Christianity in the Political Marketplace

[HagiaSophia]

When television personality Bill Maher stated on MSNBC’s*“Scarborough Country” that the religious suffer from a neurological disorder that “stops people from thinking,” he committed a grievous sin.*Not against the Christian Community that he was mocking, but against his fellow liberals.You see, the Left as their own set of “10 Commandments,” and like our own, they do not want anyone seeing them in public.*And, Bill Maher has broken one of the most sacred of these Commandments by being honest and articulating what he, and many other liberals think about America’s Christians.

Liberals have a problem, in general, with people of faith, morality, and values. They do not have any and the majority of the American voting public does.* However, ever since the 2004 Election, where the Electorate made it clear that they will hold candidates accountable for their ethical and moral beliefs, liberals have been scrambling to find someone, anyone, who holds traditional Christian values in their ranks and might be able to win an election outside the San Francisco Bay area.

Alas, the search has been largely futile.* Liberals at the head of the Democratic Party are awakening to the realization that their years of ridiculing, insulting, and marginalizing Christian values has pushed the majority of not just Christian Americans into the fold of the Republican Party, but the majority of Americans who hold any form of traditional morality central to their lives as well.*

In traditional liberal fashion, rather than even considering the fact that their convictions and beliefs are immoral, impracticable, or even wrong, liberals have decided that Christians are in fact the ones with the problem and need to change.* In the past, liberals would have just attacked and demonized Christians.* Call a few folks “Jesus Freaks,” throw up a few “Welcome to Jesusland, Jesus Juice to the Right” banners and a couple of those “evolve” fish with legs bumper stickers on some cars and the Christians would go running right back into their box.* But that does not seem to work anymore, so the liberals themselves have to evolve…"

michnews.com/artman/publish/article_6952.shtml

 

[Scott_Lafrance]

Bill Maher is a retard. I’ll pray for him, even if he thinks its a dumb idea.

 

[HagiaSophia]

Scott_Lafrance:

Bill Maher is a retard. I’ll pray for him, even if he thinks its a dumb idea.

This is the kind of commentator who as they approach life’s end, prays harder than most. All of a sudden it gets “scary” and the audience has gone home. There is no director to call cut and real life hits.

 

[HagiaSophia]

It is hard to escape the conclusion that the distinct voice that Catholics once brought to the public square is gradually being lost. In its place, we see the emergence of two separate Catholic political cultures, each serving the needs of one of the two major parties, and each with its own “magisterium.”

Those wishing to embrace the church’s social-justice tradition while evading the moral force of its teaching on abortion can cite the speeches of Mario Cuomo, while those seeking a Catholic apologetics for libertarian economics or preemptive war can consult the encyclicals of Michael Novak and George Weigel.

The fact that Catholics are divided between the two parties is not the problem. There is no reason why Catholics must be of one mind on all matters of public policy. But there is still something disturbing about seeing Catholics become so completely conformed to the ideologies of their chosen political parties or movements. The recanting of earlier prolife views by so many prominent Catholic Democrats is one example of this. The unwillingness of many Catholic Republicans to offer any criticism of the Gonzales nomination-to say nothing of the war in Iraq-may be another.

commonwealmagazine.org/article.php?id_article=1125

 

[Matt25]

beliefnet.com/story/156/story_15629.html

TRUTH ABOUT LIBERALS #2
Most Are Religious A conventional wisdom has developed that almost all religious people voted for Bush and most people who voted for Kerry were secular or anti-Christian. The Republican Party sent out brochures in West Virginia and Kentucky saying liberals wanted to ban the Bible, Dr. James Dobson recently called a liberal senator a “Gods’ people hater” and Republican convention keynoter Zell Miller’s said of columnist Maureen Dowd, “You can see horns just sprouting up through that Technicolor hair."

 However, not only are liberals not, by and large, Satanic or anti-Bible, they’re mostly quite religious. Voters who went to church monthly split 50%-49% for Bush and Kerry. Those who go to church "occasionally” went for Kerry 53%-47%, while people who attend church weekly went for Bush 58%-41%. More important, 61% of Democrats pray *daily*, 59% are "certain" there’s life after death, and most believe in God. The spiritual lives of Democrats are, statistically speaking, somewhat less based in houses of worship than those of Republicans but they are believers nonetheless.

When Democrats hear conservatives accuse them of being anti-religion it sounds like what they’re really saying is that Democrats don’t practice the right kind of religion – that they are, as my talk radio friend put it, “a bunch of phonies.” This is a direct attack on the nature of liberals’ relationship with God or spirituality.

    TRUTH ABOUT LIBERALS #3

They Believe History Is On the Side of Tolerance

 Conservatives contend that liberals believe in moral relativism, and, to be sure, there is a tendency for liberals to avoid accusing people of moral wrongdoing. Conservatives say this proves liberals are immoral or amoral. In fact, what’s happened is that liberals have elevated "tolerance" as the value that trumps many others, an essential and ethical way of coping with life in an increasingly diverse nation. Most liberals who support gay partnership rights are not themselves homosexual but believe in the right of people to determine their own lives. Conservatives appropriately argue that it's OK to be intolerant of some things -- even liberals wouldn't tolerate, say, murder. But that means the debate is really over how to weigh one value (tolerance) over another value (traditional family) -- not over whether one side cares about values and the other doesn't. 



   There’s something else that needs to be said. Liberals believe that historically red state conservatives were on the wrong side of the civil rights struggle (first as conservative Democrats and then as Republicans) and that they opposed much of the campaign for equal rights for women that enabled Condoleezza Rice to be National Security Advisor and Sandra Day O'Connor to be on the Supreme Court. So when conservatives oppose gay rights, liberals see history repeating itself. To grossly caricature both sides, liberals may have been wrong about the Soviet Union but conservatives were wrong about civil rights and women's rights. Liberals look at gay marriage opponents and say, to paraphrase Reagan, there they go again.

TRUTH ABOUT LIBERALS #5
Family Values Are Revered

 Telling someone they are against "family values" is not far from telling them they’re bad parents. Most liberal parents (like most conservatives) spend most of their days thinking not about politics but about how to raise good kids. It’s probably not worthwhile to try to figure out who is better at it but these statistics ought to at least pour cold water on conservative self righteousness on this point: of the 10 states with the [highest divorce rates](http://www.divorcemag.com/statistics/statsUS2.shtml), ten of them voted for Bush. Of the 10 states with the lowest divorce rates, 9 of them voted for Kerry. And the state with the lowest divorce rate in the nation? Massachusetts.