The poster did not have time to post here because of work considerations. Please read and comment, it is full of good information and a unique point of view.
Walk this way......
Mon Oct 3rd, 2005 at 07:41:11 PDT
From the diaries--PD. Should be interesting to see what details emerge from this.
Something Bush said in his introduction of new Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers piqued my interest, and a little research has shown that she is a former board member of two evangelical Christian organizations.
This is the first time I can recall an evangelical Christian being nominated to the Court, although I'm certainly no expert and could certainly be forgetting someone.
The group that first got my attention was Exodus Ministries, which appears to do valuable social work in supporting ex-prisoners.
The other group is more troubling, at least to me, and I'm trying to keep an open mind about it, but it's hard. Pioneer Bible Translators appears to exist for the sole purpose of evangelizing in the developing world.
When Bush was listing her "qualifications" to serve on the nation's highest court, he mentioned that she'd been a board member of Exodus Ministries. It sounded evangelical, and since I'd never heard of it, I decided to check it out.
It's actually an interesting Christian program to support ex-prisoners and try to help them re-integrate into society. Ok, I can live with that.
But I also found out, via findlaw, that Miers was a board member of Pioneer Bible Translators, a much more aggressively evangelical group. As the name implies, they translate the Bible into a variety of languages. There's nothing inherently wrong with that; people from any country should be able to read the various holy books of any religion in their own language. But PBT appears to aggressively target Muslim countries and developing nations for conversion to a brand of evengelical Christianity that appears to be the type that I am personally uncomfortable with.
I'm stressing the appears thing a bit because I honestly don't know much about these organizations and would appreciate insights from members of this forum who know more than I do.
But I do know that aggressive evangelizing in Muslim countries is extremely controversial and offensive to many Muslims, if not to most of them. I'm certainly a strong believer in freedom of speech and freedom of religion. But these folks worry me. I can't help it.
I find aggresive evangelizing distasteful, because I've been on the receiving end of it. At the time, I was a devout and deeply religious Catholic, and I was offended by the idea that my brand of Christian faith "didn't count."
I'm also curious about what her membership in these organizations, particularly in PBT, might imply about her stand on a woman's right to choose, and on other key issues that matter to me.
That is, of course, assuming it implies anything, which it may not. At least one rightwinger apparently believes Ms. Miers is not sufficiently anti-choice.
Look, one of the reasons I come here to Street Prophets is because of my inherent distrust of evangelical Christianity. Most people (though not me) would probably describe me now as a lapsed Catholic, and although I try to lead a good life, I know there are evangelicals out there who think I'm going to Hell just for the Catholic part, never mind the lapsed thing.
But many of the people I am closest to are devout Christians, both Catholic and otherwise, including evangelicals. For their sakes, I try very hard to keep from stereotyping (and fearing) all Christians, or even all evangelicals, because of the words and actions of a few.
So I'm asking you people of faith here, and you people here who, like me, probably would not be described as people of faith: What do you think about the fact that Harriet Miers was a member of the board of directors of Pioneer Bible Translators? What does it say to you about her? Anyone know more about the group than I do?
Even though this was posted at Street Prophets for a specific reason, I thought the information contained in the diary was worth a cross posting.