History Begins to Repeat Itself with Pence's Tie Breaking DeVos Vote

With VP Pence Tie Breaking DeVos "Education" Vote - There can be no doubt that the USA is a "Christian" nation.

BERLIN: PROCLAMATION TO THE GERMAN NATION

FEBRUARY 1, 1933

...The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and co-operation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life....

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Churchianity (Holy Card) - The New GOP Religion of the United States

"The world used to believe in the divine right of kings," Father Ducey said in one of his sermons. "Today we have a, substitute—Churchianity.

Churchianity today believes not much in kings but it does believe in a golden rule, the rule of gold in the church as well as in the state. It tries to influence the work of God and secures the passage of unjust laws—laws not for good, or freedom or liberty, but in the interests of injustice, oppression and wrong."

"Churchianity covers wealthy sin with the mantle of gold. With Churchianity money is king and the king can do no wrong. The poor unfortunate criminal, the creature of wretched circumstances is avoided, despised and outcast, and the depraved, malicious sinner is honored and received by Churchianity and society without any show on his part of repentance."

Daily Inner Mountain - Butte Montana March 18, 1899

Father Thomas J. Ducey 1846-1909

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N9SQQBV

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The Real Terror of Religion and its Ultimate Victims of Abuse

The Real Terror of Religion and its Ultimate Victims of Abuse

There is a scene on the telly of Muslims in Paris wanting to crowd into the local mosque for comfort and those outside talking to the cameras about “they are not like those who kill (the terrorists) and that Islam is a beautiful religion of peace.”

I dare say most people on the inside of the religion bubble see it as something good and part of the social glue of family and community.

But the truth is that for the three main monotheistic religions of the mean little desert god by various local names, these religions all began in violence under generals Moses, Constantine or Mohammed.

What do you mean Constantine created Christianity? Yes Christ the state sponsored myth and deity of a dying dysfunctional Roman Empire needed one last push of unity that the Emperor/God Constantine needed to stay insanely in power. It has little to do with a person named Jesus who may or may not have existed in historical myth. 

His, the Emperor/God Constantine's giving deeds to basilicas to bishops throughout his empire to collect taxes and recruit soldiers and dispense Sharia Law in those very same structures was the stuff labeled Christ-ianity to carry out his noble cause of gluing the mess of his dying empire back together again one last time. (...all the king's horses and all the king's men could not put ...)

I dare say that secret ceremonies in his special Christian Army units still practiced worship of secret Army deities while the secret ceremonies of the bishops carried on secret ceremonies of debauchery with the rank and file etc.

That Charlemagne killed all his conquered people with death by beheading for not submitting to the Christian faith and its church spies. That Islam was offered all throughout  the Middle East and Asia at the point of a sword at the head of conquering armies.

That Moses took what he wanted in terms of land and slaughtered people in the old fashioned way, the Egyptian way.

That people in times of personal or national crisis turn to the old gods for comfort. Today is no different than back then.

I especially feel sorry for those minorities that are not welcome in the Catholic Christian Sect, intelligent women or gay men and women or the discarded children of clergy rape, of power's pleasure. 

I feel sorry for people waiting around for stale crumbs from the old closeted gay master’s tables. Better a kick in the gut than a pat on the back from that human trash running that particular organization into the ground.

As Auntie Mame says in the movie at least. “Life is a feast and most poor sons of bitches are starving to death.”

Religion is poison. Toxic to the human race. 

Religion is for Terrorists. 

(or losers)

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Anointed Saint and Martyr Kim Davis Organizes Christian Prison Gang to Terrorize the Unsaved behind Bars

On authority from Gawd, imprisoned county clerk Kim Davis wasted no time in starting a Christian prison gang to harass the unsaved in her immediate view. This on verbal support of several closeted Gawd-fearing GOP politicians from southern inbred red states - Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky etc. Words from the king of bullshitters Donald Trump don't really count I would think. 

“It is an abomination that people here in prison not demand salvation from my perfect Gawd”. She stated to a reporter before having a rumble in the Clark County Prison exercise yard with the people with the wrong shade of color and Da Gays etc.

“Looking forward to sign a book deal with Sarah Palin’s publisher. I like she have a unique story like she. Did I mention I like she.  Here in prison some of the girls remind me of Sarah…”

Mat $. Staver, Liberty Costs Counsel, passed the hat outside the prison to pay for Gawd favored legal advice.

“Jesus died only for me” stated Kim behind bars. “He died so I could hate. I am a perfect Disheveled Assembly of Gawd Chreesh-chun. Amen.”

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Christianity's Violent Path Through History

There is no "PC" way to cover up, dress up, forget Christianity's violent path through Western and Human History. Obama stated a truth.
— Globalist (@mcshea33) February 8, 2015

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Rolling Out The New Banner of The New Evangelization of The New American Christianity - in Arizona, Kansas, Utah.....

Rolling Out The New Banner of the New Evangelization of The New American Christianity - in Arizona, Kansas, Utah.....




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Jesus Died on the Cross to Make Black Friday Possible - Amen - I Am The Way The Truth and The Reduced Item Sale on Aisle 4 !

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The After Shocks of Benedict Sixteen's Papacy – Election of the Next Igor Clone as Pope

Pope Igor II (2013 -      )

There are turning points in the journey of life. I see this resignation of a power ranger, Benedict XVI, as just one after shock of Karol Wojtyla aka John Paul II. While the official view of JPII was one of media darling and or religious rock band like superstar, he was after all only a politician.

The office of pope and or bishop of Rome is a man-made position.  You just have to do some diligent and sincere research to find out that most of what exists today and aka as Christianity went through a Pagan filter and or sieve when Constantine followed through on Hadrian’s and many other Roman emperors' desire to have one homogenized Roman Religion to unite the Roman Empire over and above its roads, commerce and politics.

That much of what Catholicism is today is a surviving remnant of that Roman Pagan Religion thingy officially sanctioned by the Emperor/god Constantine the great.

Surprisingly, Catholicism did not die out with the Reformation. 

Successful businesses have a tendency to continue to stay in motion with cash flow and then stop or die with extinct cash flow. 

The Reformation in a small way resurrected something of the early Christian essence, pre-Constantine Catholic spin, in the form of some of the Protestant sects.

What Vatican II opened up in the way of a window was a thought or way of looking at what exactly Christianity was all about or could be. And maybe every region can its own traditions, can have a niche, but the overall product needs a unity to succeed. A unity yet to be invented by the many many sects of that old religion. 

Getting back to the media superstar John Paul II, he was without a doubt the premier Cold War Warrior or so his publicist sold him as.  And he did use money funneled, Laundered through his church to fund internal dissent in his native Poland.

Problem is that no man can serve two masters.  Render unto Caesar and Render unto God. I think that men who have immense power get confused as to who or what their original mission statement in life was when they started out on their journey through life, before they hit lotto and got power, power, power.

While the Vatican has always been a political animal as much as a religious one over the centuries, John Paul II with his connections to the West and CIA etc. seemed to lock the water faucet on full with dollars and military and political decisions coming out of the stone talking Oracle at Delphi like mask of Christ, whoever or whatever he was two thousand years ago.

John Paul II and this faithful surviving servant Igor aka Benedict XVI burned out the religious motor of the Vatican religion thing and now the business of the Vatican is simply bu$ine$$ no matter what the press releases claim or say.

In a way too, Reagan merged conservative politics with conservative fundamentalism religion and the resulting GOP mess is neither political nor religious but something nobody can or wants to use in the modern global culture based on the sacred high technology of the moment.

No matter what clone a bunch of John Paul II or Benedict XVI appointed stooge bishops/cardinals elect as the next pope, he will not have any real agenda to fall back on except the present existing Bu$ine$$ Model.

As such, below is a except from a writer Garry Wills, on the Colbert Show acting as a person, one of the people of God, the Church, that does not need a Vatican or a priest to commune with the divine.

The soul and spirit of Vatican II lives on!

Whatever.

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/423715/february-11-2013/garry-wills


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Santorum’s Coming Crusade Against IRAN – Onward Christian Soldiers!

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/02/rick-santorum-the-crusades-get-a-bad-rap.php

If you were worried there wouldn’t be a 2012 candidate touting the pro-Crusades platform, then today is your lucky day!

“The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical,” former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) told a South Carolina audience yesterday. “And that is what the perception is by the American left who hates Christendom.”…

Referring to the “American left,” Santorum observed: “They hate Western civilization at the core. That’s the problem.” Santorum also suggested that American involvement in the Middle East is part of our “core American values.”

“What I’m talking about is onward American soldiers,” Santorum continued. “What we’re talking about are core American values. ‘All men are created equal’ — that’s a Christian value, but it’s an American value.”

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Roman Empire Was Not Green

Don’t mistake later memes on the timeline.  Don’t insult Jews or early Christians with the lording over the animals in a wrong way now, as opposed to original context in Genesis.

One of the themes I have come to in my research and writing is that the Roman Empire was not Green.

Rome hated nature as evidenced by its military, numbers only, Julian calendar that abandoned the moon and or feminine (balanced) concept connected to nature.

By turning sex into a body function to serve the state, Rome, like the present Roma Nova American/European empire culture and its Roman Church, has turned sex into a commodity to be monitored, censored, taxed and exploited.

If Christianity is to survive in the west, it must go to its pre-Constantine roots and adore the abundance of gifts of a loving God to her children and abandon the reptilian chaos and natural imbalance caused by the Roman military mind.

Ref: Terry Weldon on Catholic Magisterial Teaching about Human Sexuality: Animal Considerations

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Season’s Greetings – Family Guy – on Christianity and X-mas

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The Collapse of Christianity in America ?

A good read.  A moment of focus.  A moment for thought.

Christianity in the US is collapsing 

...I wondered how, after this, things could have gone so wrong. Christianity went from the flowering meadow and Byzantine court to the tortured crucifixions of the Northern Renaissance. Exuberance and wonder gave way to a crabbed obsession with sin and Christians turned inward to fret about the health of their souls. 

There is, however, a tradition that suggests this enterprise is doomed. "He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." Wrapped up in our selves and preoccupied with working out our salvation, we defeat our purpose.

This is reminiscent of the paradox of hedonism – the recognition that if we aim for happiness it will elude us. John Stuart Mill observes: "Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness … Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness along the way." So long as we are all about our ourselves, we will never be satisfied. If our goal is our own salvation, we will not achieve it.

The better class of evangelical preachers these days – those who aim to attract a more upscale clientele to their suburban megachurches – don't say much about salvation. Like the secular self-help gurus they promise personal growth, "recovery" and other this-worldly benefits. But the message is the same: it's all about you. The church provides you with uplift, recipes for successful living, community, consolation, and encouragement – to meet your needs and satisfy your wants.

The rhetoric and politics of evangelicals and self-help gurus are different but the essential message is the same: it is the doctrine of salvation by faith according to the canonical born-again scenario. You are seized by the conviction that your life is profoundly unsatisfactory in some global way that eludes further analysis: you are sinful, neurotic, stressed, addicted, co-dependent – insufficiently happy. 

You assemble a customised mix of the beliefs that "work" for you: your personal faith. Through it you achieve salvation, healing, and personal growth, the start of an endless spiritual journey to further self-improvement. You, and other Americans whose only hobbies are themselves, support legions of pastors, gurus, therapists and motivational speakers.

It is easy to see why most people are contemptuous of this amalgam of credulity, sentimentality and narcissism, which in its evangelical Christian form is tied up with myths about the age of the earth and origin of species, sexual taboos and a conservative political agenda. With this as the public face of religion it's not surprising that in the US, as in Europe, Christianity is collapsing….

 Interesting opinion piece.

What is Chrislam?

There is a new fear term – fear word - circulating along the born again fear blog networks and that is the word Chrislam.

What is Chrislam?

Actually there is a Christian sect in Nigeria that started the term “Chrislam” in the 1980s in an attempt to build bridges of understanding in a 50/50 Muslim/Christian nation.  In that sect, both the Bible and Koran get respected as valid religious text.

In the context of born again blogs, whenever a megachurch pastor such as Rick Warren sits down and talks to a Muslim or has an interfaith conference or prayer service, or a Sunday school teacher outlines the basic facts of Mohammed or his religion, all hell has broken lose!

(An army of negro muslims has been spotted and rumored to be on the road to Smalleville USA at this very minute? What’s Jeff Davis’ cell phone number!)  Sad.

The ranks of Christian soldiers have broken ranks.  What next? Hispanics in the local Christian town square in the white heartland demanding jobs and socialism?  Secularism! Whatever.

Most of these fear blogs mention two things – Rick Warren – and the Koran/Quran - Korans are being put in the pews of these liberal, progressive, godless churches next to the bible. Yeah right. 

If there are two things the far right GOP Church Party types do not have to fear – that is Rick Warren or the Koran.  Boring stuff.

The same way Rob Bell got labeled as satanic simply because he choose to spell Hell with a small “h” as in hell, Warren can take the heat from these borderline lunatic fringe Christians and their paranoid blogs. And the Koran is simply the Koran.


Get a life people, won't you.

Have a nice day, free of fools and fear.

When did Christianity turn into a Religion of Hate Doctor Bachmann?

There seems to be a theme of Matthew that runs through this rant.

I have to wonder what personal torture that white heartland born-agains have to endure in order to fit into the still existing heartland prairie town square where conformity is of utmost important and existence? 

You conform or you get shunned, banished and or killed for your personal instinctual sexual being.  The ghost of Matthew Shepard’s memory, of Wyoming hate crime fate, lives on, a victim of being different.

I do not want to say this with anger and or hate.  But I think that two suppressed sexual human beings in the form of Marcus and Michele Bachman are hiding behind a cross of confusion in their desire to establish a Christian theocracy in America.  It is a life but not much of one IMHO.

The above photo is of a gaydar billboard outside St. Matthews church in Auchland, New Zealand.

'Gay-dar' church billboard vandalised

An Auckland church known for its edgy billboards has come under another attack from vandals. 

St Matthew in the City put up a "gay-dar" billboard on Friday, which shows a spectrum from gay to straight, with a cross acting as a gauge.

A message underneath states: "As used by the Anglican Church to assess potential priests." 

Church spokesman Clay Nelson said the sign aimed to highlight discrimination in the Anglican Church against members of the gay and lesbian community. 

However, it had already been vandalised.

Gay-dar or gaydar is a word I had to look up very recently. It is a new acronym for gay and radar.  Meaning that certain types of body language and or presence supposedly connotes gayness.  In a way, gaydar is more often used to taunt children or young people who do not seem to conform even if they are or are not by nature homosexual.

What is the good in this vandalism in New Zealand?  At least the topic of homosexuality, a 19^th century pseudoscience terminology, is being put on the table for discussion in the Anglican Church worldwide.

Sexuality, and not just homosexuality, is a closeted subject in all of Christianity or so it would seem to me. 

I am looking at the current civil rights thing here in the United States regarding legal rights for Homosexual Humanity.  And even if I only believe in limited legal connection and not marriage as a right, I have to step back and realize that partial rights are really a statement or justification for no rights.

That the 3/5 clause in the original U.S. Constitution to appropriate representation based on a slave, first as property, and secondly only as 3/5 of a human being status, has long ago been changed in that Constitution.

But this is not about voting rights which is what the Civil Rights movement in the 1960’s was all about.  That movement’s overall mission was to start establishing the reality of equality by first guaranteeing free access to the voting booth for all citizens.

This present era is bogged down in the decay of old ideas and old prejudices and things long closeted against the rights and privacy of each individual not only in this country but on this planet as well.

That the struggle for humanity throughout the ages has been to find one shiny perfect moment, a city on a hill moment, when man and woman, as part of God’s evolving creation, can stand on stable ground and separate the animal from the divine in our split natures and to maturely recognize the differences.  That, and to move on to higher ground and on to true ordained potential.

It is one thing to legislate equality.  It is quite another to legislate morality.  You cannot legislate what your definition of morality is.  Morality is oft times defined by geography more so than by any magic make believe revelation from above any normal timeline and existence.

Somewhere along the timeline, Christianity got obsessed about sex.  All sorts of twisted and bizarre justifications for spiritual enlightenment have to do with fasting from sex to get that spiritual high.  Rather than having discussion about sex, sex was not discussed.

All sexuality got hidden and closeted.  “So deep in the closet – you could see Narnia.”

Anything sexual got put under the label of sin and only the clergy could dole out definition or dispensation on a monopolized area of natural human activity.  Bizarre!

In fact, one of the things the first Council of Nicea did was ban self castration as mentioned in Matthew 19:12.  There was also no doubt a backlash against the old pagan practice of having sex with a temple prostitute to elevate your spirit and mental being up into your preferred god and or goddess presence.  But let’s not go there at the moment.

Never the less, Jesus, in the imperfect account of him in the gospels, does not seem to specifically mention homosexuality.  Paul mentions it here or there and usually in a long litany of sins.  Though they say that Paul was light in his sandals, I don’t believe it.

I think that Paul, the self appointed “Apostle”, was more likely a victim of a botched circumcision reversal operation so popular with middle class Hellenistic Jewish boys who wanted to fit in at the local gym amongst their gentile peers, so to speak.  “Look guys, I fit in, I am just like you now.” (wow)

For Paul, the lack of sex is a good thing, a spiritual thing.  But it was his thing.  Not necessarily any of our individual things.  There are many roads to spirituality, not just one.  And so it goes.

When did spiritual enlightenment, in so-called Christianity, get divorced from personal obligation to try and love yourself and your neighbor?  Love first.  Salvation second.  Not the other way around I would think.

When did the privacy of sexuality become the peeping Tom right of civil or church government to interfere in the life of an individual, or consenting adult individuals?

If you are unhappy in your own skins, in your own sexuality dear Marcus and Michele, please do not try to impose your unhappiness on others.  

In other words - get a life! 

Have a nice day.

All religion is politics. All religion is local.

Judaism, Christianity, Islam are not religions so much as political parties. Their founders - Moses, Constantine and Mohammed were all generals.  Politics and war came first in the founding of these ideologies.


If an outer space alien could communicate with me in English, a language I am a master of, and ask the 64 trillion dollar question about what is all this religious strife on planet Earth about, well here goes.


Do Jews, Christians and Muslims worship the same abstract idol and or God? NO!


Definitely not!


A Muslim’s mother’s beef stew is not the same as a Christian’s mother’s beef stew.  


Only momma knew how to cook beef stew. 


For you to compare my mother’s beef stew to your mother’s beef stew is an insult to my mother and to me. 


And there you have modern religion; same as ancient religion.


All religion is local – just like politics.  All belief in God is local as well.


That’s the point with ancient paganism when it went up against the corrupted form of Judaism aka as Christianity.  They were going up against the abstract of One God in One Temple in Jerusalem.  There were no annex temples in the ancient holy land.  God had no vacation homes.


The Jews had one God and he along with his consort Asherah were worshipped in the great temple of Solomon until the Babylonian captivity. 


When the Jews did come back from Babylon, along with their Babylonian concubines, they rebuilt the mud hut, the great temple of Solomon.  They discarded Asherah.  The feminine side of their god disappeared.  God evolved, he then had a male side only.  Christianity is based on Judaism and Islam is framed on these two previous male only gods/politick/religions.  


Of course the Jewish god only talks Hebrew.  The Christian god only talks Aramaic, Greek and Latin.  And the Muslim god only understands Arabic.  One idea.  Three different gods.  E Pluribus Unum?  Hardly.


So when the Roman Nazis come along and could not impose Roman politics onto Jerusalem, they destroyed the Temple.  The genie was out of the bottle.  Because once you remove the geography of the abstract Jewish god, anybody including the Christians or the Muslims can add on their mom’s recipe for beef stew to the traveling ghost of a concept of one God in that god’s diaspora.


Yahweh was destroyed in 70 A.D./C.E..  All the kings horses and all the kings men could not put Yahweh back together again or at least serve the same beef stew ever again.


While the Jews, as the object of their inspirations and prayers, point back to a temple god of two thousand years ago, the Christians point back to general Constantine’s mom’s beef stew recipe, the Nicenian  heresy, and the Muslims look to the Kaaba.
 
Hinduism, which absorbed all local gods as it evolved as a political entity, let the local deities stand and evolve too along side the poltical “religion” etc..  Ironically, here is a quote from what appears to be a polytheistic culture about the weird unrealistic concept of a one god – a one size fits all deity.  


Why are there so many Gods in Hinduism?

God is one. There is only one Real and True God who does not have any form or a name. It can neither be described, thought of or conceived through human faculties. But since we are so many, each one of us conceives God according to our attitude, view points and state of life -- just as a woman can be looked upon differently by different people: mother, by her children; wife, by her husband; sister, by her sisters; daughter, by her parents; granddaughter, by her grandparents; sister-in-law, by her husband's brother, etc. The woman is one and the same, but she is viewed differently by each one of her relatives. Similarly, we look upon the same God in many ways.

I believe most Hindu’s are vegetarians.  I therefore probably cannot compare their politics/religion with my mom’s one true authentic recipe for beef stew.

 

Whatever. 

In most ancient cultures, the heart was the center of intellect and intuition.  In their hearts, Jews, Christians and Muslims perhaps understand and commune with the same God. But using a scientific metaphor – language, words, geography  – in other words, a form of gravity is introduced into the equation  – which confuses the perfection of the human heart with the questions and imperfections of the human brain with its tags and labels.

If man is both part beast and part angel, the question of - do Muslims and Christians worship the same God? – who is asking the question - why - and in what force of gravity present? 

Word Worship, Kevin Shrum, Rob Bell

I just read an article against Rob Bell by a Pastor Kevin Shrum regarding Bell's upcoming book - Love Wins: Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. I have a few things to say and comment on.

Universalism: For Whom the Bell Tolls? – It Tolls for Thee

I think Shrum unfairly mislabels Pastor Bell as a Universalist and then tries to morph him into this supposed Universalist monster as the basis for his argument to shun him and his ideas. This, as well as to cut off all dialogue and understanding, to build a wall against his sharing with us all the message of Jesus and God's love towards creation.

Worship of a book can be idolatry. Indeed from a distance my perception of Islam is that it worships the words of the Koran. It is to me an idol. I have met few Muslims and have never gotten into a discussion with them about their religion. So in a way if I assume their worship of the words of Mohammed alledged to be the words of God/Allah is idolatry, that is a really big assumption on my part?

I read parts of the Koran and couldn't make heads or tails of it. After I gave the book away, I found out that it was supposed to be read out loud. I also have recently read that the King James Version of the bible was also written with the intent that it be read aloud. That modern translations of the bible block richness of language as well as meaning and connotations of verbal and oral history. If the literature that is the bible is now meant only to be read and not spoken, it is a great cultural loss to us all I fear.

Indeed the Reformation was formed out of the magic creativity of the human mind but more importantly out of machinery, the printing press. The signifigance of that invention and blood spilled in those days about over who understood the words of the bible better than your own translation or perception of such, the energy of anger, of that blood spilling and fire burning enthusiam still exists in the fundamamentalist quarters of Christiandom to this day IMHO.

In my youth and before the ultimate failure of Vatican II, my personal life was peppered with the left over resentment and hatred of that printing press revolution and the wars over words, that centuries old religion power struggle. Yes, words can kill and generations later the collateral damage of mere words, or the worship of such, can still be felt in some quarters.

In my search for spirituality and tainted by the Roman paganism of my youth and that name brand of Christianity, I have found many things and many words and many thoughts that suggest to me that the Jewish holy man Jesus is believable in some of his alledged teachings. I say alledged because scholars over at the Jesus Seminar have among other groups analysed the imperfections of the man made document called the NT – New Testament. Science, linguistics, historic research can shed new light on what I think some think is a perfect object worthy of worship – an idol so to speak - aka the bible.

Anyway, I ran into this article condemning a fellow Christian Rob Bell to some sort of shunned place though in fact I think some wish him a place in hell. My dear fellow Christians, hell is upon this earth and the fundamentalist business of saving souls by cracking men over their heads for not conforming to an imperfect book is like so medieval and archaic. The truth will make you free. Seek and you shall find etc.

I only just became aware of this Rob Bell fellow through the blogosphere and his unique approach to reaching out to humanity beyond his immediate circle at Mars Hill. I found Rob's You Tube on Resurrection and I loved the energy. For the first time in years I could connect with the concepts of the NT and that guy Jesus, and fully imagine that anything he said or did was, or could be, relevant in this modern age.

These rants in the fundamentalist blogosphere about Rob Bell are spilling over to people like me. I want to buy his book now. Free publicity like that some people have to pay for.

I did some research and came to the conclusion that Bell has a brilliant gift to take the rawness of Christianity and commmunicate it to others. His style is modern which is why I think some are jealous of him. He is no rock star but his style is definitely M-TV.

As far as I know Pastor Rob Bell is still a literalist fundamentalist Christian. While some of it works for me in some of his video ministry, it is still just at some level a hook to bring people into his mega-temple. Business is business. Consumers have to be made to want to consume. Etc. Competition is tough these days.

While most atheists are purported to be anti-God, they are in fact in my opinion just anti-religion and based on past and bad experiences of such. The Christian faith is fighting for market share in a dwindling or dying market. I think Pastor Bell is reaching out to some lost sheep. Pastor Shrum seems to be cutting off his own nose to try and smite Rob Bell's success. Pastor Shrum is, to paraphase the famous Ronald Reagan adage, breaking the eleventh commandment of Christian fundamentalism and speaking ill of a fellow fundamamentalist. Naughty. Naughty. He should know better.

Getting back to Pastor Bell:

Don’t you realize that the beach of universalism on which you’re stepping has been tried before and that, just as before, a tidal-wave of biblical truth and historical/theological consensus will sweep you away? You will become a footnote in the history of the church as just another well-intentioned ‘theologian’ who tried to spit into God’s powerful whirlwind of truth. Rob, I’ve never met you, but please, get off the beach before your stellar career is swept away.”

I have read of many so-called heretical beliefs in the past of Christianity. They have been killed off, murdered off literally, and swept into the dust of history. But seemingly they, the logic of these questioning beliefs, from reading the bible, they keep resurrecting themselves. Shrum starts his critique of Rob Bell accusing him of Universalism, which I don't honestly completely understand, as if that is enough to throw the first rock so to speak at a dissenter, a “heretic”, amidst their own fundamentalist ranks.

I have watched the hypocrisy of religion parasiting itself onto our government in my lifetime with its limited world views and cash grabs for “charity”. I have also seen the decline of morality in this nation and in particular the government at a rate to equal the march backward in time toward a Christian theocracy which I think is what fundamentalists want.

Looking at the fundamentalism of the Iranians and the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan, I fear a rule by people who worship words in books and claim to be the same as God almighty which is blasphemy in my point of view.

Did “family values” make honest men of Wall Street bankers? I don't think so. Quite the opposite I think. There is something wrong with any fundamentalism . It lacks heart and soul too. It is do as I say and not as I do little sheeple.

Well anyway the thing in this article against Rob Bell that inspired me to write this is below:

But, Rob, I have more questions. If universalism is true, I’m going for the best of what both worlds have to offer – eat, drink, and be merry in this life for tomorrow I will die, and when I do die I get heaven no matter what happened this side of eternity. And what’s my reward? I get away with it! Fantastic! Again, please don’t tell me that I should still follow Jesus in this life because it will make my life better. Are you kidding! I’m a ‘stinkin’ sinner’ who is already uninterested in and struggling with changing my ways, so if I don’t have to and I can still get heaven and if thumbing my self-important finger in God’s face has no eternal consequences, this is awesome and I for one am all about it...

I am reminded of Jesus' parable about the workers in the vineyard and the same wages paid to those who toil all day or for just one hour. When confronted by dissatisfaction from the day long workers, the owner of the vineyard invokes the golden rule of buisness – he who has the gold makes the rules.

Where do these self-hating, word worshipping fundamentalists get off telling people what God can dole out in terms of salvation? Who are they to say that they are the only 100% kosher Christians on the block?

“God rules the world!” Not you. God saves whomever he wants to. No matter what your so-called rule book says.

Bell in an interview denies being so-called Emergent. What I have learned from e-mails and internet articles about the Emergent church movement, is that it is in theory trying to get above the heavy gravity of the poorly translated inspired word of God. That if a congregation is to remain a vital part of any community in this secular godless global world, it needs to reach beyond those poorly man translated words to the heart of matter, to the heart of Jesus and his message of universal love of creator to its creation – all of his, her creation, not just a chosen few in the bible belt.

Let me be prophetic here too Kevin. Christianity must change or die. The global reality is indeed secular and godless and it is a drug that destroys humanity and men's souls. That if you cannot get to the heart of Jesus' message of love, understand and plant its seeds, then all is truly lost in this world and the next.

Secularism and the Tea Party

Christianity and the Tea Party = zero.

It does not take rocket science to notice the underlying unchristian message of the so called Tea Party political movement.

The primary underslying message of racism accumulates evidence with birthers who claim that the President was not even born in this country. Obama was born in Hawaii, one of those last two strange states that entered the union in 1959. Hawaii is the one with a bunch of islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Alaska is the large chunk of ice west of Canada.

Alaska has bred a favorite daughter in the form of Sarah Palin, a half term Governor. Palin’s Tea Party appeal of uttering words, verbal clutter onto the media airwaves does not make her a media whore but she is trying. While no direct racist, Palin buddies up to every screwball idea that comes out of the seemingly disenfranchised white middle class movement. In a way, her’s is part of a populist movement that springs up in hard times in America. The times make Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin shapes nothing and just stands there signing American flags for fans.

Together or separately, the Tea Party represents dissent. Big government is a problem if it is mismanaged. It is. But it is mismanaged by the Congress that puts politics first and fiscal responsibility second, third or wherever.

The Tea Party comes at you with more angles than a hand cut diamond. Birthers, anti-large government, get rid of minimum wage and social security, eliminate citizenship for the children born here of illegal immigrants etc. This makes for a stew of many flavors and textures. Nothing but fiscal responsibility and a good economy will get America out of its present economic hole in the ground.

Politics need to change to cooperation, a Christian virtue, on both sides of the aisle if that is the stated goal of a future together and not the future separate and splintered into a thousand petty interests. Chaos. Chaos is definitely a breeding ground of things unchristian.

When I use the word unchristian up front, I am talking about the lack of empathy that the average Tea Party-er has for the other guy in America. Eliminating the minimum wage or social security is kinda anti-human – would you not say?

Social safety nets help keep the big ball of wax together and moving along. Draconian nineteenth century ideas need not apply to the present situation which is what most Tea Party ideas end up sounding like.

So in the midst of entrenched secularism and atheism, the Tea Party sits waging its own agenda using standards surrounding them, namely secular, and definitely not Christian.

The GOP, having been the Christian Party these past twenty odd years now waits for Tea Party dissent to translate into votes for what is now a secular agenda of the moneyed few against the masses it would appear to me.

The media is partly to blame for this. The corporations that own the media are also part of some at present grand conspiracy of everyone having America shooting itself in the foot on real issues rather than cooperate and get back to being a reasonable great country again.

Atheism - defining it

Without God. Without Religion. Without sensitivity to human values. A great big ugly me only world. Greed. Progress. Secularism. How do you define atheism?

No easy or simple definition. The civilization that has evolved since the last ice age is strutting somewhat sans many of the ancient belief or superstition operating systems these days.

Cold, mechanical, soulless. The modern age is the modern age. Some of us see the lack of culture everyday related to a lack of respect for centuries old traditions that many times are also the local culture or the local religion.

A burger from a Yankee fast food place is symbolic of the changing face of global culture, capitalism and human values.

The American middle class model, which the whole world seems to desire, will strip the planet of all dignity and resources unless we somehow learn to not only conserve but preserve traditional ways.

Global integration to some godless model or ideal stands side by side with long standing models. Tomorrow is as bleak as we individually choose to make life. That, without outside forces of economics pushing us along an uncharted untraveled road of life.

The message of Jesus in his Gospels is as real and raw as it was two thousand years ago. A man’s soul is perhaps the sum of all the values that a man holds in life. If we serve ourselves, do we serve others as well? How to live in the world and to be free from the outside forces of change that want us to conform to somebody else’s model of living.

Some Christians may fear atheism as a belief system. Some Christians do not practice what they preach or understand the message.

The message is not to sell your soul in this life and to prepare for a kingdom not of this earth after we pass away. Godless, soulless atheism has always existed in the selfish ways of men and women.

The capacity to bring heaven to earth has always been there. Trick is in trying to focus on the goals of Jesus’ message to love your neighbor as yourselves and in equal measure to attachment and love for the Creator God.

Anne Rice Continued...

Anne Rice Continued…

I am not a fan of the author but she is saying some really heart felt emotional statements about religion.

"When does a word (Christian) become unusable?" she asked. "When does it become so burdened with history and horror that it cannot be evoked without destructive controversy?"…

Yesterday, the author reiterated that her faith in Christ was "central" to her life. "My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me," she said. "But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become." Guardian UK, July 30, 2010, Alison Flood

Interesting fodder for thoughts in a faith that has so many sects that it seems sometimes not to be a coherent faith but more of a cultural label.

This follows my own thinking in that you should follow the teachings of Jesus first before you serve any other purpose including organized religion that sometimes only gives lip service to the words and meanings of Jesus.

More Etouffee - Anne Rice on Religion

An interesting quote from Anne Rice after her veiled slap at Catholicism (Christians?) in previous days.

Pick a new religion for ex-Catholic Anne Rice?

But maybe Catholic theology was less the problem for Rice that the very human institution, particularly the U.S. Bishops. Rice told the Associated Press:

She was troubled by the child abuse scandals in the church, and the church's defensive reaction, and by the ex-communication of Sister Margaret McBride, a nun and hospital administrator who had approved an abortion for a woman whose life was in danger...

I believed for a long time that the differences, the quarrels among Christians didn't matter a lot for the individual, that you live your life and stay out of it. But then I began to realize that it wasn't an easy thing to do... I came to the conclusion that if I didn't make this declaration, I was going to lose my mind.

It is hard in today’s 24/7 media sabe world to ignore the imperfections of man-made institutions such as the church.

Anne Rice, apparently felt uncomfortable being a card carrying member of a religious body. She should realize that as Jesus said of Peter – “Upon this rock, I build my church” that Peter the rock had many human flaws and so do all institutions.

It takes sometimes an almost mystical strength to see through to the heart of the matter and to the grace at the center of it all, seeing through to the Creator and the Creator’s plan.