Liberal Christians Challenge 'Values Vote'

Washington Post | 10/10/04 | Alan Cooperman

[madprof98]

Liberal Christian leaders argued yesterday that the moral values held by most Americans are much broader than the handful of issues emphasized by religious conservatives in the 2004 presidential campaign.

Battling the notion that "values voters" swept President Bush to victory because of opposition to gay marriage and abortion, three liberal groups released a post-election poll in which 33 percent of voters said the nation's most urgent moral problem was "greed and materialism" and 31 percent said it was "poverty and economic justice." Sixteen percent cited abortion, and 12 percent named same-sex marriage.

[snip]

"One of the things a few of us are talking about is a reassessment of how the Democrats deal with an issue like abortion -- could there be a more moderate ground, where even if they retained their pro-choice stance, they talked about uniting pro-choice people together to actually do something about the abortion rate?" said Jim Wallis, editor of the liberal evangelical journal Sojourners.

[snip]

The nationwide telephone poll of 10,689 voters was conducted by Zogby International for the Catholic peace group Pax Christi, the New York-based civic advocacy group Res Publica and the Washington-based Center for American Progress, a think tank allied with Democrats. It had a margin of error of plus or minus one percentage point.

The poll found that 42 percent of voters cited the war in Iraq as the "moral issue" that most influenced their choice of candidates, while 13 percent cited abortion and 9 percent same-sex marriage. Asked to name the greatest threat to marriage, 31 percent said "infidelity," 25 percent cited "rising financial burdens" and 22 percent named same-sex marriage.

[snip]

[madprof98]

These people just don't get it. The "values" vote was not about abortion and gay marriage exactly, but the fondness of the Left for those practices was symbolic of the Left's rejection of morality itself, of any meaningful sense of good and evil beyond just "good = whatever anybody wants to do" and "bad = stopping somebody from doing what they want." Unless the so-called progressive Christians regain their sense of sin, they won't be able to sell anybody else on the notion that they too are moral people.

[bella1]

I will go out on a limb and guess that they are also members of the World Counsel of Churches!!

[madprof98]

Sorry, left out the link to the whole article.

[TheBigB]

The nationwide telephone poll of 10,689 voters was conducted by Zogby International

I think we can end any serious discussion of this poll right here.

[lilylangtree]

These so-called liberal Christians are looking for justification for their satanic-backed decisions.

[GenXFreedomFighter]

I think a lot of them are motivated by 'social justice,' which usually means making sure the poor are cared for, and in this country today, means bigger entitlements and higher taxes. It's a worthy thing to be concerned about, and I contribute a lot of time and money toward that through the church. I just don't see government force and higher taxes as the solution.

[Cicero]

One of the things a few of us are talking about is a reassessment of how the Democrats deal with an issue like abortion -- could there be a more moderate ground. . . .

They certainly don't get it. Instead of killing 1.2 million babies a year, maybe they could make an offer and the pro-lifers and the pro-abortinists could strike a compromise and kill, let's say, 0.9, or even 0.8 million babies a year.

I don't think so.

How would they have felt if the head of the Ku Klux Klan had offered to lynch, let's say, just 900 blacks a year, instead of 1,500? Not an acceptable offer, I don't think. And not especially "moderate."

[Esther Ruth]

"33 percent of voters said the nation's most urgent moral problem was "GREED and MATERIALISM" and 31 percent said it was "poverty and economic justice."

They will get real far with this angle as a way of reigning in their socialism - not.

[paladinan]

I hear you. "Liberal" actually used to be a *good* thing, back in the day when it meant "personal generosity", rather than "celebrate the culture of death", or even "let's let government run all aspects of our lives"!

[CasearianDaoist]

I would say that these practices run down to an even deeper nihilism: They define a world view that marks humankind as an animal with a set of "appetites" that need to be "satisfied," and if this"satiation of these appetites" and be adroitly managed in the "proper way" by the "right sort of people" then the masses of mankind can be herded like cattle into their proper future. It is a bleak view of the human spirit. In fact, it is a denial of the entire spiritual dimension of mankind. It is a denial of the whole notion of the individual.

The notion that man is a spirit that needs must overcome appetites quit escapes them.

I am beginning to wonder if their is such a thing as a "liberal Christian."

We will here this sort of drivel for the next 4 years. We need to start responding to it now.

[tallhappy]

There's another name for "liberal Christians" which is secular humanists. Or they call them selves post-modern Christians.

They don't really believe the gospel or the Bible or in Christianity even. But they cling to the trappings.

Generally very intellectually unimpressive in my opinion. It's hard to know what they are ever talking about.

[unspun]

Progressive Strategy:

Plan A: Kill children as fetal infants (or as they hang by the neck out of their mothers vaginas).

Plan B: If you can't do this, make them dependent upon a Government that controls them, except for allowing all manner of corrupting influences to prey upon them through the media and statist education.

[heartwood]

I do wonder how pro-abortion Christians imagine Jesus would have helped a woman pregnant out of wedlock.

[brianstien]

As a card-carrying, non-denominational skeptic, I can count the number of times I’ve been inside a church (or, on my mom’s side, a Buddhist temple) on the fingers of both hands. While religion holds absolutely no sway in my life, the “cultural values” issue resonates nonetheless.

As I’ve followed the after election post-mortems, I think the question has been vastly over-simplified. Most of my contemporaries are parents. None in my circle are evangelical. When they express alarm at having their 10-yr olds ambushed by Janet Jackson’s mammary at the superbowl; or the profanity seeping into prime-time; or the extent to which Hollywood & Madison Ave bend over backwards to appeal to the most prurient impulses; they are condescendingly derided and scoffed at as toothless hicks, frigid schoolmarms, and ignorant bigots. The reality is that they are decent, reasonable people, weary of having their perspectives undermined and ridiculed at every turn. That patronizing hostility is one reason the issue wound up on the radar screen, and surely helped to rev up the Republican base this time around. But it’s not just the Bible-thumpers, and it describes a much broader divide than God, gays, and guns.

I hope the left continues to enlist Whoopi Goldberg, Michael Moore, and Susan Sarandon, et al, to preach how STUPID! IGNORANT! and GULLIBLE! we are. It will anger and energize us four years hence just as it did last week.

[NYer]

The nationwide telephone poll of 10,689 voters was conducted by Zogby International for the Catholic peace group Pax Christi

Solemn Warning! The following organizations are those who claim to be Catholic but dissent from the Truth as handed down from Jesus Christ, Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, the Divine Word, to His Apostles and their successors, the Pope and the Magisterium. These organizations are truly following in the footsteps of JUDAS - Just Undermine Doctrine And Spirituality. While they claim to be Catholic, they promote a man-made religion of unfettered pro-sin "choice" by the individual answerable to no one but himself (herself for the feminist reader), while promoting the spirituality of pagans. We all know what the serpent said to Eve; "you shall be as Gods" (Genesis 3:5).

Pax Christi (cited in Renew 2000)	This group may be the most widely recognized leftist organization to American Catholics. Long a proponent of nonviolence, Pax Christi promotes "action to transform structures of society." Aligned with liberation theology, "ecological justice," and the usual litany of modernist demands. A member of Catholic Organizations for Renewal.
DISSENTING ORGANIZATIONS Catholic Ping - please freepmail me if you want on/off this list

[WoodstockCat]

I think a lot of them are motivated by 'social justice,'

I agree, and the first thing for every member of this poll to do is show us how much they gave to their church last year above the tithe.

[CasearianDaoist]

Just you watch they will peel of a portion of the Christian vote with this tactic. What is need is to openly denounce them for the Marxists that they are.

Never underestimate these people's ability to mold opinion nor their ability to frame arguments. They will disparage the "far right" Christian vote" and try to get other segments of the Christian vote to disassociate themselves from that group. They will particularly go after Catholics. They tried this with some success during the Reagan years (J. Farwell, et al.)

It is time now to take off the gloves and expose them for the Marxist they are. "Social Justice," as we all know, is just a cover for income redistribution and all that goes with it. It is worse than theft and there is nothing moral about it.

Scialist is by it very nature immoral and against God for it interposes the state between Man's true nature and bewteen Man and God.

[Matchett-PI]

The Religious Left - Who they are and what they believe: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1275945/posts?page=67#67

[Matchett-PI]

Capitalist Ron Nash: "The New Face of Marxism - The Religious Left / Jim Wallis-Sojourners
Issues, Etc. ^ | Monday, October 11, 2004 | Ronald Nash, PhD
Posted on 10/22/2004 2:31:05 PM EDT by Matchett-PI

http://www.kfuo.org/ie_main.htm = The audio of an interview with Ron Nash. Scroll down to October 11.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1275945/posts?page=67#67

[petertare]

I know exactly who these people are--they populate my Methodist church. Undercover communists that seek to twist the teachings of the Master to provide moral cover to steal from my family wallet via government edict and implied guilt. This will be the new demorat tactic as we watch their ad agency inspired new packaging as dems "get religion".

My Bible is complete with examples and a moral map for individual redemption--not for enhancement of religious inspired government theft.