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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geode00 who wrote (45600)5/10/2005 7:50:29 AM
From: Crimson Ghost  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 173976
 
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WHERE ARE THE CHRISTIAN MODERATES?
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SAM SMITH, PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - The failure of Christian moderates to
take on publicly religious extremists who claim the same Bible and
theology sadly brings to mind the failure of liberals to take on Joseph
McCarthy. As with McCarthyism, extremism thrives in the valley of fear
and silence.

In McCarthy's case it was some New England Republicans - not liberals -
who finally stood up effectively against McCarthy. They, like the
liberals, had kept silent too long, but at least they finally got the
courage to speak out.

Christian moderates need to look no further back than the civil rights
movement for a model of reaction. For it was some of the same sects -
including the white southern Baptists - who most fiercely opposed
desegregation. Judge Thomas P. Brady, a deacon and Sunday school teacher
at a Baptist church in Mississippi described the Supreme Court's
desegregation decision this way:

"Black Monday ranks in importance with July 4th, 1776.... May 17th, 1954
is the date upon which the declaration of socialistic doctrine was
officially proclaimed throughout this nation. It was on Black Monday
that the judicial branch of our government usurped the sacred privilege
and right of the respective states of this union to educate their youth.
This usurpation constitutes the greatest travesty of the American
Constitution and jurisprudence in the history of this nation."

As late as 1997, Jim Wallis could write in Sojourners that:

"White evangelicalism simply has been wrong on the issue of race for a
very long time. Indeed, conservative white Christians have served as a
bastion of racial segregation and a bulwark against racial justice
efforts for decades, in the South and throughout the country.

"All during the civil rights struggle, the vast majority of white
evangelicals and their churches were on the wrong side - the wrong side
of the truth, the Bible, and the gospel."

These are the same voices that have transferred their hatred and targets
for dominance from blacks to women and gays, who want their mean myopia
to be national policy, and who blaspheme the very icon they profess to
worship by their cruelty, prejudice and intolerance.

There are two big differences, however. The first is that the media
refers to and pictures these extremists not as bigots but as "people of
faith." To a remarkable degree, the press has accepted the virulent
public policies of the Christian right as worthy of respect and even
admiration.

The second differences is that the voice of rational, moderate
Christianity is largely silent. Not only is there no Rev. Martin Luther
King Jr offering an appealing alternative to hate, but white bishops
from the Episcopal Church are not being pictured with locked arms
walking with the weak towards freedom. There are few coalitions of
conscience in major cities and there is a lack of sermons, donations,
and activism.

By the 1960s, the reactionary religious right found itself with a
vigorous opponent helping to open the doors of hope it was blockading.
Even the Catholic Church was better known for its worker priests and
liberation theology than for its opposition to abortion. The secular and
the religious had joined in making America a better land.

Nothing similar is happening now. This is not a sudden transition. The
observant have noted the retreat from progressive social action on the
part of moderate Christian churches over the past couple of decades.
Just one small example: how often have you seen a moderate Christian
service or commentator on television?

But, as with McCarthyism, it is better to be late than not to act at
all. Faced with the rise of the American Taliban, it is past time for
moderate Christians to return their own faith to honor and social good
rather than to let it be defined by the tainted turmoil of false
prophets. Humanists and free thinkers can't do all the work. These
moderate Christians must stand up to our contemporary religious bigots
just as their predecessors did during the civil rights struggle. And
time is running out.

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NEWS FROM THE COLONIES
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THINGS THE MEDIA DOESN'T TELL YOU ABOUT AFGHANISTAN
afghanwomensmission.org

- Warlords still dominate afghanistan
- Outside Kabul, women still fearful of being in public spaces
- Women's unemployment rampant
- State of rural women's health is dismal
- Women have no political freedom
- Independent media under constant threat



To: geode00 who wrote (45600)5/10/2005 10:48:35 AM
From: American Spirit  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 173976
 
The Delay Foundation is where Tom is hiding his dirty money. Stay tuned to see if there's an investigation which can crack the non-profit corporate veil of that phony charity.


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