LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

I really like Spong. He tells it like it is. This Daily Kos post talks about Spong's latest comments about the misuse of the Bible by the religious supremacists.

Political pulpit: The Bible as weapon in the culture war

By John Shelby Spong

May 15, 2005

In recent years the Bible has emerged as a major force in the political arena.

For example, devotees of the Scriptures have quoted this sacred source to justify religious support for the war in Iraq. In fundamentalist Christian communities this war is seen as bringing peace to the Middle East and securing Israel's establishment, which they believe are the conditions for the coming of "the rapture" and thus the end of the world.

It is worth noting that part of the code language used by these millenarians is that in the rapture "no child is left behind!"

The Bible regularly is quoted by conservative Christians to argue that what they call "the homosexual lifestyle" is contrary to Scripture. Politically this takes the form of seeking to amend the Constitution to discriminate against our citizens who are gay or lesbian.

In this basic charter nearly every previous attempt at amendment has been to expand freedom. Now these Bible quoters want to reverse that trend, failing to see that if today's majority can amend the Constitution to discriminate, then no one is safe from tomorrow's majority.( Read more... )

I want to highlight something he said in the body of this essay, something that reflects the purpose of this, and many other boards that are starting to turn up online:

Theocracies always turn demonic because they justify everything in the name of God.

Non-religious people and people whose religious tradition is different from the prevailing point of view should be alarmed at these trends, especially when their voices, raised in protest, are dismissed as anti-Christian.

That is why I urge those who like myself are Christians, steeped in this religious tradition that we love, to speak publicly in powerful opposition to this current use of religious power.

Varied religious voices need to remind the leaders of this nation that no single person speaks for and no single perspective captures the ultimate truth of God.

If we do not remind them about this, and if we do not act to halt their steamrolling over our rights, they will take over. They are a minority. We must remember that. But they have systematically climbed into power, using deliberately deceptive means to get good Christians to ride along and fund them, and to disguise their real goals- until now. Their triumphalism has revealed their hand. Are we going to let them walk in and destroy what we've had for 229 years? It's up to us, and others like us, to say, "Wait a minute! Your vision is not mine!" Do we have the courage to stand up to them and their fear and hate? They might listen to fellow Christians before they listen to a Jew or a Pagan. Let's get the word out.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This Christianity Today article talks about Christian outrage at Wal-Mart's business practices:

Deliver Us from Wal-Mart?

Christians are among those sounding the alarm about the ethics of this retail giant. Are the worries justified?

by Jeff M. Sellers | posted 04/22/2005 09:30 a.m.

The cavernous hallway outside Chicago City Council chambers is echoing with the sound of 150 people chanting, "We're fed up, we won't take it no mo'!"

The lady with the megaphone is leading a mix of union workers and community reform activists shouting slogans against the world's largest retailer. One of the protesters, Ella Hereth of the advocacy group Jobs with Justice, tells CT that Wal-Mart is the "poster boy for corporate exploitation."

She ticks off the complaints: low pay, scant benefits, race and sex discrimination, and profiting from mistreated workers in foreign "sweatshops." Before the Chicago City Council votes to block one store but allow another, aldermen label Wal-Mart "the worst company in America" and an "evildoer."

As it has grown into a powerhouse with sales of $256.3 billion—more than the sales of Microsoft and retail competitors Home Depot, Kroger, Target, and Costco combined—Wal-Mart has become a lightning rod nationwide in local tempests of moral outrage. Church leaders (primarily mainline, liberal, and Roman Catholic) have joined grassroots activists fearful that mindless global market factors will steamroll human dignity.( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This is a very interesting excerpt from Democracy Now! about the rise of the Christian Right.

An excerpt:

The level of conversation in the media is rising regarding the Christian Right. One good example was a recent interview, on the nationally syndicated radio program, Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman, titled The Christian Right and the Rising Power of the Evangelical Political Movement. The program featured an interview with journalist Chris Hedges and Rev. Joseph Phelps, of Highland Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, who hosted a counter event to the Christian Right's rally for religious bigotry, Justice Sunday.

Here is some of what was said:( Read more... )

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BBC reporter Justin Webb travels to Mississippi:

On the radio the so-called family Christian station was explaining why God invented women and the Devil invented feminism.

So far, so predictable. But a visit to Mississippi in 2005 provides a reminder that while religion has motivated all manner of charlatans and creeps in American life and still does, it is also the primary motivation for many of those who genuinely do good and are not collecting money or condemning other people's vice. [...]

A couple of highly motivated evangelical Christians have built a personal relationship unthinkable in even the recent past and are now significantly improving the lives of mainly black 16- and 17-year-old murderers and rapists - people the rest of the nation is happy to lock up and forget.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This column from The Center For American Progress talks about "Justice Sunday":

On the Brink of 'Theocracy'

by Reverend Carlton W. Veazey
May 5, 2005

Progressives who think warnings about "theocracy" are an exaggeration should take a closer look at "Justice Sunday: Filibustering People of Faith," the Christian Right telethon headlined by Senate Majority Leader William Frist. Envision the carefully designed image that the far-right Family Research Council, the main organizer of the April 24 event, beamed into conservative churches across the country: a political rally from a large, comfortable mega-church in Louisville, with a middle-class audience listening with rapt attention to political operatives who self-identify as religious leaders-and at the bottom of the screen, streaming video with the photos, names and phone numbers of targeted U.S. senators. The visual message was clear: the church is dominant over the state and senators should toe the line on eliminating the filibuster and confirming Bush judges or pay the price.( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This Interfaith Alliance response to the "Justice Sunday" of two weeks ago is very insightful:

“Response to Justice Sunday”

Audio Press Briefing

The Interfaith Alliance

Washington, DC

April 25, 2005

Don Parker: This is Don Parker. I am press secretary for The Interfaith Alliance. Our web site is www.interfaithalliance.org. I’m in Washington, but like most of you, our speakers are on the line from locations around the country. I’m going to introduce the moderator for this event.

The Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy is the president of The Interfaith Alliance and The Interfaith Alliance Foundation, based in Washington. He also serves as the pastor for preaching and worship at Northminster Baptist Church in Monroe, Louisiana. Dr. Gaddy is also one of twenty international religious leaders on the World Economic Forum’s Council of 100 Leaders, a group formed to improve dialogue and understanding between the Western and Islamic worlds.

Dr. Gaddy and all of our speakers today are available to the news media for commentary on issues relating to the intersection of religion and politics in general and on this issue in particular. Dr Gaddy …

Welton Gaddy: Thanks, Don. Good morning and welcome to all of you who have joined us for this press briefing. We’re very pleased to have a distinguished panel with us today. The panel includes the Rev. Dr. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, the Rev. Dr. Carlton W. Veazey, the Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes Jr., and Rabbi David Saperstein. In just a moment I’ll introduce each of these people to you in brief statements.

For the past several days, as you know, an event called Justice Sunday has pervaded the news. The purpose of the event was to garner support for Senate leaders seeking to do away with the historic practice of the filibuster when dealing with judicial nominations. Organizers of the Justice Sunday event had identified opponents of this initiative as “anti-faith.” ( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This speech by Texas State Representative Senfronia Thompson (D-Houston) demonstrates the values of a real person of faith. Read it, and be glad that there are people like this in office.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Chip Berlet has some great words of advice for those of us engaged with the Religious Right.

More than a decade ago I sat in a conference room in Washington D.C. and was told I had to start using the phrase “religious political extremist.” This was the new way for people on the political left to frame our opponents on the political right. It made me unhappy. I already had problems with language such as “radical religious right,” “lunatic fringe,” and “wing-nut.” This new phrase just seemed wrong to me.

I'm uncomfortable when I hear people of sincere religious faith described as religious political extremists. What does that term mean? I worry that many people hear it as a term of derision that says we're good and they're bad. There is no topical content. It’s a label that says folks are outside the mainstream; and it lumps together leaders and followers, and blurs distinctions within the Christian Right that I think are important. Most conservative Christian evangelicals do not want to impose a theocracy on our country. I’d like to be able to talk to them about the issue of Christian dominionism within the Christian Right.( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY meta4life)

Apparently our various appearances on the "Loose Canon" miniboard at Beliefnet.com has had an effect -- Ms. Hayes has run to some pretty safe and unchallenging sources (for her, anyway) in an attempt to get informed:

Loose Canon is trying to fathom why the fixation on the religious right is more intense than ever. I hope it's a primal scream: Democrats are beginning to realize they need the votes of "these people;" but they still find them unspeakably tacky. But the intensity and irrationality of the hatred directed at the religious right is distressing.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This Catholic prayer is one that I believe reflects the Beatudes of Christ. I see it as a counterpoint to all the fear and hate being sown by the Dominionists.

Prayer of St. Francis

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY meta4life)

Thought those of you who don't follow BeliefNet.com might want to go check out one of their daily bloggers, Charlotte Hays, a conservative Catholic who publishes their "Loose Canon" blog.

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/145/story_14545_1.html

She's just getting "informed" about dominionism (as I was, last week) and has taken what I see as a typically casual approach (for a religious conservative) in her attempts to educate herself.

BeliefNet allows users to comment on these blogs, much like here except you're limited to 1024 characters. It may be worth getting an account so you can join me (alesia1, there) in helping her get educated on those who'd like to hijack her religion altogether.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Here's the first editorial about the Open Center conference I attended this past weekend:

A spiritual olive branch for the far-right faithful
Ellis Henican


May 1, 2005

Chip Berlet isn't the devil. He doesn't even look the part.

He's a big, burly guy in suspenders and a sport shirt who was raised Presbyterian in northern New Jersey. He's spent most of his adult life at the intersection of journalism and community activism - in Colorado, Chicago and Boston. Over the years, he's become one of America's leading experts on the steady rise of conservative Christianity and its growing role in political life. He was onto this long before George W. Bush came into the White House.

These days, Berlet thinks of himself as an organizer, a researcher and a radical left-wing Christian. Yet he counts among his friends quite a few people whom his other friends consider whacked-out right-wing religious zealots.

"Actually," Berlet was saying on Friday afternoon, "I don't like those labels at all, calling people 'religious extremists' or 'radical religious right.' You can't have a conversation when you start that way. I want to talk to these people. I want to engage them. ... I want to have a real discourse about religion and politics."

Welcome to backlash against the latest scary rise of America's Religious Right.( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This opinion article from Salon puts the theocrats in their place:

God doesn't take sides
How do I reconcile my faith with that of the spiritual hysterics in the White House? Easy. I don't even try.

By Anne Lamott

April 27, 2005 | I have been on a book tour for a month, and as God is my witness, at every single reading I gave, someone asked how I can "reconcile my Christian faith with that of the radical right." I never quite answered this to my own satisfaction, but would like to try to do so now. And the answer is, "I don't. Why would you even bother?"

The truth is that many of us left-wing Christians with fragile nerves and bad attitudes are becoming ever so slightly tense about the distinct possibility that this country we love is becoming, under the Bush administration, a theocracy. Those of us with public lives are constantly asked, "Don't you think the radical right has appropriated God, and if so, what is your response to that?"

My answer to the first question is no. No one can appropriate God, goodness, the Bible or Jesus. It just seems that way. The people currently in charge of this country have so spiritualized their hysteria that their antics make for much better news coverage than the rest of us. Terri Schiavo ("Has America begun murdering its handicapped?" they thunder, and we say meekly, "Well, um, no"). "Lord of the Flies" rallies against gay marriage. Pro-life violence. And -- my personal favorite -- the frenzied opposition to stem cell research, based on the right's conviction that it is an atrocity to save actual human lives by creating new stem cell lines using frozen embryos slated to be thrown out after couples undergoing IVF conceive or give up.( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY thedemonprist)

( An article and some amusing pics )

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" 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)

This article from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette talks about Sen. Mark Pryor's criticism of the evangelical attack on the US judiciary. Here's an excerpt:

WASHINGTON — Sen. Mark Pryor lashed out Wednesday at the Christian evangelicals who have joined the attack on Democratic filibusters of President Bush’s judicial nominees.
Their tactics threaten "to make the followers of Jesus Christ just another special-interest group," Pryor said in a conference call with Arkansas reporters.
"It is presumptuous of them to think that they represent all Christians in America, even to say they represent all evangelical Christians," added Pryor, 42, a first-term Democrat who has considered himself an evangelical Christian for 25 years.
The term generally refers to members of conservative Christian denominations that believe that proselytizing is an essential part of the religious experience.( Read more... )

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This Slate Magazine article talks about the ramifications of pharmacists refusing to dispense birth control.

And Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has a few choice words to say about the extreme Right and their hate speech.

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It's apparent that the Dominionists have hoist their Jolly Roger, and shown their true colors- and people around the country are starting to awaken to the monster in our midst.

The Rutland Herald has an editorial on "Religious Bullying".

The New York Times talks about Bill Frist's 'religious war'.

Here's a refreshing voice of reason- a Presbyterian minister at William and Mary.

And I seem to have stumbled upon a potential solution- or at least a potentially powerful means of pushing back against the assault the Dominionists have mounted upon our lives and freedoms and faith. I bought "The Isaiah Effect" (by Gregg Braden) a year ago, but hadn't yet read it. While searching for a book about Fundementalism, I found it sitting on top of the book I sought. Instead of reading "Casting the First Stone", I felt compelled to start reading "The Isaiah Effect". I'll talk a little more in depth about it when I finish it, but for those of you who are metaphysically, or prayerfully inclined, I highly recommend this book. And I just started it. We can reshape the world. We can stop this darkness and reseed the light. And we can do it in a powerful and nonviolent way.

Oh, and let's add Chuck Currie's blog to our small, but growing collection of Christian voices of reason. Like The Slacktivist, Currie sees through the Dominionist smoke screen. He is also a minister of the United Church of Christ, who had that ad about religious inclusivity that was banned by the networks for being too 'controversial'.

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This Seattle Times article talks about the religious left engaging the Dominionists in politics:

Ten years ago, Kathy Sakahara proudly wore a button that read: "Keep churches out of politics."

The Maple Valley liberal feared the rise of the religious right. She worried America was becoming a theocracy. Though a Christian, the idea of preaching politics from the pulpit made her queasy. Today, Sakahara still has that button — as a reminder of how wrong she was.

"It was a mistake to try to keep religion separate from politics," said Sakahara, 50. "We need to wake up and try a new approach."

Given how packed Seattle's First Baptist Church was the other night, it's clear Sakahara is not alone.

A standing-room crowd of 900 heard traveling evangelical speaker Jim Wallis give an "altar call" for the religious left to engage in politics.

The night before, an estimated 1,000 heard Wallis deliver the same message at Seattle's University Temple Church. The night before that, 700 came out to St. Leo's Catholic Church in Tacoma.

"Something is happening here!" Wallis exclaimed at the size of the crowds. "The monologue of the religious right is finally over and a new dialogue has begun."

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ordos45 wrote:

"America's ideals are corrupted by human nature, just as the ideals of Christianity are corrupted by human nature. A wise man once said "Satan's greatest trick is to make us think he doesn't exist at all". I disagree, Satan's greatest trick is to make us think we're doing the Lord's Work."