Politics - playing the religious card

[Evo]

You don't believe in freedom of speech? You would ban religious speech in political debates and public formats? I don't understand your point here. What specifically would you do or like to see done?

I'd like to see religion separated from Government. Just as churches aren't supposed to get involved in politics, candidates also should not be representing the church to which they belong.

I think this is an excellent article and sums up how I feel about the subject.

Let me repeat here what I've said in churches: A mistake that over the history of our nation both theological liberals and conservatives have made in different moments is to equate one political candidate or one political party as being somehow closer to God. We need to resist this impulse for several reasons. First, I've never been aware of any public figure -- at least since Jesus -- who fully understood the wisdom of God. We all fall short despite even the best of intentions. When the late Jerry Falwell and others argued during the 2004 elections that you could not be a Christian unless you voted for their preferred candidates, they supplanted their own beliefs for the Gospel teachings. Second, and perhaps more important, is that when we align the church with one candidate or one political party, we risk becoming an agent of that cause instead of an agent of God. Scripture teaches us that we are called by God to be loving critics of the conventional wisdom, not agents of the state.

As a progressive minister in the United Church of Christ, I'm deeply concerned about poverty, the environment and war, to name a few of the pressing issues of our day. My hope is that more and more progressive Christians will become engaged in the public square. But we should not replicate our efforts out of what the religious right has done. No, groups like Focus on the Family and the like have too often claimed God as their own and reduced Scripture to a political platform. Progressive people of faith need to operate in ways that respect the great tradition of religious pluralism in the United States and intentionally seek -- even as we push hard on important issues of justice -- to build bridges in a nation too often divided and torn asunder by religious voices and by politicians who claim that God calls them to office.

Heck, I'd vote for this minister.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-chuck-currie/christianity-and-politics-in-america_b_939880.html

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I'd like to see religion separated from Government. Just as churches aren't supposed to get involved in politics, candidates also should not be representing the church to which they belong.

Okay, but how exactly could that happen? Are you suggesting that a law should be passed or the Constitution amended? If so, how would it read?

 

[turbo]

Okay, but how exactly could that happen? Are you suggesting that a law should be passed or the Constitution amended? If so, how would it read?

How could candidates be legally prevented from touting their religious affiliations? I don't see a single avenue for that approach. Nothing that could stand even a cursory review, anyway.

 

[Evo]

Okay, but how exactly could that happen? Are you suggesting that a law should be passed or the Constitution amended? If so, how would it read?

I've never claimed to have ansers, I'm asking in this thread if people think using a specific religion as a political platform is right or wrong. I'm with the people that think it's wrong. That's all.

If enough people get tired of it and stand up against it, hopefully it will die off. People that throw their hands up in the air and say "we can't stop it, maybe it will go away if we don't do or say anything", may find that ignoring a problem usually doesn't make it go away.

 

[Proton Soup]

You don't believe in freedom of speech? You would ban religious speech in political debates and public formats? I don't understand your point here. What specifically would you do or like to see done?

yeah, and well, i just get this little feeling in my gut that this subject's preferred targets are christian "evangelicals". and what I'm hoping is that we won't see the thread get locked if the discussion becomes a little more inclusive.

and so I'm just going to put this out here and hope for the best. because people like michelle bachmann aren't only pandering to the christian right.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/...itzes_with_key_ny_jews_Ks5Rm6JnZBxW9OY78pwwoK

"We're meeting with people all across New York who are interested in my candidacy," Bachmann said as she ducked into a Broadway office building for a small, private sit-down with Orthodox Jewish leaders.

Bachmann spent about an hour at a private office discussing issues ranging from same-sex marriage to security for the Jewish state. She reminded the group she worked on a kibbutz in Israel 40 years ago.

Dov Hikind is an interesting guy, too. http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/08/dov_hikind_hates_gay_marriage.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uglr9NVU3LA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DH4w2tIzxLg

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I've never claimed to have ansers, I'm asking in this thread if people think using a specific religion as a political platform is right or wrong. I'm with the people that think it's wrong. That's all.

If enough people get tired of it and stand up against it, hopefully it will die off. People that throw their hands up in the air and say "we can't stop it, maybe it will go away if we don't do or say anything", may find that ignoring a problem usually doesn't make it go away.

I don't think it's wrong but it's unacceptable. That's why I tend to vote for Democrats of late. I think that is your answer: Support the candidates who don't do this. What do you you think I'VE been screaming about for eight years?

Beyond that, it sounds like this should be a poll, not a thread. I don't see what there is to discuss given your parameters. When we discuss the rationale for various points of view, you say we're off topic. You asked a morality question; "right or wrong?".

 

[Evo]

I don't think it's wrong but it's unacceptable. That's why I tend to vote for Democrats of late. I think that is your answer: Support the candidates who don't do this.

If it's a concern, yes. Don't just sit there wringing your hands, or turn on *bridezillas* on reality tv.

Beyond that, it sounds like this should be a poll, not a thread. I don't see what there is to discuss given your parameters. When we discuss the rationale for various points of view, you say we're off topic.

I don't want to get into specific discussions of issues, trying to avoid heated debates on emotional topics.

I might add a poll, I'll need to get categories brought up in the articles on the subject, they seem to be able to explain better than I can.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

If it's a concern, yes. Don't just sit there wringing your hands, or turn on *bridezillas* on reality tv.

And send money.

Still ticks me off. For another $50, we would have gotten an autographed photo of Obama. I didn't even realize this until Tsu's uncle started bragging and showed us his personally signed photo [autosigned no doubt ].

I don't want to get into specific discussions of issues, trying to avoid heated debates on emotional topics.

So we can't explain why we think it's right or wrong and discuss those points?

 

[Evo]

And send money.

Still ticks me off. For another $50, we would have gotten an autographed photo of Obama. I didn't even realize this until Tsu's uncle started bragging and showed us his personally signed photo [autosigned no doubt ].




So we can't explain why we think it's right or wrong and discuss those points?

I don't want the thread to be an argument of specific issues, more along what this minister has to say

Let me repeat here what I've said in churches: A mistake that over the history of our nation both theological liberals and conservatives have made in different moments is to equate one political candidate or one political party as being somehow closer to God. We need to resist this impulse for several reasons. First, I've never been aware of any public figure -- at least since Jesus -- who fully understood the wisdom of God. We all fall short despite even the best of intentions. When the late Jerry Falwell and others argued during the 2004 elections that you could not be a Christian unless you voted for their preferred candidates, they supplanted their own beliefs for the Gospel teachings. Second, and perhaps more important, is that when we align the church with one candidate or one political party, we risk becoming an agent of that cause instead of an agent of God. Scripture teaches us that we are called by God to be loving critics of the conventional wisdom, not agents of the state.

Maybe it's a lost cause. Maybe the only people that really care are the ones that support religion in politics and I'm the misfit.

 

[MarcoD]

Maybe the only people that really care are the ones that support religion in politics and I'm the misfit.

Care about what? Everybody cares about things, it may very often just not be fleshed out very well.

Considering the caring, I wonder more whether democracy is failing since people invented the 'poll'. I have really wondered the last years whether just not all politicians are opportunistic and just maximize market shares with whichever emotion is popular in the public. And since both parties do that, but there will be differing opinions, in a two party system you end up with a 50%/50% divide on trivia by default (where everybody fervently agrees on common ground).

In essence, the poll might have turned the US into a direct democracy (at least, during voting time), but also popularized democracy such, that only the general 'feeling' of the public, as rationalized by representatives, is leading, and moral 'leadership' has degraded towards being the best front runner of the public's common 'emotional' response.

(Uh, I am not sure what I am trying to say here, or whether it is relevant.)

EDIT: This is also mostly an observation in the Netherlands where I've been wondering whether I am actually experiencing 'the end of democracy' as we knew it.

 

[Evo]

Care about what? Everybody cares about things, it may very often just not be fleshed out very well.

Considering the caring, I wonder more whether democracy is failing since people invented the 'poll'. I have really wondered the last years whether just not all politicians are opportunistic and just maximize market shares with whichever emotion is popular in the public. And since both parties do that, but there will be differing opinions, in a two party system you end up with a 50%/50% divide on trivia by default (where everybody fervently agrees on common ground).

In essence, the poll might have turned the US into a direct democracy (at least, during voting time), but also popularized democracy such, that only the general 'feeling' of the public, as rationalized by representatives, is leading, and moral 'leadership' has degraded towards being the best front runner of the public's common 'emotional' response.

(Uh, I am not sure what I am trying to say here, or whether it is relevant.)

It's that this year is unusual in regards to the number of politicians claiming that the Christian God wants to get into politics, through them, the ones God chose, more exactly fringe Christian Evangelical/fundamentalist church politicians.

I find this a disturbing trend.

Sure, we get the occasional crank running for office, but they are short lived because cranks usually aren't a well organized group with lots of money.

 

[MarcoD]

It's that this year is unusual in regards to the number of politicians claiming that the Christian God wants to get into politics, through them, the ones God chose, more exactly fringe Christian Evangelical/fundamentalist church politicians.

I find this a disturbing trend.

But doesn't this just simply mean that the US, as a democracy, wants Christian leader who talks to God? I mean, these people use polls right?

Maybe I am pessimistic, but in a claim by Bachman, which was something along the lines of 'my husband is the boss,' I just hear someone dropping a line, fishing for the vote of the neoconservative right.

These are troubling times, that makes people conservative, people may be looking for God (or rather, religious conservatism).

 

[Evo]

But doesn't this just simply mean that the US, as a democracy, wants Christian leader who talks to God? I mean, these people use polls right?

Maybe I am pessimistic, but in a claim by Bachman, which was something along the lines of 'my husband is the boss,' I just hear someone dropping a line, fishing for the vote of the neoconservative right.

These are troubling times, that makes people conservative, people may be looking for God (or rather, religious conservatism).

One of the problems is although they are a small number of the populace, they are highly organized and they have a lot of power and control. Republican politicians fear them and their threats (see previous posted articles), they can buy a lot of advertisements, making it appear that they have a lot of public support, which they don't, they can organize and mobilize their people to go to political rallies, to dictate to their members for whom they will vote, to register people that don't even know what's going on, get absentee ballots for those that don't know what's going on, and bus people to the polls to vote. IMO. I have been witness to this type of thing first hand through Born Again Christian friends that thought that they could bring me to their side by inviting me to their secret "prayer meetings" where they planned these things out in great detail. All it did was shock the crud out of me.

 

[Astronuc]

But doesn't this just simply mean that the US, as a democracy, wants Christian leader who talks to God?

. No!

 

[MarcoD]

One of the problems is although they are a small number of the populace, they are highly organized and they have a lot of power and control. Republican politicians fear them and their threats (see previous posted articles), they can buy a lot of advertisements, making it appear that they have a lot of public support, which they don't, they can organize and mobilize their people to go to political rallies, to dictate to their members for whom they will vote, to register people that don't even know what's going on, get absentee ballots for those that don't know what's going on, and bus people to the polls to vote. IMO. I have been witness to this type of thing first hand through Born Again Christian friends that thought that they could bring me to their side by inviting me to their secret "prayer meetings" where they planned these things out in great detail. All it did was shock the crud out of me.

Oh, that bad.