LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This editorial in the Northwest Arkansas Times reminds us about the contrast between Christ's teachings and those of the Pharisees. I thought that it might serve to remind us about the contrast between rigidity and hate, and flexibility and love.

The Christian Gospels show Jesus in a state of regular conflict. The gospelwriters identify the conflicting party as the "scribes and Pharisees." Although their account is probably colored by some early-Church polemic, here’s the picture we have of those who were bothered by Jesus’ message.

The Pharisees saw this as a fallen and profane world. They believed that people are essentially born sinners, and if left to their own, will live lives that are sinful, unclean and often evil. The only hope for us, therefore, is to be guided in the right way, if we will be guided, and forced if necessary. There are laws. There are absolutes. There is right and there is wrong, and we can know the difference with confidence, said the Pharisees. They searched the scriptures and codified right and wrong. Those who followed the laws of scripture were righteous. Those who did not or could not, were sinners.

The Pharisees believed that the most important thing in the world was to be obedient to the laws of God. If one was obedient, then God would bless you. What are the signs of God’s blessing? Prosperity and wealth, health and wellbeing, a large and orderly family, say the Pharisees.

It was believed that if you punished the disobedient appropriately, then the disobedient would become obedient in order to avoid punishment. There were strict punishments for breaking certain laws. Those who could not straighten up and become observant would be shunned and outcast at best, or, in extreme cases, stoned as blasphemers.( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This Yurica Report essay is long, but incredibly thoroughly researched and footnoted. Here's what the email I got introducing this stunning article said:

Everyone we know has been worried sick over what the new Bush administration is going to do to America's environment and what they have in mind for each of us. Mr. Bush and his religious right congressional followers believe that is is immoral to tax the rich to help the poor. They believe the middle class and those living in poverty have exploited corporations and the wealthy with Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid--so they want to "privatize" these programs and leave the most vulnerable Americans even more vulnerable. They believe the poor and middle class have exploited corporations with unnecessary lawsuits for injuries. So Mr. Bush's agenda is to cap how much money a physically injured person can collect from those found guilty of having inflicted the injury.

Mr. Bush's agenda is possible because most of the evangelical and Pentecostal churches support whatever he wants. And many Roman Catholics have also granted their support. We thought it was time to expose the facts to American churchgoers.

The Yurica Report has published and updated a unique report titled "The Bloodguilty Churches." It is a carefully researched work (190 endnotes). It reveals the following:

The Bible prohibits: deregulation; vote rigging; privatization of Social Security; tax cuts for the wealthy; invading Iraq; oppressing the Hispanics who cross our borders; cutting Medicaid services; cutting Medicare services; hurting the environment; failing to answer all the questions from the 9/11 families; Tort Reform; torture; lying to congress; bribes; tampering with the justice system; appointing prejudiced nominees to the bench; tipping the scales of justice to favor big corporations.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY kalibex)

Matt Rothschild of The Progressive magazine points out embedded biblical references in Bush's 2nd Inauguration Address

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

The Daily Kos always has some interesting entries. This one, by a 'professed atheist', says a lot about artificial Christianity, what Christ said, and how Dominionists (mis)interpret the scriptures.

I have been a militant atheist all my life. Not militant in wanting to destroy religion, but in keeping it out of the public sphere.

But I have come to a conclusion recently that has startled me, obvious as it seems to me in retrospect -- it wasn't religious language that bothered me, it was the "values" promoted couched in religious terms.

I would cringe -- and continue to cringe -- when politicians and religous figures cite scripture to justify hatred towards gays or any other class of people. But I don't cringe when scripture is used to justify poverty relief, or conservation ("protecting God's creation"), or social security ("honor thy mother and thy fathers"), or oppose the death penalty, or oppose the war.

What we have in this country is the hijacking of religion by an ideological faction that is using their supposed moral authority on behalf of three narrow issues -- abortion, stem cell research, and gay rights. Meanwhile, the Bible tackles myriad issues, most of which align with liberal/progressive thought. So when did "life" become just abortion, and not war and the death penalty and even associated issues like post-natal care (child mortality is still an issue of life and death)?

Liberals, outside the black churches, have ceded the moral language to the Right, in large part because of people like me who flinched at every reference to God by a Democrat.

But using Christianity or Buddhism or any other religion as a moral foundation is really no less superior than the moral structure I use to guide my life (I'm a utilitarian). All that should matter is that we all arrive at the same conclusion.

In other words, it doesn't matter how we get there, as long as we all arrive at the same place. And there should be no shame for Democrats to explain the reasoning for their value structure. And if Jesus is the reason, then so be it.

Anyone who reads the New Testament for the first time tends to be struck by Jesus's virtual obsession with one particular sin: Religious hypocrisy.

He was hardest of all on Pharisees, who come off as virtual villains in the NT; and yet Pharisees' beliefs in such things as the afterlife were the closest to Jesus's own. Meaning: Simply saying you believe the right things doesn't do you any good.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

In this blog, Carol Wolman takes a critical look at the Religious Right and their hypocracy, and has the Scripture to prove it. Very interesting and insightful reading.

Sunfell

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 ordos45)

I'm guessing a lot of people are as disgusted by the End Times sensationalism as I am? Marketing crazes abound as people are more influenced by commercialism than scripture.

I knew that I remembered something from the Bible about that, from Jesus. The whole 24th chapter of Matthew is a good reason on the subject, but the 36th through 39th verses are what I was looking for.

“No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

Now as the passage goes on, it says to be watchful, but nowhere does it say that it's all happening any moment and you should go out and mass merchandise. Commercialism of Christ doesn't work. It just takes the glory from God and lines the greedy pockets of men.

(Verse taken from New International Version translation.)

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Bill Moyers talks about the onslaught of 'delusional' thinking that has taken over our governent and its leadership. His sharp criticism is a breath of fresh air.

Writing in Mother Jones recently, Bill [McKibben] described how the problems we journalists routinely cover—conventional, manageable programs like budget shortfalls and pollution—may be about to convert to chaotic, unpredictable, unmanageable situations. The most unmanageable of all, he writes, could be the accelerating deterioration of the environment, creating perils with huge momentum like the greenhouse effect that is causing the melt of the Arctic to release so much fresh water into the North Atlantic that even the Pentagon is growing alarmed that a weakening Gulf Stream could yield abrupt and overwhelming changes—the kind of changes that could radically alter civilizations.( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This article in "Grist" magazine details how political domination by right wing Christians is threatening the environment.

Opposing abortion and stem-cell research is consistent with the religious right's belief that life begins at the moment of conception. Opposing gay marriage is consistent with its claim that homosexual activity is proscribed by the Bible. Both beliefs are a familiar staple of today's political discourse. But a scripture-based justification for anti-environmentalism -- when was the last time you heard a conservative politician talk about that?

Odds are it was in 1981, when President Reagan's first secretary of the interior, James Watt, told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. "God gave us these things to use. After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back," Watt said in public testimony that helped get him fired.

Today's Christian fundamentalist politicians are more politically savvy than Reagan's interior secretary was; you're unlikely to catch them overtly attributing public-policy decisions to private religious views. But their words and actions suggest that many share Watt's beliefs. Like him, many Christian fundamentalists feel that concern for the future of our planet is irrelevant, because it has no future. They believe we are living in the End Time, when the son of God will return, the righteous will enter heaven, and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire. They may also believe, along with millions of other Christian fundamentalists, that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed -- even hastened -- as a sign of the coming Apocalypse.

We are not talking about a handful of fringe lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. The 231 legislators (all but five of them Republicans) who received an average 80 percent approval rating or higher from the leading religious-right organizations make up more than 40 percent of the U.S. Congress. (The only Democrat to score 100 percent with the Christian Coalition was Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia, who earlier this year quoted from the Book of Amos on the Senate floor: "The days will come, sayeth the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land. Not a famine of bread or of thirst for water, but of hearing the word of the Lord!") These politicians include some of the most powerful figures in the U.S. government, as well as key environmental decision makers: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Senate Republican Conference Chair Rick Santorum (R-Penn.), Senate Republican Policy Chair Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, and quite possibly President Bush. (Earlier this month, a cover story by Ron Suskind in The New York Times Magazine described how Bush's faith-based governance has led to, among other things, a disastrous "crusade" in the Middle East and has laid the groundwork for "a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion.")

And those politicians are just the powerful tip of the iceberg. A 2002 Time/CNN poll found that 59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the Book of Revelation are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks.

Like it or not, faith in the Apocalypse is a powerful driving force in modern American politics. In the 2000 election, the Christian right cast at least 15 million votes, or about 30 percent of those that propelled Bush into the presidency. And there's no doubt that arch-conservative Christians will be just as crucial in the coming election: GOP political strategist Karl Rove hopes to mobilize 20 million fundamentalist voters to help sweep Bush back into office on Nov. 2 and to maintain a Republican majority in Congress, says Joan Bokaer, director of Theocracy Watch, a project of the Center for Religion, Ethics, and Social Policy at Cornell University.

Because of its power as a voting bloc, the Christian right has the ear, if not the souls, of much of the nation's leadership. Some of those leaders are End-Time believers themselves. Others are not. Either way, their votes are heavily swayed by an electoral base that accepts the Bible as literal truth and eagerly awaits the looming Apocalypse. And that, in turn, is sobering news for those who hope for the protection of the earth, not its destruction.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY ordos45)

http://www.electionfund.org/

Big name eh? Basically they have the top ten Biblical reasons to vote for Bush, the top ten Biblical</b> reasons not to vote Kerry, and the 2004 Philistine List (all Democrats, subtitled "Praying Against Candidates Who Despise Gods Laws").

The Mission Statement is quite telling too.
http://www.electionfund.org/mission.html The basic gist of it is that they wish to make America a Theocracy, but not in so blunt words. (Unless wording like "Furthering Biblical principles", and advance Biblical Righteousness in America does not sound that way to you.)

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY seshen)

Could the church have its head up its sphincter any further? To deny a holy sacrament over INGREDIENTS?

8-year-old's first Holy Communion invalidated by Church

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY ordos45)

Yes, you did read that title correctly. This article is a bit biased, but it gets the point across quite well. (The ad wanting you to subscribe will load first, so be patient please.)

http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair12222003.html

Don't you all love rewriting history and reading the Psalms on a Grand Canyon overlook plaque?

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY ordos45)

I think I've noticed a trend of late among members of the Christian faith as of late. Aside from people like Pat Robertson that call any other faith demonic, you don't hear much acknowledgement of demons existing.

In fact I went around and asked a dozen people at two Churches recently if they believed demons existed, and that magic was real. I got only one answer saying yes to both.

Now demons and magic are both mentioned as real in the Bible. So by denying their existence, those people are calling the Bible wrong. (Oh the wonderful horrified looks when I told them that.)

So my question is, what is it that makes us fear demons and magic? We are supposed to acknowledge their existence, but a good portion of everyday Christians doubt they exist. Is it fear of something they can't quite comprehend? Fear that they might be under demonic influence themselves? Fear that magic works?

Are we letting our fears and prejudice blind us from things we should see as real? I think so. Those people I spoke with earlier, they were denying "God's Word" as they call it. Needless to say, denying God is a bad thing in Christianity.

So, I guess that's my post on fear of...of what? The demonic? The reality of magic? The Unknown?

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY seshen)


A Jewish rabbi believes the Bible should be seen as a great work of fiction-and a racy read

LONDON-BASED AMERICAN Reform Jewish Rabbi Sidney Brichto thinks so. Over the past two years, Brichto—director of the Liberal Jewish Movement in the UK for 25 years—has published eight volumes of “The People’s Bible,” which he hopes will transform the Bible back into the popular literary masterpiece it was once considered.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY seshen)

A couple of fun URLs for your perusal:

The Skeptic Tank presents: Lunatic Fundamentalist Zealot Rant of the Month Awards

The Fallible Gospels: Reasonable Observations on the Origins of Christianity

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

(Crossposted from my own LJ)

Neven has an excellent post in Challenging God. Go read it.

A quote for posterity:

Show me that the majority of Christians are genuinely loving (Matthew 22:34-40), kind (Colossians 3:12), patient (James 1:2-4), respectful (1 Corinthians 13:4-5a), wise (James 1:5-6), discerning (Matthew 10:16), truthful (John 16:13), humble (Philippians 2:3-4), consistent (James 1:7), confident in their redemption (Hebrews 4:14-16), willing and able to perform miracles when preaching the good news (Mark 16:14-18; John 14:12), financially prosperous (have more than they need) (Proverbs 3:9-10), and genuinely obey Jesus' commands (John 14:21,23; 1 John 2:3-6). This is the measure of god's success.