Good news: Faith Versus Trump: Religious leaders are in the forefront of the Opposition

[guillaumeb]

Last edited Tue Mar 27, 2018, 07:31 PM - Edit history (1)

From the article:

On Monday, December 4, the day after the first Sunday in Advent, a group of Christian clergy and leaders of other faiths gathered in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. They were there to challenge the pending Republican plan to rewrite the nation’s tax laws—a plan that will shower billions of dollars of tax breaks on the wealthy while effectively raising taxes on those making less than $30,000 a year....


Instead, the group left the rotunda and walked to the United Methodist Building down the street. There, the faith leaders announced the launch of a new national Poor People’s Campaign, cochaired by Barber and the Reverend Liz Theoharis, a Presbyterian minister and codirector of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. The campaign will employ direct action and civil disobedience, as well as public education and voter registration, to draw attention to issues and mobilize disenfranchised citizens.

To read more:

http://progressive.org/magazine/faith-versus-trump/

Edited to correct eaders to leaders. There may have been some eaders on the march as well.

[Voltaire2]

1. Bad news: Faith supports Trump.

Religious leaders are in the forefront of the support.

[guillaumeb]

2. A fast reader.

What did you think of the article? Feel free to be specific.

[Voltaire2]

3. I thought your headline was bullshitty.

Religious voters overwhelmingly supported Trump. The news on this front remains almost entirely bad.

[guillaumeb]

6. The Reverend Barber was one in my Progressive people of Faith series.

What about his positions do you not like?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

4. I don't understand why you guys keep arguing about this stuff.

Religions and religious organizations are human creations that are only as good or as bad as the people comprising them. There have been obnoxious and destructive fundamentalist religious leaders like Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, but there were and are leaders like Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu. The black churches, led by MLK and other pastors, were enormous forces in the civil rights movement. Desmond Tutu was instrumental in furthering the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. The Dalai Lama has been working for autonomy for Tibet since the '50s. Religions, which are far from a single monolithic belief system, can be a force for good or a force for evil; they can be very liberal or very conservative. Most importantly, we are all free to believe of not to believe. For my part, I'm an agnostic. I don't know whether there's a god and it doesn't bother me that I don't know. I care not at all what others believe (and therefore see little value in arguing whether there is or is not a supreme being, or whether people who believe in one are stupid and superstitious, or whether people who do not believe in one are arrogant and supercilious). I care only that it is not made the basis for legislation in our intentionally secular democracy, and that it is not used to justify hurting people. Beyond that, believe what you want, or not. It's just that nobody is ever going to convince or convert anybody by grumbling on an internet message board. That includes me, both as grumbler and grumblee.

[guillaumeb]

5. Very well said.

I post positive articles to remind people that there are good and not so good people. Religious groups are composed of people, so obviously there are good and not so good religionists. Every group of humans will have this mixture.

[TexasProgresive]

7. "Every group of humans will have this mixture." +1,000,000

[guillaumeb]

10. Better said by Velveteen.

[trotsky]

17. You have previously admitted that no one here thinks believers are a monolith.

So why do you need to remind anyone? Who needs to be reminded?

[Act_of_Reparation]

19. Fundamental misunderstanding of the issue.

Organizations are only as good or as bad as their constituent members? Well, what makes the constituent members good or bad? Are they born that way? Are they socialized? If they are socialized, what role does the organization play in their socialization? With religion so deeply embedded in most societies, you'd have to either propose a determinist model of human behavior or twist yourself into fucking knots trying to exempt religion from the socialization process.

Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson, and Jerry Falwell are nothing without the millions of seemingly well-intentioned people who follow them.

[Mariana]

8. These religious leaders are dragging their asses, trying to catch up.

They're only now getting around to forming an opposition campaign and plans to protest? Too bad they weren't "at the forefront of the opposition" in 2016. They might have done some good, then.

[guillaumeb]

11. Reverend Barber started this in 2007.

Dr. King started his campaign 60 years ago.

So as to "dragging asses and trying to catch up", perhaps you should research Barber and King.

[Mariana]

13. "there, the faith leaders announced the launch

of a new national Poor People’s Campaign, cochaired by Barber and the Reverend Liz Theoharis." On Monday, Dec. 4, 2017.

Barber is a great man, but let's stay in reality. You can't seriously suggest he was protesting Trump in 2007. That is just not true.

[guillaumeb]

15. Some information:

Barber came to national attention in the spring of 2013, when the Moral Mondays movement emerged under his leadership and brought a summer of effective civil disobedience to North Carolina’s statehouse. That effort came in response to a tide of reactionary legislation passed after the legislature and governorship were taken over by Republicans intent on undoing North Carolina’s longstanding reputation as a politically moderate Southern state.

https://www.thenation.com/article/rev-william-barber-is-bringing-mlks-poor-peoples-campaign-back-to-life/

I did not say that he was protesting Trump in 2007. Nor did King protest Trump in 1965.

[yallerdawg]

9. We are for the most part liberal progressive Democrats.

We are NOT white evangelical "anyone-who-says-he-is-Republican" supporters.

Roughly eight-in-ten (79%) African Americans self-identify as Christian, as do seven-in-ten whites and 77% of Latinos, according to Pew Research Center’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study. Most black Christians and about half of all African Americans (53%) are associated with historically black Protestant churches, according to the study. Smaller shares of African Americans identify with evangelical Protestantism (14%), Catholicism (5%), mainline Protestantism (4%) and Islam (2%).

http://atlantablackstar.com/2018/03/11/black-people-religious-people-america-getting/

We need to be mindful of our friends when we bash entire classes of people based on their religion (which would seem to be an unnecessary reminder on a liberal progressive Democratic website ).

Anyone noticed how even Bill Maher has toned it down?

[guillaumeb]

12. Agreed, but it seems as if some are quite offended

if there is any mention of the positive things that religion inspires some people to do. It really does seem as if some would prefer a Religion Group filled exclusively with negative news about religion.

[yallerdawg]

14. It's like with the gun-humpers!

Any concession to any form of gun control is the First Step to Taking Our Guns Away.

Same with those in this group who can't let it go or acknowledge any good at all can come from religion and faith!

I mean - they obviously feel they are better people and more knowledgable than 2 billion Christians, 1.8 billion Muslims, 1.1 billion Hindus...

Maybe they ARE better than some. That's the thing. There are good and there are bad - in every group we can come up with.

[guillaumeb]

16. True on all points.

My view.

[yallerdawg]

18. This everyday: