Posted on 10/15/2012 10:28:02 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
A popular Christian blogger says he's voting for Mitt Romney and is challenging notions that Christians should sit out this year's election or that they shouldn't vote for the GOP presidential candidate because he's a Mormon.
In a series of blog posts, Frank Turk listed several reasons on Pyromaniacs why he's voting for and endorsing a "Mormon son of a Mormon who was not very conservative in Massachusetts and has not demonstrated very safely-right ideology in governing in the past."
One of those reasons is abortion.
Turk recognized that there are some Christians who will either try to vote for a third party candidate or not vote at all because both Romney and President Obama support abortions, though Romney only approves of it in cases of rape, incest and life of the mother.
For many Christians, abortion is murder, immoral and sinful and voting for a candidate who supports abortion would be wrong.
So by not voting, these Christians "protect their holiness."
Turk offers: "Doing nothing and calling it a moral victory is cowardly. It may actually be evil. But if it is nothing else, it is certainly this: failing to do as much as possible to make a difference toward the improvement of those things which you can effect and can make better. Failing to show that much compassion and effort is morally lazy.
"In the world we actually live in, where in our country there are about 1,200,000 abortions every year, one candidate/party is saying that we could eliminate 960,000 abortions by saying the only exceptions might be physical health and welfare of the mother. It's moral malpractice to say that seeking to reduce the number of abortions by 80% is the same as saying 100% of all abortions are politically and morally OK."
So Turk is endorsing Romney in order "to avoid the obvious moral failing of doing nothing at all – or participating in the moral equivalent of performance art – to turn back an unacceptable outcome even if the alternative is only less-unacceptable."
Turk also argued against the common argument that electing Romney to the White House would equate to assisting Mormonism in becoming a mainstream religious option.
In Romans 13, the Apostle Paul indicates that a non-Christian person, in his case Caesar, is capable of being a sound ruler.
"Even Caesar and his functionaries were able to approve of good conduct and strike terror into those who have bad conduct. In Paul's mind, being an unbeliever does not disqualify anyone from being a political ruler," Turk wrote.
Additionally, God instituted the governments, he argued. Even if the government may serve God poorly, the institution of government "is actually God's ordinary means of looking out for justice and judgment."
"Paul says that explicitly about the Roman government – which, let's face it, is barbaric by our standards. The kind of morality the average Roman would ascribe to would be absolutely wanton by our post-Christian standards. Yet somehow the Mormon view of morality is not going to work for an American magistrate?" said Turk.
Regarding the notion that Christians would be assisting a cult in becoming more mainstream, he said: "That sounds very high-minded and God-glorifying – until we start to think about all the things we have to give up which, frankly, make things that are non-Christian into socially-acceptable practices. We'd have to give up the internet, for starters; we'd have to give up our iPhones. We'd have to give up books. We'd have to give up Capitalism and Democracy.
"If we can rightly, theologically justify all the other ways we cooperate with non-believers on the secular stage, ignoring the means of doing so now to maintain your alleged holiness is, at best, evidence which ought to be used to convict you of greater transgressions."
Providing one "America" reason that the "don't assist in making a cult mainstream" doesn't work out, the blogger wrote, "Voting for any man does not affirm that you accept his religious expression, or his systematic theology: it affirms that you accept his right as a citizen to run for office."
In his concluding post, Turk stated that his intention is not to make Christians into "mindless voters for red-state dominion."
"What I want is for you to not pretend this election is just another election," he wrote.
"Vote effectively. And Vote prayerfully."
Better a Mormon in the White House than the Muslim we have now.
Baptist ping
Yeah, they voted for a muzlimb.
one candidate/party is saying that we could eliminate 960,000 abortions by saying the only exceptions might be physical health and welfare of the mother.
______________________________________
NO
The republican Party is saying on its platform NO ABORTIONS
the candidate Willard Mitt Romney is saying all on his own ABORTIONS FOR HEALTH OF THE PREGNANT FEMALE, WELFARE OF THE PREGNANT FEMALE...
which is slightly diferent than when he said for years ABORTIONS DONT NEED A REASON LETS HAVE LOTS
I’m SOOOOOOOOOOOO grateful that you don’t live in a Blue state.
This is not because he is a good choice for the presidency. My belief is that because of the sickening moral degradation of America, we are essentially doomed. I don't see any Great Awakening in the offing although God may forestall His wrath for a season as He did for King Josiah. No nation that sanctions the butchery of over 50 million children will long stand.
Romney's election may slightly slow the steady march to destruction and thus give us a short window of time in which we can better prepare ourselves for the coming judgment both spiritually and physically.
America doesn't appear in the cataclysmic endtime Bible prophecies. There's a reason.
Mr. Turk needs to read Isaiah 28:14-20. And then he needs to pray long and hard.
I’ve done that for the last six months now. Mormonism has nothing to do with why I and others like me can’t support Mitt Romney.
If you read the verses, you’ll see what God has to say about ‘the lesser of two evils’.
I'm too tired to check for it but I bet this particular blogger has yet to condemn them for that action ~ or lack there of.
Re: the latter: Oh, so you HAVE to now vote for a Hare Krishna, a Scientolist, a Wicca, or a Satanist to thereby "prove" "that you accept his (her) right as a citizen to run for office"????
Talk about lame logic. Hardly debunking anything.
Sorry, Frank...and those who embrace this sorry line of thinking"
* We don't have to vote for Democrats just to prove they have some "right" as citizens to "run for office."
* We don't have to vote for homosexuals just to prove they have some "right" as citizens to "run for office."
* We don't have to vote for Environmentalist Green Party folks just to prove they have some "right" as citizens to "run for office."
* We don't have to vote for libertarians just to prove they have some "right" as citizens to "run for office."
* Nor do we have to vote for Scientologists just to prove they have some "right" as citizens to "run for office."
There is no across-the-board universal parallel application of Frank Turk's logic here...showing its sheer absurdity.
Or maybe he means that there is no religious test for office in the United States.
Listen, no candidate "meets" tit for tat their theology and your theology.
Tell us, Frank Turk and your disciples, name a single source who is claiming that because Candidate A doesn't match up "systematic theology"-wise, don't vote for him???
This is simply called a "straw man" argumentative fallacy.
The Straw Man fallacy is committed when somebody ignores actual positions and substitutes an extreme, distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of various positions.
So, as it pertains to Mitt Romney and other temple Mormons, we don't have to evaluate him across the board on every theological tenet. And I haven't found ANYBODY saying that we need to...(or apply that logic to ANY OTHER candidate in any other race, either).
We can simply evaluate Mitt Romney on a few key decisive theological points: For example, does he or does he not, believe he is a "god in embryo?" Many Lds "prophets" have taught that. No Lds teaching has denied those teachings. Therefore, do we want to vote for somebody who sets himself up as a rival god to THE God???
How do you think THE God feels about you as a Christian ignoring the FIRST commandment about not placing other gods before him...and endorsing such false gods???
There. No exhaustive theological exam needed.
A second point worthy of eval: What is the Mormon "scriptural" position on who we as Christians are?
Answer? ALL (as in 100%) of our professors are "corrupt." ALL (as in 100%) of our creeds are an "abomination." That's what Joseph Smith - History vv. 18-20 teaches in the Pearl of Great Price, which is Lds "scripture." That's not "Mormon leader" mere opinion; it's their specific scripture as applied toward all Christian sects.
Therefore, is that very "inspirational" for Christians to vote for Romney???
Key point in remembering is that we're down to only a handful of true swing states. Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, polling-wise are all falling to Romney. The only FREEPERs who can justify their anti-conservative vote "anybody but Obama" (a euphemism for pro-Romneyism) are those in states like Ohio, PA, Wisconsin, Colorado.
Just about ALL of the rest of the states will either easily fall to Romney, or to Obama, and your FREEPER vote won't make a difference in those states.
I see we’ve still got some bigots here who don’t understand how important beating Obama is. Those people are idiots.
"Religious tests" per the Constitution apply ONLY to the government attempting to "fence out" given candidates.
If such tests applied to voters, then we would be FORCED to vote for minority religious candidates like Satanists to prove that there's no "religious test" for such a candidate.
How lame.
Religious tests apply only to WHO gets on the ballot; it's not meant to be a dictator forcing you HOW to vote among your choices on that ballot.
Franklin Graham has come out strongly for Mitt.
After Mitt visited Billy Graham, Billy said he’d do everything he could to help.
I see we still have some intolerant “bigots” here who can’t stand the free religious expression of others.
Yes, very true.
You know what's "funny" is that Obama's supposed Muslim ties have been mentioned in hundreds/thousands of FR threads and tens of thousands of FR posts going back to 2007. I've yet to see a single FREEPER bring up the "no religious test for office" to apply to either Islam or Obama's Muslim ties.
How conveniently inconsistent.
(Nor have I seen the self-appointed "bigot patrol" rush into those same threads to accuse posters of engaging in Islamic "bigotry"...more hypocrisy on the loose)
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