LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This interesting article asks a critical question: "Are Conservative Politics a barrier to the Gospel?"

Two years ago our church was growing at the rate of about a hundred people per year and we were all very excited about what God was doing. As the pastor responsible for evangelism and assimilation, I had a unique perspective. One night after visiting a family that was new to our church, it occurred to me that no matter what walk of life a person came from to our church, there was one thing that I could be sure of; they had all watched the O’Reilly Factor on Fox News within the last week. They all voted for the same candidates and had conservative social views.

This bothered me because while I was very excited about what God was doing at our church, it was puzzling to me as to why God would do this. “Why would God build the church of people who all thought the same?” The fact is that there are a lot of people in our community that will never come to our church, and it isn’t because of Jesus—it’s because of us. Somehow we’ve mixed politics, ideology, and our vision for our country, with who we are as Christians. This is a barrier that causes many people who are not Christians to not even want to be around us.

How can we be a church that allows people to have their politics and ideology, but also welcomes people from other viewpoints to be a part of the same church? (All of this assumes we want to reach those who are unlike us, which for some may not be the goal.)

The comments following this post are also quite interesting.

And from AlterNet: How different are Christian and Islamic fundementalists?

Not much...

Well, like it or not, fundamentalists of all stripes believe -- to varying degrees -- in a literal interpretation of their respective holy texts. That's fine when it comes to Thou Shalt Not Steal, but is quite dangerous when it allows people to do harm to "nonbelievers" and think it's a righteous act. There are certainly examples of that kind of fundamentalism -- violent fundies -- in each of the "big three" religions.

You think?

And in The Revealer, Jeff Sharlett asks about the priorities of fundementalists:

The New York Times is filled with ups-and-downs for Christian conservatives today -- Ralph Reed has lost his primary race for lt. governor of Georgia, Bush vetoed stem cell research, and the Kaczynski twins, darlings of American Christian Right activists (though you wouldn't know it from the Times' coverage) are twisting Poland's crank rightward. But the Times seems most fascinated -- and confused -- by the Christian activists' imperviousness to research undertaken on its own behalf.

First, there was last week's Department of Education study that revealed that private schools do no better than public schools, and that in most cases Christian conservative schools do worse. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings vigorously denounced the report, produced by her own department -- perhaps in an attempt to build a justification for vouchers -- and then boasted that she hadn't even read it, despite having had it on her desk for two weeks. Then, today, we learn that a small group of GOP legislators are proposing a national, $100 million voucher program for private and religious schools. To hell with the facts! To heaven with the little lambs.

Lots of interesting, and sobering, reading.