element
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Post by element on Oct 4, 2005 17:33:18 GMT 4
In this day and age, one would think that separation of church and state has become the norm and not the exception. NOT true! The schools are becoming quite clever in finding ways to wiggle around the laws. The school which my children attend is in the wiggle mode, themselves. There is a club for the children to join..."Club Truth". This is a club that many, many children have joined, it's considered 'cool' to belong to this club. I have had the unfortunate despair to tell my children that they cannot nd will not be allowed to join this club. When I send them to school, I send them for education of the arts, standard cirriculum, and public access. I take care of raising to bar with their studies and adding to the standard cirriculum. I take care of their personal questions of 'belief' in the 'truth'. This club is, infact, teaching children of the teachings of Jesus Christ, and the scriptures. How does the school get away with this? .... Well, of course they hold this club's meetings BEFORE the first bell rings for class! They consider that schol isn't technically in session, and that they are perfectly within rights to conduct these meetings! In legal speak, perhaps, they are. I find myself one of the few that finds this appauling! When I drop my children off at the school at 7:30 am, it is for them to drop off their library books, study for their tests for the day, and to grab a bite to eat before the day starts....NOT to go to 'church'! Our family is of mixed religion, and this leads us to a difficult task of teaching open~mindedness and free thinking. We wish our children to make up their OWN minds of what to believe, and that which they want to place their faith in. We educate them with the answers that we think are suited to their questions, and direct them to read, study, and educate THEMSELVES!!! Being that they are still quite young, they found that joining this club would be "cool". It was a way for them to mingle with their friends, to spend time with them. In the mean time, they were taught things about a religion that isn't of this family, and taught that the religion of this family member is of EVIL!!! They were taught that their parent is EVIL!!! I am furious! Needless to say, we have taken care of the questions our children had. It's a sad day when a parent must defend their religion and spirituality to their own children! It's a sad day when a parent must deny to their child that they are EVIL!!! I cried, I was hurt, and disgusted! BUT...I dealt with it as a loving parent would...with education of the differences and history of these religions. The problem is that the schools are finding these 'loop holes'. The schools find it UN~important to uphold the laws of this country. Finding "loop holes" is NOT upholding! I suggest this: PLEASE stay informed of what the masses teach your children! Stay in the LOOP so you don't get caught in a HOLE! My involvement with my children allowed me to catch this before it got too far. Just because people live in a majority sstyle area, doesn't mean they are PART of the majority! Don't allow your children to be, and I hate this term, "brain~washed" by those you entrust to TEACH them of the basics of reading and writing and arithmatics! Make sure you watch, and involve yourselves...they can be quite sneaky....they do belong to 'big~brother' after all...just as sheisty...just as controling...make sure they do their job...nothing more, and nothing less!...........If this makes ONE parent become involved in their children's education, I have done a good thing! Teach your children faith in themselves, and give them the education and the ability to think for themselves! (and beleive me...its not a "every man for himself" idealism in this case!...ahem!)
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Oct 4, 2005 18:12:52 GMT 4
Element, Since this 'Truth Club' is offered as a club outside school hours, I don't think there's much you can do, unless, the school administration is actively promoting this club. That might be a case for separation of church and state.
Personally, I believe it is a good idea to teach children about all the religions of the world so we can foster in them a better understanding and tolerance of our brothers and sisters outside one's own belief system.
Sincerely, Michelle
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element
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All of us, children of nature, paint our own portraits!
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Post by element on Oct 5, 2005 3:55:40 GMT 4
Michelle, Thank you for your reply to my earlier post. I do agree that we must educate our young to ALL religions and ideals of spirituality; this will only lead to tolerance of difference. However, I find it appauling that the school systems would take these teachings into their own hands. This, in my opinion, is the place of the parent/guardian. (and was probably the intent of our fore fathers when they said "separation of church and state"...just an educated guess, though). I only commented on this subject because I feel, very strongly, that parents must stay in touch with what it is the school systems are teaching. I do not agree with the thought of a legal battle, though. To sue a school system would only defeat the higher purpose. The schools cannot afford to be sued. This is common knowledge. The way they get away with it IS because they don't hold it within school hours. The point I am making is that when I drop my children off at the school...when the doors are unlocked...THESE are school hours. I entrust the safety and well~being to the school system between the hours of the school doors being open, as do all the parents. In my opinion, just because the class bell hasn't sounded, doesn't mean they aren't IN school. They are there, the doors are open, and the parents should be able to TRUST the schools to UPHOLD the laws...one thing I've always had issues with is that I have heard, often, of the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law...It seems to me that the school systems are just going by the spirit of the law... I haven't experienced a time where a citizen has been allowed to defend themselves by the spirit of the law (although I am sure it happens), and I see that the school system uses this spirit of the law to define their 'loop hole'. As I stated, to sue the schools would not be regarded as an intelligent idea. I DO think, however, that parents should be much more involved in their child's education. I merely brought this to light so that some parents may be informed that their children may be "subject" to more than the subjects of cirriculum. Again, thank you for responding. I truely enjoyed your posts on our education system, as well. I have been surrounded by educators all of my life, and have a good, solid background in legal, qualified teaching. I simply pray that parents will be more involved, more informed, and more intent on teaching the truth THEY feel is necessary for the future of their own children. Noone told me that the schools would hold meetings of the gospel; I would have discussed this with my kids BEFORE the issue arose. To be informed can stop conflict before it happens; and this was my attempt to educate the lesser informed.
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Mar 22, 2006 21:46:16 GMT 4
The following was interesting to me, and it may be to you also. I am continually amused that the current Red State Vs Blue State split in the United States is followed with such intensity. The Right-wing Christians argue that the national character must be formed to be in line with their own religious beliefs whether or not the rest of the population holds such beliefs. The secular humanists argue for separation of church and state. This split is nothing new to us and I don't wish to discuss it, except that the government plays a game with these two groups. The game is you can either have prayer in school or the right to an abortion. But you can't have both, and you'll never really get either!
However, you may wish to visit some of the Christian Values websites below. [and I would say that these do not reflect the thinking of all Christians] I believe it would be helpful for some of us to understand what many of the right-wing Christian values/demands consist of.
Anwaar, I would think that some of your most clamorous critics visit these sites.
Continuing on, while Reds and Blues split hairs, I wonder why it is ignored that neither Christian or Enlightened Human thinking is what defines our national character. What does define this character is in opposition to both types of thinking; it is capitalism. And both groups embrace it, support it.
Our national system of capitalism completely lacks anyone's ethical values. What person of moral standing would support a system where the poor are at such a grotesque disadvantage? Under capitalism, justice isn't due to obedience to moral law, or conscience, or compassion. Justice here works to preserve a social system which is routinely unjust.
I fail to understand why the Reds and the Blues do not see this; how they have both been duped into serving the same system which is deeply anti-religious and antihuman. This system which is the true mark of our national character masks unspeakable violence and injustice. Would it not be a fine thing for both to put their differences aside during this one moment in history, and turn their attention on the one ultimate source of misery in our world?
"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one." God, how I miss John Lennon and his vision for our world.....Michelle Vision America: Will the GOP Lose the Values Vote? War on Christians Conference May Provide the Answer 3/22/2006 11:16:00 AMContact: Don Feder of the Vision America, 508-405-1337 WASHINGTON, March 22 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Mobilizing the Values Vote could spell the difference between victory and defeat for Republicans in the upcoming election. But the party is in jeopardy of losing support from its key constituency. That's one of the messages likely to come out of The War On Christians And The Values Voter In 2006 conference, which will convene next Monday, March 27, at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. The conference will include addresses by such distinguished Values Vote leaders as Gary Bauer, Congressman Tom DeLay, Sen. John Cornyn, Alan Keyes and Vision America President Rick Scarborough. Bauer comments: "I've said it before and I'll dare say it again - Let's address values issues! I know there are hardworking members of Congress who share my belief that while confronting America's budget deficit, we must also seriously address our 'virtue deficit, and there are dozens of great bills pending in Congress that have overwhelming support at the grass roots." Vision America President Rick Scarborough, the conference organizer, added: "Christians are getting increasingly fed-up with being wooed during election years and virtually ignored at all other times. The Republican Party had better begin treating us like equal partners, instead of orphan children. Eventually, there will be no credit for it to draw on, come election time." At The War On Christians And The Values Voter In 2006 conference, a Values Voter Contract with Congress will be discussed. Many of the organizations represented at the conference are also promoting the contract -- which calls on Congress to pass 29 key pieces of legislation, addressing such pressing issues as marriage, judicial activism, cloning and other life issues, protecting the First Amendment rights of churches, pornography and indecency and securing our borders. To read the Values Voter Contract with Congress in its entirety, go to www.valuesvoter.org. While the presence of marriage protection amendments on state ballots secured the president's reelection in 2004 (most analysts admit it meant the margin of victory in Ohio) -- today, the president's party is in danger of losing its base. A recent poll by the Family Research Council showed 63 percent of Values Voters feel Congress has not kept its promises to act on pro-family legislation. For more information on The War On Christians And The Values Voter In 2006 conference, go to www.visionamerica.org.
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Mar 24, 2006 15:33:04 GMT 4
Published on Monday, March 20, 2006 by the New York Times 'American Theocracy' - Clear and Present Dangers by Alan Brinkley Four decades ago, Kevin Phillips, a young political strategist for the Republican Party, began work on what became a remarkable book. In writing "The Emerging Republican Majority" (published in 1969), he asked a very big question about American politics: How would the demographic and economic changes of postwar America shape the long-term future of the two major parties? His answer, startling at the time but now largely unquestioned, is that the movement of people and resources from the old Northern industrial states into the South and the West (an area he enduringly labeled the "Sun Belt") would produce a new and more conservative Republican majority that would dominate American politics for decades. Phillips viewed the changes he predicted with optimism. A stronger Republican Party, he believed, would restore stability and order to a society experiencing disorienting and at times violent change. Shortly before publishing his book, he joined the Nixon administration to help advance the changes he had foreseen. Phillips has remained a prolific and important political commentator in the decades since, but he long ago abandoned his enthusiasm for the Republican coalition he helped to build. His latest book (his 13th) looks broadly and historically at the political world the conservative coalition has painstakingly constructed over the last several decades. No longer does he see Republican government as a source of stability and order. Instead, he presents a nightmarish vision of ideological extremism, catastrophic fiscal irresponsibility, rampant greed and dangerous shortsightedness. (His final chapter is entitled "The Erring Republican Majority.") In an era of best-selling jeremiads on both sides of the political divide, "American Theocracy" may be the most alarming analysis of where we are and where we may be going to have appeared in many years. It is not without polemic, but unlike many of the more glib and strident political commentaries of recent years, it is extensively researched and for the most part frighteningly persuasive. Although Phillips is scathingly critical of what he considers the dangerous policies of the Bush administration, he does not spend much time examining the ideas and behavior of the president and his advisers. Instead, he identifies three broad and related trends — none of them new to the Bush years but all of them, he believes, exacerbated by this administration's policies — that together threaten the future of the United States and the world. One is the role of oil in defining and, as Phillips sees it, distorting American foreign and domestic policy. The second is the ominous intrusion of radical Christianity into politics and government. And the third is the astonishing levels of debt — current and prospective — that both the government and the American people have been heedlessly accumulating. If there is a single, if implicit, theme running through the three linked essays that form this book, it is the failure of leaders to look beyond their own and the country's immediate ambitions and desires so as to plan prudently for a darkening future.The American press in the first days of the Iraq war reported extensively on the Pentagon's failure to post American troops in front of the National Museum in Baghdad, which, as a result, was looted of many of its great archaeological treasures. Less widely reported, but to Phillips far more meaningful, was the immediate posting of troops around the Iraqi Oil Ministry, which held the maps and charts that were the key to effective oil production. Phillips fully supports an explanation of the Iraq war that the Bush administration dismisses as conspiracy theory — that its principal purpose was to secure vast oil reserves that would enable the United States to control production and to lower prices. ("Think of Iraq as a military base with a very large oil reserve underneath," an oil analyst said a couple of years ago. "You can't ask for better than that.") Terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, tyranny, democracy and other public rationales were, Phillips says, simply ruses to disguise the real motivation for the invasion.And while this argument may be somewhat too simplistic to explain the complicated mix of motives behind the war, it is hard to dismiss Phillips's larger argument: that the pursuit of oil has for at least 30 years been one of the defining elements of American policy in the world; and that the Bush administration — unusually dominated by oilmen — has taken what the president deplored recently as the nation's addiction to oil to new and terrifying levels. The United States has embraced a kind of "petro-imperialism," Phillips writes, "the key aspect of which is the U.S. military's transformation into a global oil-protection force," and which "puts up a democratic facade, emphasizes freedom of the seas (or pipeline routes) and seeks to secure, protect, drill and ship oil, not administer everyday affairs."Phillips is especially passionate in his discussion of the second great force that he sees shaping contemporary American life — radical Christianity and its growing intrusion into government and politics. The political rise of evangelical Christian groups is hardly a secret to most Americans after the 2004 election, but Phillips brings together an enormous range of information from scholars and journalists and presents a remarkably comprehensive and chilling picture of the goals and achievements of the religious right. He points in particular to the Southern Baptist Convention, once a scorned seceding minority of the American Baptist Church but now so large that it dominates not just Baptism itself but American Protestantism generally. The Southern Baptist Convention does not speak with one voice, but almost all of its voices, Phillips argues, are to one degree or another highly conservative. On the far right is a still obscure but, Phillips says, rapidly growing group of "Christian Reconstructionists" who believe in a "Taliban-like" reversal of women's rights, who describe the separation of church and state as a "myth" and who call openly for a theocratic government shaped by Christian doctrine. A much larger group of Protestants, perhaps as many as a third of the population, claims to believe in the supposed biblical prophecies of an imminent "rapture" — the return of Jesus to the world and the elevation of believers to heaven. Prophetic Christians, Phillips writes, often shape their view of politics and the world around signs that charlatan biblical scholars have identified as predictors of the apocalypse — among them a war in Iraq, the Jewish settlement of the whole of biblical Israel, even the rise of terrorism. He convincingly demonstrates that the Bush administration has calculatedly reached out to such believers and encouraged them to see the president's policies as a response to premillennialist thought. He also suggests that the president and other members of his administration may actually believe these things themselves, that religious belief is the basis of policy, not just a tactic for selling it to the public. Phillips's evidence for this disturbing claim is significant, but not conclusive. The third great impending crisis that Phillips identifies is also, perhaps, the best known — the astonishing rise of debt as the precarious underpinning of the American economy. He is not, of course, the only observer who has noted the dangers of indebtedness. The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, for example, frequently writes about the looming catastrophe. So do many more-conservative economists, who point especially to future debt — particularly the enormous obligation, which Phillips estimates at between $30 trillion and $40 trillion, that Social Security and health care demands will create in the coming decades. The most familiar debt is that of the United States government, fueled by soaring federal budget deficits that have continued (with a brief pause in the late 1990's) for more than two decades. But the national debt — currently over $8 trillion — is only the tip of the iceberg. There has also been an explosion of corporate debt, state and local bonded debt, international debt through huge trade imbalances, and consumer debt (mostly in the form of credit-card balances and aggressively marketed home-mortgage packages). Taken together, this present and future debt may exceed $70 trillion. The creation of a national-debt culture, Phillips argues, although exacerbated by the policies of the Bush administration, has been the work of many people over many decades — among them Alan Greenspan, who, he acidly notes, blithely and irresponsibly ignored the rising debt to avoid pricking the stock-market bubble it helped produce. It is most of all a product of the "financialization" of the American economy — the turn away from manufacturing and toward an economy based on moving and managing money, a trend encouraged, Phillips argues persuasively, by the preoccupation with oil and (somewhat less persuasively) with evangelical belief in the imminent rapture, which makes planning for the future unnecessary. There is little in "American Theocracy" that is wholly original to Phillips, as he frankly admits by his frequent reference to the work of other writers and scholars. What makes this book powerful in spite of the familiarity of many of its arguments is his rare gift for looking broadly and structurally at social and political change. By describing a series of major transformations, by demonstrating the relationships among them and by discussing them with passionate restraint, Phillips has created a harrowing picture of national danger that no American reader will welcome, but that none should ignore. Alan Brinkley is the Allan Nevins professor of history and the provost at Columbia University. Source: www.commondreams.org/views06/0320-31.htm
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Apr 3, 2006 15:39:58 GMT 4
How the GOP Became God's Own PartyWashington Post By Kevin Phillips Sunday, April 2, 2006; Page B03 Now that the GOP has been transformed by the rise of the South, the trauma of terrorism and George W. Bush's conviction that God wanted him to be president, a deeper conclusion can be drawn: The Republican Party has become the first religious party in U.S. history. We have had small-scale theocracies in North America before -- in Puritan New England and later in Mormon Utah. Today, a leading power such as the United States approaches theocracy when it meets the conditions currently on display: an elected leader who believes himself to speak for the Almighty, a ruling political party that represents religious true believers, the certainty of many Republican voters that government should be guided by religion and, on top of it all, a White House that adopts agendas seemingly animated by biblical worldviews. Indeed, there is a potent change taking place in this country's domestic and foreign policy, driven by religion's new political prowess and its role in projecting military power in the Mideast. The United States has organized much of its military posture since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks around the protection of oil fields, pipelines and sea lanes. But U.S. preoccupation with the Middle East has another dimension. In addition to its concerns with oil and terrorism, the White House is courting end-times theologians and electorates for whom the Holy Lands are a battleground of Christian destiny. Both pursuits -- oil and biblical expectations -- require a dissimulation in Washington that undercuts the U.S. tradition of commitment to the role of an informed electorate. The political corollary -- fascinating but appalling -- is the recent transformation of the Republican presidential coalition. Since the election of 2000 and especially that of 2004, three pillars have become central: the oil-national security complex, with its pervasive interests; the religious right, with its doctrinal imperatives and massive electorate; and the debt-driven financial sector, which extends far beyond the old symbolism of Wall Street. President Bush has promoted these alignments, interest groups and their underpinning values. His family, over multiple generations, has been linked to a politics that conjoined finance, national security and oil. In recent decades, the Bushes have added close ties to evangelical and fundamentalist power brokers of many persuasions. Over a quarter-century of Bush presidencies and vice presidencies, the Republican Party has slowly become the vehicle of all three interests -- a fusion of petroleum-defined national security; a crusading, simplistic Christianity; and a reckless credit-feeding financial complex. The three are increasingly allied in commitment to Republican politics. On the most important front, I am beginning to think that the Southern-dominated, biblically driven Washington GOP represents a rogue coalition, like the Southern, proslavery politics that controlled Washington until Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860. I have a personal concern over what has become of the Republican coalition. Forty years ago, I began a book, "The Emerging Republican Majority," which I finished in 1967 and took to the 1968 Republican presidential campaign, for which I became the chief political and voting-patterns analyst. Published in 1969, while I was still in the fledgling Nixon administration, the volume was identified by Newsweek as the "political bible of the Nixon Era." In that book I coined the term "Sun Belt" to describe the oil, military, aerospace and retirement country stretching from Florida to California, but debate concentrated on the argument -- since fulfilled and then some -- that the South was on its way into the national Republican Party. Four decades later, this framework has produced the alliance of oil, fundamentalism and debt. Some of that evolution was always implicit. If any region of the United States had the potential to produce a high-powered, crusading fundamentalism, it was Dixie. If any new alignment had the potential to nurture a fusion of oil interests and the military-industrial complex, it was the Sun Belt, which helped draw them into commercial and political proximity and collaboration. Wall Street, of course, has long been part of the GOP coalition. But members of the Downtown Association and the Links Club were never enthusiastic about "Joe Sixpack" and middle America, to say nothing of preachers such as Oral Roberts or the Tupelo, Miss., Assemblies of God. The new cohabitation is an unnatural one. While studying economic geography and history in Britain, I had been intrigued by the Eurasian "heartland" theory of Sir Halford Mackinder, a prominent geographer of the early 20th century. Control of that heartland, Mackinder argued, would determine control of the world. In North America, I thought, the coming together of a heartland -- across fading Civil War lines -- would determine control of Washington. This was the prelude to today's "red states." The American heartland, from Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico to Ohio and the Appalachian coal states, has become (along with the onetime Confederacy) an electoral hydrocarbon coalition. It cherishes sport-utility vehicles and easy carbon dioxide emissions policy, and applauds preemptive U.S. airstrikes on uncooperative, terrorist-coddling Persian Gulf countries fortuitously blessed with huge reserves of oil. Because the United States is beginning to run out of its own oil sources, a military solution to an energy crisis is hardly lunacy. Neither Caesar nor Napoleon would have flinched. What Caesar and Napoleon did not face, but less able American presidents do, is that bungled overseas military embroilments could also boomerang economically. The United States, some $4 trillion in hock internationally, has become the world's leading debtor, increasingly nagged by worry that some nations will sell dollars in their reserves and switch their holdings to rival currencies. Washington prints bonds and dollar-green IOUs, which European and Asian bankers accumulate until for some reason they lose patience. This is the debt Achilles' heel, which stands alongside the oil Achilles' heel. Unfortunately, more danger lurks in the responsiveness of the new GOP coalition to Christian evangelicals, fundamentalists and Pentecostals, who muster some 40 percent of the party electorate. Many millions believe that the Armageddon described in the Bible is coming soon. Chaos in the explosive Middle East, far from being a threat, actually heralds the second coming of Jesus Christ. Oil price spikes, murderous hurricanes, deadly tsunamis and melting polar ice caps lend further credence. The potential interaction between the end-times electorate, inept pursuit of Persian Gulf oil, Washington's multiple deceptions and the financial crisis that could follow a substantial liquidation by foreign holders of U.S. bonds is the stuff of nightmares. To watch U.S. voters enable such policies -- the GOP coalition is unlikely to turn back -- is depressing to someone who spent many years researching, watching and cheering those grass roots. Four decades ago, the new GOP coalition seemed certain to enjoy a major infusion of conservative northern Catholics and southern Protestants. This troubled me not at all. I agreed with the predominating Republican argument at the time that "secular" liberals, by badly misjudging the depth and importance of religion in the United States, had given conservatives a powerful and legitimate electoral opportunity. Since then, my appreciation of the intensity of religion in the United States has deepened. When religion was trod upon in the 1960s and thereafter by secular advocates determined to push Christianity out of the public square, the move unleashed an evangelical, fundamentalist and Pentecostal counterreformation, with strong theocratic pressures becoming visible in the Republican national coalition and its leadership. Besides providing critical support for invading Iraq -- widely anathematized by preachers as a second Babylon -- the Republican coalition has also seeded half a dozen controversies in the realm of science. These include Bible-based disbelief in Darwinian theories of evolution, dismissal of global warming, disagreement with geological explanations of fossil-fuel depletion, religious rejection of global population planning, derogation of women's rights and opposition to stem cell research. This suggests that U.S. society and politics may again be heading for a defining controversy such as the Scopes trial of 1925. That embarrassment chastened fundamentalism for a generation, but the outcome of the eventual 21st century test is hardly assured. These developments have warped the Republican Party and its electoral coalition, muted Democratic voices and become a gathering threat to America's future. No leading world power in modern memory has become a captive of the sort of biblical inerrancy that dismisses modern knowledge and science. The last parallel was in the early 17th century, when the papacy, with the agreement of inquisitional Spain, disciplined the astronomer Galileo for saying that the sun, not the Earth, was the center of our solar system. Conservative true believers will scoff at such concerns. The United States is a unique and chosen nation, they say; what did or did not happen to Rome, imperial Spain, the Dutch Republic and Britain is irrelevant. The catch here, alas, is that these nations also thought they were unique and that God was on their side. The revelation that He apparently was not added a further debilitating note to the late stages of each national decline. Over the last 25 years, I have warned frequently of these political, economic and historical (but not religious) precedents. The concentration of wealth that developed in the United States in the bull market of 1982 to 2000 was also typical of the zeniths of previous world economic powers as their elites pursued surfeit in Mediterranean villas or in the country-house splendor of Edwardian England. In a nation's early years, debt is a vital and creative collaborator in economic expansion; in late stages, it becomes what Mr. Hyde was to Dr. Jekyll: an increasingly dominant mood and facial distortion. The United States of the early 21st century is well into this debt-driven climax, with some analysts arguing -- all too plausibly -- that an unsustainable credit bubble has replaced the stock bubble that burst in 2000. Unfortunately, three of the preeminent weaknesses displayed in these past declines have been religious excess, a declining energy and industrial base, and debt often linked to foreign and military overstretch. Politics in the United States -- and especially the evolution of the governing Republican coalition -- deserves much of the blame for the fatal convergence of these forces in America today. Kevin Phillips is the author of "American Theocracy: The Perils and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century" (Viking).tinyurl.com/oaz7p
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on May 24, 2006 16:19:40 GMT 4
Ron Luce's Holy War by Sunsara Taylor Revolution #48, May 28, 2006 “Do you care more about the pigs around you or God?” BattleCry leader Ron Luce asked the crowd of more than 17,000 youth gathered at Wachovia Spectrum Stadium in Philadelphia on Friday, May 12. No, this wasn't a metaphor. After reading a passage from Luke 15 that mentions pigs, he actually had a bunch of those big, oinking, pink, farm animals on stage with him! Get it, you either get with Luce's hateful, hyperpatriotic, woman-bashing, racist god, or you're a... pig? And it became clear during the BattleCry rally, all the talk of battles, warriors and war is not metaphor either. White Man’s BurdenEarly on the second day, a tribal drumbeat filled the stadium and a voice boomed out “the most violent people in human history.” Grainy images appeared on the stadium screens of indigenous Ecuadorians running and throwing spears. Proof of their “barbarism”? Never mind that their land was destroyed by oil development and their way of life undermined, these “savages” had killed five missionaries who came to destroy their belief systems decades ago. One of the supposed killers is brought on stage. He’s been “civilized” by the Bible and calls on the youth to sign up for mission trips to go and convert others like him. News flash to Luce's audience: These indigenous people, whose very existence is hanging by a thread—threatened by the encroachment of the “modern world” of exploitation, racism, environmental destruction and cultural genocide—are at least a hundred million people short of being “the most violent people in human history,” even if they did what he accused them of. The reality is that over a hundred million indigenous people were killed by the Europeans who followed Columbus to the “new world.” And let's not forget that the genocide against Native Peoples was blessed by people carrying Ron Luce's Bible. Finally, after being programmed with these racist lies, Luce's flock flooded down to the floor of the stadium to sign up for missions this summer—to Africa, Latin America, the urban U.S., Australia, the Mideast and beyond. As they went, Ron Luce offered odd encouragement, “You guys are freaks of a whole different breed…You guys are a bunch of wild animals. Man!” Ignorance and PatriarchyNext up on the agenda—woman bashing. If you think the world needs an alternative to the worst misogynist heavy metal or hip-hop, but you still want to see women degraded, insulted, and dehumanized, Luce has got just the thing for you. Lakita Wright, self-proclaimed “sexpert” who has spoken to nations, Congress, and more than half a million young people this past year, stepped up to preach the “naked truth” (get it?) about abstinence and purity. Her specialty seemed to be shamelessly promoting racist and sexist stereotypes that only a Black woman trying to outdo Bill Cosby might be able to get away with. She began with a parable that portrays “Lies” as female and “Truth” as male, then launched an attack on all the established truths about safe sex and resurrected all the oldest stigmas against those, especially women, who would engage in sex outside patriarchal marriages. She reserved special derision for the “stupid” young women whose lives are disrupted because they have a baby. “Don’t blame him [the baby]. It’s your fault. You should have zipped it up. Locked it down. Clank. Clank.” She drew chuckles from many men when she “slipped” and called women “flea-males,” saying, “Did I say that? Well, if you lie down with dogs…” Wright led a call-and-response about hundreds of sexually transmitted diseases and listed, with great drama, all the pain and disfigurement they can cause. Then, while claiming to care about these diseases, she went on to assail one thing that is proven to prevent them: “Condoms don’t work.” Wright bemoaned the fact that judges in the U.S. today aren’t required to study the Mosaic books of the Bible. These are the parts of the Bible that celebrate taking your enemies as slaves, killing their babies, and forcing women to be concubines (sex slaves), traded and controlled as possessions, and subject to the most horrific of abuses. Reality check: Condoms save lives. Preaching “abstinence” as a way to prevent STDs kills people. Luce and his klan don't give a fuck about young people's lives—this war on condoms is driven by their literalist Biblical message: death by stoning for those who engage in sex outside of wedlock. Holy War—For RealAfter what amounted to a celebration of genocide against Native Americans, and a pep rally for death by STDs, things got really gory. A featured speaker, Franklin Graham, who is credited with converting George W. Bush, was introduced. He implied that HIV/AIDS is a punishment from God. “We get outside of marriage and there are consequences.” He went on to assert that God sees marriage as a “relation between a man and a woman. Not a man and a man or a woman and a woman.” This drew him his loudest applause of the day, never mind that the Bible celebrates many instances of marriage between one man and many women. Maybe next time I go to one of Luce's conventions, I'll bring a bunch of bumper stickers that have a stick figure of a man plus stick figures of 1,000 women with an equals sign and then the word “Marriage.” People can put them on their cars to promote a model of marriage in the Bible—where King Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines (and for some reason God never gave him AIDS as a punishment). The “heart” of Graham's speech was a call for holy war. He preached about the “battle for souls of men and women from North to South, East to West, over the entire earth.” There is, he declared, “No way to God but through Jesus Christ.” Now, I actually don't believe that religion is the root cause of war—that's more driven by economic and political forces. But how long must we put up with a world where people are whipped up to kill people because—as Christian fascist general Jerry Boykin (whose troops got their asses kicked in Somalia) said: My god is bigger than your god. Graham told the biblical story of Daniel “taming the Babylonians.” After celebrating the U.S. troops who are killing in Iraq right now, he preached that there is “no difference between the Iraqis today and Babylon 1,000 years ago.” In the Bible Babylon is the epitome of evil and decadence. All manner of bloodlust and plunder against it is not just condoned but celebrated. As Psalm 137:9 spells out, even the babies are to be dashed to death against the rocks! While calling on the youth present to engage in this “battle for the souls of men,” he exhorts them, “No souls can be saved without the shedding of blood. Blood must be shed!” Then, a group of Navy SEALs are projected on the large screen above the stadium as they make their way from backstage. Dressed in camouflage, carrying automatic weapons, kicking down doors and firing blanks into empty rooms along their way, they looked like the house-to-house raids and indiscriminate killing seen in rare footage out of Iraq. Fireworks exploded and flames billowed as Ron Luce greeted, bragging that all of these men have been involved in real battles. They are part of FORCE Ministries, which conducts Bible studies at military bases around the world and is made up of current and retired SEALs, law enforcement, and other military who preach the Gospel. Among those on stage, one is a SEAL just back from Afghanistan and another was a member of a police SWAT team. All of them are trained to kill and do so believing God is sanctioning them. One of the SEALs told about boot camp and being forced to surrender his entire will to the demands of his instructor. Luce stepped in to tell the audience, “That is your youth pastor. He’s going to make you a SEAL for Christ.” Of course, the great Commander of this religious army is God who issues his foot-soldiers armor—“a shield of faith, a belt of truth, and boots of preparedness”—as well as “offensive weapons” like the “sword of the spirit” and the “word of God.” This merging of “God’s Army” and the U.S. military returns full circle to the event’s opening when a letter of greeting and blessings from George W. Bush was read. After that, a minister had led thousands to bow their heads and thank the lord for giving them George Bush, who coincidentally is the U.S.’s Commander-in-Chief. The Two Faces of Christian FascismBattleCry keeps this bloodthirsty holy war madness in the closet. You won’t find it on their website and you won’t hear it in their major media appearances. For all his on-stage bluster, and his stacks of books laced with militarism, when Ron Luce debated me on the O’Reilly Factor, he sounded more like a wilting flower, “Well, there are young people all over America and they are realizing that they are caught in the middle of this culture war… They are saying, you know what? We want our voices to be heard. We love the lord and we’re not mean.” How many of the moms and dads and youth gravitating to the Christian fascists looking for life with a purpose have any idea that the agenda of their leaders is as gruesome, bloodthirsty, and horrible as the hell myth that they are being scared into submission with. But whether or not you realize what you are signing onto, when you make your pact with Luce and his bunch, you're not only signing onto a brain-deadening fantasy that robs you of your ability to understand and change the world, you end up being led to fight—and shed blood—in a “holy war” for Bush and all he concentrates. Source: worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1608&Itemid=184
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Jul 13, 2006 14:34:25 GMT 4
October 5 th, Nation-Wide Protest: “Bring the Bush Program to a HALT!”
Keep the Doors Open:
To the Last Abortion Clinic in Mississippi, To Women, and To a Future Without the Bush Regime!
Join with the Drive Out the Bush Regime Summer Bus Tour in Jackson, Mississippi, July 15-22.
Operation Save America (formerly Operation Rescue) has plans to set out to shut down the last abortion clinic in Mississippi and “mark the beginning of the end of abortion in Jackson, in the state of Mississippi, and in America.”
This fanatical fundamentalist Christian movement is not just a fringe group of extremists. They are the storm troopers of a theocratic ideology and program that has, under the Bush regime, increasingly been established in the halls of Congress, in the judiciary, and in the White House itself.
What is at stake is the future of women here and all over the world. Without the ability to control their reproduction women cannot be free. If women are not free, then no one is free.
Operation Save America will be trying to command the national spotlight with their messages of hatred and intimidation: “Homosexuality is a sin. Islam is a lie. Abortion is murder.”
Let the country instead see defiant, uncompromising, active women and men saying, “From Jackson to the White House, Women Will Not Be Slaves! No Theocracy! Drive Out the Bush Regime!”
We can already see now that the ’06 election will offer no real choice on women’s right to their own destinies. Leading Democrats have declared that of abortion is a “tragic choice” and launched a new strategy of running vehemently anti-choice candidates like Casey from Pennsylvania.
As it says in the Call for the World Can’t Wait, “This whole idea of putting our hopes and energies into ‘leaders’ who tell us to seek common ground with fascists and religious fanatics is proving every day to be a disaster, and actually serves to demobilize people.”
The future is being decided. Be in the streets! Be counted!
Drive Out the Bush Regime!
Worldcantwait.org
Contact: getonthebus@worldcantwait.org
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Sept 15, 2006 11:21:12 GMT 4
America's Moral Decline and the Rise of False Christianity by Karen Horst Cobb Published on Thursday, February 16, 2006, by CommonDreams.org “This is the year God wants to make you a millionaire.” The visiting evangelist stomped back and forth on the stage of the rented school building. His “hallelujahs” and “praise God” crescendos were followed by jumping up and down. Sweat ran down his face as he proclaimed that the church members would not need to be afraid if the economy collapses and their neighbors houses are foreclosed upon because they are blessed and will have all of their needs met. The service ended with the explanation that the first step to becoming a millionaire is to pledge $200 of “seed faith money” to the church . Just prior to the introduction of the evangelist the young single minister with spiky hair introduced the beginning of fellowship “life groups," explaining that the “free market” will decide which ones succeed. Recently, Ted Taggard of mega church New Life Fellowship in Colorado Springs explained that Spirituality is a “commodity “ to be bought and sold. The writings of Milton Friedman are recommended for all new converts. This young minister must also be a free market convert . His small group is a satellite of World Harvest Church. The sermon themes of the mega churches are all very similar and reflect the cause of America‘s moral decline. Christianity is getting a makeover using the classic trappings of Money, domination and military aggression. It looks like the 50 million dollar Bible theme park which was to be built in Israel by evangelicals will not happen now that Pat Robertson insulted Ariel Sharon. Imagine a 50 million dollar Bible theme park protected by nuclear weapons in the holy land and off limits to Arabs. The harvest of the mega church is ready; welcome the gleaners, the seed faith money has matured. According to a 2003 article in Forbes Magazine big churches are big business. Researchers found that in 2003 there were 740 mega churches each averaging 6,876 participants. The average net income of each was $4.8 million at the time of the study. The Forbes article states, “[the] entrepreneurial approach has contributed to the explosive growth of mega churches“. Is it the entrepreneurial spirit or the Holy Spirit which is enticing the converts to this new religion? Some used to say that the love of money is the root of all evil and the rich man (like the camel) will forever be outside the kingdom. I guess that is just “too first century” for the modern believer. The millennium church makeover is all about Christian capitalism, he who the free market has set free shall be free indeed! Remember, this is the year God wants me to be a millionaire. Some might think that putting your last hundred bucks in the offering satchel as “seed faith money” is a lot like gambling or buying a lottery ticket. Perhaps James Dobson and Ralph Reed can explain that to the Indians (and the rest of us.) A Washington Post article explains that Ralph Reed (former head of the Christian coalition) “received $4 million to whip up public sentiment against expansion of gambling in Louisiana and Texas." He did this by mobilizing evangelicals to take a stand against the immorality of gambling. The buildings and technologies of the mega-fellowships are edifices to capitalism, free market economics, and the entrepreneurial spirit. The lexicon is slightly different but the concepts are exactly the same as those of CEO motivational speakers or a slick late night infomercial promoting real estate schemes. You can do it! You can win! You can be a success! You are smart! There are no limits to what you can achieve. Just send me some money and get started today. A quick internet search reveals sources concerning the personal life styles of the pastors of many of these churches. Their seed faith has been harvested into private jets, extravagant cars, multimillion dollar homes and much, much more. The storehouses are overflowing and with this wealth comes power. Like Ted Haggard’s New Life Fellowship in Colorado Springs, World Harvest Church is a very politically active mega church. Rod Parsley is the pastor , “co-laborer“, as he puts it. He is also founder and president of the politically active “Center for Moral Clarity." In a few weeks he is scheduled to speak on the topic “the War on Christians and the Values Voter in 2006” at the Vision America Conference Other speakers scheduled for the event are Alan Keyes, Senator Sam Brownback, John Cornyn, Gary Bauer, Phyllis Schlafly, Janet Parshall, Rick Scarbrough, and Tom Delay. (yes that’s right - the multiply-indicted Tom Delay.) I have not listened to Pastor Parsley’s CD set “Injustice in American Courts” nor have I purchased the shiny “King Arthur style sword” for $41.10 to display in my home. I have not considered taking courses at World Harvest Bible College where I can learn to "shape the culture” nor have I spent the thousands necessary to learn how to “walk in Dominion power to advance the kingdom of God through the earth” [italics added] In his Ohio Community, religious leaders exposed the use of Pastor Parsley’s religious tax-free status to support Gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell. Yes, the same Ken Blackwell who was the co-chair of the committee to re-elect Bush/Cheney in 2004 while at the same time responsible for overseeing Ohio’s election which ended up with many irregularities. Parsley and Blackwell launched a voter registration campaign but only to register Republican voters. Money leads to power and power leads to war. It seems today there is a need for a tougher, meaner Jesus, a government issue Jesus (GI-Joe) who comes complete with state of the art Kevlar tunic, two edged sword, and secret code book (the book of Revelation). Evangelical Christians are organizing and conspiring to manipulate governments to use weapons if necessary to kill some of God’s children so that prime real estate goes to people whom they believe God likes best. This immoral clarity was reported recently in the Jerusalem Post. Rev John Hagee is the organizer and leader of the Armageddon war cry and has now created the powerful political lobby, Christians United for Israel (CUFI). Christians untied for Israel (CUFI) includes Jerry Falwell, Benny Hinn, Jack Hayford, George Morrison, Rod Parsley and Steven Strang and many other media evangelicals. According to Hagee, “ The goal is to be strategically placed to successfully lobby Washington on behalf of Israel… Every state in the Union, every congressional district will be accounted for.” Reportedly, this lobbying group represents 30 million evangelical Christians. As we know, congress alone has the power to declare war. Will it be Christians who pressure elected officials into war? Will it be people who declare themselves to be Christ-like, who use his name to sound the collective war cry which unleashes the deadliest weapons on earth? George W. Bush said recently that “all options are on the table” when it comes to Iran. The Evangelical Christian right is working to insure a manmade apocalypse develops in the Middle east. This powerful political faction runs parallel to the economic foreign policies of the slightly more secular neo-conservative “republican” party which has visions of empire and military rule as outlined in the Project for a New American Century's "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century" [pdf format]. It was written a year before 9/11, and, prophetically, the plan to put bases throughout the Middle East is right on schedule. John Hagee’s latest book is Jerusalem Countdown which can be viewed on his website. Evidently, it presents Iran as a horrible nuclear threat to Israel and the United States. Just for a quick check with reality here is the score on nuclear weapons: Iran-0, Israel-200, US-10,600 (as of 2002). Please explain to me who are these "people of faith” and what do they put their faith in? Experts agree that Iran is at the very least ten years away from obtaining even one nuclear warhead.Ten years is a lot of time to wage peace. Theocratic capitalism appeals to human lust for money, power, and military rule. Conversely, simplicity, service, and humility belong to the divine. Confusing fables are taught to itching ears. (Timothy 4:3 paraphrased). The first century followers of Christ did not entertain the entrepreneurial spirit, market competition and accumulation of wealth or organized to lobby Caesar. For some, generosity is a strategy to gain wealth to purchase political power. Christ-like generosity however results from empathic compassion and a longing for the welfare of others. This is the core of moral clarity and makes it impossible for true believers to horde wealth. The rich man and the camel are both unable to kneel low enough to pass through the eye of the needle. (Matthew 19:24). In the upside down kingdom Jesus taught that the poor are rich, the weak are strong, and the servant is the master. It is a change of heart rather than a change of legislation and circumstances. The new Jerusalem is a community governed by the golden rule, not ancient real estate governed by religious politicians. A person living in love does not need PowerPoint seminars, CD boxed millennium sets, ornamental swords, or novels written in code. It’s all summed up in a sentence and a sacrifice- Love the lord and love your neighbor. Warriors lust for more powerful weapons. If the Christians Untied for Israel are successful in lobbying Washington on behalf of Israel they will insure that more living souls will be destroyed. God is not an angry real estate broker who uses extortion and violence to get his way. He does not think of suffering and dying children as “collateral damage”. The charred bodies in Fallujia incinerated by white phosphorus were living souls. Deformed babies fused together or born without limbs because of the use of depleted uranium weapons is beyond depravity. It is estimated that 150,000 living souls have been extinguished directly or indirectly as a result of the war in Iraq. Many of these are women and children. Beautiful news models and impressive military strategists describe “magnificent” weapons and manipulate us into pride and patriotism brought to us by companies with military contracts. With deadened empathy we watched the “shock and awe” as whole families explode before our eyes. What families values support this behavior? The American dilemma remains unspoken. If I become aware, how can I remain comfortable and keep shopping? The lust for money, dominance, and military power is at the core of America‘s moral decline. It is imperative that church leaders and laity boldly proclaim that violence, torture, hostage taking, conquests of land and resources are actions Christians can never condone. Killing for Christ is an abomination leaving us with blood-stained hands and darkness in our hearts! Every church must be a peace church or it will become a state church and then it will be… no church at all. [Note from the author:] Some might read this article with a spirit of anger and hatred toward those mentioned. If so please re-read it in a spirit of extreme sorrow, compassion and utter despair for the loss of the Gospel of love. You may direct comments to me at cairnhcobb@msn.com. Karen Horst Cobb wrote No Longer a Christian and No Longer a Christian - Part II published by CommonDreams.org in the fall of 2004. She is a mother and a grandmother, and with God’s grace, tries to follow the example of Christ as she speaks Christ’s message to the world that there is no Government Issue Jesus (GI-Joe Jesus.) Source: www.commondreams.org/views06/0216-20.htm
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Sept 28, 2006 10:01:51 GMT 4
RELIGION AND THE PUBLIC SQUAREThursday, September 21, 2006 A wonderful aspect of a free, capitalist society is that nearly everything is privately owned. That applies to churches -- they are owned by the order, such as Roman Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, Moonies, Muslims, Hindus, and all the some 4200 different religious groups (that's the number of how many different religious groups exist in the USA now [http://www.adherents.com/]) -- or by their congregations. Because a free society has no state religion, various religious groups are not involved in politically squaring off against one another. Sure, there are some political aspects of some religious orders, but in the main their affairs are left to the social and private realms of our lives. In countries where government and religion are closely linked, efforts to rule the public square are among the ambitions of most religious groups. Just consider Jerusalem, which is constantly being fought over, both politically and physically. Arguably, whenever some religious group wins the political fight in a country, the rights of those who do not belong to this group are seriously jeopardized. Exclusion of those not among the ruling sect from public policy decision-making is routine. Efforts to gain political power by those religious groups which don't enjoy it is often the source of major upheavals. But it also goes beyond the borders of such countries, as is evident in the current controversy over Pope Benedict's comments in which he quoted certain texts critical of Islam. In a free society -- and even in partially free ones like the USA or Canada -- such remarks may attract critical attention in various forums of disputation such as magazines, newspapers, books, conferences, university seminars and the like. Normally, though, no one is going to take to the streets, and no one is going to offer threats of violent or legal action against those with whom one is debating even very serious issue. What leads to this substantially peaceful approach to religious disagreement and dispute is the institution of private property rights. One can gather together with one's fellow faithful and keep dissidents away or insist on peaceful terms should they be allowed to enter. Dissidents, heretics, and the like do not have free entry to sacred grounds -- they are privately held and maintained. Although in most cases church entry is not barred to non-believer visitors, it is clear that they are allowed in only if they act in a respectful and civilized manner. Look at the places around the globe where religion permeates everything, especially the public square -- meaning politics. Everyone has the idea that everything is open to his or her influence. Everyone believes that other people's most private affairs -- their beliefs, faith, religious practices, ornaments, sacred texts -- are fair game for anyone to bother about. No one can be kept out and if one is a member of a minority faith, persecution is nearly certain. If groups are roughly the same size, they often perpetrate continual violence against one another, as in India and Pakistan. Of course, this is partly due to the tribalism which runs rampant in such societies. Individual rights are ignored; what matters is solidarity and loyalty to some group. The groups craving such loyalty are willing to do nearly anything to stay on top, to rule the realm. Roman Catholics in the West and elsewhere used to be like this, of course, willing to deploy whatever means would work so as to be dominant in some country, to determine what the laws were, what public policies -- which pretty much means involvement in every social and private matter important to people -- should prevail. Dissidents, heretics, unbelievers would experience vicious reprisals. Other religions would follow suit -- it was very often a matter of them versus us, based on the sacred texts and idols that were to be worshipped. It is a remarkable achievement of the classical liberal political tradition to have begun to restrain this kind of conduct on the part of religious -- and, indeed, other -- groups. The American founders and framers, especially, established major obstacles to religious groups taking over everyone's life in society. They were to be kept within their own realms and whatever proselytizing they did had to be confined to the peaceful, civilized means of advocacy, sermonizing and preaching. Sure, there are exceptions in the U.S. today, and various religions try to butt into the lives of everyone with trying to get gay marriages, contraception, abortion and other practices legally banned based on their particular doctrines. (One reason some religions try very hard to pass themselves off as scientifically based or condemn secular views as faith based is that this way the distinction between what is religious and what is not may be obscured.) In any case, in a fully free society religion would be barred from the public square and that is a very good thing indeed. This doesn't ban religious views, doesn't keep these views from guiding people's personal conduct but it reduces their frequently acrimonious impact on politics. Tibor R. Machan Co-Founder, Reason Magazine Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, Auburn UniversitySource:www.freemarketnews.com/Analysis/117/6014/religion.asp?wid=117&nid=6014
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Jun 27, 2007 13:11:29 GMT 4
Supreme Court Slams Courthouse Doors Shut on Taxpayers in Religious Liberty Case For Immediate Release: 6/25/2007 Contact: Josh Glasstetter or Drew Courtney PFAW Foundation email: media@pfaw.org phone: 202-467-4999 In response to the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision today in Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation limiting the standing of individual taxpayers to challenge government expenditures that violate the Establishment Clause, People For the American Way Foundation President Ralph G. Neas released the following statement:“It’s a bad day for the First Amendment. The Supreme Court just put a big dent in the wall of separation between church and state, and a big smile on Pat Robertson’s face. Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice and allied Religious Right groups have long called on the Court to restrict the right of Americans to challenge government expenditures that unlawfully mix church and state. That is exactly what the Court did today.”
“Today’s ruling will make it more difficult for citizens whose tax dollars are being unlawfully spent to subsidize religion to bring a complaint in court. It is also consistent with a broader strategy by right-wing judges and activists to restrict standing for average Americans to challenge powerful government and business interests.
“The increasing willingness of the Court to undermine our rights and legal protections should be a wake-up call to Americans about the importance of the Court and future nominees.”Source:www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=24266&tr=y&auid=2796187BACKGROUND OF CASE:The Supreme Court Takes Up Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation PFAWF's Associate Legal Director Gives Remarks on Hein Hein v. Freedom from Religion Foundation is the first real opportunity for the Roberts Court to shape church-state law. It’s the Roberts Court’s first case concerning President Bush’s faith-based initiatives. And it's already shaping up to be an epic battle over the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. What's at stake? Argued on February 28, 2007, Religious Right groups want the Court to overturn a 1968 decision, Flast v. Cohen, that recognized taxpayers’ legal right to challenge government spending in violation of the Establishment Clause. Following Flast, "Hein says taxpayers have standing under the Establishment Clause to bring challenges," writes the American Constitution Society, and "focuses narrowly on whether taxpayers have standing when the Administration uses funds to pay for social services to be delivered by religious groups." Yet, however narrow that focus, Pat Robertson and others on the Right are using the case to urge the Court to shut the courthouse doors to Americans seeking to protect their rights under the Establishment Clause.After People For the American Way Foundation and four of the country's other leading religious liberty organizations filed an amicus curiae brief defending Flast, our Associate Legal Director, Judith E. Schaeffer, joined a press briefing organized by the American Constitution Society at the National Press Club. First Amendment advocate Melissa Rogers moderated the discussion. The other panelists were Benjamin Bull, the chief counsel of the Religious Right Alliance Defense Fund, and Richard Katskee of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Check out Judith’s remarks:Thank you, Melissa, for the kind introduction, and thank you ACS for sponsoring this panel and for inviting me. Richard has just done a wonderful job discussing the specific and important legal issues presented by the facts of Hein and the briefs of the actual parties to the case—the Bush administration and the Freedom from Religion Foundation. But the case also has far broader implications even beyond these important issues, as we can see from the amicus briefs that have been filed.
In fact, as far-reaching as the government’s own position is in trying to cut back on taxpayer standing in Establishment Clause cases, some of the amici supporting the government take even more extreme positions that would be even more harmful to religious liberty if adopted by the Court. It’s these potentially broader aspects of the case that I’d like to discuss briefly before we take your questions.
First, there’s Pat Robertson’s ACLJ—the American Center for Law and Justice, which has come right out and urged the Supreme Court to overturn Flast v. Cohen, and completely eliminate the right of taxpayers to challenge government expenditures that violate the Establishment Clause.
The ACLJ is trying to close the courthouse doors to taxpayers who want to seek relief when the government forces them to subsidize religion. James Madison—generally regarded as the author of the religion clauses of the First Amendment—is no doubt turning over in his grave at this very thought. In his famous Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, Madison opposed a bill introduced in the Virginia General Assembly that would have levied a tax for the support of teachers of the Christian religion. In explaining his opposition, Madison wrote,
Who does not see . . . that the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever?
Clearly, in Madison’s view, government cannot be permitted to force taxpayers to subsidize religion—whether it’s to the tune of three pence, or three million pence. And yet Pat Robertson and the ACLJ would have the Supreme Court eliminate the ability of taxpayers to come into court to seek relief when this occurs. Remarkably, the ACLJ has been joined by twelve states who have filed their own amicus brief also urging the Court to overturn Flast v. Cohen. So much for protecting the interests of their citizens.
But as extreme as their position is, former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore has gone even further. You remember Roy Moore—he violated the Establishment Clause himself by installing a huge monument of the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the state judicial building, and was then kicked off the bench when he—a sitting judge—refused to comply with a federal court order to remove the monument. On behalf of an organization called the Foundation for Moral Law, Mr. Moore has taken the extremist position not only that taxpayers should not have standing in Establishment Clause cases, but that no individuals should have. In his view, the Establishment Clause “does not confer an individual right capable of vindication in the courts.”
And before you dismiss this just as the ravings of a right wing fringe group, Justice Clarence Thomas himself has indicated that he shares this view. In his concurrence in the Newdow case—the Pledge of Allegiance case—Justice Thomas wrote that “the Establishment Clause does not protect any individual right.” That is simply an astonishing view of our Constitution.
Religious liberty in America would be radically undermined if a majority of the Court were to accept this view of the Establishment Clause. It would mean, for example, that no American could bring a lawsuit challenging the most explicit government endorsement or advancement of religion. And these kinds of things do happen, particularly in public schools, where young children are the victims. Let me give you just one example.
A number of years ago, we represented Lisa Herdahl, a courageous mother of six children in rural Mississippi. In their local public school, prayers in the name of Jesus were broadcast over the school intercom every morning, and religious Bible classes were taught as part of the official school curriculum.
Mrs. Herdahl objected to this religious indoctrination of her children by the government. The school took her young children out of the Bible classes, which of course singled them out and subjected them to harassment and ridicule; they were taunted and called devil worshippers by their classmates.
Not surprisingly, we won the federal lawsuit that we brought on Lisa Herdahl’s behalf to end the intercom prayers and the religious Bible classes. But if Roy Moore and Justice Thomas have their way, the Lisa Herdahls of America, and their children, would no longer have the federal courts to protect them from violations of the Establishment Clause. And in Pat Robertson’s view, Mrs. Herdahl couldn’t even challenge the Bible classes as a taxpayer. Any of these outcomes would be a very sad day indeed for religious liberty in this country.
In short, the Hein case epitomizes the culture clash between those of us who believe that genuine religious liberty comes only from true government neutrality toward religion, and others who would trample on the separation of church and state. It underscores the basic, fundamental value differences that we have when we look at the same set of facts and the same Constitution and see two entirely different things.
In particular, as Ben’s organization and other amici supporting the government view it, there is no cognizable “injury” when a taxpayer is forced to subsidize religion against her will. To be sure, the injury that occurs is not like being run over by a car and having your legs broken, but it is no less real, no less significant, and, most important, no less capable of being remedied through the courts, whether it’s three pence or three million pence.
For Pat Robertson and Roy Moore, the arguments about standing in this case are really a vehicle for them to try to fashion the America that they would like to see, an America in which there really is no separation of church and state, where the government does not have to be neutral toward religion, and where Lisa Herdahl’s children can be subjected to religious indoctrination in their public school and the federal courts can’t do anything about it. At People For the American Way Foundation, we have a very different and far more vibrant vision of religious freedom in America, which is why we have chosen to participate in this important case.[/b][/color] Source:www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=23521
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Nov 17, 2007 15:50:41 GMT 4
The Evangelical Christian Takeover of the MilitaryBy David Antoon Posted on November 16, 2007, "I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. ..." --Oath of Office
"Our mission is to educate, train, and inspire men and women to become officers of character motivated to lead the United States Air Force in service to our nation." --Air Force Academy mission statement
"We will not lie, steal, or cheat. ..." --Air Force Academy honor code
"Military professionals must remember that religious choice is a matter of individual conscience. Professionals, and especially commanders, must not take it upon themselves to change or coercively influence the religious views of subordinates." --Religious Toleration (Air Force Code of Ethics, 1997)Forty-two years ago, at the age of 18, I took the oath of office on my first day as an Air Force Academy cadet. The mission of the academy was not only to train future leaders for the Air Force but for America as well, because, in the end, most academy graduates do not serve full military careers. The honor code became an integral part of everyday life. These are the values that I, and most graduates of the 1960s and early '70s, took with us from our four years at the academy. I, as did many graduates, underwent pilot training followed by tours of duty in Vietnam. Like military men and women of today, we did our best to become technically competent and professional leaders. Never, during my four years at the academy and subsequent pilot and combat training, was the word warrior used; nor, whether as a cadet or officer, did I ever encounter "Christian supremacist" rhetoric.In April of 2004, my son, after receiving a coveted appointment to the United States Air Force Academy, asked me to accompany him to the orientation for new appointees. This 24-hour visceral event changed my life forever, and crushed my son's lifelong dream of following in my footsteps. The orientation began with a one-hour "warrior" rant to appointees and parents by the commandant of cadets, Brig. Gen. Johnny Weida. The fact that the word warrior had replaced leadership was a signal of what was to follow. I later learned that cadets, to determine when a new record was established, had created a game in which warrior was counted in each speech Weida gave. My son and I then made our way to the modernist aluminum chapel, where I expected to hear a welcome from one or two Air Force chaplains offering counsel, support and an open-door policy for any spiritual or pastoral needs of these future cadets. In 1966, the academy had six gray-haired chaplains: three mainline Protestants, two priests and one rabbi. Any cadet, regardless of religious affiliation, was welcome to see any one of these chaplains, who were reminiscent of Father Francis Mulcahy of "MASH" fame. Instead, my son's orientation became an opportunity for the academy to aggressively proselytize this next crop of cadets. Maj. Warren Watties led a group of 10 young, exclusively evangelical chaplains who stood shoulder to shoulder. He proudly stated that half of the cadets attended Bible studies on Monday nights in the dormitories and he hoped to increase this number from those in his audience who were about to join their ranks. This "invitation" was followed with hallelujahs and amens by the evangelical clergy. I later learned from Air Force Academy chaplain MeLinda Morton, a Lutheran who was forced to observe from the choir loft, that no priest, rabbi or mainline Protestant had been permitted to participate. I no longer recognize the Air Force Academy as the institution I attended almost four decades earlier. At that point, I had no idea how invasive this extreme evangelical "cancer" had become throughout the entire military, that what I had witnessed was far from an isolated case of a few religious zealots. In order to better understand this shift to a religious ideology at this once secular institution, I called the Academy Association of Graduates (AOG). Its response: "We don't get involved in policy." What I didn't know was that the AOG, like the academy, had affiliations with James Dobson's and Ted Haggard's powerful mega-churches. When Dobson's Focus on the Family "campus" was completed, the academy skydiving team, with great ceremony, delivered the "keys from heaven" to Dobson. During some alumni reunions, the AOG arranged bus tours of Focus on the Family facilities in nearby Colorado Springs, Colo. I also learned that the same Monday night Bible studies discussed at orientation were taught by bused-in members of these evangelical mega-churches and that some spouses of senior academy staff members were employed by these same religious institutions. It seemed that my beloved United States Air Force Academy had morphed into the Rocky Mountain Bible College. The academy chaplain staff had grown 300 percent while the cadet population had decreased by 25 percent: from six mainline chaplains to 18 chaplains, the additional 12 all evangelical. The academy even gained 25 reserve chaplains, also nonexistent in earlier times, for a total of 43 chaplains for about 4,000 cadets, or one chaplain for every 100 cadets. In the following weeks, a uniformed Army Maj. Gen. William Boykin began sharing his Christian supremacist views from church pulpits around the country, declaring that he was "God's Warrior" and that "America is a Christian nation." He demeaned the entire Muslim world by stating that his God was bigger than a Muslim warlord's god and that the Muslim's god "was an idol." He received little more than a token slap on the wrist. At the time, Joseph Schmitz, then the Department of Defense inspector general (Schmitz is currently the chief operating officer of Blackwater International), found that Boykin had committed no ethics violations.Days later, the May 10 edition of The New Yorker featured the Abu Ghraib torture article by Seymour Hersh, who more than three decades earlier had brought us the story of My Lai. As a late critic of the Vietnam War, in which I lost many high school and academy classmates, I was skeptical and critical of the drum beat for war orchestrated by the Bush administration. When then-Secretary of State Colin Powell again sold his soul in front of the United Nations and the world, the die was cast. I say again because as a major on his second tour in Vietnam, Powell whitewashed reports of the My Lai massacre and attempted to discredit and silence those few, most notably Ron Ridenhour, who had the courage to get the story into Hersh's hands. These were some of my thoughts on the day my son had to decide whether or not to accept his appointment to the Air Force Academy. It was a time in my life when fatherhood and truth were confronted with faux nationalism. With tremendous courage and sadness my son declined his appointment and ended his dream--and my dream for him--to attend the Air Force Academy. Though deeply saddened, we were not sorry. In what would have been my son's academy summer encampment, chaplain Watties "suggested" that cadets return to their tents and tell their tent mates they would "burn in hell" if they did not receive Jesus as their savior. At the same time, the academy commandant, Weida, made a habit of including biblical passages in official e-mails and correspondence to subordinates and cadets. He had developed a secret "chant and response" with the cadets: When he yelled "Airpower," the evangelical cadets in the know would respond "Rock, sir" in reference to the Bible story that Jesus built his house upon a rock. Coincidentally, at this time and at the invitation of the academy, the Yale Divinity School was observing the pastoral care program for sexual assault victims at the academy. Under the leadership of professor Kristen Leslie, the Yale team issued a stunning report on the divisive and strident evangelical pressures by leadership and staff at the academy. The response from academy leaders was telling. They at first denied the reports of Watties' "hell-fire" threats. Under media pressure, they later claimed the violations were committed by a visiting reserve chaplain, when in fact they were by the recent Air Force Chaplain of the Year himself: Watties. In an interview after receiving his Chaplain of the Year award, Watties boasted of baptizing young soldiers in Saddam Hussein's swimming pool. It is difficult to think of more inflammatory and Crusader-like behavior in an Arab nation.In response to the Yale report, the academy demanded that chaplain Morton denounce the report she had co-signed. When she refused, she was transferred to East Asia, ultimately resigning from the Air Force in protest. Morton was the only officer who put her oath of office "to support and defend the Constitution" above careerism. Then-DoD Inspector General Schmitz, noted for his Christian supremacist rhetoric in the book "Blackwater," sent a team led by evangelical "born again" Lt. Gen. Roger Brady to investigate the academy. Schmitz had recently found no ethics violations in the actions of Gen. Boykin and allowed Boykin's promotion to senior military officer in charge of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and "extraordinary rendition." The "Brady Report" found the academy only to have an "insensitivity" problem. Air Force Academy graduate Brig. Gen. Johnny Weida, "silenced" and removed from the major general promotion list, was secretly promoted with back pay the following year at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. Following the release of the "Brady Report," West Point graduate and Secretary of the Air Force Mike Wynne, ignoring the existing code of ethics, issued another "code of ethics" that allowed evangelical proselytizing. A month later, in an effort to appease the religious right, Wynne issued an even softer "code of ethics." Amazingly, Wynne's document is in complete violation of the code of ethics issued in 1997 by Secretary of the Air Force Sheila Widnall prohibiting proselytizing by commanders and other officers.The pre-existing Air Force code of ethics in The Little Blue Book states:
"Military professionals must remember that religious choice is a matter of individual conscience. Professionals, and especially commanders, must not take it upon themselves to change or coercively influence the religious views of subordinates."Here are just a few violations of that principle over the last three years: Academy football coach Fisher DeBerry hung a banner in the team locker room reading: "Competitor's Creed: I am a Christian first and last. ... I am a member of Team Jesus Christ." Baseball coach Mike Hutcheon, recruited from evangelical Christian Bethel College, forced players to lead team prayer during practice. When asked about locker room prayer in March 2007, Lt. Gen. John Regni, the academy superintendent, responded "we have chaplains that are attached to each of the teams and they are very important in that area." In a July 12, 2005 interview with the New York Times, Brig. Gen. Cecil Richardson, Air Force deputy chief of chaplains, stated, "...we reserve the right to evangelize the unchurched." For over a decade, the official academy newspaper ran ads stating: "We believe that Jesus Christ is the only real hope for the World. If you would like to discuss Jesus, feel free to contact one of us! There is salvation in no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved." The ads were signed by 16 department heads, nine permanent professors, both the incoming and outgoing deans of faculty, the athletic director and more than 200 academy senior officers and their spouses. Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, in just a few short years has received complaints from more than 6,000 service members and discovered church-state violations at the academies, at military installations in Iraq and around the world, and even within the inner corridors of the Pentagon. In 2005, when Weinstein filed suit against the Air Force for constitutional violations of church-state separation, the House of Representatives, with little public notice, passed a chilling bill that undermines enforcement of the First Amendment's separation of church and state. The Public Expression of Religion Act, H.R. 2679, provides that attorneys who successfully challenge government actions that violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment shall not be entitled to recover attorney's fees. According to The Washington Post, the purpose of this bill is to prevent suits challenging unconstitutional government actions advancing religion.In December 2006, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation brought media focus to the Christian Embassy Evangelical Organization and its now famous video, which clearly showed the egregious ethics and constitutional violations of several flag officers and the breadth of the problem. Air Force Academy graduate Maj. Gen. Jack Catton, who suggested in the film that his religious beliefs trump country and his oath to the Constitution, was cited last year for sending e-mails to military subordinates and contractors advocating they vote for a particular candidate for Congress, arguing that there are "not enough Christians in Congress." West Point graduate and Army Brig. Gen. Robert Caslen, who was filmed stating "We are the aroma of Jesus Christ here in the Pentagon," is now commandant of cadets at West Point. West Point graduate Army Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, another Christian Embassy star, was the "voice" and "face" of the press conferences at Qatar. His office is famous for the creation of the "Rambo" Jessica Lynch fabrications and the manipulation of the killing of Pat Tillman into a recruiting and media event. West Point graduate and evangelical Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich, involved in the investigation of Tillman's death, stated publicly that Pat Tillman's family was not at peace with his death because they are atheists who believe their son is now "worm dirt." Air Force Academy graduate Maj. Gen. Peter Sutton, assigned as the senior U.S. military officer in Turkey at the time the Military Religious Freedom Foundation brought the Christian Embassy into media focus, was questioned by Turkish officials about his membership in a radical evangelical cult. Many are aware of the mercenary army, Blackwater USA, led by Eric Prince, former Ambassador Cofer Black and Joseph Schmitz, the same Joseph Schmitz mentioned above. It is here where the ties become complex and suggestive of an even grander "crusade."As described by Jeremy Scahill in his book "Blackwater," Prince, who attended the U.S. Naval Academy, comes from a wealthy theo-con family, is a "neo-crusader," and a Christian supremacist. He has been given billions of dollars in federal contracts to create a private army. COO Schmitz, another Naval Academy graduate, is a member of the Order of Malta, a Christian supremacist organization dating back to the Crusades, and happens to be married to the sister of Jeb Bush's wife, Columba. And Cofer Black, former coordinator for counterterrorism at the U.S. State Department and former director of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, who was quoted by the BBC as saying "Capture Bin Laden, kill him and bring his head back in a box on dry ice," brings his own skill set to the Blackwater team as vice chairman. The Christian supremacist fascism first reported at the Air Force Academy is endemic throughout the military. From the top down, there has been a complete repudiation of constitutional values and time-honored codes of ethics and honor codes in favor of religious ideology. And we now have a revolving door between Blackwater USA, which is Bush's Praetorian Guard, and the U.S. military at every level. The citizen-soldier military dictated by our founding fathers has been replaced with professional and mercenary right-wing Christian crusaders in control of the world's most powerful military. The risks to our democratic form of government cannot be overstated. This evangelical Christian supremacist fascism within our military and government is a cancer. Officers, especially commanders, who violate the original code of ethics, must be rooted out of the military. The undermining of the Constitution, especially by senior military officers, must end. As I look back at my 30 years as an active-duty officer, two combat tours in Vietnam, decorations including air medals and the Distinguished Flying Cross, I realize that not once was my service in support or defense of the Constitution. For the very first time, I am upholding my oath of office. © 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.View this story online at: www.alternet.org/story/67385/
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Jan 6, 2008 14:02:46 GMT 4
The Founding Fathers Were Not Christians By Steven Morris Free Inquiry, Fall 1995
The Christian right is trying to rewrite the history of the United States as part of its campaign to force its religion on others. They try to depict the founding fathers as pious Christians who wanted the United States to be a Christian nation, with laws that favored Christians and Christianity. This is patently untrue. The early presidents and patriots were generally Deists or Unitarians, believing in some form of impersonal Providence but rejecting the divinity of Jesus and the absurdities of the Old and New Testaments.
Thomas Paine was a pamphleteer whose manifestos encouraged the faltering spirits of the country and aided materially in winning the war of Independence: “I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of.... Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all." The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine (Republished 1984, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY)
George Washington, the first president of the United States, never declared himself a Christian according to contemporary reports or in any of his voluminous correspondence. Washington championed the cause of freedom from religious intolerance and compulsion. When John Murray (a universalist who denied the existence of hell) was invited to become an army chaplain, the other chaplains petitioned Washington for his dismissal. Instead, Washington gave him the appointment. On his deathbed, Washington uttered no words of a religious nature and did not call for a clergyman to be in attendance. George Washington and Religion, by Paul F. Boller Jr. (1963, Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, TX).
John Adams, the country's second president, was drawn to the study of law but faced pressure from his father to become a clergyman. He wrote that he found among the lawyers “noble and gallant achievements" but among the clergy the "pretended sanctity of some absolute dunces." Late in life he wrote, “Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out. This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!" It was during Adam's administration that the Senate ratified the Treaty of Peace and Friendship, which states in Article XI that "the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion." The Character of John Adams, by Peter Shaw (1976, North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC; quoting a letter by John Adams to Charles Cushing, Oct 19, 1756); and John Adams, A Biography in his Own Words, edited by James Peabody (1973, Newsweek, New York, NY; quoting letter by John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, April 19, 1817); and in reference to the Treaty, Thomas Jefferson: Passionate Pilgrim, by Alf Mapp Jr., (1991, Madison Books, Lanham, MD; quoting a letter by Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse; June, 1814).
Thomas Jefferson, third president and author of the Declaration of Independence, said, "I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian." He referred to the Revelation of St. John as "the ravings of a maniac" and wrote, “The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ leveled to every understanding and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticisms of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power, and pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious reason that nonsense can never be explained." Thomas Jefferson: an Intimate History, by Fawn M. Brodie (1974, W.W. Norton and Co. Inc., New York, NY; quoting a letter by Thomas Jefferson to Alexander Smyth, Jan 17, 1825); and Thomas Jefferson: Passionate Pilgrim, by Alf Mapp Jr., (1991, Madison Books, Lanham, MD; quoting a letter by Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, July 5, 1814). Thomas Jefferson also wrote, "The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter." (Thomas Jefferson in a letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823).
James Madison, fourth president and father of the Constitution, was not religious in any conventional sense. "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise." "During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution." The Madisons, by Virginia Moore (1979, McGraw-Hill Co. New York, NY; quoting a letter by James Madison to William Bradford, April 1, 1774), and James Madison: A Biography in his Own Words, edited by Joseph Gardner (1974, Newsweek, New York, NY; quoting Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments, by James Madison, June 1785).
Ethan Allen, whose capture of Fort Ticonderoga while commanding the Green Mountain Boys helped inspire Congress and the country to pursue the War of Independence, said, "That Jesus Christ was not God is evidence from his own words." In the same book, Allen noted that he was generally "denominated a Deist, the reality of which I never disputed, being conscious that I am no Christian." When Allen married Fanny Buchanan, he stopped his own wedding ceremony when the judge asked him if he promised "to live with Fanny Buchanan agreeable to the laws of God." Allen refused to answer until the judge agreed that the God referred to was the God of Nature, and the laws those "written in the great book of nature." Religion of the American Enlightenment, by G. Adolph Koch (1968, Thomas Crowell Co., New York, NY; quoting Reason: The Only Oracle of Man and A Sense of History, compiled by American Heritage Press Inc. (1985, American Heritage Press, Inc., New York, NY).
Benjamin Franklin, delegate to the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, said, “As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion...has received various corrupting Changes, and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England, some doubts as to his Divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the Truth with less trouble." He died a month later, and historians consider him, like so many great Americans of his time, to be a Deist, not a Christian. Benjamin Franklin, A Biography in his Own Words, edited by Thomas Fleming (1972, Newsweek, New York, NY; quoting a letter by Benjamin Franklin to Exra Stiles, March 9, 1790).
Speaking of the independence of the first 13 States, H.G. Wells in his Outline of History, writes, "It was a Western European civilization that had broken free from the last traces of Empire and Christendom; it had not a vestige of monarchy left and no State Religion... The absence of any binding religious tie is especially noteworthy. It had a number of forms of Christianity, its spirit was indubitably Christian, but as a State document of 1796 explicitly declared: 'The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.'" The words "In God We Trust" were not consistently on all U.S. currency until 1956, during the McCarthy Hysteria. The Treaty of Tripoli, passed by the U.S. Senate in 1797, read in part, "The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion." The Treaty was written during the Washington administration and sent to the Senate during the Adams administration. It was read aloud to the Senate, and each Senator received a printed copy. This was the 339th time that a recorded vote was required by the Senate, but only the third time a vote was unanimous (the next time was to honor George Washington). There is no record of any debate or dissension on the Treaty. It was reprinted in full in three newspapers: two in Philadelphia, one in New York City. There is no record of public outcry or complaint in subsequent editions of the papers.
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Mar 26, 2008 14:04:10 GMT 4
Unconstitutional Bible Class In Public Schools
Often we are confronted by well-meaning “religious” people who read, quote from, or thump their “holy” books in our faces. They are everywhere: on television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and billboards. They knock on our doors to evangelize and proselytize. This is all okay ; but to use our public school system in order to enforce any religious teaching, particularly one over all others, is not only wrong, it's unconstitutional.
The reason I say it's wrong is because the group reported on here subscribes to old religious thinking and positions their truth and tribe against others’ truths and tribes. They are attempting to indoctrinate children with this type of thinking. [pity their children, but certainly don't touch mine!] The result of this type of behavior is never ending conflict and chaos, the antithesis of peace. Emerging spiritual thinking focuses on kindness and universal benevolence in all relationships, and an intelligent understanding of the origins of ancient belief systems and of the phenomenon of religion. This old worldview is characterized by separation, exclusivity, segregation, and unilateralism. Truly, our emerging worldview must lean towards togetherness, unity, inclusiveness, integration, and multilateralism. Michelle Texas School Board Agrees To Stop Teaching Unconstitutional Bible Class In Public Schools For Immediate Release: 3/5/2008 Contact: Will Matthews, ACLU, (212) 549-2582 or 2666; media@aclu.org Lisa Graybill, ACLU of Texas, (512) 478-7300; lgraybill@aclutx.org Drew Courtney, PFAW Foundation, (202) 467-4999; media@pfaw.org Agreement With Ector County School Board Will Prevent Unconstitutional Curriculum From Being Taught ODESSA, TX — The Ector County School Board agreed today to stop teaching a course in its public schools that unconstitutionally promotes a particular interpretation of the Bible that is not shared by Jews, Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and most Protestants. The agreement settles a federal lawsuit filed in May 2007 that was brought by eight Odessa parents and taxpayers who argued that the course, created by a religious organization, violated their constitutional right to religious liberty by promoting specific religious doctrines to children in their community. The parents were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Texas, People For the American Way Foundation and the law firm of Jenner and Block LLP. “This agreement is a victory for those who wish religious education to be in the hands of parents and not public school officials,” said Dr. T. Jeremy Gunn, Director of the ACLU’s Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief. “It is unacceptable for government officials to decide which religious beliefs are true and which are not and then use the public school system as a means of proselytizing children.” The lawsuit challenged the school board’s decision last year to teach a controversial Bible course created by the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools (NCBCPS), a private group that promotes its own particular interpretation of the Bible. The NCBCPS has been criticized by recognized biblical scholars for its religious bias and unsound scholarship. Under the agreement, Ector County schools may not teach the current course after this school year. If the board decides to offer a different Bible course in the future, the course must follow strict legal standards for objectivity and may not be based on the NCBCPS curriculum. “Public schools may offer courses about the Bible if they do so in an objective and balanced way,” said Judith E. Schaeffer, Legal Director of People For the American Way Foundation. “But the evidence is overwhelming that these constitutional principles have been ignored in Ector County schools. Students have been taught one religious interpretation of the Bible. That’s not only violating the Constitution, it’s also giving students a bad education.” The elective course was being taught in two high schools in Odessa, Texas — Permian High School and Odessa High School. Among other things, the Bible course required students to give “true” or “false” answers to questions that should be a matter of religious faith. Public school teachers sought to promote religious life lessons by having students memorize biblical passages and then discuss how the passages affected their lives, the groups filing the lawsuit said. The course also presented an unbalanced view of American history that promoted specific religious beliefs that is in conflict with objective scholarly standards. Douglas C. Hildebrand, an ordained elder and deacon at a local Presbyterian Church and one of the longtime Odessa residents who was a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said it is inappropriate for one set of religious beliefs to be promoted over others. “Religion is an essential component of my life and the life of my family, but this course did nothing more than advocate certain religious views that are not shared by everyone,” Hildebrand said. “It seems as though a church had invaded the public school system — and it wasn’t my church.”Lisa Graybill, Legal Director for the ACLU of Texas, said sound scholarship was never the primary objective of the course. “This class was never about educating students, but rather the promotion of one particular set of religious beliefs to the exclusion of all others,” Graybill said. “There are a number of ways in which religion’s role in society, history and literature can be constitutionally taught to students, but that was clearly not the objective of this particular course.”The NCBCPS course has been seriously criticized by Bible scholars for its lack of accuracy, ignorance of scholarly research, and biased promotion of a particular religious interpretation of the Bible. Although the NCBCPS defends its curriculum as being constitutional, its own website at one time revealed a different agenda, urging people to contact NCBCPS as a “first step to get God back in your public school” — a designation that was removed after the lawsuit was filed. According to Daniel Mach, the Director of Litigation of the ACLU’s Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, Ector County school officials now have a much clearer understanding of what the Constitution does and does not allow. “The agreement gives the school board a clear roadmap if it decides to adopt a new course,” Mach said. “We trust that any future curriculum will be appropriate for students of all faiths — including nonbelievers — and that it will respect the religious liberty of all Odessans.” A copy of the original complaint is available online here. Additional information about the case and the issue of teaching about religion in public schools can be found online at: www.aclu.org/bibleinpublicschools or www.pfaw.org/go/ReligiousFreedom Source: www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=25063Statement on The Bible in Public Schools: A First Amendment Guide ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief April 2007 Some schools, boards of education, and state legislatures have considered introducing courses on the Bible in public schools. In order to provide guidance on how this might be done consistently with constitutional values and requirements, a joint statement entitled The Bible in Public Schools: A First Amendment Guide [1] was prepared in 1999. The document was endorsed by a range of religion-based groups, including: National Association of Evangelicals Christian Legal Society Christian Educators Association International Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs Council on Islamic Education National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA American Jewish Committee American Jewish Congress Other endorsers, which do not promote a particular religious point of view, represent both educational and civil liberties perspectives, including: People for the American Way Foundation National Education Association National School Boards Association American Federation of Teachers National Association of Secondary School Principals. Although the ACLU does not endorse all of the recommendations included in the document (in part because some pertain to issues on which the organization takes no position, such as which courses ought to be included in a public school curriculum), the document provides a great deal of sound guidance that, if implemented openly and conscientiously, is constitutional and will help protect schools against liability. Those seeking to introduce Bible courses in public schools should particularly take into account the following three key principles that emerge from The Bible in Public Schools: First, while it is constitutional for public schools to teach children about religion, it is unconstitutional to use public schools to advance particular religious beliefs. Among the important statements made in the guidelines are: "The school's approach to religion is academic, not devotional." "The school may strive for student awareness of religions, but should not press for student acceptance of any religion." "The school may sponsor study about religion, but may not sponsor the practice of religion." "The school may educate about all religions, but may not promote or denigrate any religion." (all p. 8) Unfortunately, some people promote "Bible education" as a disguised way of advancing their particular religious beliefs in public schools. One way for public schools to avoid being used to promote particular religious beliefs is to offer courses that teach about a broad range of the world's religions rather than courses that focus on a single religious text. While this approach is not constitutionally required, it certainly can help alleviate legitimate concerns about there being a hidden agenda to promote a particular religious tradition. Second, the structure of the specific course curriculum, including the choice of textbooks, supporting materials, and teacher outlines, should be developed with a conscientious effort to avoid advancing particular religious beliefs. "The Bible may be used as a primary text, although it probably should not be the only text for a course. Schools should avoid the use of instructional materials and lessons that are of a devotional nature, such as those used in Sunday school." (p. 7) If public schools decide to teach about the Bible, the curriculum should be scrupulous in not showing favoritism for one version or religious interpretation of the Bible over another, whether Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, or other. Third, if public schools decide to offer religion or Bible courses, teachers should possess the relevant academic training and should teach the course as a proper academic subject. The teacher's educational background should not be limited to that of a particular religious tradition, but should include serious academic study of the Bible. "When selecting teachers to teach Bible electives, school districts should look for teachers who have some background in the academic study of religion. Unless they have already received academic preparation, teachers selected to teach a course about the Bible should receive substantive in-service training from qualified scholars before being permitted to teach such courses." (p. 9) While teachers are completely free to have deeply felt religious beliefs, it is not appropriate for them to use the classroom to advocate their religious beliefs to public school children. * * * * Some who promote religion and Bible courses in public schools wish to help students better understand the world in which they live and of the role that religion plays in peoples' lives. This can be done in accordance with sound constitutional values. Others promote such courses with the obvious intention of enlisting public schools to advance their particular religious beliefs. Ultimately, it should be remembered that the promotion of religious faith is the fundamental responsibility of parents, families, and religious communities — not legislatures, government offices, or public schools. [1] Available online at: www.firstamendmentcenter.org/PDF/bible_guide_graphics.PDF Source:www.aclu.org/religion/schools/29618res20070509.html
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michelle
Administrator
I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Oct 31, 2008 12:04:45 GMT 4
The Family The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American PowerBy Jeff Sharlet Price: $25.95 On Sale: 5/20/2008 Formats: Hardcover | E-Book A journalist's penetrating look at the untold story of christian fundamentalism's most elite organization, a self-described invisible network dedicated to a religion of power for the powerful They are the Family—fundamentalism's avant-garde, waging spiritual war in the halls of American power and around the globe. They consider themselves the new chosen—congressmen, generals, and foreign dictators who meet in confidential cells, to pray and plan for a "leadership led by God," to be won not by force but through "quiet diplomacy." Their base is a leafy estate overlooking the Potomac in Arlington, Virginia, and Jeff Sharlet is the only journalist to have reported from inside its walls. The Family is about the other half of American fundamentalist power—not its angry masses, but its sophisticated elites. Sharlet follows the story back to Abraham Vereide, an immigrant preacher who in 1935 organized a small group of businessmen sympathetic to European fascism, fusing the far right with his own polite but authoritarian faith. From that core, Vereide built an international network of fundamentalists who spoke the language of establishment power, a "family" that thrives to this day. In public, they host Prayer Breakfasts; in private, they preach a gospel of "biblical capitalism," military might, and American empire. Citing Hitler, Lenin, and Mao as leadership models, the Family's current leader, Doug Coe, declares, "We work with power where we can, build new power where we can't." Sharlet's discoveries dramatically challenge conventional wisdom about American fundamentalism, revealing its crucial role in the unraveling of the New Deal, the waging of the cold war, and the no-holds-barred economics of globalization. The question Sharlet believes we must ask is not "What do fundamentalists want?" but "What have they already done?" Part history, part investigative journalism, The Family is a compelling account of how fundamentalism came to be interwoven with American power, a story that stretches from the religious revivals that have shaken this nation from its beginning to fundamentalism's new frontiers. No other book about the right has exposed the Family or revealed its far-reaching impact on democracy, and no future reckoning of American fundamentalism will be able to ignore it. ISBN: 9780060559793; ISBN10: 0060559799; Imprint: Harper ; On Sale: 5/20/2008; Format: Hardcover; Trimsize: 6 x 9; Pages: 464; $25.95; Ages: 18 and Up Source: www.harpercollins.com/books/9780060559793/The_Family/index.aspx**************** Hillary's Nasty Pastorate The Nation: When It Comes To Unsavory Religious Affiliations, Clinton Is A Lot More Vulnerable Than ObamaMarch 21, 2008 (The Nation) This column was written by Barbara Ehrenreich. There's a reason Hillary Clinton has remained relatively silent during the flap over intemperate remarks by Barack Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. When it comes to unsavory religious affiliations, she's a lot more vulnerable than Obama. You can find all about it in a widely under-read article in the September 2007 issue of Mother Jones, in which Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet reported that "through all of her years in Washington, Clinton has been an active participant in conservative Bible study and prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group known as "The "Fellowship," also known as The Family. But it won't be a secret much longer. Jeff Sharlet's shocking exposé The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power will be published in May. Sean Hannity has called Obama's church a "cult," but that term applies far more aptly to Clinton's "Family," which is organized into "cells" - their term - and operates sex-segregated group homes for young people in northern Virginia. In 2002, Sharlet joined The Family's home for young men, forswearing sex, drugs and alcohol, and participating in endless discussions of Jesus and power. He wasn't undercover; he used his own name and admitted to being a writer. But he wasn't completely out of danger either. When he went outdoors one night to make a cell phone call, he was followed. He still gets calls from Family associates asking him to meet them in diners - alone. The Family's most visible activity is its blandly innocuous National Prayer Breakfast, held every February in Washington. But almost all its real work goes on behind the scenes - knitting together international networks of right-wing leaders, most of them ostensibly Christian. In the 1940s, The Family reached out to former and not-so-former Nazis, and its fascination with that exemplary leader, Adolf Hitler, has continued, along with ties to a whole bestiary of murderous thugs. As Sharlet reported in Harper's in 2003: During the 1960s the Family forged relationships between the U.S. government and some of the most anti-Communist (and dictatorial) elements within Africa's postcolonial leadership. The Brazilian dictator General Costa e Silva, with Family support, was overseeing regular fellowship groups for Latin American leaders, while, in Indonesia, General Suharto (whose tally of several hundred thousand "Communists" killed marks him as one of the century's most murderous dictators) was presiding over a group of fifty Indonesian legislators. During the Reagan Administration the Family helped build friendships between the U.S. government and men such as Salvadoran general Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova, convicted by a Florida jury of the torture of thousands, and Honduran general Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, himself an evangelical minister, who was linked to both the CIA and death squads before his own demise. At the heart of The Family's American branch is a collection of powerful right-wing politicos, who include, or have included, Sam Brownback, Ed Meese, John Ashcroft, James Inhofe and Rick Santorum. They get to use The Family's spacious estate on the Potomac, The Cedars, which is maintained by young men in Family group homes and where meals are served by The Family's young women's group. And, at The Family's frequent prayer gatherings, they get powerful jolts of spiritual refreshment, tailored to the already powerful. Clinton fell in with The Family in 1993, when she joined a Bible study group composed of wives of conservative leaders like Jack Kemp and James Baker. When she ascended to the Senate, she was promoted to what Sharlet calls the Family's "most elite cell," the weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast, which included, until his downfall, Virginia's notoriously racist Senator George Allen. This has not been a casual connection for Clinton. She has written of Doug Coe, The Family's publicity-averse leader, that he is "a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God." Furthermore, The Family takes credit for some of Clinton's rightward legislative tendencies, including her support for a law guaranteeing "religious freedom" in the workplace, such as for pharmacists who refuse to fill birth control prescriptions and police officers who refuse to guard abortion clinics. What drew Clinton into the sinister heart of the international right? Maybe it was just a phase in her tormented search for identity, marked by ever-changing hairstyles and names: Hillary Rodham, Mrs. Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton and now Hillary Clinton. She reached out to many potential spiritual mentors during her White House days, including New Age guru Marianne Williamson and the liberal rabbi Michael Lerner. But it was the Family association that stuck. Sharlet generously attributes Clinton's involvement to the under-appreciated depth of her religiosity, but he himself struggles to define The Family's theological underpinnings. The Family avoids the word Christian but worships Jesus, though not the Jesus who promised the earth to the "meek." They believe that, in mass societies, it's only the elites who matter, the political leaders who can build God's "dominion" on earth. Insofar as The Family has a consistent philosophy, it's all about power - cultivating it, building it and networking it together into ever-stronger units, or "cells." "We work with power where we can," Doug Coe has said, and "build new power where we can't." Obama has given a beautiful speech on race and his affiliation with the Trinity United Church of Christ. Now it's up to Clinton to explain - or, better yet, renounce - her long-standing connection with the fascist-leaning Family. Source: www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/20/opinion/main3955108.shtml
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