Posted on 06/01/2005 11:53:24 AM PDT by Unam Sanctam
You mean when a bunch of Bible-thumping conservatives declared independence, fought a war, wrote a Constitution, and founded this country?
Oh, this is rich.
Dan
It is palpable, isn't it?
...but who'd want to palpate it? Ick!
Their ignorance is killing their churches. Historically speaking, the NCC is destined for the proverbial outhouse.
OP had it right (whatever happened to OP?)....Ignore them, have children, raise them. These folks abort their babies, have unions that don't have babies, and encourage their members to keep their birthrate below replacement level.
They're gonna run out of players before they run out of clock.
The really sad part is that many of these people sitting in the pews are good, conservative, ignorant people.
Either they don't know that where their money is going is working against them or they don't care. How many Freepers still go to these apostate churches?
Member churches have different was of funding their hierarchies, and it's from denominations that the NCC gets it's money, but I'd say it's an inescapable fact that member tithes at a minimum FREE UP other hierarchy money so that they can send cash to the NCC.
IMHO, the NCC does absolutely nothing of value that's returned to denominations....much less local churches.
Very good point. One of the most effective things Bible believers can do is have LOTS of kids, and raise them in God's ways.
Dan
So let's examine "The Real Agenda of the Irreligious Far Left"
1. Abolition of private property and the application of all rent to public purpose. The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (1868), and various zoning, school & property taxes. Also the Bureau of Land Management
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. Misapplication of the 16th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, 1913, The Social Security Act of 1936.; Joint House Resolution 192 of 1933; and various State "income" taxes. We call it "paying your fair share".
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance We call it Federal & State estate Tax (1916); or reformed Probate Laws, and limited inheritance via arbitrary inheritance tax statutes.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels We call in government seizures, tax liens, Public "law" 99-570 (1986); Executive order 11490, sections 1205, 2002 which gives private land to the Department of Urban Development; the imprisonment of "terrorists" and those who speak out or write against the "government" (1997 Crime/Terrorist Bill); or the IRS confiscation of property without due process.
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly. We call it the Federal Reserve which is a credit/debt system nationally organized by the Federal Reserve act of 1913. All local banks are members of the Fed system, and are regulated by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). This private bank has an exclusive monopoly in money creation which in reality has ended the need for revenue from taxes. So why do they tax? To FOOL YOU into thinking they need them.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transportation in the hands of the State We call it the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Department of Transportation (DOT) madated through the ICC act of 1887, the Commissions Act of 1934, The Interstate Commerce Commission established in 1938, The Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Communications Commission, and Executive orders 11490, 10999, as well as State mandated driver's licenses and Department of Transportation regulations. There is also the postal monopoly, AMTRACK and CONRAIL
7. Extention of factories and instruments of production owned by the State, the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. We call it corporate capacity, The Desert Entry Act and The Department of Agriculture. As well as the Department of Commerce and Labor, Department of Interior, the Evironmental Protection Agency, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, Bureau of Mines, National Park Service, and the IRS control of business through corporate regulations.
8. Equal liablity of all to labor. Establishment of Industrial armies, especially for agriculture. We call it the Social Security Administration and The Department of Labor. The National debt and inflation caused by the communal bank has caused the need for a two "income" family. Woman in the workplace since the 1920's, the 19th amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, assorted Socialist Unions, affirmative action, the Federal Public Works Program and of course Executive order 11000. And I almost forgot...The Equal Rights Amendment means that women should do all work that men do including the military and since passage it would make women subject to the draft.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the population over the country. We call it the Planning Reorganization act of 1949 , zoning (Title 17 1910-1990) and Super Corporate Farms, as well as Executive orders 11647, 11731 (ten regions) and Public "law" 89-136.
10. Free education for all children in government schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc. etc. People are being taxed to support what we call 'public' schools, which train the young to work for the communal debt system. We also call it the Department of Education, the NEA and Outcome Based "Education" .
Pantheons of fantasy are their medium of infinitization...
New Age induces a benevolent relaxation that may be disabling in the face of aggression. In a world of terrorism, New Agers can only take to the hills and leave their scriptures in jars at Esalen.(Camille Paglia, Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960s, http://www.bu.edu/arion/paglia_cults00.htm)
Plato’s Euthyphro is a great illustration. Socrates advances the argument to Euthyphro that, piety to the gods, who all want conflicting devotions and/or actions from humans, is impossible. Socrates exposed the pagan esoteric sophistry.
Morality and all of its associated concepts are from the belief that some higher power is defining the correctness of human behavior. Today, "morals" are a religious pagan philosophy of esoteric hobgoblins where transfiguration is from pantheons of fantasies as the medium of infinitization. Others get derision for having an unwavering Judaic belief in Yahweh or Yeshua, although their critics will evangelize insertion of phantasmagoric fetishisms into secular law.
Likewise, morals are such a construction of idols used by the Left as a rationale for them to demand compliance to their wishes in politics, which most often are a skewed mess of fallacies in logic. "Morals" are a deceptive replacement for the "avoidance of sin." If a person believes in God, it is the conviction of the Holy Spirit that guides them, not the idolatrous vanities of conceited morality constructed by others.
A greater number of "atheists" and "pagans" adopt the same hackneyed tenets of a false Judaic-Christian ideal (golden calf). They also subscribe to the Judaic fetishism of "sin," but will fight to their death in denial of it. Most of them are so wrapped up in their own polemics that they have become nothing more than pathetic anti-Christians with the same false hypocritical philosophy (example: NCC involvement at this conference). They just slap a new label on it hoping nobody will notice - - they replace the idea of "avoiding sin" with "morals."
Is dissatisfaction with inevitable mortality driving ersatz secularists and religious heretics to seek connection with something Eternal through a Universal Truth by constructing an idol out of their own vanity or conceit they label as morality?
The "Third Way" - David Horowitz
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a39611fde5615.htm
Excerpts:
"....."The Third Way" is a familiar term from the lexicon of the left with a long and dishonorable pedigree in the catastrophes created by messianic socialists in the 20th Century.
It is the most ornate panel in the tapestry of deception I described at the beginning of this essay. [click link above]
In the 1930s, Nazis used "The Third Way" to characterize their own brand of national socialism as a equidistant between the "internationalist" socialism of the Soviet Union and the capitalism of the West.
Trotskyists used "The Third Way" as a term to distinguish their own Marxism from Stalinism and capitalism.
In the 1960s, New Leftists used "The Third Way" to define their politics as an independent socialism between the Soviet gulag and America's democracy.
But as the history of Nazism, Trotskyism and the New Left have shown, there is no "Third Way."
There is the capitalist, democratic way based on private property and individual rights-a way that leads to liberty and universal opportunity.
And there is the socialist way of group identities, group rights, a relentless expansion of the political state, restricted liberty and diminished opportunity.
The Third Way is not a path to the future. It is just the suspension between these two destinations.
It is a bad faith attempt on the part of people who are incapable of giving up their socialist schemes to escape the taint of their discredited past.
..... and "The Third Way"-a cynical deception to ensure the continuance of Us, until we acquire enough power to transform everyone else.
It is the difference between the politics of getting what you can, and the politics of changing the world. ...
Their cynicism flows from the very perception they have of right and wrong.
They do it for higher ends. They do it for the progressive faith.
They do it because they see themselves as having the power to redeem the world from evil.
It is that terrifyingly exalted ambition that fuels their spiritual arrogance and justifies their sordid and, if necessary, criminal means.
And that is why they hate conservatives.
They hate you because you are killers of their dream.
Because you are defenders of a Constitution that thwarts their cause.
They hate you because your "reactionary" commitment to individual rights, to a single standard and to a neutral and limited state obstructs their progressive designs.
They hate you because you are believers in property and its rights as the cornerstones of prosperity and human freedom; because you do not see the market economy as a mere instrument for acquiring personal wealth and political war chests, to be overcome in the end by bureaucratic schemes.
Conservatives who think progressives are misinformed idealists will forever be blind-sided by the malice of the left-by the cynicism of those who pride themselves on principle, by the viciousness of those who champion sensitivity, by the intolerance of those who call themselves liberal, and by the ruthless disregard for the well-being of the downtrodden by those who preen themselves as social saints.
Conservatives are caught by surprise because they see progressives as merely misguided, when in fact they are fundamentally misdirected.
They are the messianists of a religious faith.
But it is a false faith and a self-serving religion.
Since the redeemed future that justifies their existence and rationalizes their hypocrisy can never be realized, what really motivates progressives is a modern idolatry: their limitless passion for the continuance of Them. ....
"..How little those who have not inhabited the progressive mind are able to grasp the ruthless cynicism behind its idealistic mask or the fervent malice that drives its hypocritical passion for "social justice."
No matter how great the crimes progressives commit, no matter how terrible the future they labor to create, no matter how devastating the catastrophes they leave behind, the world outside the faith seems ever ready to forgive them their "mistakes" and to grant them the grace of "good intentions." ....
New Left progressives-including Hillary Clinton and her comrade, Acting Deputy Attorney General Bill Lann Lee-were involved in supporting, or protecting or making excuses for violent anti-American radicals abroad like the Vietcong and anti-American criminals at home like the Black Panthers.*
We did this then-just as progressives still do now-in the name of "social justice" and a dialectical world-view that made this deception appear ethical and the fantasy seem possible.
As a student of the left, Jamie Glazov, has observed in an article about the middle-class defenders of recently captured Seventies terrorist Kathy Soliah: "if you can successfully camouflage your own pathology and hatred with a concern for the 'poor' and the 'downtrodden,' then there will always be a 'progressive' milieu to support and defend you."* ........
Despite the homage contemporary leftists pay to post-modernist conceits, despite their belated and half-hearted display of critical sentiment towards Communist regimes, they are very much the ideological heirs of Stalinist progressives, who supported the greatest mass murders in human history, but who remember themselves as civil libertarian opponents of McCarthy and victims of a political witch-hunt. (Only the dialectically gifted can even begin to follow the logic involved.)
To appreciate the continuity of communism in the mentality of the left, consider how many recent Hollywood promotions of the industry Reds and how many academic apologies for Stalinist crimes (in fact, the vast majority of recent academic texts on the subject) have been premised on the Machiavellian calculations and Hegelian sophistries I have just described.
Naturally, today's leftists are smart enough to distance themselves from Soviet Communism. But the Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev was already a critic of Stalin forty years ago. Did his concessions make him less of a Communist? Or more?
On the other hand, conservative misunderstanding of the left is only in part a product of the left's own deceits.
It also reflects conservatives' inability to understand the religious nature of the progressive faith and the power of its redemptive idea.
For instance, I'm often asked by conservatives about the continuing role and influence of the Communist Party, since they observe quite correctly the pervasive presence of so many familiar totalitarian ideas in our academic and political culture.
Though still around and sometimes influential in the left, the Communist Party has been a minor player for nearly fifty years. How can there be a communist left (small "c" of course) without a Communist Party?
The short answer is that it was not the Communist Party that made the left, but the (small 'c') communist Idea.
It is the idea, as old as the Tower of Babel, that humanity can build a highway to Heaven. It is the idea of returning to an Earthly Paradise, a garden of social harmony and justice.
It is the idea that inspires Jewish radicals and liberals of a tikkun olam, a healing of the cosmic order.
It is the Enlightenment illusion of the perfectibility of man.
And it is the siren song of the serpent in Eden: "Eat of this Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and you shall be as God."
The intoxicating vision of a social redemption achieved by Them-this is what creates the left, and makes the believers so self-righteous.
And it did so long before Karl Marx. It is the vision of this redemption that continues to inspire and animate them despite the still-fresh ruins of their Communist dreams.
It is this same idea that is found in the Social Gospel which impressed the youthful Hillary Clinton at the United Methodist Church in Park Ridge, Illinois.
She later encountered the same idea in the New Left at Yale and in the Venceremos Brigade in Communist Cuba, and in the writings of the New Leftist who introduced her to the "politics of meaning" even after she had become America's First Lady.
It is the idea that drives her comrades in the Children's Defense Fund, the National Organization for Women, the Al Sharpton House of Justice and the other progressive causes which for that reason still look to her as a political leader.
For these self-appointed social redeemers, the goal-"social justice"-is not about rectifying particular injustices, which would be practical and modest, and therefore conservative.
Their crusade is about rectifying injustice in the very order of things.
"Social Justice" for them is about a world reborn, a world in which prejudice and violence are absent, in which everyone is equal and equally advantaged and without fundamentally conflicting desires.
It is a world that could only come into being through a re-structuring of human nature and of society itself.
Even though they are too prudent and self-protective to name this future anymore, the post-Communist left still passionately believes it possible.
But it is a world that has never existed and never will. .....
...No matter how opportunistically the left's agendas have been modified, however, no matter how circumspectly its goals have been set, no matter how generous its concessions to political reality, the faithful have not given up their self-justifying belief that they can bring about a social redemption.
In other words, a world in which human consciousness is changed, human relations refashioned, social institutions transformed, and in which "social justice" prevails.
Because the transformation progressives seek is ultimately total, the power they seek must be total as well.
In the end, the redemption they envision cannot be achieved as a political compromise, even though compromises may be struck along the way. Their brave new world can ultimately be secured only by the complete surrender of the resisting force.
In short, the transformation of the world requires the permanent entrenchment of the saints in power. Therefore, everything is justified that serves to achieve the continuance of Them. ..." ~ David Horowitz
I don't know.
And yet again, the left is projecting itself and their actions on their oponents. Who is it, I wonder, who keeps going to the courts to get publicly supported legislation overturned? Who is it that claims to support "the right of the people," only to have public votes overturned?
Mark
I've been reading your posts on this thread, and understand you to be very studied in Christianity. So I'm rather surprised to see your version of these new Chariismatic churches to be similar to mine.
What I miss most of all when I attend a Charismatic church is the gorgeous music of my conservative church (United Methodist, btw). It's a virtual concert of classical music we get each Sunday.
"Whatever, isn't it the same Christianity, whether with light shows and video screens and folks in izod shirts and khakis, or with Bibles and people dressed in their finest?"
Yes it is the same Chrisitanity, just more enthusiastic. A new revival period has appears to have started and it's going to be very Charismatic. Not specifically Charismatic, but people are connecting emotionally with Jesus at a level that I haven't seen or experienced before. Your daughter is getting it.
Some words from a recent Christian rock song:
I want to sit at your feet,
drink from your cup in your hand,
lean back against you,
and breathe,
feel your heart beat.
The more I seek you,
the more I find you.
The more I find you,
the more I love you.
This love is so deep,
it's more than I can stand,
I melt in your peace.
As Rick Warren has pointed out, the older music is most frequently about God and Jesus. The newer type of music is love songs to God and His Son.
The above song is most definitely a love song. Quite beautiful to the ear and the soul.
What is the other song that is playing on the radios that kids like so much?...can't remember right now, but I do remember it, I won't be able to get it out of my head. I love the song.
It doesn't matter to me how my daughter gets it. What's she's experiencing is a family of Christianity, a group that genuinely cares about her.
She volunteers for Atlanta Fest, a Christian rock concert held at 6 flags each summer. She says some of the music is just too loud, lots of screaming. Same goes for Big Stuff camp held in Panama City Florida, where high school kids go by the thousands.
She's grown up in my conservative church. So she knows how to act properly in my high Methodism church as well as her Charismatic church.
"Held", by Natalie Grant?
A beautiful song, melodically and lyrically. My wife saw her live in Houston a few weeks ago and she said that the live version blows the studio version clean out of the water.
This weekend in Houston we are having Summerfest, a Chrisitian Contemporary festival. I have to work all weekend so I cannot go. Maybe next year I can go.
"I Can Only Imagine". ONe of the best rock songs ever written. Right up there with "Unchained Melody".
Yes. I'll be singing it in my head all afternoon.
unchained melody....yes.
thanks.
I am running for my life (and salvation) from Protestantism to Eastern Orthodoxy. It is the one churh that does not budge.
Liberal Protestanism denies the divinity of Christ and the miracles of his life.
COnservative Evangelical churches use the Bible for personal political and financial purposes.
The Orthodox church merely teaches the truth.
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