[lit-ideas] Re: When Unspeakable Evil Just Isn't Enough....

_http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/042205B.shtml_ 
(http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/042205B.shtml) 
 
<< Frist  Draws Criticism from Some Church Leaders 
By  David D. Kirkpatrick and Sheryl Gay Stolberg 
The New  York Times  
Friday 22 April 2005  
Washington - As the Senate battle over judicial  confirmations became 
increasingly entwined with religious themes, officials of  several major 
Protestant 
denominations on Thursday accused the Senate Republican  leader, Bill Frist, of 
violating the principles of his own Presbyterian church  and urged him to 
drop out of a Sunday telecast that depicts Democrats as  "against people of 
faith."  
Dr. Frist's participation has rekindled a debate over  the role of religion 
in public life that may be complicating his efforts to  overcome the Democrats' 
use of the filibuster, a parliamentary tactic used by  Congressional 
minorities, to block President Bush's judicial nominees.  
Dr. Frist has threatened to change the Senate rules  to eliminate judicial 
filibusters, and in response Democrats have threatened a  virtual shutdown of 
the Senate. A confrontation had been expected as early as  next week, but it 
now 
appears that the showdown may be delayed.  
Religious groups, including the National Council of  Churches and the 
Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, plan to conduct a  conference call 
with 
journalists on Friday to criticize Senator Frist's  participation in the 
telecast. The program is sponsored by Christian  conservative organizations 
that want 
to build support for Dr. Frist's filibuster  proposal.  
Among those scheduled to speak in the conference call  is the Rev. Clifton 
Kirkpatrick, a top official of the Presbyterian Church  U.S.A., in which Dr. 
Frist is an active member.  
"One of the hallmarks of our denomination is that we  are an ecumenical 
church," Mr. Kirkpatrick said in an interview on Thursday. He  also said, 
"Elected 
officials should not be portraying public policies as being  for or against 
people of faith."  
A spokesman for Dr. Frist said his remarks, which are  not yet available, 
would be consistent with previous statements about fair  treatment for judicial 
nominees. "I would hope that he would read Dr. Frist's  remarks," the 
spokesman, Bob Stevenson, said of Mr. Kirkpatrick.  
Mr. Stevenson added that the timing of the  confrontation on filibusters was 
not related to the criticisms that have been  raised about the telecast, 
saying Dr. Frist still planned to propose a  compromise to the Democrats.  
Still, the Senate moved closer to a showdown on  Thursday, when the Senate 
Judiciary Committee, voting along party lines,  approved two nominees, Janice 
Rogers Brown and Priscilla R. Owen, who were  blocked by a filibuster in the 
last Congress and are expected to be blocked  again. Republican strategists 
consider the nominees - two women, one of whom is  black - favorable choices 
for a 
filibuster fight.  
There were signs, though, that Dr. Frist was planning  to postpone the 
confrontation for at least another two weeks, when the Senate  returns from a 
spring 
recess.  
Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, said Dr.  Frist had told him he 
would like to take up a transportation measure next week,  an indication that 
he 
did not expect a filibuster fight before the Congressional  recess. Polls, 
meanwhile, suggest a lack of public support for ending the  filibuster. A 
recent 
survey conducted for NBC News and The Wall Street Journal  found that 50 
percent of those polled believed that the Senate should retain the  filibusters 
for judicial nominations, while 40 percent were against and 10  percent 
undecided.  
The theme of the telecast, which is called Justice  Sunday and will be 
broadcast to churches and Christian radio and television  networks, is "The 
Filibuster Against People of Faith." Its sponsors argue that  by blocking 
judicial 
nominees who oppose abortion rights on religious and moral  grounds, Democrats 
are effectively discriminating against those nominees.  
Dr. Frist has agreed to provide a four-minute  videotaped statement for the 
event. Democrats are calling his participation  evidence of Republican 
extremism.  
"We're going to allow the majority leader to invoke  faith to rewrite Senate 
rules, to put substandard, extremist judges on the  bench?" Senator John 
Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat and former presidential  nominee, said 
Thursday 
on the Senate floor. Mr. Kerry added, "It's not up to us  to tell any one of 
our colleagues what to believe as a matter of faith."  
Christian conservatives have also accused Senator  John Salazar of Colorado, 
a Roman Catholic, of tolerating anti-Catholicism from  his fellow Democrats 
who oppose nominees who follow the church's teachings on  abortions.  
On Thursday, Mr. Salazar responded by issuing a  statement taking to task one 
of the telecast's speakers, Dr. R. Albert Mohler  Jr., president of the 
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, for  deprecating the 
Catholic 
faith. It quoted Mr. Mohler as saying "the Roman church  is a false church and 
it teaches a false gospel" and "the pope himself holds a  false and 
unbiblical office."  
Dr. Mohler called Mr. Salazar's statement "absolutely  ridiculous," saying it 
was hardly news that evangelical Protestants and Roman  Catholics "differ on 
many key theological issues." He said he supported a  Catholic nominee the 
Democrats had opposed.  
In the past two weeks, religious leaders on both  sides of the judicial 
battle have plunged into the debate. The United States  Conference of Catholic 
Bishops is distributing millions of postcards around the  country for 
parishioners 
to send their senators asking them not to insist that  nominees uphold 
abortion rights. Evangelical Protestant groups like Focus on the  Family have 
been 
portraying the confirmation debates as a fight over public  expression of 
religion and respect for traditionalist values.  
Now the liberal group People for the American Way is  buying advertisements 
and distributing church program inserts that attack  Senator Frist for invoking 
religious faith in what it says is a partisan  context. The National Council 
of Churches is asking members to organize news  conferences denouncing Dr. 
Frist.  
The criticism of the telecast underscores the  delicate task facing Dr. 
Frist, who is laying the groundwork for a possible  presidential campaign in 
2008, 
as he courts the evangelical Protestant groups  and other religious 
traditionalists that formed the bedrock of President Bush's  winning coalition. 
With his 
patrician bearing and background in the relatively  liberal Presbyterian 
Church, Dr. Frist, a Harvard-trained transplant surgeon,  does not fit in as 
naturally with Christian conservatives as President Bush.  
Dr. Frist's overtures to Christian conservatives have  drawn the ire of the 
more liberal hierarchies of other religious groups,  including the officials of 
his own denomination. Dr. Bob Edgar, general  secretary of the National 
Council of Churches and a former Democratic  congressman, said he had sought to 
include Mr. Kirkpatrick, of the Presbyterian  Church, in the conference call 
both 
because Dr. Frist is Presbyterian and  because of the church's emphasis on 
ecumenicalism.  
"To say that some group of Christians has a monopoly  on the ear of God is 
especially an outrage to Presbyterians," Mr. Edgar said.  
Mr. Kirkpatrick said Dr. Frist's participation in the  telecast undermined 
"the historical commitment in our nation and our church to  an understanding of 
the First Amendment that elected officials should not be  portraying public 
policies as being for or against people of faith."  
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research  Council and organizer of the 
telecast, said those who were offended did not have  to watch the telecast.  
"There are millions of other Americans who see a  connection between the 
filibuster and judicial activism," Mr. Perkins said. "And  when we talk about 
judicial activism, we are talking about issues that people  faith care about 
deeply." >>  


========Original Message========     Subj: [lit-ideas] Re: When Unspeakable 
Evil Just Isn't  Enough....  Date: 4/24/05 12:43:52 P.M. Central Daylight Time  
From: _andreas@xxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx)   To: 
_lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)   Sent on:    
Read the current issue of Harper's Weekly. There  are two long articles about 
the 
mega-churches and the Evangelical radio  broadcaster networks. It discusses 
their political 
ambitions, their violent  homophobia, and their anti-semitism.

These are not fringe cults anymore;  James Dobson of the National Religious 
Broadcasters 
(NRB) (1,600 radio and  TV stations, 141 million listeners) and Ted Haggard 
("Pastor Ted") of 
the  National Association of Evangelicals (NEA) (45,000 churches, 30 million 
people)  have 
enormous political power in the Republican Party and they are using  it.

Start paying attention to "Dominionists" (based on a line in the Old  
Testament: they shall 
have dominion over the earth). The evangelicals are  now calling themselves 
Dominionist. They 
intend to take control over the USA  and get rid of secular law, humanists, 
the "Homosexual 
Agenda", feminists,  and activist judges. The Schiavo case was an example of 
their disregard 
for  the courts.

What's remarkable is that Dominionists see themselves as  under attack and 
they must strike  
back.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/7235393?pageid=rs.Home&pagereg
ion=single7&rnd=1114363953988&has-player=true&version=6.0.11.847

yrs,
andreas
www.andreas.com  

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