Politics & Religion- Who do you think you are?

Talina: Religion is all about geography.

Thank you, Talina.

"....we are in a sense chipping away at the freedom and liberty this country was build upon."

AMEN

Nice post.

"....we are in a sense chipping away at the freedom and liberty this country was build upon."

It's such a shame...

Religion is also culturally defined as well. I am particularly repulsed by the integration of American culture, religion with politics. This is a very unhealthy mixture. What I am paticularly distressed about is as a religios person, is being painted with a broad brush by those who are rightly experiencing revulsion of this unhealthy mixture.

RKL

"... being painted with a broad brush by those who are rightly experiencing revulsion of this unhealthy mixture."

Wow, you totally hit the nail right on the head for me Robert!!

Talina,
After you dropped out of martinchill's discussion I posted a reply to you.
We do not now and never had what is called religious freedom in the U.S.

We have a constitutional article that states no religion shall be established by our lawmakers. So it is freedom from a governmental chosen national religion.
This is why you, I, and many others are quite disturbed by this political administration and their followers wanting to codify into law ideas that are based on religious belief and thought only.

We do not now and never have allowed anyone to worship anyway they wish. Religions are not allowed to trump constitutional and state laws to coerce and abuse their followers.

Barbara S, what do you mean, religion is about geography?

"We have a constitutional article that states no religion shall be established by our lawmakers. So it is freedom from a governmental chosen national religion.
This is why you, I, and many others are quite disturbed by this political administration and their followers wanting to codify into law ideas that are based on religious belief.."

Cena- Thanks for replying.. I had to go clean the bathroom that is why I missed your reply. ;-) Anyway you are right things are getting way out of hand! Our politicians are in office to represent us as a whole not to fulfill their own religious, political or financial agendas.

It is obvious they are not interested in representing us as a whole and I am sooo glad people are waking up and seeing this… The question is how on earth are we as a nation going to change the expectations and get things turned around??

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Look, I acknowledge religion. If it
were not for the religious basis
driving this country, we'd probably
all be speaking Russian today.
(That's a reference to America's
perseverance in the Cold War)
But that's no excuse for what's
going on now. These GD GOP
meetings look more like
fundamentalist tent meetings
than assemblies charged with
the missioni to govern a nation.
Their idea of governing is
to slam their hands on the
Bible and proclaim the truth.
(Which is, in all seriousness,
based in a total fairy tale.)
Tom Delay makes sense as
a New South businessman/
churchman/politician. And
that's exactly where I hope
he is able to keep it.

Edward,
Many early and even a few contemporary Christian communites are "communal". Russia is and has long been a Christian nation.

The U.S.S.R was a military dictatorship. The revolution in Russia was against the monarchy and the church becasue of how violently they together oppressed the people. The U.S.S.R. merely changed the "religion" to a "personality cult" and maintained a tenent against religion as a tool for not being willing to share power with a church.
The same in China and other self named socialist or communist nations that were in fact military dictatorships where the people were forced to honor "worship" the leader in a religious way.

what a better world this would be if there was no religion at all.
people are dieing because of it

Talina, thank you for opening up a topic that can carry us far into thought.

First, what an amazing coincidence. I've only known one other Talina in my life: It was the street I grew up on for 20 years.

It's time we turned this around, ya'll (I'm a Texan). I've begun to ask people "What Would Jesus Do?" And I mean Jesus... not the apostles, not evangelists, not saints. What Would Jesus Do?

Jesus never got in people's faces. He waited for them to ask him a question, then he answered calmly. When asked about having to pay taxes he said, "Render unto Cesar etc.". When asked what it took to get to heaven, he told the rich man to sell all he had and give the money to the poor. The man left sadly, knowing he couldn't bear to do it. But Jesus didn't follow and berate him or pass a law forcing him to do it.

So, when someone talks of Christian values, ask him/her "What Would Jesus Do?" If Jesus were in charge of the National Budget, would he spend the money on war... or the poor?

Would Jesus want laws judging a person's morality? He didn't. When faced with a person about to be punished for her sexual behavior, his answer was "Punish her if *you've* done nothing wrong." Not "punish if you've done nothing *sexually* wrong. Just plain, old "if you've done nothing wrong". Jesus' message was "You have enough to worry about with you're own salvation to worry about others".

I consider myself an agnostic who is a practicing atheist. I believe that true Christian values of mercy and love are good beliefs. But I don't feel the need to believe in a god in order to practice them. To me the core value of Jesus is "Work out your salvation and allow others to do the same".

Well, actually Christ did get in their face -- but except in one instance, did so very tactfully (whipping the money changers out of the Temple doesn't make the tact test.) The problem with religion and politics is that a lot of people actually believe in not only a god, but in only one type of god -- and the implication then is that all of the gods that are not the type of god that they believe in are false gods. Which is fine right up to the moment they decide to put the coercive force of government behind their beliefs. Then we start having all kinds of oppression and nasty things happen -- fortunately or unfortunately God tends to only talk to people that actually believe in Him, and that is the crux of the problem only true believers know what He is saying. That can get scary if you have politicians saying things like Bush did -- when he was asked whether he had talked to his father about the potential consequences of overthrowing Hussein, he responded that he talked with another Father about it. And unlike one of the comments made earlier, it may have been a good thing that America did not become Communistic, but I am not so sure that it was such a good thing that some of the third world didn't. If you look at literacy rates, standard of living, infant mortality rates and focus in on Afghanistan -- all of the countries which fell to Communism rank higher than the countries in the region which were client states of the United States (except Israel). The truth of the matter is, if we had not assisted the Taliban in fighting off the Communist invasion -- we might not have had a 9/11 to talk about. I am beginning to believe that for much of the third world, communism even the brutal Stalinist type may be a necessary precursor to democracy.

After spending the first 63 years of my life being "unreligious" I got curious and spend time learning about it. As I progressed in learning it became more and more obvious that the Christian bible contains the only truth that makes sense. It really is too much to explain in this context, because it took a while to come to that conclusion. So the only thing I can recommend to those that are really interested is to commit to attending a "Bible Church" for a few weeks, where the only thing you hear comes right out of the bible. Better yet if you tell a Pastor or Elder that you don't believe, but are curious. Not to say that any of the organized religions are necessarily wrong, but the purest word of God is taught in these unaffiliated churches. You may need to try more than one to find one that fits you best. If you can't be bothered to do this then I can't be bothered to listen to your responses, because I've found that the less one knows about this subject, the easier it is to believe it's all wrong. And if you really believe that religion and government shouldn't mix then what about the laws against stealing, killing, lying, etc. do you really want to get rid of them. Also, if you believe that we have never been a Christian nation you have been misinformed. I've been to the brainwashing that passes for an education now, but the benefit of having lived in a communist country let me recognize that garbage for what it was. I really feel sorry for all of you that have heard only one side. If you're interested to find out more send me an e-mail, but identify it as "gather-religion" in the subject, because I delete anything I don't recognize immediately, there is just too much junk out there. The address is 'gvik@msn.com'.

Howdy, Gunter. I, too, have had a life-transforming change, only in the opposite direction. I was raised in a household with a strong religious belief and have a rich knowledge of christian faith. As with you, my personal experiences have led me to certain beliefs that differed from my past. However, just because I don't believe in something, doesn't mean that I don't see the good it has to offer.

No one wants to do away with laws governing murder, theft, cheating, etc. But those laws aren't owned by christians. Those same laws exist in every culture regardless of religion because they are a common contract between the people of a community. Pretty much an "I don't kill you, you don't kill me and we can both walk around unafraid" kind of thing. Most other laws are based in economic and political reasons rather than religious ones.

Laws that classify as religious-based are those that proscribe personal behavior or behavior between consenting adults based on the notion of sin and tolerance of sin. It is these laws that people who are against a religion-based government criticize. Christ regularly criticized laws and interpretations of laws that condemned people for personal behavior as when he healed or gathered and ate wheat on a Sunday, or when he confounded the group that wanted to stone the adulteress. He didn't support those types of laws then and I don't believe he would, now. His message was that personal behavior is a personal thing.

The values of personal behavior taught in all the major religions are good practices for a happy, healthy life. Treat others as you would be treated, take care of your body, let go of negative emotions and engender good ones with those you meet. But, christians don't own those values, either. Buddha taught them centuries before Jesus and wise men taught them millennia before that. And, in my experience, these actions have the same effect whether or not I believe in a deity.

You are right that this is indeed a christian nation. This is easily seen by the fact that the vast majority of citizens are christian and our constitution and community laws grew up in a christian culture. However, once again, Christ stressed personal behavior was a personal responsibilty... not the responsibility of the rule of law. And the founding fathers, those wise, christian men who gave us democracy and a stable, self-checking government gave us a framework that allowed us to change things when they no longer fit us as a culture. That's how a group of men who practiced slavery could draft a document that would eventually abolish it.

Our culture may have grown up christian, but perhaps it's moving away from it. It can still preserve and encourage good behavior and even know and understand the debt our society has for religions for their codifications of good community behavior. But we no longer have to insist that everyone subscribe to that same belief. And we don't have to enforce religious beliefs with the rule of law.

Very well said Fish, but if one believes that a creator exists one has to pick a belief. There are resons why I think the bible is the true authority. In it every scientific principle stated has been found to check out so far. It says that the earth is a globe hung in empty space, whereas (I've heard)Buddhism teaches that the earth is a flat triangle resting on the heads of elephants, and earthquakes are the result of their headshaking.

There are many truths in every religion, but I'm looking for all true.

And yes, we have a great document that allowed us to get away from slavery, but we are now allowing partial birth abortion, which I equate with murder. Personally I can't picture a single cell as a human being, but somewhere in that process I believe it becomes one.

I don't want to enforce a religious belief with the rule of law, that would serve no purpose since it would make that belief meaningless. But I would encourage everyone to check it out. But now this encouragement is being twisted into trying to dictate. If anyone tries to do that he's not applying Christ's principles, even though his goal is right.

I would rather believe and be wrong when I die, than not believe and find out I'm wrong when I die. (I think Pascal said it first).