It's hard to imagine what goes through a campaign manager's head when his candidate says to him, "Harry, tomorrow, I'm going to tell the Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Lutherans, the Disciples of Christ, the United Church of Christ, the Episcopalians, and the American Baptists that they aren't real Christians -- about 25 million people." Does the manager reach for the Tylenol or the Jim Beam? That is essentially what the Senator said in 2008 when he was campaigning at Ave Maria University in Florida. Here are his words.
"We look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country and it is in shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it."
It sounds politically suicidal, but I guess it makes perfect sense from a certain strategic point of view. What he was doing was making an exclusive claim of the sacred. He was implying that only the Roman Catholic Church and evangelical churches like the Southern Baptists can claim the sacred. The enemy of these groups has to be the secularists. In America any conflict between the side with all the sacred symbols vs. people with only secular ideals will favor the former.
But if mainstream Protestants also represent the sacred and they are on the side of gay rights, marriage equality and pro-choice positions, then they must be discredited. President Obama's church, my church, the United Church of Christ, cannot be a "real" church. It has to be "gone from the world of Christianity." Their most important concern is to keep any vestige of sacredness from President Obama. They refuse to see him as a Christian in a traditional Protestant Church, a person who is no more Christian than other people, but no less Christian either.
At the risk of sounding as judgmental as the Senator, it might be he who has gone astray. He has a theology of purity, a concern never to be involved with anything that is condemned as impure by his religion, things like homosexuality and birth control. But the central value of biblical Christianity is not purity. Nor is it things like a literal six-day creation, or being born again. It is love and justice. Focus on that those values and you find yourself not worrying about purity, but actually trying to make society better. It is the dreaded affliction of us mainline Protestants: social justice.
But maybe the Senator is right about us. We don't seem to have the important qualities of a real religion. We are too soft. We don't ex-communicate people. We don't deny them communion. And there is another of our bad qualities: We try to be tolerant. We don't think we have a corner on the truth. And finally, we have yet another drawback. We don't listen. We don't listen to Glenn Beck, to Rush Limbaugh, to Sean Hannity, or any of the flood of conservatives who think social justice is for the birds. We ordain women to the ministry, we ordain gays to the ministry. We -- many of us, at least -- support the work of Planned Parenthood and think it that when it furnishes compassionate care for poor women and other women, it is in accord with that commandment to love the neighbor.
So, from Senator Santorum' s standpoint, I guess we are lost. We are so far gone that we are actually not ashamed of who we are.
But thanks for trying to save us, Senator. We won't forget it.
When Jesus returns, as prophesied, “to rule all nationsâ€, will He also rule over the Christian priests?
That is to say, when Christ returns “in the glory of his Fatherâ€, “in his own glory and in his Father’sâ€â€“when the Father and Son appear together, as Baha’u’llah and His glorious Son Abdu’l-Baha have appeared–will the Christian leaders humbly lay down their power, their authority, their fame, their scriptural interpretations, and their own knowledge of things, and accept Baha’u’llah as the return of their Lord, and follow Him, and do His bidding, though it may not be in accord with their wishes or desires or expectations; or will they instead “act as former generations have acted†in the ancient times, and devise fantastic notions, and dispute with Him, and cling to outmoded traditions and shibboleths, and continue to reject their Lord–in spite of compelling, incontrovertible and infallible proofs offered by Baha’u’llah and Abdu’l-Baha that show unequivocally not only their right to claim to be God’s Messenger for today, but also where the commentators have gone wrong–and vainly cite as a prerequisite the literal fulfillment of certain prophecies which they themselves have determined must occur, in the manner they prescribe, before they would deign to lower themselves to accept the appearance of their Lord?
Moloch was the god of the Canaanites and other Semitic peoples of the ancient near east. His priests demanded child sacrifice. In the worship of this god, babies were burned alive by their own parents.
Mr. Davis supports the "work" of Planned Parenthood, which is the largest abortion "provider" in the nation. Estimates of the number of babies murdered by Planned Parenthood since 1973 is in the tens of millions - far far more than the number of babies possibly sacrificed to Moloch in a comparable period of time. If you are searching for someone with a "fierce Moloch type of faith" (whatever that is supposed to mean) Mr. Davis is your guy, not Rick Santorum.
Better late than never, I guess.
Last week a priest on Bill O'Reilly's show called. Santorum an extremist that will not be popular with most Catholics.
Mainline Protestants and Catholic have a similar voting and responses to polls. Research has also found both to be more intelligent and better educated than Evangelicals that are supporting Santorum. The following is the similarity between most Catholics and Mainline Protestants.
More than 75 Catholic college professors sent a publicly released letter to House Speaker John Boehner saying that the budget he supported will hurt the poor, elderly and vulnerable. Boehner, a Catholic Republican, gave the commencement address in 2011 at the Catholic University of America.
http://ncronline.org/blogs/distinctly-catholic/breaking-news-catholic-academics-challenge-boehner
2. Yes, there are a great many nominal Catholics who are badly catechized. That is why the Holy Father has appointed orthodox Bishops to oversee a new evangelization both in Europe and the United States.
3. "Catholic College Professors" have no standing to speak for the Church or for anyone else.
4. Reasonable minds can differ as to whether conservative fiscal policy harms the "poor, elderly, and vulnerable." Personally, I think that confiscatory taxation and the totalitarian welfare state impoverishes everyone. In any event, such social policy is a prudential matter and not not doctrinal.
Obama Again - 2012!
I wish more "liberal" religious leaders would speak out against this hypocrisy. As Rev. Davis points out "We are too soft. We don't ex-communicate people. We don't deny them communion. And there is another of our bad qualities: We try to be tolerant." Such tolerance and silence have discouraged and turned away many people from church and God, spawning videos like "Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus || Spoken Word". Their frustrations towards organized religions were obviously caused by a small group of people who hold extreme views and love to pass judgments onto others. In reality, these people couldn't be further away from the Bible's teaching.
Many on the religious right might still resent Jesus for hanging with the sinners...but the religious left would resent Him just as much for calling the sinners to repent. Such is our state when we don't continuously abide in Him, for despite the Rev.'s erroneous assertion that Christianity isn't about being born again, Jesus said quite emphatically that unless we are born again we can't even SEE the Kindgom of God.