Fascinating article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
They call themselves "spiritual progressives," and they're getting louder and prouder.
Reacting to the successes of the Christian right and reviving the faith-fueled activism that drove 1960s crusades on civil rights and the Vietnam War, more liberals are embracing the language of faith
Again, fascinating. Notice the sentence structure here and the phrases used; "embracing the language of faith." Yes, that is double-speak for "using God's name to pretend we are doing His will while we fleece the gullible."
For decades, left-leaning activists "were so afraid of imposing their beliefs on others that we hadn't claimed a stance," said Carolyn Pressler, a professor at United Theological Seminary in New Brighton. "Suddenly it was the Christian right versus the secular left. We had abdicated."
No more. Nationwide, new books and websites are raising the flag of the religious left. In Minnesota, the trend has been evident in such arenas as the legislative debate over a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Evangelicals and Catholics who back a ban faced church activists who argued that godliness was on their side. The chorus of liberal religious voices also has been heard on poverty, immigration and taxes.
The problem here is that the term "left-leaning activists" are NOT religious at all. In fact, they place faith at the bottom of the barrel and push Jesus aside as a decoration for their handbills and litigation referrals. They use "faith" as a type of stamp to seal the daub of paraffin upon the unholy agendas so cited above. These people have nothing to do with God...they are working against His Word and they are doing so deliberately.
In order to be charitable, I will admit that there are some who did not know their faith to begin with and so were easily fleeced in this culture which has suppressed critical thought while prentending to encourage it.
Now, this article is pretty long so I won't bore you all with commentary throughout. Rather, I leave you with this point, well summed up by Steve Sviggum:
Sviggum said lawmakers are unlikely to listen long to anyone who claims God is on their side. "Instead, we should be working to be on God's side," he said.
It has never failed to amaze me that the people who claim God is on their side are usually the ones serving an immoral and diabolical agenda. For example...the pro-abortion woman who attacked me on an internet site in which I was defending life. She told me that she had the armor of God on while demanding that women be able to kill their children at will. The rainbow sashayers who claim God is on their side and that they have a RIGHT to recieve Jesus in moral dissent and mortal sin. And in the cited article, the "progressives" who demand a right that does not exist for it is against the order of nature, which God created.
It is not we who have a claim upon God's allegience...it is God who seeks OUR allegience. God is not the property of anyone; He is not subservient, and He is apolitical. God is our creator, and it is our job to do His will...not the other way around.
2 comments:
Those who claim God to be on their side are often the same ones attempting to refashion in their own image. We have a word for that—idolatry.
I've always thought the problem with Liberalism is that they place their good policies in the same basket with the bad and get upset when people reject the entire package because of the bad parts. Let me give you an example:
In the continuing self-destruction of the Episcopalian Church, a female "priest" called dogmatic conservatives a "splinter group" and proceded to rant about how intolerant they were being. She says, and may actually believe, that those people aligned against her in the current fight are anti-woman and anti-gay.
Unless I'm mistaken, her worldview includes two things:
1) charity to and (platonic) relationships with homosexuals is part of the christian calling that we all share
2) in order to properly embrace someone and encourage them to be accepting of charity, we need to give them equal access to positions of leadership and restate doctrines that are offensive to their sensibilities
The first one is a statement which all sides can agree on, while the second is liberal tripe designed to water down the traditions of a centuries old guardian of morality. She then berates her opponents as if they were in fact arguing for the mass execution of homosexuals and chaining women to bedposts so they could fulfill their vocations as childbearers.
Anyone versed in the actual beliefs of the right knows that this is an orcish caricature of the beliefs they hold. This raises the obvious question: Does she really have so little time in between her emotion filled sermons and her angsty self-loathing to realize that she has mistaken views about her opposition, or is she stuck on using a rhetorical style that too many people take for actual argumentation?
My goal is to highlight what liberals do, rather than to determine their motives. She represents one of two bad choices.
In the past generation, conservatives (religious, definitely; secular, for the most part) have striven to keep their policies in line with the views of the previous few hundred years. Liberals, on the other hand follow their own devices, creating their own philosophies rather than building on what has come before them. The ones that aren't altruistic merely pander to their own selfish designs. The one that are have the hubris to believe that they can reach closer to God than those conservatives who stand on the shoulders of giants in the faith.
The first rule in fait-politics should be that before you claim God is on your side, you better make sure you are on God's side first.
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