Posted on 09/04/2012 5:47:07 PM PDT by Libloather
Mormon Democrats gather for first-ever national meeting in Charlotte during DNC
Above, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who belongs to the LDS Church, speaks to the first national meeting of LDS Democrats on Tuesday in Charlotte. Reid mentioned that several presidential candidates in the United States have been Mormons, starting with Joseph Smith, the founder and first president of the LDS Church, who ran in 1844 with "a very progressive" platform.
(Excerpt) Read more at photoblog.nbcnews.com ...
You can have faith in God without being “organized”....
$37k? Ha! Not even a tiny drip in the bucket.
The fine was for not disclosing these additional [donations]. The money the church donated was declared. The issue was employee time and supplies. This was not time or supplies that employees volunteered. I also worked and voted against Prop.8 so I have no problem with others doing so or your Churches support. But the facts are the Church was paying people to work on a political campaign.
Did I say you couldn't have faith without being organized?
No, I did not!
The guy was wondering if he should leave his religion because of the people in it who do not live up to the religion, and I encouraged him not to leave his faith because of the likes of Harry Reid.
Do not put words in my mouth.
BTW...I wasn't placing "words in your mouth"...Ha!! Don't be so thin skinned.........
By that you mean LDS, Inc.
Sorry if my use of The Church was offensive. It was not my intention. My comment was in response to post #6 . The LDS,Inc. was fined for not fully disclosing donations to a political campaign. They did disclose financial donations but did not declare that they payed people to work on the campaign and donated supplies. All the talk about maybe the other side did it too, and the size of the fine does not change the fact that the LDS,Inc. helped finance and did not fully disclose its involvement in a political campaign.
It certainly does expose the bias of the persons discussing the issue.
You are correct about that. The Everybody does it, The Other guy is bad too, is usually used as a defense when there is no defense .
Not offensive at all. Just normal talk for mormons. Which I always think odd..but that’s just me.
If I were to leave a given religion, it would be because I found it wasn’t consistent with God’s word, not because some person professing the same faith was a disappointment, or because leaders of the religion were found to be human after all. We each will give account to God for our own faithfulness, not the faithfulness of others.
Having said that, nothing wrong with a little human organization, as long as you don’t take it too seriously. Jesus will keep track of his own sheep very effectively. But some organization is helpful for our sakes. But it doesn’t have to be a massive, centrally controlled bureaucracy. This is why the distributed network model is preferred among many of us so-called Protestants; a top down human hierarchy based on a history of formal membership wrapped around a centrally controlled “oracle” can create some degree of uniformity by sheer force of bureaucratic will power, but it is equally capable of propagating uniform error as uniform truth.
By contrast, a distributed model based on shared belief in and subscription to the Biblical text avoids the faux uniformity issues, but has the problem of individuals seeing things as individuals do, through their own unique prism of experience and understanding. But that’s really a net advantage, because it amounts to peer review, as in science, which is beneficial. Inferior interpretations and practices can be identified and weeded out, with no one human person or organization having the power to prevent discovery or proclamation of the truth.
So organization is only as bad as the people in it, and as we are all sinners, that can be pretty bad. Therefore smaller is better, because local congregations promote local accountability. We have to keep each other honest by comparing our beliefs and practices to God’s word, and that will work better if we don’t give any one human or group too much power. But what will work the best is simply this:
2 Tim 2:19 Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his. And, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.
Peace,
SR
Good post.
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