Evangelical Leader is not Drinking W's Kool-Aid.

[reprehensor]

An evangelical voice strikes different notes

snip

"Many in the religious right would say the only issues are same-sex marriage and abortion and judges. I say no way. There's social justice. Eliminating poverty. The environment. The Bible is not about two or three issues.

"Some members of the religious right believe it is impossible to be a Bible-believing liberal. I believe you can be a Bible-believer and a liberal.

snip

"It makes no sense to save a baby and have it choke to death on the air."

He said the National Association of Evangelicals "does not stand with" evangelicals who want a Christian government in the United States.

more@link

[atreides1]

1. Interesting

But anyone who is associated with Dobson's Focus on the Hate, I mean Family, should be taken with a grain of salt and watched very closely.

[kentuck]

2. What's his name ?

Link doesn't open for me....just curious..

[havocmom]

5. Here ya go...

<snip> COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - An Indiana farm boy and onetime Bible smuggler in communist eastern Europe, the Rev. Ted Haggard* has become one of the most influential voices in evangelical Christianity.

<snip> But he parts ways with many evangelicals with his concern about global climate change and other environmental issues, support for the Supreme Court decision protecting gays' sexual privacy, and support for social justice.

<snip> He said the National Association of Evangelicals "does not stand with" evangelicals who want a Christian government in the United States.

<snip> "I support the ideology of a pluralistic society with a fundamentally secular government," he said. "The church is a voice, but not the only voice.

*boldface mine for your convenience

[gratuitous]

7. Very dangerous sentiments

It's really important to a certain segment of power-grabbers to portray all the "right" Christians as a monolithic think-alike entity. Folks like Mr. Haggard, Jim Wallis of Sojourners and Tony Campolo are dangerous voices (to that segment) who strike a reasonable balance between private belief and public policy.

I know that Wallis got a little national play with his recent book, and maybe Haggard will get some attention. Campolo is treated like plutonium by the national media, who for some reason like what the power-grabbers are doing with and to evangelicals.

[Coexist]

8. Sing it!

That's what we need to be hearing.

[iconoclastic cat]

3. Good luck with that, Rev.

[GreenPartyVoter]

4. Thanks for sharing that

[Village Idiot]

6. It's nice to see...

That not all the Evangelicals support *'s agenda...

Last time I looked, neither abortion nor sex marriage are mentioned in the Bible AT ALL...

Kindness, decency, respect, poverty, community, however....

[noonwitch]

9. Homosexuality is condemned in the Old Testament

But so are a whole lot of other things. We are supposed to stone urban rape victims to death if they don't scream, for example, and stone any woman who isn't a virgin for her first marriage.

Abortion isn't ever mentioned in the Bible. God actually either causes miscarriages as punishment for sin (like to David and Bathsheba's firstborn) or condones ripping babies out of mother's wombs during wars.

Read "Ken's Guide To The Bible" by Ken Smith. It's usually in the humor section, but it has a list of Bible verses at the end with all the references to miscarriages and God's approval of soldier induced abortion in wartimes.

[XemaSab]

10. Big focus of wallas's (sp?)

book is poverty, and the fact that poverty and economic justice are two of the biggest themes in the Bible.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

11. Interesting Read...

"Religious History of America" by Edwin Gaustad and Leigh Schmidt. You can find it remaindered for $5 in lots of bookstores and it's available at Amazon.

The really interesting part is the 20th century schism between the fundamentalists and the modernists. Occuring in nearly every protestant denomination, the rift essentially pitted the "strict interpretation" camp against the "social gospel" camp. Today the fundamentalists would have you believe that you must either accept their interpretation or you're not a Christian (an argument they tried to use a century ago).

My take: Fundamentalists were left for dead following the 1960's but they got smart and co-opted the Republican Party, opting to use legal-political coercion to win a theological battle that they lost a generation ago.