Posted on 09/23/2007 7:18:21 AM PDT by Doofer
About the only thing worse than painting yourself in a corner is doing it when the floor doesn’t need painting in the first place.
So I was doubly disappointed a couple of days ago when Dr. James Dobson, a one-time child psychologist who has become a leading Christian activist, absolutely skewered presidential candidate Fred Thompson in what was to me a dazzling display of dumb.
I’ve long admired and adored Dr. Dobson’s “Focus on the Family” and believe he’s a genius when it comes to kids. This week, in what was called “a private e-mail to friends,” the doctor proved to me he’s got a long way to go when it comes to working the same magic with adults.
Apparently Thompson’s history regarding some marriage amendments and the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform deal got Dr. Dobson all wild-eyed and fiery-hearted and he wrote his buddies this puzzling paragraph:
“(Thompson) has no passion, no zeal, and no apparent ‘want to.’ And yet he is apparently the Great Hope that burns in the breasts of many conservative Christians? Well, not for me, my brothers, not for me!”
Wow, if Dr. Dobson discounts Fred Thompson that fast and this early, it would follow he’s got a bigger ace to play, but if this thing works out like I suspect it will in the year to come, Dr. Dobson is going to make quite a mess walking across all that wet paint just before the election.
Understand, I’m not a big Thompson fan, but isn’t it too early to pick a horse? All I know is what I read, but in watching the various political aspirants I don’t think if I were Dr. Dobson I’d start slinging a whole lot of mud at anybody just yet.
There are some others still in the race who are a “little bit left” of Fred, so to speak, and to slap down the former senator was a needless act that got Dr. Dobson a good amount of the kind of coverage he doesn’t want and that his ministry sure doesn’t need..
I have long held the opinion that “the Christian right,” as it is called, should stay out of politics. There are many who disagree with me, but I don’t think God should be sullied by those who claim He is a Republican or a Democrat. The same drought that hits the red states hits the blue ones.
Further, I know some fine Christians who happen to be rather liberal. There are also some crooks, as we’ve seen lately, who espouse each party, so I wish the churches would stick to salvation and the politicians would handle the marriage amendments and campaign finance questions.
I think Christianity, as I know it and as I believe it, can be summed up in just one word: Hope. I don’t care what happens to me – car wrecks, friends committing suicide, brothers dying, divorce, whatever – I am assured by Jesus Christ the end of my life will include the words, “happily ever after.”
Why should a Christian activist, whose goal is to teach about that same “hope” and enable anyone from a mass murderer to a tainted politician to have the same promise of “happily ever after,” get all jumpy over Fred Thompson at this stage of the game?
The better question is a harder one for me. Is that what being a Christian is about? Is that the way you convince a non-believer to enter the Kingdom?
Dr. Dobson presents himself on a pretty high plain with slick magazines and TV shows and radio broadcasts, but when he pops Fred Thompson for “no passion, no zeal, no ‘want to’,” what part of that glorifies God? I don’t get it, not at all.
Finally, there are the pious who’ll discount the whole thing, pointing out a “private e-mail” should have never been disclosed, but somebody once said, “As a man thinketh, so he is.”
It is because of the 2004 election when people didn’t mind hearing him speak and getting the Republicans elected. Now that he is not saying what evangelicals want to hear, they are dropping him like a disease. Nice people.So everyone should follow him blindly just because he's James Dobson?
Nope, when people like him fall, they can never climb back up. Someone else will come to take his place.
Maybe he will get back in 2012 when he agrees with every word the Evangelicals want him too.
"You guys"? I think you assume far too much!
I am glad I am not an Evangelical (catholic). You guys put too much pressure on people.
The Christian right was present and active from 1776 to 1789 (and before and after), and should be active today. Most American in the Colonies/States in those years were, in fact, Christian right. . . invloved in politics. The people who founded this nation and the people who were the strongest movers for the Bill of Rights were Christian right, and people who were deeply sympathetic with them.
The Christian right is in this war, and I’m a member of that segment. I’m a Christian of like biblicist convictions to the Virginia Baptists who had the ear of Jefferson and Madison in pushing for the Bill of Rights. The leader of those Virginians was a fellow named John Leland. It is documented. It is part of our American history and heritage.
OK, what are you gonna tell Osama and the Saudis?
How about the Iranian Mullahs?
You think they are gonna listen to you? 'Pod
Nazi trial documents made public
Friday, 11 January, 2002
The first instalment, entitled "The Nazi Master Plan; The Persecution of Christian Churches", shows how the Nazis planned to supplant Christianity with a religion based on racial superiority. (snip)
"Different steps in that persecution, such as the campaign for the suppression of denominational and youth organisations, the campaign against denominational schools, the defamation campaign against the clergy, started on the same day in the whole area of the Reich...and were supported by the entire regimented press, by Nazi Party meetings, by travelling party speakers."
***what evangelism should be about, not politics.***
Washington D.C. is what salesmen would call a “rocking chair district” for the devil.
(Which means no competition, easy pickings.)
We as Evangelicals shouldn’t give in to that, we should vote, blog, sent $, etc.
But, we need to remember the truly dark forces that control that area, and carefully chose between consumate EVIL (HRC), and lesser evils (just about anything the pubs have).
Dobson got this one wrong.
I’m a long ways off from “far right” but I can see that the GOP is desperate to earn their next loss. Bashing anyone who disagrees is a democrat tactic.
That is what I think too. I guess they will ruin it for all of us.
Do you really not know the difference between not supporting a candidate and attacking one? I'm sure Dr. Dobson doesn't support Hillary or Rudy, but he has not chosen to write hit pieces on any other candidate but Fred Thompson.
I don’t know what you are saying. Evangelicals on this thread are bashing Dr. Dobson. Perhaps you are not reading this thread.
To understand how it was in early America, one need look no further than the first American President:
I never witnessed his private devotions. I never inquired about them. I should have thought it the greatest heresy to doubt his firm belief in Christianity. His life, his writings, prove that he was a Christian. He was not one of those who act or pray, “that they may be seen of men” [Matthew 6:5]. He communed with his God in secret [Matthew 6:6].
Nelly Custis-Lewis, 1833, Granddaughter of Martha Washington
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-wall/wal-g011.html
I get sick of listening to people whining about how far left the democrats have gone when the GOP will be in the same place in a few years.
It’s time for the GOP to stop acting like a sail to push the democrat ship ever leftward and start acting like an anchor to prevent it.
God is a classical liberal, but he does vote Republican and contributes to the GOP because he knows they’re best we’ve got. God is pragmatic like that.
So now your evangelical vision of God trumps the Catholic interpretation and my own Jewish view of God and His Word? You are some "Christian"!
It's closed-minded religious know-it-alls who insult those who do not believe exactly as they do that cause needless unrest.
Since Evangelicals, Catholics (even Coptics) AND Jews have the exact same “vision of God”, is there some sort of problem here?
From everything I have seen of him Dr. Dobson worships himself above Christ.
Ping to #40
“Not really, we pretty much just ask that people follow Gods rules.”
That’s okay, as long as it is not demanded or legislated as such.
And the Virginia Baptists along with John Leland by no means kept their faith in a closet (the un-Christian right now wants Christian right in a closet while okay-ing the sodomites to come out of the closet). They publicly pushed for the Bill of Rights in Philadelphia and obtained Madison’s ear.
Washington’s Chaplain during the Revolution was Baptist John Gano, who baptized Washington. Washington said, (almost verbatim) “The war is my separation with political England and my Baptism is my break with religious England.”
I recommend to you the books of historians Rosalie J. Slater and Dr. James Beller.
The truth still remains that America at its founding was overwhelmingly and predominantly Christian right. It would be insane to believe that that did not influence every area of life in the colonies/states, including its politics.
The founders made open and published statements in favor and support of the Bible and the teaching and learning of it.
Yes, there is.
If your assertion was accurate and all of the faiths you mention share the exact same view of God and what He expects from us, why would there then be distinctly different religions?
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