Religion should play NO role in politics. Unfortunately, being that the masses are gullible and continue to believe in superstitious fairy tales, they put a great deal of value on the religious beliefs of the candidates. Our Founding Fathers would be insulted by this… TGO
Refer to story below. Source: Christian Science Monitor
Separation of church and state may be a constitutional requirement in US government. But in Election 2012, religion has become an increasingly important factor. President Obama and Mitt Romney are focusing on particular religious groups.
By Brad Knickerbocker | Christian Science Monitor
Separation of church and state may be a constitutional requirement in US government. But in Election 2012 politics, religion has become an increasingly important factor.
Both President Obama and Mitt Romney are focusing on particular religious groups – Roman Catholic, Jewish, and Evangelical Christians. Mr. Romney’s religion – Mormonism – is being covered by the media like never before in US political history. (At least since the sect moved to Utah in the 19th century in order to practice its own beliefs – including, at that time, polygamy.)
Off to the side, meanwhile, is an apparent spat between the two most prominent Mormon politicians – Romney and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid – which seems to bear on their religion’s theology.
The cover story in the current issue of Time magazine is headlined “The Mormon Identity: What Mitt Romney’s faith tells us about his vision and values.” It’s written by Jon Meacham, who’s a member of the Leadership Council of the Harvard Divinity School and whose books include “American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation.”
“[T]he question is whether Romney has the capacity to draw once more on the pragmatic tradition of his religious forebears,” Mr. Meacham writes. “Will he stick with a strategy that seems not to be working against President Obama, or will he respond to changing events … with bold policy proposals or a more overtly negative campaign or whatever might move the election in his favor?”
“One thing is clear: as a devout Mormon leader, Romney knows his church history, and he knows that difficulty and doubt are inherent elements of life,” Meacham writes. “The key thing is to remain faithful, to serve, to press ahead – to the next territory that might welcome you, to the next voter who might decide to give you a chance. From the outside, Romney’s life looks to have been easy and affluent. There is, however, another angle of vision, one that reveals a deep-seated Romney instinct to survive and thrive in even the worst of storms.”
In the New York Times a few days earlier, Simon Critchley, professor of philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York, had a long column titled “Why I Love Mormonism.”
There, professor Critchley (who is not a Mormon) sought to explain to non-believers – especially urban skeptics whose knowledge is limited to snarky superficialities – that the Mormons he met as part of his academic work “were some of the kindest, most self-effacing and honest people I have ever met.”
“They were also funny, warm, genuine, completely open-minded, smart and terribly well read,” he added.
But with many non-Mormons today, he finds “a casual prejudice that is not like the visceral hatred that plagued the early decades of Mormonism – lest it be forgotten, Joseph Smith was shot to death on June 27, 1844, by an angry mob who broke into a jail where he was detained – but a symptom of a thoughtless incuriousness.”
Washington, DC being a company town, the Washington Post visited the Mormon “ward” (congregation) where a President Romney likely would attend.
“More ethnically and economically diverse than the typical Mormon ward, its roughly 200 congregants are drawn largely from Northeast Washington and have included deported immigrants, a teen shot dead in gang violence, refugees from African wars, and youths who depend on the church for meals, tutoring for class and support to pay for Boy Scout camp,” the Post reported.
The writer seemed surprised to find that most ward members are Democrats. Still, one said, “I’d welcome him with open arms.”
One who would not welcome Romney to Washington with open arms is fellow Mormon Sen. Reid. When Romney made his now-infamous comment which seemed to write off the 47 percent of Americans who “are dependent upon government … believe that they are victims … believe the government has a responsibility to care for them,” Reid was quick to comment that Romney had “sullied” their religion and that the GOP presidential challenger “is not the face of Mormonism.”
In the Washington Post’s “Belief Watch” column, Lisa Miller puts Romney’s controversial “47 percent” remark to wealthy donors in historical and theological perspective.
“Mormons regard thrift, industry and self-reliance as non-negotiable obligations,” she writes. But, she adds, “The dark side of the Mormon devotion to self-reliance is a corresponding horror of failure and dependency on outsiders.”
“A good Mormon wants to care for others in need, but he doesn’t want to be cared for,” she writes. “If in dire straits, he should seek help first from family and then from his church community – not from government assistance.”
Not all Mormons agree with Romney’s apparent interpretation.
“That’s Republicanism,” Kathleen Flake, professor of religion at Vanderbilt Divinity School and a Mormon, told the Post. “That’s not Mormonism.”
“What thunders from the Book of Mormon in LDS churches on Sunday, professor Flake added, is ‘if you judge the poor, you have no place in the kingdom of God.’”
Beyond Romney’s faith, both he and Obama are watching closely as other religious groups move toward one candidate or the other, seeking to influence that trend.
The Religion News Service reported this past week that “President Barack Obama’s support among Catholic voters has surged since June … despite a summer that included the Catholic bishops’ religious freedom campaign and the naming of Rep. Paul Ryan, a Catholic, as the GOP’s vice-presidential candidate.”
“On June 17, Obama held a slight edge over Mitt Romney among Catholics (49 percent to 47 percent), according to the Pew Research Center,” the news service reported. “Since then, Obama has surged ahead, and now leads 54 percent to 39 percent, according to a Pew poll conducted Sept. 16.”
Among Jewish voters in 2008, Obama won an overwhelming 78 percent, according to exit polls. This year, the GOP is trying hard to win a larger percentage of such voters.
Reports the New York Times: “Focused on South Florida, Ohio, and Nevada, the Republican Jewish Coalition, backed mostly by the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, a Zionist, has begun spending $6.5 million on an air-and-ground strategy to reach Jewish voters who may view Mr. Obama as unreliable on the question of Israel’s security.”
In recent weeks (and especially in light of the perceived threat from Iran’s nuclear progam), Romney himself has played up his close relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Meanwhile, Evangelical Christians – a substantial minority of whom had previously indicated they might not be able to vote for a Mormon – apparently began gravitating toward Romney once it became clear he would be the Republican nominee.
“There are at least two explanations for why Romney’s Mormonism matters so little among this powerful voting bloc,” writes Jonathan Merritt on the blog site for Sojourners, the progressive religious and social action organization. “First, evangelicals seem to care more about political ideology than orthodox theology as far as voting is concerned. Polls show that voters care most about the economy, not faith. It’s why the Tea Party – most of them being self-described evangelicals – have gravitated toward another Mormon, Glenn Beck.”
“Second, any discomfort about Mormonism is outweighed by an even larger disdain for President Obama,” Mr. Merritt writes. “Many evangelicals bemoan the last four years of his administration’s policies and they fear what he’ll do if re-elected.”
As religion scholar John-Charles Duffy of Miami University in Ohio put it in the Religion & Politics online news journal, “Evangelicals may not think Romney’s a Christian, but at least he’s not Obama.”
TheGodlessOne…you have raised your grammar grade to A+ but stuck with the D- (bordering on F) grade on perspective.
-GhostRider Wisdom…that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
My friend…First of all, apart from their education and research on this issue, historians are no different than you and I…men with opinions. Just like you and I, two historians will go over documents and available artifacts on a subject and they will come up with differing conclusions. As to Founding Fathers and their commitment to keep religious influence out of government, what is undeniable is that they did not want government to prohibit the right of the people to believe, worship, or express, whatever the fuck the choose to. Our Founding Fathers had quite a bit of hindsight and knew that men like Fidel Castro – who instantly abolished (until recently) the existence of Churches in his kingdom – would come along in the future.
The correct text is: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” FREE exercise means in your home, in the street, at the mall, wherever. If you want to go say some prayers at the mall, go ahead! It’s your constitutional right. If you want to say grace before your lunch at school, spiffy! However: the school cannot have a policy of grace, or prayer, or religion. It also means you can ask a presidential candidate about his own beliefs if you so desire – they may choose to say “No Comment” OR “I believe in Noah and Whale” OR play the game any way they desire.
As for you having done quite a bit of research on this subject, you will of course post the findings that make a statement on your perspective – just like I would do with my research on subjects such as consciousness or near death experiences.
-GhostRider Wisdom…that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Enlighten me. Is the following words you wrote, a statement or a question
>In other words, they’d rather vote for a Mormon; someone who believes that the Garden of Eden was located in Missouri?<
If a statement, it is in incomplete sentence.
People would rather vote for Mormon than what? A black man? A Muslim? A Christian? People would rather vote for Mormon than for a President that cannot be given a passing mark for his 4yrs on the job?
If a question, I don't get it.
I’m going to enlighten you. I placed an interrogation mark at the end of the sentence instead of periods, which would have been the correct punctuation. I have now corrected my mistake, and so the sentence now reads: … “In other words, they’d rather vote for a Mormon; someone who believes that the Garden of Eden was located in Missouri…” Whether or not the sentence is incomplete is a non-sequitur as you would say. In the context of what I wrote, the sentence makes its point; clear as day.
No! No, they would not rather vote for a Mormon! It goes to show you that the GOP still does not want the job. I have be saying it for 4yrs. They didn’t 4yrs ago by putting up an 80yr old man and a female bimbo, albeit, the hottest one America had to offer – a package of littel electability and no big loss to the party if it lost to they lost to Obama. This time they put up a Mormon with a young dude without national name regognition – a package of littel electability and no big loss to the party if it lost to they lost to Obama. -GhostRider Wisdom, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Whether or not religion should play a role in politics is of course, a question that is up to personal opinion and quite frankly, it is one that I, GhostRider, could not qive a fuck about as I feel strongly both ways BUT I will say this:
Religion has played a role in the politics of this country since it became a country. Many of the British North American colonies that eventually formed the United States of America were settled in the seventeenth century by men and women, who, in the face of European persecution, refused to compromise passionately held religious convictions and fled Europe. As a matter of fact, of the 55 delegates that includes the key Founding Fathers – John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington – to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, 49 were Protestants, and two were Roman Catholics (D. Carroll, and Fitzsimons). Among the Protestant delegates to the Constitutional Convention, 28 were Church of England (or Episcopalian, after the American Revolutionary War was won), eight were Presbyterians, seven were Congregationalists, two were Lutherans, two were Dutch Reformed, and two were Methodists.
Historians have examined the religious affiliations and beliefs of the Founders and argue that the Founding Fathers were anti-clerical Christians, such as Thomas Jefferson (who created the so-called “Jefferson Bible”) and Benjamin Franklin.Others (most notably Thomas Paine) and that the leading Founders (Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Wilson, Morris, Madison, Hamilton, and Washington) were neither Christians nor Deists, but rather supporters of “theistic rationalism”. As you know TGO, since you have a rather amussing obsession of religion, theistic rationalists believe that God plays an active role in human life, rendering prayer effective. They accept parts of the Bible as divinely inspired, using reason as their criterion for what to accept or reject. Their belief that God intervenes in human affairs and their approving attitude toward parts of the Bible distinguish theistic rationalists from Deists
So, what say I, GhostRider, in conclusion to a question that I personally will not invest anymore time in? America is a Democrazy so if that is what the majority of the people want – so be. If not, let the majority change it by voting.
-GhostRider Wisdom…that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
I’ll try to be brief in my commentary. As to the lack of traditional religious beliefs of our Founding Fathers and especially their commitment to keep religious influence out of government, this is undeniable. I’ve done quite a bit of research on this subject and have posted some of my findings on this Blog. Whether or not people want to believe it is up to them.
But be that as it may, that’s not my point. My point, quite simply, is that in this day and age an overwhelming majority of the American people continue to place a great deal of value on God, Jesus, the Bible and all the rest of this nonsense. In other words, they’d rather vote for a Mormon; someone who believes that the Garden of Eden was located in Missouri. As if there ever even was such a place! Or, as in the case of born-again Christian George W. Bush, that the universe is just several thousand years old! Really? Somehow the American electorate equates these utterly stupid superstitious beliefs, by grown men, with morality. Talk about dumb and gullible…
Just look around the globe… If you do so objectively you can’t help but notice that the most backward, most corrupt and most oppressive governments are the most religious. This is not a coincidence.