C.S. Lewis
Posted on 06/28/2005 9:19:57 AM PDT by voletti
THIS week, for the fourth year in a row, President George Bush broke from affairs of state to address the Southern Baptist Convention. He promised the strict evangelical group, which has 16m members, that he would work hard to ban gay marriage and abortion, and that their “family values” were his values, too.
In the 1960s, many liberal Americans thought they had banned religion from the public square for good. Yet nowadays the president, the secretary of state and the House speaker accept the evangelical label. A packed prayer breakfast takes place every Thursday in Congress. And liberals regularly contend that one of America's two great parties is bent on creating a theocracy—backed by a solid core of somewhere between a quarter and a third of the population.
Why is the religious right as powerful as it is? The question puzzles even Americans. Their country, as a whole, is not getting more religious. The gap between it and European countries has increased, but largely because of Europe's growing godlessness. Most Americans say that religion is very important (60%) or fairly important (26%) in their lives, but Karlyn Bowman, a polling analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, points out that the figures were 75% and 20% in 1952.
What has changed is, first, the make-up of Protestant America and, second, the realignment of religious America's politics. The generally liberal mainline churches have declined, while harder outfits like the Southern Baptists have spurted forward. White evangelicals, who see the Bible as the literal truth (or darned close to it), now make up 26% of the population.
It is not just a matter of numbers but of confidence. Born-again Christians are no longer rural hicks; they are richer and better educated than the average American.
(Excerpt) Read more at economist.com ...
We adhere to the preservation of the Scriptures to English-speaking peoples in the King James Bible. Send me a personal email, and I'll give you (free of charge) some very good materials on manuscript evidence, and the problems with the English Bibles of the 20th Century.
There is no question that there are many theological differences between evangelicals and Catholics, but in the realm of moral issues, evangelicals and Catholics are allies. The left will try to undercut that alliance, but part of the maturity of the evangelical community in America is that they can distinguish what are theological principles, and what are social issues which connect to political action and the responsibility of citizenship.
Well-said.
Do SBC pastors nowadays preach against smoking, chewing, or going with girls who do? I'd sure love to hear that.
BTTT
But are you aware that there are still thousands and thousands of Christians who hold to what the "fundies" did 80 years ago? Those people who believe in purity of life are still around, and they are patriots.
The King James version leaves out several books that are still part of the Catholic vulgate, books that were considered Sacred Scripute by the Jews until after Mosada, when the Rabbis disowned them because they believed they were one of the reasons that they lost the revolt.
Catholics and Protestants use a different Bible. Do you, as a Baptist believe that I, a Catholic, have a right, if asked by an official to swear on a Bible, to swear only on the Bible version which I believe correct?
I believe that the oath is to God and not the "book."
I am a Southern Baptist but I enjoy watching EWTN. It is a shame that Mother Angelica is not live anymore. I think most of her shows are reruns or I just miss the new ones.
C.S. Lewis
Yes, I'm aware of this. But I'm also aware of what Jesus said that it's not what one puts into one's body that defiles them, but what proceeds from the heart.
Uh...maybe going to Saturday afternoon Mass so you don't have to go hung over on Sunday? =]
Okay, here is a great example of why the RATS keep on surviving. We Christians are more interested in fighting each other than in defeating a common enemy.
Very well stated.
"The Greek one."
There is no such thing as the Greek ONE.
There are more than 5,000 portions, partial manuscripts and fragments remaining. There are compilations of these in various texts, like those of Erasmus and Stephanas, but there is no such thing as THE Greek Bible. There are, of course, modern translations of Bibles into the Greek language, but these, by and large, are re-translated back into Greek from other sources (I mean the ones you might buy today in a bookstore in Athens, for example).
More is available on these subjects if you'll send me a personal email.
And yes, even C.S. Lewis was a sinner.
Any reasonable person would conclude that smoking is harmful and self inflicted harm is a sin. If it seems wrong it probably is.
There are good reasons for this
About 10 years ago, the Southern Baptist Convention came out with a study where they determined with precision that roughly 46.2% of Alabamians were going to hell, and how did they come up with this you ask.
Basically, it was demographics, they took the population demographics, and they took some national Religious Membership statistics and came up with a formula
Basically, if you did not belong to an Evangelical "Born-Again" faith, then you were counted in the segment of the population that would be burning in hell (this included Catholics, Episcopalians, I think the Lutherans too...)
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