Faith and Politics

[Warph]

Jesus, Christians and Politics
By Frank Turek
10/31/2010

The United States Congress was in a rare joint session. All 435 representatives and 100 senators were in attendance, and the C-SPAN-TV cameras were rolling. The members were gathered together to hear a speech by a descendant of George Washington. But what they thought would be a polite speech of patriotic historical reflections quickly turned into a televised tongue-lashing. With a wagging finger and stern looks, Washington's seventh-generation grandson declared,

Woe to you, egotistical hypocrites! You are full of greed and self-indulgence. Everything you do is done for appearances: You make pompous speeches and grandstand before these TV cameras. You demand the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats wherever you go. You love to be greeted in your districts and have everyone call you "Senator" or "Congressman." On the outside you appear to people as righteous, but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness! You say you want to clean up Washington, but as soon as you get here you become twice as much a son of hell as the one you replaced!

Woe to you, makers of the law, you hypocrites! You do not practice what you preach. You put heavy burdens on the citizens, but then opt out of your own laws!

Woe to you, federal fools! You take an oath to support and defend the Constitution, but then you nullify the Constitution by confirming judges who make up their own laws.

Woe to you, blind hypocrites! You say that if you had lived in the days of the Founding Fathers, you never would have taken part with them in slavery. You say you never would have agreed that slaves were the property of their masters but would have insisted that they were human beings with unalienable rights. But you testify against yourselves because today you say that unborn children are the property of their mothers and have no rights at all! Upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed in this country. You snakes! You brood of vipers! You have left this great chamber desolate! How will you escape being condemned to hell!

Of course such an address never really took place. Who would be so blunt and rude to address the nation's leaders that way? Certainly no one claiming to be a Christian. Are you sure?

Jesus said something very similar. What? Sweet and gentle Jesus? Absolutely. If you read the twenty-third chapter of Matthew you'll see that much of my fictitious speech is adapted from the real speech Jesus made to the Pharisees. Contrary to the spineless Jesus invented today by those who want an excuse to be spineless themselves, the real Jesus taught with authority and did not tolerate error. When people were wrong, Jesus corrected them and sometimes he got in their faces to do so.

While Jesus was often more diplomatic, he knew that sometimes you need to be blunt with people. Sometimes you need to be direct instead of dancing around the issues. In fact, if you fail to be direct, you risk enabling people, allowing them to continue on their merry way, destroying themselves and the nation.

"Oh, but Jesus wouldn't say that kind of thing to politicians," you say. "He wouldn't get involved in politics."

Think again.

Who were the Pharisees? They were not just the religious leaders but also the political leaders of Israel! You mean Jesus was involved in politics? Yes! Paul was too. He addressed the political leaders of his day and even used the privileges of his Roman citizenship to protect himself and advance the Gospel.

But didn't Jesus say, "Give unto Caesar." Yes. So what? We all ought to pay taxes. But that doesn't mean we ought not get involved in politics. In our country, you can not only elect "Caesar," you can be "Caesar!"

Jesus told us to be "salt" and "light," and he didn't say be salt and light in everything but politics. Christians are to be salt and light in everything they do, be it in their church, in their business, in their school, or in their government.

That doesn't mean establishing a "Theocracy." Christians should be great protectors of liberty, including freedom of (not from) religion. In fact, having Christians involved in government happens to be advantageous for even non-Christians. How so?

It is only the Christian worldview that secures the unalienable rights of the individual in God— rights that include the right to life, liberty, equal treatment, and religious freedom. Islam won't do it. Islam means submission to Allah and Sharia law. It doesn't protect individual rights. Neither will Hinduism (the Caste system) or outright secularism, which offers no means to ground rights in anything other than the whims of a dictator. Only Christianity grounds the rights of the individual in God, and also realizes that since God doesn't force anyone to adhere to one set of religious beliefs, neither should the government.

I often hear Christians claiming that we ought to just "preach the Gospel" and not get involved in politics. This is not only a false dilemma; it's stupid (how's that for direct?). If you think "preaching the Gospel" is important like I do, then you ought to think that politics is important too. Why? Because politics and law affects your ability to preach the Gospel! If you don't think so, go to some of the countries I've visited—Iran, Saudi Arabia, China. You can't legally "preach the Gospel" in those countries—or practice other aspects of your religion freely—because politically they've ruled it out.

It's already happening here. There are several examples where religious freedoms were usurped by homosexual orthodoxy. This summer a Christian student was removed from Eastern Michigan University's (a public school) counseling program because, due to her religious convictions, she would not affirm homosexuality to potential clients. A Judge agreed (a similar case is pending in Georgia). In Massachusetts, Catholic charities closed their adoption agency rather than give children to homosexual couples as the state mandated. In Ohio, University of Toledo HR Director Crystal Dixon was fired for writing a letter to the editor in her local newspaper that disagreed with homosexual practice.

More violations of religious liberty are on the way from the people currently in charge. Lesbian activist Chai Feldbaum, who is a recess appointment by President Obama to the EEOC, recently said regarding the inevitable conflict between homosexuality and religious liberty, "I'm having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win." So much for tolerance. The people who say they're fighting for tolerance are the most intolerant, totalitarian people in politics.

Getting involved in politics is necessary if for no other reason to protect your religious liberty, and the liberties of us all. So if you're a Christian, follow the example of Christ—call out hypocrites and fools, and vote them out on Tuesday!

Oh, I almost forgot. If you're a pastor and you're worried about your tax-exempt status, please remember two things: 1) you have more freedom than you think to speak on political and moral issues from the pulpit, and 2) more importantly, you're called to be salt and light, not tax-exempt.

---Frank Turek

[jarhead]

Outstanding post Fly-Boy---outstanding.

[Warph]

Outstanding post Fly-Boy---outstanding.

Thank you, you ol' Grunt.   

[Warph]

Are We A Christian Nation?

President Barack Obama said in Turkey: "We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values."

Well, I don't know what "we" consider "ourselves," but I do think we ought to examine that statement and why Obama felt compelled to make it a part of his world apology tour.

Can you imagine the Saudi king coming to America and bragging that his nation is not Muslim? I assure you that he's not ashamed of the Islamic character of his nation, even though his nation is demonstrably less tolerant of other religions.

So is (or was) America a Christian nation? If by that we mean that America is a Christian theocracy, that our government should give Christians preferential treatment, or that members of other faiths aren't welcome, the answer is an emphatic "no."

But if we are talking about the ideals that led to the very colonization of this land, our declaration of independence from Britain, and the formulation of our Constitution, then the answer is certainly "yes."

In the words of professor John Eidsmoe, "If by the term Christian nation one means a nation that was founded on biblical values that were brought to the nation by mostly professing Christians, then in that sense the United States may truly be called a Christian nation."

Why does this matter? Simply because our dominant secular culture delights in demonizing Christianity, distorting its character, conflating it with less tolerant faiths, and associating it with all our societal woes. History revisionists have convinced many that we mainly owe our liberties to secular humanist ideals and those borrowed from the Greeks, Romans and the French Enlightenment.

To the contrary, our freedom tradition can be traced to our predominantly Judeo-Christian roots.

While secularists endlessly cite a few high-profile members of our Founding Fathers, such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, as being deists (which itself is even debatable), the overwhelming majority of both the Declaration of Independence's and Constitution's signers were strong, practicing Christians, as the late Dr. M.E. Bradford meticulously documented.

Some point to the so-called generic references to God in the declaration and Thomas Jefferson's authorship of its first draft as evidence that its influences were non-Christian. But as Dr. Gary Amos has noted, "The humanists and Enlightenment rationalists viewed the concept of inalienable rights with scorn."

As for deists, they believed in a "cosmic watchmaker," not a superintending God.

Plus Jefferson's draft was vetted by a congressional committee, which made more than 80 changes, removing some 500 words and adding two references to a "providential God." Jefferson denied he was speaking solely for himself in the draft, saying "it was intended to be an expression of the American mind."

Nor could the declaration's affirmation that "all Men are created equal ... (and) are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights" have come from the polytheistic Greeks or Romans, because "Creator" is singular. And, as Amos observed, the Greeks didn't believe the universe or man was created, but that it "emanated ... from an impersonal divine force that permeates the universe. ... There was no room in Greek philosophy or religion for the notion of endowment because creatures and divinity were never separated." The Greeks "could not conceive of rights that were god given." They "believed that rights were a product of society and state."

Sounds hauntingly familiar, doesn't it?

The concept of unalienable rights inheres in the Judeo-Christian precept that an all-loving God created man in his image, thus entitling him to dignity, freedom and rights that cannot be divested by the state.

Our constitutional framework of government can only be understood in the context of the Framers' predominantly Christian worldview. While they believed in man's dignity, they also believed in his depravity and that only if they imposed limitations on government would it be possible to establish a scheme of individual liberties.

Much of our Bill of Rights is biblically based, as well, and the Ten Commandments and further laws set out in the book of Exodus form the basis of our Western law. Indeed, English legal giants Sir William Blackstone and Sir Edward Coke both believed the common law was based on Scripture. Though we often hear there were no references to the God of the Bible in the Constitution, the document closes by citing the date with "in the Year of our Lord."

Our ruling class today is dominated by those who no longer believe that our rights are God-given or that our liberties depend on effective limitations on the state. They are so divorced from true history and American statecraft that they fail to see the irony in their dissociation with and apologies for our Judeo-Christian heritage, which is responsible for making this the freest and most prosperous nation on earth for people of all races, ethnicities and religions.

[Warph]

Did Gingrich divorce his wife on her deathbed?

One of the most troublesome charges against Newt Gingrich is that he served the divorce papers to his first wife in her hospital room where she was dying of cancer.   The increased scrutiny due to his front-runner status in the Republican presidential  race has at least uncovered the evidence that the story is not true.  From the Washington Post:

Although the thrust of the story about his first divorce is not in dispute — Gingrich's first wife, Jackie Battley, has said previously that the couple discussed their divorce while she was in the hospital in 1980 — other aspects of it appear to have been distorted through constant retelling.

Most significant, Jackie Battley wasn't dying at the time of the hospital visit; she is alive today. Nor was the divorce discussion in the hospital "a surprise" to Battley, as many accounts have contended. Battley, not Gingrich, had requested a divorce months earlier, according to Jackie Gingrich Cushman, the couple's second daughter.

Further, Gingrich did not serve his wife with divorce papers on the day of his visit (unlike a subpoena, divorce papers aren't typically "served"). Gingrich's marriage to Battley had been troubled for many years before it dissolved 31 years ago, both parties have said.

via Aspects of Gingrich divorce story distorted – The Washington Post.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/aspects-of-gingrich-divorce-story-distorted/2011/11/17/gIQA8iY4YN_story.html?tid=pm_pop

Still, he has been married three times.  His second divorce came in 1999 and involved an extra-marital relationship with a congressional staffer who is now his third wife.

Do you think these transgressions should disqualify him from the presidency?  Before you answer, think JFK, LBJ and Bill Clinton?