phenomena which I think might be contributing factors:

• The Scopes trial, aka the Tennessee Monkey trial, which began exactly 78 years ago this week (ironic, as I didn't realize that until I started writing this entry).
  
• Commercial radio, and the dawn of broadcasting and the "mass media".
  
• The rise of what would become known as Christian "televangelism": The Moody Bible Institute aired its first program in 1925, and WMBI, the Institute's first radio station, went on the air the year following.
  
• The Great Depression.
  
• The death of the Appalachian native subculture: Radio introduced Appalachia to the mainstream American culture. At the same time, America was introduced to the Appalachian subculture vis a vis broadcasts from Nashville's WSM and "Jamboree" from Wheeling, WV's WWVA. This began the gradual homogenization of the Appalachias with the rest of the nation. Public works programs instituted under the New Deal hastened this process.
  
• The advent of internationalism, with Wilson's foreign policy and the League of Nations.
  
• The demonization of nation states, as the Fascists take over Italy in 1924 and Hitler gains control over the Nazi party in Germany in 1925.
  
• The decline of the British Empire, with the perceived loss to western civilization that entails.
  
• The Mafia, and the corresponding rise of anti-Catholic sentiment as demonstrated by organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY seshen)

One happy little dissenter who helped found our nation.

The pragmatic founding father defies deism and comes up with his own conception of the Creator.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY seshen)

A new book is coming out by Elaine Pagels, author of "The Gnostic Gospels."


No More Creeds: How the Gnostic Gospels Are Transforming Christianity. The discovery of ancient texts challenges the idea that Christianity always had a single, authorized set of beliefs.