Leap of Faith

TNR ^ | Post date 11.15.04 | by Gregg Easterbrook

[.cnI redruM]

It's fun watching smugly superior liberals grasp for pathetic excuses. Particularly since they didn't lose this last election by a really large margin. Their expectations were out of touch with reality, and now they need a boogeyman to avoid dealing with the logical consequences of these expectations.

Thus, the 'progressive' left goes after the religious right with the same logical consistency that used to drive accusations that the Freemasons were poisoning the wells.

[Luddite Patent Counsel]

Easterbrook should stick to football. He doesn't really understand any more about football than he does about politics, but at least his TMQ column is somewhat entertaining.

[wideawake]

there is for example the Liberal Catholic Church, which rejects the authority of Rome and offers communion to any believer

Please. This "church" has maybe 2500 members.

And Jehovah's Witnesses, like Unitarians, are not Christians in any historical sense, since they believe that Jesus was only a creature.

[MarxSux]

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is not centrist but rather liberal. It has been at the forefront of the ecumenical movement.

[TommyDale]

"The American population cannot have more than one or two percent true evangelicals--that is, Christians who actively work to bring converts to their faith."

I think the writer needs to study this a bit more. He is making an assumption here, if not trying to redefine the actual term 'Evangelical Christian' to suit his argument. Of course, we know that this is a common method of the enemy, to define the terms of their argument, even if it is wrong.

[Jibaholic]

My fiancee worked as a choir director at a liberal American Baptist church for a while. The pastor there told the congregation not to see the Passion because of what he read about it's supposed anti-semitism in the New York Times. I'm not surprised that mainline protestant denominations are in decline.

[wideawake]

Also "evangelical Christian" does not mean "proselytizing Christian" it means "Gospel Christian".

And you don't need to knock on doors to spread the Gospel message - you can witness the faith in a multitude of ways.

[TheBigB]

Easterbrook's TMQ column on ESPN was ended months ago for anti-semitic comments.

[hlmencken3]

The author confuses the 23% of values voters with evangelicals, as well as being factually wrong on other key points. Maybe his facts are fake but accurate.

[.cnI redruM]

Undoubtedly true. However, Easterbrook does make a fairly accurate point that anyone thinking that churchgoers automatically vote for conservatives is an idiot. The converse of this proposition was empirically eviscerated rather than affirmed by the results of election 2004.

Namely 42% of the voters in 2000 were regular churchgoers. 42% of the voters in 2004 were regular churchgoers. Unless GWB got far more of the churchgoing vote in 2004 than in 2000, citing a new influx of religious voters as an explanation for the rather amusing result two weeks ago is fallacious.

[Tacis]

Poor, poor democrats! They'll believe anything to help them rationalize around the facts that Bush is a great candidate for the times and Kerry is a lazy, lying traitor.

But, with all this talk of the evils of Christianity (other than the no-rules Episcopals), haven't we talked for years about the strength and cohesiveness of the "black churches" in delivering the black sheep to the dems in every major election? Why is religious influence on political decision good when dems are involved but bad when non-liberal-progressive-radicals are involved?

[.cnI redruM]

Excellent question. One that leftisit Christ-bashers wouldn't want to take up for very long.

[NotSoFreeStater]

His column can now be read on NFL.com.

[TommyDale]

President Bush received 62% of the regular church going voters. Kerry received approximately the same percentage of the NON church attendees. Run these numbers in a computer and see where they fall out.

[not2worry]

IMHO, this guy doesn't have a clue!

[TheBigB]

Oh, okey-doke.

[TommyDale]

Thanks for that clarification to those who don't know the difference, including the author of the article. If anyone is in doubt, look up the term "Evangelical" or "Evangelical Christian" and see what the actual definition says.

According to this author, Muslims qualify as "Evangelical".

[MadAnthony1776]

I say the "Passion of the Christ". It struck me as being pretty much in line with the Bible. It was a whole lot closer to Biblical fact than "Jesus Christ Superstar" was. It didn't strike me as being anti-Semite. For believers, it just shows that this was God's plan and the Jews and Romans were tools in this plan.

[Preachin']

"And you don't need to knock on doors to spread the Gospel message - you can witness the faith in a multitude of ways."

While it is true that knocking on doors is not the only way, evangelism still centers around speaking the truth about a risen Jesus to the point that others repent and turn to Him.

[Preachin']

"And Jehovah's Witnesses, like Unitarians, are not Christians in any historical sense, since they believe that Jesus was only a creature."


Actually, the Jehovah's Witnesses teach that the Word was "a" God (ref John 1).