Our digest of current, selected articles that may be of interest to other believers against Bush and friends. This will be updated regularly. Suggestions are welcome.
Detroit News. Reprinted from Common Cause (Excerpt from an open letter signed by 100 faculty and 40 staff)
...As Christians we are called to be peacemakers and to initiate war only as a last resort. We believe your administration has launched an unjust and unjustified war in Iraq.
As Christians we are called to lift up the hungry and impoverished. We believe your administration has taken actions that favor the wealthy of our society and burden the poor.
As Christians we are called to actions characterized by love, gentleness, and concern for the most vulnerable among us. We believe your administration has fostered intolerance and divisiveness and has often failed to listen to those with whom it disagrees.
As Christians we are called to be caretakers of God’s good creation. We believe your environmental policies have harmed creation and have not promoted long-term stewardship of our natural environment...
Nate Reens, Grand Rapids Press. Excerpt below:
...In a full-page advertisement that will run in The Press on Friday and a half-page ad to appear Saturday, Calvin students, staff and alumni voice their disappointment with Bush's graduation stop.
“By their deeds ye shall know them,” reads the paid advertisement, quoting the Bible. "Your deeds, Mr. President — neglecting the needy to coddle the rich, desecrating the environment, and misleading the country into war — do not exemplify the faith we live by.
“Moreover, many of your supporters are using religion as a weapon to divide our nation and advance a narrow partisan agenda. ...We urge you not to use Calvin College as a platform to advance policies that violate the school's religious principles.” More than 750 alumni, students and staff have signed Friday's advertisement, while about 100 of Calvin’s 300 faculty members put their names on the Saturday ad.
Jeff Sharlet, Harper’s Magazine. Excerpt:
....Pastor Ted (Haggard, New Life Church, Colorado Springs) who talks to President George W. Bush or his advisers every Monday, is a handsome forty-eight-year-old Indianan, most comfortable in denim. He likes to say that his only disagreement with the President is automotive; Bush drives a Ford pickup, whereas Pastor Ted loves his Chevy. In addition to New Life, Pastor Ted presides over the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), whose 45,000 churches and 30 million believers make up the nation’s most powerful religious lobbying group, and also over a smaller network of his own creation, the Association of Life-Giving Churches, 300 or so congregations modeled on New Life’s “free market” approach to the divine. Pastor Ted will serve as NAE president for as long as the movement is pleased with him, and as long as Pastor Ted is its president the NAE will make its headquarters in Colorado Springs...
The press tends to regard Dobson as the most powerful evangelical Christian in America, but Pastor Ted is at least his equal. Whereas Dobson plays the part of national scold, promising to destroy politicians who defy the Bible, Pastor Ted quietly guides those politicians through the ritual of acquiescence required to save face. He doesn’t strut, like Dobson; he gushes. When Bush invited him to the Oval Office to discuss policy with seven other chieftains of the Christian right in late 2003, Pastor Ted regaled his whole congregation with the story via email. “Well, on Monday I was in the World Prayer Center”— New Life’s high-tech, twentyfour- hour-a-day prayer chapel —“and my cell phone rang.” It was a presidential aide; “the President,” says Pastor Ted, wanted him on hand for the signing of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Pastor Ted was on a plane the next morning and in the President’s office the following afternoon. “It was incredible,” wrote Pastor Ted. He left it to the press to note that Dobson wasn’t there.
No pastor in America holds more sway over the political direction of evangelicalism than does Pastor Ted, and no church more than New Life... Evangelicalism is as much an intellectual as an emotional movement; and what Pastor Ted has built in Colorado Springs is not just a battalion of spiritual warriors but a factory for ideas to arm them.
Jim Wallis, Sojo Mail, Sojourners (excerpt below)
After the “Justice Sunday” event, and the controversy surrounding it, some of the sponsors are denying they ever claimed that those who oppose them are hostile to people of faith. Yet their words stand for themselves. In the letter announcing the event on the Family Research Council Web site, Tony Perkins wrote: “Many of these nominees to the all-important appellate court level are being blocked...because they are people of faith and moral convictions.... We must stop this unprecedented filibuster of people of faith.”
So, I told the Louisville rally that when someone has stolen our faith in the public arena, it is time to take our faith back. “Justice Sunday” was an attempt to hijack Christianity for a partisan and ideological agenda. Those on the Religious Right are declaring a religious war to give their version of faith religious supremacy in America. And some members of the Republican Party seem ready almost to declare a Christian theocracy in America. It is time to take back both our faith and our Constitution.
Letter to Senator Frist from Mark S. Hanson, Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
...the rhetoric that some people of faith—Republicans, conservatives, or fundamentalists—“have it right” and all other people of faith have it wrong not only is self righteous, but inappropriately polarizes people of faith for political purposes.
I am not writing to express a view on the proposed rule change affecting judicial nominations, but to respectfully ask that you cease judging whether or not people have faith by how they choose to express that faith on political issues. You honor neither yourself, this country, nor people of faith by such political manipulation. In the strongest terms, I urge you to use your position of significant responsibility to lead this country to a healthy respect not only for dissent, but for all people of faith.
In God’s grace,
Mark S. Hanson
By M.E. SPRENGELMEYER, Scripps Howard News Service (excerpt follows)
WASHINGTON - Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar lashed out at Focus on the Family Thursday, saying the group is using “un-Christian” political tactics in the fight over White House judicial appointments.
Salazar defended Democrats’ right to filibuster objectionable nominees and blasted the Colorado Springs, Colo.-based evangelical Christian group for recent ads urging him to “STOP the nonsense.”
“I do think that what has happened here is there has been a hijacking of the U.S. Senate by what I call the religious right wing of the country,” Salazar told reporters at a Capitol Hill news conference Wednesday.
He singled out Focus on the Family by name, objecting to full-page newspaper ads the ministry’s political arm recently placed, targeting 20 senators in 15 states.
“I think what has happened is Focus on the Family has been hijacking Christianity and become an appendage of the Republican Party,” Salazar said in an interview. “I think it’s using Christianity and religion in a very unprincipled way.”
Jim Wallis, Sojo Mail, Sojourners (excerpt below)
...Now the Religious Right is saying that supporting the president’s judicial nominations is a test of orthodoxy. This is a dramatic new and serious breach in the relationship between faith and politics.
James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Prison Fellowship’s Chuck Colson, and Southern Baptist leader Albert Mohler are hosting “Justice Sunday,” a telecast this weekend from a mega-church in Louisville, Kentucky. Their message is that those who don’t support President Bush’s judicial nominees are hostile to “people of faith.”
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist plans to join them by video to get political support for his effort to end the Senate practice known as the filibuster, which is designed to delay a vote on controversial issues in order to protect strong minorities from being overrun by majorities. The Republican leader’s appearance at this event endorses the Religious Right’s claim that the Democratic filibuster of a small number of very conservative judges is “a filibuster against people of faith.”
Despite the fact that Democrats oppose these judges for their views on a variety of subjects, conservative leaders have singled out abortion and gay marriage as their chief concerns and only want judges who support their agenda. Despite the fact that many Democrats who oppose some of President Bush’s nominees are themselves people of faith, Republicans and their religious supporters are questioning the faith and religious integrity of their opponents.
That is an escalation of the religious/political war. And the two together sound like assertions of a Republican theocracy. Behind these activities lies a fundamental assumption by Republican operatives and their conservative religious allies that they own religion in America. They demand that religious people vote only their way. They claim that “values voters” in America belong to them, and they disrespect the faith of those who disagree with their agenda. There are better words for this than just “politically divisive” or “morally irresponsible.” For these are not merely political offenses, they are religious ones. And for offenses such as these, theological terms are better - terms such as idolatry and blasphemy.
*Indicates that registration is required to view the article.
