I'm a homosexual, and when I was younger I was (forced) to go to some Baptist churches.
Now let me give a disclaimer, I haven't ever been to a black church, but what I saw in those (probably 95%) white churches was a plethora of hate.
Hate against people like me. I'll be honest and say that I struggled with my sexuality when I was a young teen, and eventually I did turn away from the church, now I think of myself as agnostic. Oh course, I was never really conservative, so now that I look back on it, it was an easy break.
While we debate endlessly about the race card in the Dem primaries, it's alive and well on other fronts: There is an anti-Semitism already strong in this country that now targets Arabs instead of Jews.
Debbie Almontaser dreamed of starting a public school like no other in New York City. Children of Arab descent would join students of other ethnicities, learning Arabic together. By graduation, they would be fluent in the language and groomed for the country’s elite colleges. They would be ready, in Ms. Almontaser’s words, to become “ambassadors of peace and hope.”
Yesterday's New York Times shows how Arab educator Almontaser and the Kahlil Gibran International Academy were sabotaged by the Sun and the Post, and, yes, the Department of Education. The future of our world, and our hopes for peace and understanding, rest with our seeing other people as people, and not as inherently worse than we are. This kind of racism is affecting all of us. read the article, substitute "Jew" for "Arab," and you'll see what I mean.
This is rich... I usually save my righteous scorn for "Western Christianity" but the Eastern folks have opened themselves up to some pretty righteous ridicule: nothing more "Christian" than resorting to brute violence at the site Christians consider the site of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. Better still, how about beating the police called in to quell the violence with the palm fronds you're holding for Palm Sunday!?!
Orthodox Easter is this coming Sunday (they use a different liturgical calendar). Events at the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem turned violent between Greek and Armenian Orthodox Christians yesterday:Fight erupts in Jerusalem church
Yeah... this is the LOVE Jesus was talking about, folks!
I call for a netroots crusade! Let's make sure that every Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or otherwise non-Christian voter in the United States of America sees this video before November:
There is little evidence that the recent news about Obama's affiliation with the United Church of Christ has dispelled the impression that he is Muslim. While voters who heard "a lot" about Reverend Wright's controversial sermons are more likely than those who have not to correctly identify Obama as a Christian, they are not substantially less likely to still believe that he is Muslim. Nearly one-in-ten (9%) of those who heard a lot about Wright still believe that Obama is Muslim.
Overall, the impression that Obama is Muslim has at most a slight impact on his fortunes in November - mostly because so few voters hold this belief in the first place.
This Pew study, NBC News, and other sources are finding that Obama came out of the Wright controversy unscathed, while Hillary's poll numbers have actually fallen. And certainly Obama can now say he has been "tested" and survived. However, I was hoping that this scandal would douse the false religion rumors, and it looks like that didn't happen.
See the full length version of Steve D. Martin's "Renewal or Ruin" here at talk To Action
The involvement of religion in politics is not a new thing and, once upon a time and within living memory, there was a thing called "liberal Christianity"...
This diary is to all of us whites who may be scared or uneasy about the sermons of Dr. Jeremiah Wright and his association with Barack Obama. It is based on a bit of research on him and others in the religious community. As a white man in America, I have nothing but respect for this man and his struggles, I hope as we all get to know him and his message, we will all feel the same way. His words, while on the surface are reprehensible, I believe they can be used as catalyst for improvement in race relations across this country.
Well now, that was a pretty offensive and factually-challenged sermon from Rev. Wright, wasn't it?
I'm afraid I'll have to respectfully disagree with that notion.
I was initially going to write a diary about the Pavlovian refusal by so many of my fellow Americans to consider that the actions of our Government may have contributed greatly to what occurred on 9/11/01. While what occurred on that day cannot ever be justified, that doesn't mean that there aren't things that our government has done to provoke those attacks. But for some reason people have trouble separating justification from explanation.
But I digress, the real subject of this rant is the notion that politicians must answer for things said by their religious leaders/advisers which people find to be questionable and/or objectionable.
Not all Christians are supercilious, of course. Many are content to live and let live, and some even grant that science (despite its lack of supernatural entities) does some good. But Christianity as an organized, evangelizing movement has been on the offensive lately. Witness the new wave of evangelicals and their leaders such as Rick Warren, Lee Strobel, and William Lane Craig with their aggressive stance against scientific materialism and their bestselling books attempting to refute science. So, assuming you're an atheist, what do you say to the theist who asks, "You don't (chuckle) believe in a god (snicker)?"
Anybody familiar with the original article will see that the preceding paragraph is the same paragraph as the opening to "How to Respond to a Supercilious Atheist" by Alan Roebuck. By changing a few words, the same attack can be launched right back at him, and the rest of the article isn't much better. It appears to be a primer in projection. After all, when in doubt, just accuse them of being just like you.
With all the turmoil ebbing and flowing about Obama and his religion; persons affiliated with his church; and the right wing misinformation about him being a one man sleeper cell, I thought I would weigh in on this controversial topic and see if it resonates with anyone.
Let me set this up and then let it all spill out below the fold.
In the interest of full disclosure: I am an athiest. This is central to my philosophy and would probably be obvious even if I hadn't thrown it out there this early. I don't want to argue about this necessarily, because it's not a theology blog, but it's important to note that this is the perspective I'm coming from in my opinions. I also needed to explain that this is the reason I included it in my title, and not because I am trying to start a new rumor about Obama.
I just watched this video from the Obama website entitled, "Meet Barack." It details Obama's family background and political rise. I think the Obama campaign seriously needs to consider creating a distilled version of this ad to air in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. I believe they're going to need something like this to counter the GOP slime machine in the GE, anyway.
Hey, Kossacks. My first diary. Let's see if I can get banned right out of the gate. Now, don't get me wrong, that is neither my intent nor my desire. It's just one of those topics.
I've been following alot of the "Obama is a Muslim" discussions with great interest. Last summer, during a friendly discussion with my neighbor Lefty (who has never met a Republican he liked), I confidently asserted that there was no way that this country was ready to elect a woman or someone named Barack Hussein Obama. He was certain I was wrong. I told him that he severly underestimates the obtuseness of a great portion of this country. There just wasn't any way that it "would play in Peoria".
The Anti-Defamation League, and it longtime leader Abe Foxman, are not considered a liberal or progressive organization by liberals or progressives. There is plenty of criticism of them from the left. They are quite quick to call anti-Semitism on anybody... Black or White, Christian or Muslim, Republican and Democrat, etc.
They are absolutely part of mainstream American Jewish leadership.
Basically, they give the good housekeeping seal of approval on whether or not you or your statements are anti-semitic. If you are koshered by them, then you should be kosher for the rest of us (certainly us Jews).
So where does the ADL stand on Senator Obama and Minister Farrakhan?
And by the way, does the ADL have anything to say about John McCain?
Since they allude to JFK relatively often, I think Barack and is team may need to give a speech about his faith in much the same sort of way JFK addressed questions of his faith on Sept. 12, 1960.
As many diaries have noted here and the results of the election are making clear, Obama is running a ground game that is changing the rules of politics. How about the Republicans? Well they are in deep, deep trouble. Short version, they are doomed. Long version, below the fold.
" The predatory practice of payday lenders flourishes in the Bible Belt, the very place where one would think that the piety and morality of church goers would oppose such ventures that charge the poor exorbitant interest rates exceeding those of "the old mafia loan sharking syndicates." That is not the case, according to a new study that maps the correlation of payday lenders and conservative Christians. "
The Old Redneck remembers a Baptist Sunday School lesson about Jesus driving the money lenders and usurers from the temple. Now I'm wondering what Jesus would do about payday lenders.
