Does God Love America?

If you want to choose in the US, you'd better praise God. The Americans do not seem to care much what church leaders pray; just want to kneel ..

It was built in the 1920s in the style of the Spanish missions, topped off with one of those thatched roofs of red clay so popular in southern Florida by then. Catholics put their foundation a few steps from the famed Biltmore Hotel (inspired by the Giralda, the tower of the Cathedral of Seville in Spain) and named their church in honor of St. Therese of Lisieux, also known as the Little Flower.

These days, Coral Gables is mostly Cuban-American, says the pastor of the Church of the Little Flower, the Rev. Michael W. Davis, which could also explain why he feels so comfortable to be bilingual. Unlike many Catholic parishes in EE. UU., Says Davis, yours still has full banks and "reflects a vibrant community." He added cheerfully that the lovely setting of the church becomes a "wedding factory".

On a more serious note, Davis explains me the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA, for its acronym in English), the Catholic conversion program. He tells me about it because the most famous parishioner at Little Flower is a convert: Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida which is already touted as the leading Republican candidate in the next presidential race, often attends Mass with his wife, Columba, and daughter, Noelle. "[He] will go all week, and still comes regularly to the liturgy," says Davis.

Of course, Jeb belongs to one of the great families sake of USA, A much more associated with costumes J. Press and tennis in Kennebunkport with Mass. It is well known that Bush belong to episcopal wing of Protestantism, which dates back, in part, to mean Henry VIII break with Rome. Jeb, which stands for John Ellis Bush joked in 2013: "I am not a WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant); I think what you want to be a W.A.S.C. (White Anglo-Saxon, Catholic) ". When younger, Jeb showed no interest in Catholicism, the Vatican or anything else except, perhaps, baseball and grass. He attended Phillips Andover Academy, like his brother George W., the 43rd US president. UU., And played baseball there, like his father, the 41st. While in Andover, took a semester abroad, building houses for the poor in Caracas, Venezuela, where he fell in love quickly and deeply Columba Garnica Gallo, a Mexican high school student who also visited Caracas.

They married when she was 20 and he 21; besides exchanging vows, exchanged languages he spoke fluent Spanish, and she learned English. The rest of the clan took Bush used to be a Catholic family time, as happened in the mid-1970s-a time of coups and military juntas length and width of Latin America- probably gave some to think Columba's family that his new father was the director of the CIA.

Jeb and Columba lived in Caracas for three years, then moved to Miami in 1980, where he lives with real estate, investment policy and finally won. The couple attended a mass meeting, and their children were baptized and confirmed, but Jeb not converted. This was not due to a strong desire to maintain ties with the Episcopal Church, say his friends. It just did not feel encouraged to follow the path of study and then go through the rites to be a Catholic in shape.

That changed in 1996. He took the RCIA, the gateway to conversion, at the Church of the Epiphany in Miami when he was 43 years old. Jeb said that motivated "the faith of my wife. I did not want to raise our children in a mixed marriage ", but that explanation is a bit puzzling, as Jeb's children were 20, 19 and 13 years for those dates. He has also recognized that there was tension in their marriage by then, many of them related to his 1994 campaign for governor. It was the first application of Jeb for public office, and it grieved him greatly Columba, who has never liked to grace the role of being a wife to greet candidate, ribbons cutting and speeches.

"You're away from home. There's stress, "says a person close to Jeb, explaining the clouds that obscured marriage then. Furthermore, Jeb lost that contest. Sure, Bush had known defeat the passing decades, but the failure of Jeb was daunting to him in a year when so many Republicans swept public offices nationwide, and when his brother George was elected governor of Texas despite started as the least favorite. Like many people no matter if they are politicians, Jeb turned to religion in difficult times.

Maybe that emotional depression has been the catalyst for conversion, but Jeb soon enthusiast who loved Catholic rites and sacraments became. He even started wearing a rosary in his pocket-a habit that remains until this day-but retained his father's reluctance to talk about his faith. "He is not a Catholic mancuernillas" says Jim Towey, president of Ave Maria University near Naples, Florida, and has long friend of Jeb. With this, he means that Bush does not presume. "Faith is not something he talks a lot," says Towey, who headed the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives and the Community in the White House of George W. Bush.

Towey a exabogado, dedicated his life to Christ after a mission to Calcutta to work with Mother Teresa, and he became the director of her in USA. "Like many people who become [Jeb] feels fervor and said about it," he says. He remembers that brought Jeb and Columba to Tijuana to meet with priests who had worked with Mother Teresa. Visitors were greeted with a song on the bus, a reception moved something in Bush. "You could see their happiness. They moved to tears, "said Towey.

The path of Jeb Catholicism is a telling example of the noble and complicated, maddening and comforting, always contradictory and confusing in that faith and politics intersect in EE ways. UU .. The Americans like to say that they are independent thinkers and base their votes on beliefs and carefully made political goals, but often vote with their tribe. They are a people who go to church, but choosing a motley collection of chairs, some of whom claim to have been saved, as George W. Bush, and some with behavior certainly more secular, as Barack Obama. The growing group of presidential candidates this year is an intriguing tangle of inconsistencies when it comes to faith, much like the rest of US.

So while the media are obsessed with emails from Hillary Clinton or Ted Cruz boxing or belly of Chris Christie, one of the biggest stories of the year 2016 will be how faith has changed to candidates yes, and how could decide which of the dozen or so potential candidates will be inaugurated as the next president of USA the January 20, 2017.

Consider for a moment the messy and ambivalent messages that Day Takeover, a staging that is so peculiar and so appropriate for a republic that claims to love God but prohibits organized prayer in their schools. It is a ceremony that is secular, but wrapped in religious references and symbolism. The incoming president puts his hands on the Bible-until now has only been one man and was just a Bible and swear before God to defend a constitution which forbids a religious test for public office. It is both inspiring and contradictory par. And when it comes to God and politics, we all are.

The conversion to Catholicism of Jeb Bush was a very personal odyssey, one that millions of their fellow Americans have experienced in a church or another. People in USA change of faith with remarkable frequency. There are no firm statistics to compare, say, conversion rates in the nineteenth century to today, but social scientists believe they have increased. And this case is notable only because Americans are compulsive shoppers when it comes to choosing your pew. Think of the considerable increase of the uniquely American creed that is Mormonism, and charismatic evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson and Billy Graham, and the huge churches.

According to Christian Life Project and Public the Pew Research Center, more than half of all Americans will leave the church of his youth at some point, suggesting that most of the churches and temples and mosques are launchers not permanent homes. Many parishioners fleeing eventually return to the flock, but the Religion and Public Life Project, in its report "Faith in constant change," says that about 40 percent of those who leave the religion they were born not return. And many join a flock that is one of the religious groups fastest growing in the US. Who believe in a higher being but are not attracted by any church. These "no" account for almost 20 percent of adults in this country.

To complicate the picture, there is the issue of flirting with two religions. A relatively small number of Americans identify with more than one faith, for example: "I am a Muslim and Lutheran". But this does not include other growing group that social scientists know it's there but have not yet measured: Americans who identify with a religion but also sometimes other practices are borrowed, say, chanting Buddhist or Hindu meditation.

Sometimes it seems that buy churches while pushing a shopping Walmart. But they are also pious. The USA has one of the highest rates of church attendance among Western countries. About 40 percent of Americans reportedly attended a service last week. That figure is close to 15 percent in the UK. And with apologies to the high priest of atheism, Bill Maher, American voters have no interest for unbelievers. No atheist has ever been nominated for the presidency seriously, and only one of the 535 members of US Congress. He scored his religion as "none": Kyrsten Sinema, D-Arizona. And even when very few Americans choose your surgeon or plumber based on their faith, expect their politicians to be religious. Who know that they pray, while not seem to care much how or where they pray.

But how much faith is enough? As for presidential candidates, Americans prefer all kinds. Harry Truman was a drinker and gambler Baptist who did not speak much of their faith. Jimmy Carter rarely drank, never gambled and was an outspoken Baptist eager to share how born again to faith. George W. Bush, a Methodist Episcopal become, has told reporters, and told in his memoirs how he stopped drinking. "I think God helped open my eyes were closing because of drink," he wrote in Decision Points. He followed Barack Obama in the White House, who speaks of his faith in a less emotional and more intellectual way.

Americans do not seem so intolerant as they once were when it comes to judging a candidate's religion. Mitt Romney's Mormonism does not prevent him from being the Republican candidate against Obama last time. Joe Lieberman, who is Jewish, did not seem to be a burden on the return of Al Gore, as they won most of the votes in the presidential election of 2000. Rick Santorum, a conservative Catholic, topped the polls in the south in 2012, while John Kennedy in 1960 had solemnly sworn to Dixiecrats to not take orders from the Vatican.

But tribalism still rules the polls. Among the Mormons, 80 percent leans Republican, according to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. The Jews are inclined by 65 percent for Democrats. Atheists and agnostics are 71 percent Democrat. Black Protestants 88 percent lean toward the Democrats. White evangelicals are 70 percent Republicans. And while it is true that Catholicism is large enough to include Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner, Bill O'Reilly and Stephen Colbert, where they pray is often a good indicator of how they will vote.

The harvest of presidential candidates this season reflects the many contradictions of US with regard to faith. A minority has remained at his first church. Hillary Clinton has always been a devout Methodist; conversion was his only support the campaign of conservative Barry Goldwater to be a liberal in the 1960s under the tutelage of his suburban Chicago pastor, Don Jones, who led his youth group to hear Martin Luther King Jr. Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and minister, has never been away from his Baptist roots; His latest book is titled God, Guns, Grits and Gravy (God, guns, guts and thick sauce). Santorum has always been a Catholic; he tells Newsweek that his faith was strengthened when he was in the Senate, due to factors such as parish priest in northern Virginia, their experiences of brotherhood in Group Bible Study in the Senate and the deep faith of his wife.

Ben Carson, the renowned neurosurgeon, adheres to the teachings of the Seventh-day Adventists, including observe the Sabbath on Saturday and a literal belief in creationism. (He concedes that the Earth may have formed in six "periods", but insists that whatever has been slow, it was God and not a Darwinian struggle that made us who we are.) Carson says his faith was strengthened when I had an epiphany in his teens that took him out of a road, as he believed, would lead to prison and chose one that became the pride of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. (It is famous for being the pioneer of an operation to separate conjoined twins in the back of the head.)

"I had a quick temper," he tells Newsweek. "But the question is out of my life over the years. I've seen too many miraculous things. " Carson's presidential aspirations received a boost when he used the National Prayer Breakfast earlier this year to criticize Obamacare, while a few meters away of the president.

But the rest of the Republican candidates are, as Jeb Bush, turncoats, like many of the voters who hope to attract. Some of these changes have been modest: Rand Paul was raised a Presbyterian, and Episcopalian now. The Republican libertarian bent perhaps best known for a very different and less serious liturgy in his nomination to the Senate of 2010, Paul had to explain a college ritual hazing in which he participated at Baylor University, one that forced the uninitiated Nôze brotherhood (the secret society at the university) praying to a false god, Aqua Buddha.

2016 other hopefuls have taken more significant actions such as Jeb conversion to Catholicism. Cruz was born in a family of non-practicing Catholics, but his father, Rafael, a Cuban exile, came to his faith when Ted was an older baby. "I'm Cuban, Irish and Italian, and yet somehow ended up as a Southern Baptist," said Cruz, who attended Baptist schools to grow. His father is now a preacher's ministry Purifier Fire International, founded by religious presenters Benny and Suzanne Hinn, and Rafael preached the gospel more. (The elder Cruz has said that Obama tries to use the UN to take away Americans "our God and our weapon.")

Marco Rubio's story is just as interesting. Son of Cuban refugees, the Florida senator was born into a Catholic family, but when his family moved west converted to Mormonism, and Rubio was baptized in the church of Saints of the Last Days. In his teens, he returned to the Catholic flock, and still is Roman Catholic. These days, Rubio attends Mass, but since his wife was raised a Baptist, also spends part of Sunday in an independent Christian church near Miami. Some might say that this second round of church decreases Catholicism Rubio, but it is the kind of religious fusion, for lack of a better term, many Americans embrace. The father of Scott Walker, Governor of Wisconsin, is a retired Baptist preacher, and if he wins the White House, would be the first son of a preacher in residence there since Woodrow Wilson in 1913. (The same applies to Cruz.) As many Americans, Walker now attends a nondenominational evangelical church.

John Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio, who increasingly seem to join the presidential race, born into a Catholic family but became an Anglican after his parents died in a car accident. Today, he talks openly about his faith and how it affects their government, even quoting the gospels to defend its decision-rare among Republicans governors accept Obamacare funds to expand Medicaid. When you meet St. Peter at the gates of heaven, Kasich said a lawmaker from Ohio, "he probably will not ask much about what you did with respect to maintaining small government, it will ask you what you did for the poor ".

He sat in a closet with the door closed, worried that his parents found out and be saddened and infuriated by what he read. I was overwhelmed, in the purest sense of the word, printed words before him. It had been a very good student, the pride of his mother and father, who migrated from Punjab to Baton Rouge few months before he was born. But his was a traditional Indian home, and adolescent Piyush, enraptured with the New Testament, afraid to disappoint their parents if they saw him being carried away by the words of Jesus.

Today, the boy is no longer a Hindu, and is no longer known as Piyush. It is known as Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, is a Roman Catholic and proud. (Born in 1971, he took his nickname youngest son of the tribe Brady.) And yes, he says, his parents now look good. "I used to think he had discovered God, but I think it is more accurate to say that he found me," Jindal told NEWSWEEK. He flirted with Protestant churches of various types while growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, but when he attended Brown University found a Catholic church and was comfortable. In Brown, Jindal even participated in what has been widely described as an exorcism, even though the Rhodes Scholar avoids that label. Either way, this makes him the only candidate who has acknowledged being involved in something like that. Jindal wrote about this in a 1995 article, "Physical Dimensions of Spiritual Warfare" for the New Oxford Review. The incident involved a classmate, "Susan," who had suffered medical problems and seemed to have seizures, but not the way to Hollywood with his head spinning. However, Jindal and friends who held a prayer meeting to help Susan felt that witnessed a spiritual crisis and intervened. He wrote:

"The crucifix had a calming effect on Susan, and her sister was soon brave enough to put a Bible in front of his face. At first, Susan responded to biblical passages with curses and blasphemies. Mixed in with their vile attacks were short and desperate pleas for help."

Jindal has not needed to hide his involvement in a "spiritual warfare" -or that Huckabee is postulated to be both a preacher as a exgobernador- shows that Americans have strayed far from what might be called the problem Kennedy. In 1960, JFK was only the second Catholic presidential candidate of a major party. (The other, Al Smith, governor of New York, lost to Republican candidate Herbert Hoover in 1928.) JFK argued that personal faith had nothing to do with the government not only for their own purposes -to attract Protestant voters suspicious of his Catholicism but for all politicians. He said: "I believe in a president whose religious views are a private matter". In other words, God is good at home but not in the office.

That personal and voluntary separation of church and state seems to be an outdated notion. The dilemma for candidates today is deciding when is too much religion, and clearly has not yet reached the limit. Bush speaks for the majority of candidates when he says: "In relation to decision making as a public leader, one's faith should guide". What if you are Mormon or you've made a rite of exorcism or attended two churches? Most voters seems fine with it.

Seeing past presidents, there is a pattern, a precedent when it comes to God and government. Many of the great presidents appeared to follow what the masters in business administration called Best Practices. Thomas Jefferson attended church and believed in a supreme being, but most historians see him as a deist who believed in God but maybe not in the divinity of Christ. Whatever was his inclination or ambivalence, Jefferson is the man US. You can thank their freedom of worship.

Abraham Lincoln often evoked God when seeking to preserve the union and then to end slavery. But he never joined a church, but rented a pew when he was president. The House of Representatives accused in his 1846 campaign as "a mocker of Christianity". It was an accusation that Lincoln refused, at the same time acknowledged: "It is true that I am not a member of any Christian church." But signs abound faith. When freed slaves presented him with a Bible, he stated: "With regard to this great book, I can only say it is the greatest gift God has given to man."

Ronald Reagan was born in a family under the name of the Disciples of Christ and was known for not attending church when he was president. But he believed in God and believed God believed in the USA.. He so often compared the USA to the shining city on the hill -a phrase the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus that has become a sacred cliché in US politics.

Jefferson, Lincoln and Reagan showed that there are many paths to the political sky, and it matters less how the Bible how well used the pulpit reads.

The translation software provided a halting reading, as to a driver in a car that heavily used the gas pedal, and then, the brake pedal.

Could the author of the piece, NOT write it in American English, themself?

Now, what was the bloody point of the article, or was it a nonsensical parochial-only political piece, i.e., ‘yeahboo for Jeb’?

The nation already went through this ‘catholic identity crisis’ when JFK ran for president. Why do we have to sit through that, again?

God loves America far far more than she loves God. God never abandoned America. The US has abandoned God. OK, not all of it, but about half have and with more fleeing by the decade.

We are going to get what we deserve. God gave us our chance and we did well for a long time. Now we are blowing it.

More than that, it doesn’t read like it was written by a Mexican author. It reads like an American wrote it and it was posted on a Mexican blog, then the OP ran the translation for it. In fact, an American stumping for Jeb Bush.

I’m convinced there is an original English version of this out there. I am just not sure what exact word choices to use for the search.

I believe way more than half have abandoned God. And most of them don’t realize they’re following the evil one by not following God.

When this country allows less than a few percent (gays) to throw the whole country into a pit of sin they’re giving in to evil.

The politicians doing this don’t need the gay votes or the anti gun votes or the anti Christian votes. They already have them. That means their only motive is evil.

[Jefferson, Lincoln and Reagan showed that there are many paths to the political sky]

THOMAS JEFFERSON
“God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever; That a revolution of the wheel of fortune, a change of situation, is among possible events; that it may become probable by Supernatural influence! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in that event.”

“I am a real Christian – that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus Christ.”

ABRAHAM LINCOLN
In regard to this Great Book, I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good the Savior gave to the world was communicated through this book. But for it we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man’s welfare, here and hereafter, are to be found portrayed in it.

And having thus chosen our course, without guile, and with pure purpose, let us renew our trust in God, and go forward without fear, and with manly hearts.

RONALD REAGAN
If we ever forget that we are One Nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.

Let us be sure that those who come after will say of us in our time that we did everything that could be done. We finished the race; we kept them free; we kept the faith.

You are right, God loves us VERY DEEPLY, but we’ve evicted Him from our schools, courts, and our culture.

Look how we’ve changed in 25 years, and look at our leaders...

You all absolutely MUST READ “The Harbinger”, by Jonathan Cahn. This book proves, by prophesies in Isiah, that we’re on the very same path as ancient Israel, and if we DO NOT repent, our republic will be likewise destroyed.

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