Posted on 06/03/2015 8:35:46 AM PDT by rhema
“The church” really is at the epicenter of the issue. Not so much how it preached, as how it walked. Gospel values never did fare very well on a “do as I say not as I do” model. Imagine the nerve of Jesus, asking you to actually BE his friend....
pastors surrender to IRS 501-C3 ... pathetic cowardice ...
Rather than invent an agenda to fit a problem....ask the question if anything really has changed over 200 years. Then go back and review newspapers of various eras. It was common place for assault, murder and robbery to occur from 1776 on. To think we were pure and clear at some point is a fraudulent way of thinking.
I finished a book from a guy’s journals of traveling around the eastern side of the US in the 1820s recently. He described in great detail the perils of murder and robbery between various urban areas of the time. No, folks didn’t really wait around for some marshal or judge to enact punishment. Murder was a comment event.
The film industry plays a MAJOR role in the moral decline. Joe McCarthy tried to clean out the Communists from Hollywood but was destroyed for his efforts.
Bush's FaultTM
Government successfully muzzled the churches by giving them tax breaks and threatening to take them away if they tried to insert themselves into the political process.
The Supreme Court made immorality the law of the land and continues to do so at every opportunity.
When Rhett Butler said, Frankly Scarlett, I don’t give a damn!
The more people say this, the more they convince me it's true.
The “Moral Majority” rallied to the cause when our morals appeared ready to head down the crapper in the 1970’s.
Those men have since passed on, and nobody has stepped up to take their place.
I’ve seen reaction about that, and yet as currently implemented it covers politician advocacy, not issue advocacy. There already are a lot of tax-frees who do issue advocacy (notoriously, PP itself).
And it can do nothing about advising congregants to be honest rather than hypocritical.
I’d be leery about blaming that. It is not the magic chain cutter that will set the church free.
Progressive godfather FDR did what progressives do best, hijacking the crisis at hand, the Great Depression, and molding the U.S. government into a pseudo-god. Although both New Deals failed on multiple levels, some of the programs and subsidies permanently persuaded people that an interventionist government is good. That was not enough. Progressives understood the "God-factor" must be removed to accomplish their goal of secularization, wherein religion loses cultural and social significance. In 1947, the Supreme Court, largely packed with FDR appointees, decided the First Amendment instituted a "wall of separation" between church and state in Everson v. Board of Education. In so doing, they were able to separate morality and ethics from government and daily life. Hence, the immoral mess we see today.
I would argue that the decline actually began well before that, with the pietism movement that took the same position, only from the church's point of view. That's about my only complaint with this otherwise excellent article.
The only way progressivism wins is without the presence of absolute truth. Without it, morality is defined by ever-changing social whims; what’s wrong today is right tomorrow.
The absence of right and wrong is not so much that no one is wrong (itself a very attractive goal for Progressives and other children) but rather that everyone is ‘RIGHT’, and all the time... since no one at any given time can point to an absolute and unqualified wrong.
It’s the world we all dreamed it ought to be... WHEN WE WERE FIVE YEARS OLD, before we grew up.
The Beatles.
Some old lady told me this 35 years ago.
I had to laugh.
pastors surrender to IRS 501-C3 ... pathetic cowardice ...
—
You’ve got a point.
In 1964, they said, “Elvis!”
Any “ism” is a suspect thing, be it pietism, Arminianism, Calvinism (ouch!), etc.
This is what man presumes to pony up to God for His approval.
Now there may be things in the mix that God can take to His glory and bless. But He isn’t going to pass His glory to founders of an “ism.”
LOL...my dad agreed.
THere are a number of ways that people can be “involved with politics.” Voting just one of them, and even then many don’t bother with primaries, which is a large throwing away of possible influence on its own. Then there is the matter of awareness and prayers and protests and publicity, etc.
The 501C3 puts an official damper on campaigning for particular politicians, and yet. It’s hard to blame that too much. PP is such an organization and they somehow manage to do their wickedness just fine. They know how to play issue advocacy like a Stradivarius.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.