Evangelicals confirm Political Agenda / False Persecution Propaganda

[Ian David]

February 12, 2005
Evangelicals (say they) feel they're misunderstood
By Rachel Zoll
The Associated Press

HAMILTON, Mass. - Recognizing that many Americans worry about their influence after President Bush's re-election, evangelicals are saying they have been misunderstood and - in some ways - remain underdogs in a nation they consider hostile to public talk about faith.
<snip>

``We want an open discourse where we have the right and freedom to share our faith,'' Tennent said. ``I want to protect the right for a Buddhist to be a Buddhist in America. I want to protect the right for a Muslim to be a Muslim in America. ... But I still want them to know Christ.''
<snip>

``We acknowledge as evangelicals that we're in a culture war,'' Wenz said, ``but the war is against a movement that seeks to impose a totally secular world view.''

<snip>

David Wells, professor of historical and systematic theology at the seminary, said some of the trouble stems from a tendency to equate evangelicals with fundamentalists. Fundamentalists are cultural separatists, withdrawing from people who hold different beliefs and adopting ``a set of cultural attitudes that evangelicals have abandoned,'' he said. Evangelicals seek to involve themselves in society, engaging members of other religions and influencing the broader culture. The speakers said they were not surprised by the public's wariness of evangelicals, as membership in conservative Christian churches explodes and evangelicals build alliances with the politically powerful.

More:
http://www.registerguard.com/news/2005/02/12/f4.rel.evan.0212.html

EXACTLY WHAT WAS IT THEY THINK WE MISUNDERSTOOD??

[GOPFighter]

1. Fundamentalists AND evangelicals want to....

...convert me and my kids and grandkids to Christianity, and if they can't convert us, they want to impose their version of morality upon us through government. When those of us who are of a different religion or are atheists fight back for our right to live by our own beliefs, Fundies and Evang's get angry and accuse us of being anti-religion. NO, all non-Christians want is freedom from our public schools and our government imposing Christianity on us.

It's not the Evangelicals who are misunderstood, it's the rest of us who firmly believe we have the right to our own lives and our own beliefs, free of Christian pressure and intimidation. Once Evangs understand and accept this we'll all live in peace and harmony. :)

[Ian David]

2. It's not just non-Christians who want that freedom. It's Christians, too.

Not even Christians want someone else's version of Christianity imposed upon them.

What if someone passed a law that a marriage wasn't sanctified and legal unless you took communion? Those denominations that don't practice communion would be furious.

What if someone decided to impose a mandatory Sabbath, with all businesses closed, on Sundays? The Seventh Day Adventists would be furious-- their Sabbath is on Saturday.

[GOPFighter]

4. Good point

You're right.

[whistle]

3. Evangelicals fear the ideas and thoughts of....

Karl Marx who said, "..religion is the opiate of the people" and as such all religions must be abolished;

Sigmund Freud who stated that religion provides a basis for humans to have a belief in, "...the existence of God fulfills the wish for a father-figure to relieve us from the terror of infantile helplessness" which fosters dictatorships and repression;

Charles Darwin who stated that man was the result of the process of evolution through natural selection of "variations" in the species and not from some grand design of a living creator, thus challenging the very basis on which Holy Bible is founded.

[Tux]

5. Makes sense

Religion is dogmatic while spirituality is more alive and has more meaning. The only difference is understanding and exploration. Christians musst try to regain control of their religion from the Evangelicals for no reason other than to preserve what good image of Chritianity is left to non-Christians and to put them aside and out of politics.

[Ian David]

6. Here's one thing I hate.

According to their press release, they say they want everyone to have the freedom to practice their own religion.

But they also say the want to have every opportunity to cram THEIRS down OUR throats.

I'm sorry, but I do not want my children exposed to the Evangelical Lifestyle by their radical Evangelical Activists.

[Tux]

8. Thus

Enter politics or ask the church you attend to counter the Evangelical threat. Complain to the school board if creationism appears and tell them it's illegal to teach. If they do something counter it. If we start locally, we can make a diffeence nationaly. We have to show that faith is in all people and there is no secular conspiracy.

[Cell Whitman]

7. This isn't exactly accurate...ihmo

While Falwell deserves credit for re-energizing Christians politically,

Falwell shouldn't get that credit. Yes, he yapped a lot but they wouldn't have done it without the religious right's "true" savior, their "go to guy"...the guy who made it happen for them. Moon. He literally gathered the religious right together for political power in America AND SAID WE WAS GONNA DO IT!!!

In the video "Life and Liberty for All Who Believe" they talk about the players who created what we are dealing with now. Falwell, LaHaye, Viguerie - all kingpins, ALL funded by Moon at one time or another. Moon picked the ones HE wanted in high places up and dusted them off when then fell. He gave them a pocket full of cash and sent them off to theocratize our nation. No Moon - and we would still have real Republicans.imho He outspent Scaife and had the agenda to make America more theocratic and, I would say, fascist. He spent BILLIONS on it. Front groups out the wazzooo.

One of the top two conservative political organizations in the country before there was a "Christian Coalition" was a Moon front group.

Anyway, the religious right does have have control of our government but Moon's hands have been on the wheel the whole time. Picking, choosing, funding, molding....

We have had fascists and theocrats running around this country for many decades. It took a straw to stir the drink.

You can read an outline of all that HERE.



You see, without this:



You don't have something like this:



http://cellwhitman.blogspot.com/

[mutus_frutex]

9. A totally secular worldview is the only way to ensure their freedom.

That's what they don't understand. Secularism is the ultimate level playing field. Anything else impinges on the freedoms of somebody.

[gottaB]

11. I don't regard secularism as a "world view"

It's a political philosophy or outlook, a set of ideas about the proper relationship between government and the religious sphere. It doesn't pretend to explain life, the universe and everything. It should not be thought of as a worldview in that sense.

The complaint of fundamentalist Christians is that they suffer by living in a "secular" society or culture. Well, gee, modern society is complex. A lot of people are left feeling alienated, and some of them believe that by rejecting the modern world they can somehow regain a fuller sense of community and live a more meaningful life. But they don't really want to reject everything. They are after all by and large bourgeois, or at the least have bourgeois aspirations and values, which they may reflect upon and choose to reject, but, again, in piecemeal fashion. Any mass movement of this kind must perforce represent a kind of salad bar anti-modernism.

I agree with you on the whole the Christian conservatives do not understand that secularism provides for their own religious liberties It should not be surprising, however. Their movement is not led by liberators, but by petty tyrants and demagogues who encourage their followers to see themselves as victims of mass culture, society, and government, to define all manner of alienation and setback as a single kind of persecution for which the only balm is to elect rightwing Christians to public office. It's pernicious, you bet. Pure ideological snake oil.

Our task should be to disassociate the political agenda of the leaders of the Christian conservative movement from the aspirations of its followers to live a decent, meaningful, rewarding life in a complex modern society.

[usregimechange]

10. Get a job!