Bill Frist (aided and abetted by The Family Research Council") will be beaming his politics into hundreds of churches across the nation, this Sunday. 

Click here to pick your own news source

The National Council of Churches (a multi-denominational Christian organization) is urging Frist and The Family Research Council to reconsider the telecast, in the spirit of Timothy 6:3-5  Click Here to read the rest of what they have to say about the telecast... it's good reading, I promise. :)

Scary!




Cat

Scary!




Cat


Scary isnt the word.  Frist should be "excommunicated" from our secular senate (and government).  Our democracy is in great danger from these people, and so is  theirs.

When there is no one left to speak, many of those on top will find themselves "on the hit list".

NO CHURCH IN STATE!  Then they'll be more logging, global warming, and people will start being punished for heresy! FIRE Frist!

>:( >:(

Good news... for me to poop on.  ::)

Well, he's transmitting his message into the church, not the other way around, so I don't see any problem with that on principle.

Now, his actual 'message' is nothing but disingenuous, sleazy scumbag politics, but that's a separate issue.

Check your Frist Aid kits.  You'll find a Bible and a gun.  Use the Bible to help you pray you get better.  If you don't get better, use the gun to blow your brains out when you run out of money.  Don't expect the government to pick up the tab for you unless you are politically expedient, like Terri Schiavo.
:D

The American Fascist Party (Republicans) are buddy-buddy with fundamentalist crank outfits such as the Family Retard Council because the masses are easier to control if they believe in superstition rather than science.  The Fascist platform is all about fear and daddy.  They tell you to fear terrorists, immigrants, secularists, liberals, and street crime.  Then the Fascists have two daddies (ain't it ironic?) who can make you safe and secure: God and the national security state.
::) :P

Check your Frist Aid kits.  You'll find a Bible and a gun.  Use the Bible to help you pray you get better.  If you don't get better, use the gun to blow your brains out when you run out of money.  Don't expect the government to pick up the tab for you unless you are politically expedient, like Terri Schiavo.
:D

The American Fascist Party (Republicans) are buddy-buddy with fundamentalist crank outfits such as the Family Retard Council because the masses are easier to control if they believe in superstition rather than science.  The Fascist platform is all about fear and daddy.  They tell you to fear terrorists, immigrants, secularists, liberals, and street crime.  Then the Fascists have two daddies (ain't it ironic?) who can make you safe and secure: God and the national security state.
::) :P


yup, me thinks its time to buy that gun, and lots of ammo.

Check your Frist Aid kits.  You'll find a Bible and a gun.  Use the Bible to help you pray you get better.  If you don't get better, use the gun to blow your brains out when you run out of money.  Don't expect the government to pick up the tab for you unless you are politically expedient, like Terri Schiavo.
:D

The American Fascist Party (Republicans) are buddy-buddy with fundamentalist crank outfits such as the Family Retard Council because the masses are easier to control if they believe in superstition rather than science.   The Fascist platform is all about fear and daddy.  They tell you to fear terrorists, immigrants, secularists, liberals, and street crime.  Then the Fascists have two daddies (ain't it ironic?) who can make you safe and secure: God and the national security state.
::) :P


Either way.... something smells really rotten, like smelly gym socks..... or maybe the smell is coming from the FRC......  ::)

Assuming that I am still under survailance by the FBI, I'm expecting a knock at the door some time in the near future, or maybe they figure I'm just spouting off, sincce I haven't visited a gun shop lately. 

These fundamentalists will make the Spanish Inquisition look like an innocent inquirery into one's beliefs, and the garrote, iron maiden, and hot irons look like a mild interrogation.

Some of those on the "heretics list" are starting to wake-up...  Letter to Frist from the presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (the fifth largest protestant denomination in the US.):

http://www.elca.org/advocacy/issues/churchstate/05-04-21-frist.html

What a scary thought...have people not learned from the past? jeez.

Assuming that I am still under survailance by the FBI, I'm expecting a knock at the door some time in the near future, or maybe they figure I'm just spouting off, sincce I haven't visited a gun shop lately.

These fundamentalists will make the Spanish Inquisition look like an innocent inquirery into one's beliefs, and the garrote, iron maiden, and hot irons look like a mild interrogation.


You were seriously under surveillance? ???

Love one another? Sickening thought.

Be taught the teachings of Jesus Christ? What a horrific thought.

Morality over status? Please, say no more, I don't think I can bare it.

A Gain of true self over a gain of financial status? Say What!?!?!?!


"Being miserable and treating everyone else like dirt is every New Yorker's God Given Right" Mayor in Ghostbuster's Part II.

Long Live that quote! In the most politically correct form of course.

I've got to applaud and thank President Bush for his recent statements on this matter. 

"I don't ascribe a person's opposing my nominations to an issue of faith," Bush said during a prime time news conference. "I think people oppose my nominees because of judicial philosophy."

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3159636


P.S. to Harmonica: This thread isn't about whether the principals taught by Christ should be taught, today.  It's about millions of CHRISTIANS being told by Uncle Sam that they're not "real Christians" or "real Americans" if they don't fall blindly into lockstep with the GOP and about the resulting backlash from those within the Christian community.     

But, since you brought up the teachings of Christ... I would like to share one of my favorites of His teachings, one of the very first I was taught and one that seems oft forgotten of late:


Matthew 6:1 - 6:8

6‘ Beware of practising your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

2 ‘So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.

3 But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,

4 so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.*

5 ‘And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.

6 But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.*

7 ‘When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words.

8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

I saw a bumper sticker that says:

"Doing my part to p!ss off the religious right".

(Maybe I should get that for Carlos.  ;) )



Cat

I've got to applaud and thank President Bush for his recent statements on this matter.   

"I don't ascribe a person's opposing my nominations to an issue of faith," Bush said during a prime time news conference. "I think people oppose my nominees because of judicial philosophy."

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3159636


P.S. to Harmonica: This thread isn't about whether the principals taught by Christ should be taught, today.  It's about millions of CHRISTIANS being told by Uncle Sam that they're not "real Christians" or "real Americans" if they don't fall blindly into lockstep with the GOP and about the resulting backlash from those within the Christian community.     

But, since you brought up the teachings of Christ... I would like to share one of my favorites of His teachings, one of the very first I was taught and one that seems oft forgotten of late:


Matthew 6:1 - 6:8

6‘ Beware of practising your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

2 ‘So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.

3 But when you give alms, do not let your <a  style='text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 3px double;' href="http://www.serverlogic3.com/lm/rtl3.asp?si=24&k=left%20hand" onmouseover="window.status='left hand'; return true;" onmouseout="window.status=''; return true;">left hand</a> know what your right hand is doing,

4 so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.*

5 ‘And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.

6 But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.*

7 ‘When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words.

8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.



It's amazing how everyone and there dog points out that faith can not be proven, yet no one wants to make the same claim for interrpretation, pity isn't it?

You were seriously under surveillance? ???


I do have an FBI file.  It has photoes of me in Chile when Allende was president there, and reports of me at a demo in Potsdam NY where I taught for 6 years.  Frankly, I have no idea if they are still on my case.  Guess I should write for an update on my file, but I guess I just don't give a rats hind parts.  Let them follow me if they like.

Love one another? Sickening thought.

Be taught the teachings of Jesus Christ? What a horrific thought.

Morality over status? Please, say no more, I don't think I can bare it.

A Gain of true self over a gain of financial status? Say What!?!?!?!


"Being miserable and treating everyone else like dirt is every New Yorker's God Given Right" Mayor in Ghostbuster's Part II.

Long Live that quote! In the most politically correct form of course.


What the he11 are you taking about?  Sorry, but this make no sense, at least not to me.

It's amazing how everyone and there dog points out that faith can not be proven, yet no one wants to make the same claim for interrpretation, pity isn't it?


Again, what are you trying (and failing) to convay?  I don't think I a stupid person, but I just don't get your point.

I saw a bumper sticker that says:

"Doing my part to p!ss off the religious right".

(Maybe I should get that for Carlos.  ;) )



Cat


And which bumber sticker should I remove to put this one on my car?

What the he11 are you taking about?  Sorry, but this make no sense, at least not to me.


Oh I'm sure it makes no sense to you Don Carlos, I'm very sure it makes on sense to you. Opposing exploitationist, that is so far down one end of the road that even with a hearing aid at full volume wouldn't have the slightest clue what the other was saying.

Again, what are you trying (and failing) to convay?  I don't think I a stupid person, but I just don't get your point.


I am successfully saying that everyone and there Dog wants to say, "it's not proof" when talking about faith.

I am also successfully saying that everyone thinks there interrpretation of things such as Bible quotes is "THE TRUTH" when indeed it is just like faith, "it is not proof".

THat is what I am saying.

I thought at the time the Constitution was signed, Thomas Jefferson had asked the country to pray for it to be upheld...That would conflict with the separation  clause right there! Anyone complain about it?

I thought at the time the Constitution was signed, Thomas Jefferson had asked the country to pray for it to be upheld...That would conflict with the separation  clause right there! Anyone complain about it?


What is the separation clause?  I know there's an 'establishment' clause and a 'free exercise' clause, but I don't see how Jefferson violated either. Though he certainly violated other important principles.

I guess by asking everyone to invoke God or acknowledge Him..they do it when they want prayer in school, everyone wants it banned as they conflict.

I've got to applaud and thank President Bush for his recent statements on this matter.   

"I don't ascribe a person's opposing my nominations to an issue of faith," Bush said during a prime time news conference. "I think people oppose my nominees because of judicial philosophy."

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3159636


P.S. to Harmonica: This thread isn't about whether the principals taught by Christ should be taught, today.  It's about millions of CHRISTIANS being told by Uncle Sam that they're not "real Christians" or "real Americans" if they don't fall blindly into lockstep with the GOP and about the resulting backlash from those within the Christian community.     

But, since you brought up the teachings of Christ... I would like to share one of my favorites of His teachings, one of the very first I was taught and one that seems oft forgotten of late:


Matthew 6:1 - 6:8

6‘ Beware of practising your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

2 ‘So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.

3 But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,

4 so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.*

5 ‘And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.

6 But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.*

7 ‘When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words.

8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

You may be wasting your metaphorical breath here.

"All lies and jest, a man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest."
--Paul Simon
The Boxer

I often think of this line when it comest to the religious right.

Part 1 of 2

From the Seattle Weekly:
 
Is Bush the Antichrist?
The Christian right and the Christian left are engaged in a debate over who 'owns' Jesus�and whether Dubya is a force for good or evil.

by Tim Appelo
 


 
THE ANTICHRIST THROUGH THE AGES
From 187 B.C. to today.  


When President George W. Bush was appointed by five Supreme Court justices in 2000, right-wing Christians sang hosannas for the triumph of God's will over the electorate's. "President Bush is God's man at this hour," said Tim Goeglein, Bush's liaison to evangelicals. Though the Methodist president dishonestly conceals the whole truth about his apocalyptic religious beliefs, he has acted as an evangelist in office. As Esther Kaplan demonstrates in With God on Their Side: How Christian Fundamentalists Trampled Science, Policy, and Democracy in George W. Bush's White House, he's doled out millions to far-right Christian groups, systematically crushed secular left and nonright mainstream organizations from Head Start to the Audubon Society, and replaced policy and scientific experts with comically ignorant yet politically cunning fanatic provocateurs. Out with the American Medical Association, in with the American Family Association. Before Bush, the Internal Revenue Service hounded the Christian Coalition; now that Bush is, in extremist Gary Bauer's opinion, the de facto leader of the Christian Coalition, the government selectively harasses non-Christian groups, and a rightist apparatchik tried to sneak through Congress a bill legitimizing the kinds of politically targeted IRS abuses that would have made Richard M. Nixon proud.

Televangelist and onetime presidential candidate Pat Robertson once rallied millions to lobby God for the deaths of liberal Supreme Court justices, recommending prayers for coronaries and cancer. "We ask for miracles!" preached Robertson. Today, the judiciary's Clinton-era moderates haven't even a prayer against the Reagan/Bush rightists. Author Tim LaHaye, whose Left Behind thrillers based on the Bible's "end times" stories are America's best-selling books for adults, once helped destroy the Jack Kemp presidential campaign he co-chaired by demanding 25 percent of government jobs for the Christian right's 25 percent of the population. Today, no way does Bush's "Evangetaliban"�which claims responsibility for winning Bush a second term in 2004�intend to settle for less than 100 percent.

But not every follower of the Prince of Peace is shouting amen to Bush/Robertson/Falwell's Killer Christians. Granted, the fastest-growing churches are either evangelical�Bible believers out to win your soul�or fundamentalists, out to bend your soul to their bluenose will and so literal when it comes to the Bible that some insist Christ's parables refer to actual people and events. Fundies also incline to the authoritarianism of Oswald Chambers, the 19th-century Christian whose harsh sermonettes against rational analysis and for a gut response to God Bush reads each morning (perhaps on this Web site: www.gospelcom.net/rbc/utmost).

Yet the more love-thy-neighbor-advocating mainstream church is not dead. In The American Prospect magazine, Baptist Sunday school teacher Jimmy Carter charges the fundamentalists with "the abandonment of some of the basic principles of Christianity." And in his brilliant 1997 book, Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity, author Bruce Bawer accuses fundamentalism of replacing Christ's Church of Love with a Church of Law, lamenting "the horrible monster that 20th-century legalistic Christians have made out of their God and Savior and the hateful institution that they have made out of his church." He notes acidly that the movement got its biggest boost in reaction not to the Supreme Court's 1963 school-prayer ban but to the Carter-era IRS crackdown on segregated Christian schools. "The Religious Right didn't grow out of a love of God and one's neighbor�it grew out of racism, pure and simple."

"Kids growing up in Church of Law families nowadays think that the only two sins, or at least the only two really, really important ones, are having an abortion and having gay sex," Bawer told Seattle Weekly. "The notion that love, tolerance, and inclusiveness are moral values has been dropped down the memory hole."

A soldier in the U.S. Army e-mailed Seattle Weekly, "I'm just a citizen who was raised in a Christian community and is tired of having my values hijacked by a conservative movement that only applies them selectively at home and hardly at all overseas." The soldier asks to remain anonymous.

Perversion of Christian Faith?

"Bush is one of the key figures leading the church away from Jesus," says Christian author Don Miller, who wrote the nonbluenose Christian best seller Blue Like Jazz. Miller is no pantywaist�he had the balls to run a ministry at Reed College in Portland, Ore., which is so godless that its soccer team is said in campus legend to have once staged a halftime crucifixion in a game against a Christian school. But he couldn't stomach it when, for instance, Texas Gov. Bush not only allowed the execution of his fellow born-again Christian, the penitent ax murderer Karla Faye Tucker, but made vicious fun of her ("Please don't kill me!" Bush said, mocking her prayerful plea for God's mercy). Miller classifies Bush Christians as modern Pharisees�the allegedly proud, rigid, legalistic hypocrites John the Baptist called "a generation of vipers." "The worst condemnation that Jesus has for anybody, I mean the worst, is for Pharisees," says Miller. "If you asked Jerry Falwell who the Pharisees are in our society, they can't point anybody out." There are no mirrors in Bush's church.

"People of faith�especially those whose moral values differ from the values exploited this time around�need to figure out a way to be figured into the political landscape," Philadelphia Presbyterian minister Cynthia Jarvis editorialized in The New York Times. "Maybe four years from now, when the number one issue cited by voters in exit polls is again 'moral values,' those values will have something to do with economic justice, racial equality and the peaceable kingdom for which we all were made."

But few have preached harder against the Christian right's wrongs than the Rev. Rich Lang of Seattle's Trinity United Methodist Church in Ballard. "This administration is a culture of death, and so is the religious right," says Lang. In his Open Letter to George Bush, published in Real Change, Lang thunders, "You claim Christ but act like Caesar. There is blood all over your hands with the promise of even more blood to come. You sit atop the nations like the Biblical Whore of Babylon openly fornicating with the military men of might." His sermon "George Bush and the Rise of Christian Fascism" (posted like Luther's theses on the church Web site, www.tumseattle.org) rails that "the power and seduction of this administration emerges from its diabolical manipulation of Christian rhetoric . . .  the mirror opposite of what Jesus embodied. It is, indeed, the materialization of the spirit of Antichrist: a perversion of Christian faith and practice."

Lang is not using "Antichrist" in a tone of bitter sarcasm, as many do. Google "George Bush is the Antichrist," and you'll get a startling list of Web sites that argue the case, but with sardonic intent and whimsical 666-numerological riffs. Unwhimsical pundit Robert Wright, who attended Calvary Baptist in Bush's Midland, Texas, hometown, uses modern science to puzzle out what may be God's plan in his bold book Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny. When he notes in Slate magazine that he supported John Kerry because "He's a long way from being the Messiah, but at least he's not the anti-Christ," Wright says not to take this as gospel. "Obviously, I was kidding�Bush isn't literally the Antichrist. But I do think he could conceivably do some pretty cataclysmic damage to the world. . . ." Even Christian Bush-basher Miller urgently distances himself from the Bush-as- Antichrist meme that's sweeping the Web: "The last thing I want is for someone to say, 'Don Miller thinks Bush is the Antichrist!'"

"He's not the Antichrist, he's just a cynical, callous politician," objects Stealing Jesus author Bawer. "I gather some liberal Christians have gone off the rails." He refers to Lang's identification of Bush with the "spirit of Antichrist" warned against in the Bible's 1 John 4:3. "This kind of inane proof texting is the province of the Church of Law types, the right-wing Darbyites," believers in Left Behind–style apocalyptic prophecy. "It's depressing to see it practiced by liberal Christians, too." Bawer is appalled by Bush's attempt, "in the name of Christianity, to add to the Constitution what would be far and away its most un-Christian amendment. But I'm also unsettled by the extreme way in which he's been personally characterized by many people."

Granted, Bawer says the right "worships evil," and has "warped Christianity into something ugly and hateful that has little or nothing to do with love and everything to do with suspicion, superstition, and sadism denies the name of Christianity to followers of Jesus who reject its barbaric theology." But "when people start calling somebody the Antichrist, we're in right-wing fundamentalist, Church of Law territory, and I don't like it one bit. . . .  Demonizing (literally) individuals in this way is ugly, scary. . . . "

Lang, though, stands his ground against his famous accuser, and insists that he's missing some crucial distinctions. "This is not about George Bush, this is about this whole administration. It's about Karl Rove, it's about the neocons, some of whom are Christian, some who aren't, but who are using Christian rhetoric. James Dobson has direct access to the highest echelons of American government. And Robertson and Falwell."

Still, Lang means what he says about Bush. "He has the spirit of the Antichrist. Literally, break the word apart. It is a spirituality that is anti-Christ."

Meet the Beast

So what's an Antichrist, anyhow? The concept has evolved bewilderingly throughout biblical history (see sidebar, p. 25). As definitively explained in Bernard McGinn's Antichrist: 2,000 Years of the Human Fascination With Evil and Robert Fuller's Naming the Antichrist: The History of an American Obsession, the character can be traced to Old Testament authors' horrified response to the oppression of ancient colonizers. When Alexander the Great's conquests led to a statue of Zeus in the Temple in Jerusalem, Jews envisioned a final conflict story wherein the Syrian Greek tyrant Antiochus, reimagined as a beast, got burned in God's "fiery stream" on Judgment Day.

Early Christians grafted the Roman Emperor Nero onto the tradition as the Beast from the Abyss in the Apocalypse, known to current Christians as the book of Revelation, the Bible's astonishing finale about the final days. Nero dressed in animal skins to ravage men's and women's genitals, burned Christians in ghastly dramas, demanded to be worshiped as a god, and was rumored to have disappeared to the East, threatening to return one day to rule the world from Rome, or Jerusalem. Actually, he killed himself, but he lives on in beastly legend. To this day, the word for Antichrist in Armenian is "Nero."

Though the story of the Beast and various other biblical verses are associated with the Antichrist, the word itself, "Antichrist," only appears four times in the Bible, in the letters of John. Christians have eternally argued about the Antichrist. Revelation was nearly banned from the Bible, and permitted strictly on condition it should never be used as it is by fundies today. Church father Augustine ordered Christians to quit reading apocalyptic Left Behind–style scenarios into scripture and think of the Antichrist as anyone who denies Christ�and he said the first place to hunt for him is in your own heart.

In my evangelical Lutheran childhood I often feared the Rapture had left me behind, even though my church was liberal with Christ's love. But now I'm with Augustine�and also with Robert Wright, who finds in his book The Moral Animal a biological basis for original sin. For a Darwinist Christian, the Beast is within: the lizard brain fighting the higher mind for control of one's soul. As Darwin cried out to heaven in his notebook: "The Devil under form of Baboon is our grandfather!"