Weird Time for Christians

[TGHusker]

9 hours ago, BlitzFirst said:

 

 

Not really certain any good churches exist...all of them involve themselves with politics which is anti-christian.

Not true - beware of blanket statements.  Our decent size church is all about mission and helping others.  I've never heard an outright political sermon in our church.  Our pastor understands he is there to build the kingdom of God and not a political party.

[TGHusker]

24 minutes ago, BlitzFirst said:

 

 

Oh well if one minister of one church doesn't do it...it surely just disproved everything I said above.  All sarcasm aside, I was using statistics that say 64% of America is either Catholic or Evangelical...and I know both of these encourage their membership to be pro-life and vote accordingly.

 

I'm not speaking of the vocal minority parroted by the media.

Being prolife isn't a political thing for us - it is a faith thing totally at its core.  When we think of the 'least of these' not only are we thinking of the poor, hungry, thirsty, naked, the alien but we think of the unborn child. 

What makes it political is that one party has jumped on that concern of us pro-lifers and made it their priority to keep us on their political plantation by making promises after promises.  The other party has gone radically away from the pro-life concerns.   While I think the Dems do a better job of verbalizing their concern for other life issues beyond birth, I think they could grab a lot of us pro-life voters if they moderated their hard line stance of being radically pro-choice(pro-abortion if you will).  I say that would be the case in a normal election cycle when both parties put forward two 'reasonable candidates'.  We didn't not have reasonable candidates on either side in 2016 and we know the GOP will not have a reasonable candidate in 2020 if Trump is nominated again.  That may force many of us pro-lifers who also cannot stomach the child in the WH to make a hard choice - vote Dem (if they have a reasonable candidate - most likely they will based on the top tier of candidates), vote for a 3rd party candidate, or abstain.   Since it is still being played out, I'm keeping my power dry. 

[BigRedBuster]

6 minutes ago, BlitzFirst said:

 

I'm not talking about your personal opinion on the matter nor that of local congregations.  I'm talking about the policies of the denomination and the 'official' stance which is where churches that align under the organization are supposed to take their cues from.

 

 

 

Being pro-life, doesn't make an organization political.  Having the priests standing up on Sunday preaching to everyone that they should vote for Republicans or having Republican candidates come speak at church because they are pro-life would make them political.  That doesn't happen.

 

So....your statistic you claimed before is just wrong.

[Ratt Mhule]

28 minutes ago, TGHusker said:

Being prolife isn't a political thing for us - it is a faith thing totally at its core.  When we think of the 'least of these' not only are we thinking of the poor, hungry, thirsty, naked, the alien but we think of the unborn child. 

What makes it political is that one party has jumped on that concern of us pro-lifers and made it their priority to keep us on their political plantation by making promises after promises.  The other party has gone radically away from the pro-life concerns.   While I think the Dems do a better job of verbalizing their concern for other life issues beyond birth, I think they could grab a lot of us pro-life voters if they moderated their hard line stance of being radically pro-choice(pro-abortion if you will).  I say that would be the case in a normal election cycle when both parties put forward two 'reasonable candidates'.  We didn't not have reasonable candidates on either side in 2016 and we know the GOP will not have a reasonable candidate in 2020 if Trump is nominated again.  That may force many of us pro-lifers who also cannot stomach the child in the WH to make a hard choice - vote Dem (if they have a reasonable candidate - most likely they will based on the top tier of candidates), vote for a 3rd party candidate, or abstain.   Since it is still being played out, I'm keeping my power dry. 

 

I dont want to dive too deep into abortion but I dont think the dem stance is radical or “pro-abortion” Im pro-choice but its not because Im pro-abortion. Most dem politicians are not pro-abortion. Just pro not letting govt. have control over a womans body. If a woman wants an abortion, there is a reason, its not because they love “killing babies”. For example, I had a 22 year old patient yesterday have a positive pregnancy test. She started crying as soon as we told her. She walks out and walks back in to ask us where she can go for an abortion. Im sure shes scared. How will I pay for a child when im still a child? Will I be able to follow my dreams? Will I be able to finish school? Will I have help from the father? Many things go into a decision like that. And maybe she will change her mind. I hope she does because like I said, Im not pro-abortion. But I shouldnt have a say in it and neither should govt. Thats not very radical. 

[BigRedBuster]

Just now, BlitzFirst said:

 

Nah, it's not wrong.

 

I just read a book about this.  Check it out here:  http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15379.html

 

It's not just my opinion that politics and religion are so intertwined in the United States.

Understand that an entire historical collection of essays examines exactly what I'm stating here.

 

Yes it is.

 

Look...where you are going wrong is your over generalization of Churches.  If you didn't first say "all" then only slightly modify it to "90%", you wouldn't be getting pushback.  

 

Politics is intertwined with a lot of Christians.  

 

I personally believe that politics is much more intertwined within the people sitting in the pews and how the Republican party has latched on to that....than what is actually being said in most churches from the pulpit.

[Moiraine]

1 hour ago, BlitzFirst said:

 

 

Oh well if one minister of one church doesn't do it...it surely just disproved everything I said above.  All sarcasm aside, I was using statistics that say 64% of America is either Catholic or Evangelical...and I know both of these encourage their membership to be pro-life and vote accordingly.

 

I'm not speaking of the vocal minority parroted by the media.

 

 

I grew up going to a non demoninational church every Sunday and they didn’t talk about abortion from the pulpit. 

 

You can talk about anecdotes all you want, if you don’t have data to back up your claim, what you’re talking about is also anecdotal or possibly just a giant guess.

[BigRedBuster]

7 minutes ago, BlitzFirst said:

All you have to do is go to the various different websites of Evangelicals, Catholics, etc. and look at their official stances on abortion, gay marriage, etc. and it proves it for me.  No anecdotes.

 

Just because a church is anti-abortion, doesn't make it political.

 

This is a big fallacy in your argument.

[30-50 Feral Hogs]

4 minutes ago, BlitzFirst said:

 

All you have to do is go to the various different websites of Evangelicals, Catholics, etc. and look at their official stances on abortion, gay marriage, etc. and it proves it for me.  No anecdotes.

 

 

 

Religious organizations taking stances on issues of morality that they can draw back to the teachings of Jesus doesn't mean it's a political stance.  Now if they take a stance on 2A, or the Chinese tariffs, then that is a whole different discussion.

[BigRedBuster]

10 minutes ago, BlitzFirst said:

Sure, I generalized at the beginning...but that doesn't negate what I'm arguing now.

 

But, yet you never corrected your over generalization.

[TGHusker]

35 minutes ago, BlitzFirst said:

 

Nah, it's not wrong.

 

I just read a book about this.  Check it out here:  http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15379.html

 

It's not just my opinion that politics and religion are so intertwined in the United States.

Understand that an entire historical collection of essays examines exactly what I'm stating here.

 

 

Yeah not buying it.  What makes it political is intolerance.  Religion could just bow out of this (prolife) and not care what the government does.  Same with gay marriage...they could bow out and just tell their members the various stances on each issue that followers should have and let the government make laws how they want to make laws.

 

What do they do instead?  Try to decide what's right and what's wrong for everyone...not just their members. Irritating to say the least.

 

 

Pardon me, your bias is showing   So you say that those wt religious backgrounds don't have a voice in our society???     But I bet on the other hand, you would condemn the churches that didn't speak up in Hitler's Germany.  Part of the moral voice of the church is to speak up regarding injustice and esp in denouncing the government when it gets it wrong and encouraging when the govt gets it right.   So based on your statement in green above,  in the era of Trump, you want me, as a religious person or the church as a religious org (name the church) to stand quiet  and let the govt make laws however  they want to make laws???  Change Trump to even someone worse - either from the radical right or left.  Wt Trump we should stand by and do nothing, say nothing if he decides to lock up all immigrants here illegally or round them up.  Or is it only on your pet issues we are to remain silent. Maybe the pro-choice churches should be included in the silence.  So when you start taking away one person's voice, you eventually get around to taking away your own voice. 

[Moiraine]

32 minutes ago, BlitzFirst said:

 

All you have to do is go to the various different websites of Evangelicals, Catholics, etc. and look at their official stances on abortion, gay marriage, etc. and it proves it for me.  No anecdotes.

 

 

 

That’s still anecdotal unless you’ve picked church websites at random so they’re representative of all churches, and picked enough of them.

[BigRedBuster]

19 minutes ago, BlitzFirst said:

 

Yet here we are...with churches as places that you go to vote at during elections.  Churches holding voter registration drives.  Pastors encourage members to vote. Churches preaching about patriotism.

 

 

 

You do realize that the majority of churches don't do that....right?

28 minutes ago, BlitzFirst said:

I scaled back my sweeping generalization and stated that I believed that 90% of Christian churches took a political stance of some kind.  That's my opinion.

 

Well...the bolded part, you got right.

[30-50 Feral Hogs]

Just now, BigRedBuster said:

 

You do realize that the majority of churches don't do that....right?

 

Based on previous comments, I'm not so sure he does.

[BigRedBuster]

10 minutes ago, BlitzFirst said:

 

 

I do understand that you think a majority of churches don't do that.  I also realize that the organizations that these churches pledge allegiance actually do, thus the churches are either hypocritical for NOT doing them while remaining part of the organization or they actually do it.

So, the Vatican holds voter registration drives, preaches about patriotism and tells me who to vote for?  Hmmm....I even follow the pope on twitter and I've never seen that.

 

Wait....I can go vote at the Vatican?

[BigRedBuster]

17 minutes ago, BlitzFirst said:

I'm talking about Catholic and Evangelical organization websites

Here is the website of my Diocese.  Can you point to what you are talking about?

 

https://www.gidiocese.org