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Locked on 08/03/2007 6:34:01 AM PDT by Religion Moderator, reason:
Poor behavior |
Posted on 07/26/2007 5:03:33 PM PDT by tantiboh
Democratic political consultant Mark Mellman has a very good piece up today at The Hill on the baffling and illegitimate opposition among voters to Mitt Romney due to his religion. I liked his closing paragraphs:
In July of 1958, 24 percent of respondents told Gallup they would not vote for a Catholic for president, almost identical to Gallup’s reading on Mormons today. Two years later, John F. Kennedy became the first Catholic to assume the oath of office. Within eight months, the number refusing to vote for a Catholic was cut almost in half.
[snip]
Mellman also discusses an interesting poll he helped construct, in which the pollsters asked half of their respondents whether they would support a candidate with certain characteristics, and asked the other half about another candidate with the exact same characteristics, with one difference. The first candidate was Baptist, the second candidate was Mormon. The Baptist had a huge advantage over the Mormon candidate, by about 20 points.
[snip]
However, more recent polls have attempted to fix the anonymity problem. A recent Time Magazine poll (read the original report here), for example, got to the heart of the question by asking respondents if they are less likely to vote for Mitt Romney specifically because he is a Mormon. The result is not as bad as some reporting on the poll has suggested. For example, while 30% of Republicans say they are less likely to vote for Romney because of his religion, fully 15% of other Republicans say that characteristic makes them more likely to vote for him. And while many have reported the finding that 23% of Republicans are “worried” by Romney’s Mormonism, the more important (but less-reported) number is that 73% say they hold no such reservations...
(Excerpt) Read more at romneyexperience.com ...
“Ecclestiastical parochialists.” That’s a very apt term we’ve coined. I’ll have to keep it handy.
Maybe I put too much emphasis on the statement in your post: “Springfield pastor James Smith said Lincoln believed some form of providence was at work in the universe, but was unable to believe in a personal God or in Jesus as his savior.”
At least according to Pastor Smith, Lincoln was unable to believe in Jesus as his savior.
I agree with your observation that there appeared to be more tolerance—at least when compared to some on Free Republic. I like to think (hopefully not erroneously) that the overwhelming majority of voters today are not so intolerant to DQ a candidate such as Lincoln merely because of his lack of faith in Christ or, in the case of Romney, merely because of his Mormon faith.
“Did you really think about what you stated? A Mormon running for POTUS is, in your view, DQ’d and if he or she is running for lower offices “MAYBE” he or she is not DQ’d?
Mormons can be a member of the club, but just can’t hold an office in the club, right?”
I have no idea what a DQ is, but if it helps you to understand
my thinking...
I don’t think it is about a “club”. It is about me, an
American and a Christian, not voting personally for a
person in a cult and elevating them to the most powerful
office in the world.
You can do differently with your right to vote.
best,
ampu
““Never in all that time did he let fall from his lips or his pen an expression which remotely implied the slightest faith in Jesus as the son of God and the Savior of men.” Both Lamon and William H. Herndon published biographies of their former colleague after his assassination relating their personal recollections of him. Each denied Lincoln’s adherence to Christianity and characterized his religious beliefs as deist or skeptical.”
Bogus. I’ve studied the life of Licoln, having read a great
number of biographies - one called The Faith of Lincoln.
to start you out from Google...
“Well, I will tell you how it was. In the pinch of the campaign up there (at Gettysburg) when everybody seemed panic stricken and nobody could tell what was going to happen, oppressed by the gravity of our affairs, I went to my room one day and locked the door and got down on my knees before Almighty God and prayed to Him mightily for victory at Gettysburg. I told Him that this war was His war, and our cause His cause, but we could not stand another Fredericksburg or Chancellorsville... And after that, I don’t know how it was, and I cannot explain it, but soon a sweet comfort crept into my soul. The feeling came that God had taken the whole business into His own hands and that things would go right at Gettysburg and that is why I had no fears about you.” [July 5, 1863]
Lincoln stated the following upon receiving a gift of a Bible from a group of African-Americans from Baltimore:
“In regard to this great book, I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to men. All the good Savior gave to the world was communicated through this book. But for it we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man’s welfare, here and hereafter, are to be found portrayed in it.” [Sept. 9, 1864]
This is Lincoln’s proclamation that the last Thursday of November should be set aside as a day of Thanksgiving. Many days of Thanksgiving had been proclaimed by presidents before this one, but this is the one that finally turned into the national holiday that we celebrate annually.
“It has seemed to me fit and proper that they (gifts of God) should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.” [October 3, 1863]
Rarely do our presidents invoke the power of the Holy Spirit in their national proclamations:
“I invite the people of the United states (on Aug 6)... to invoke the influence of His Holy Spirit... to guide the counsels of the government with wisdom adequate to so great a national emergency, and to visit with tender care and consolation throughout the length and breadth of our land all those who, through the vicissitudes of marches, voyages, battles, and sieges have been brought to suffer in mind, body, or estate, and finally to lead the whole nation through the paths of repentance and submission to the Divine will back to the perfect enjoyment of union and internal peace.” [July 15, 1863]
Give me the quote where Lincoln says that Jesus is his personal Savior. Lincoln behaved as an Unitarian. He was respectful of the Bible and Diety, etc, but he was from a typical beleiver. In short, he was a heretic just like Mitt is viewed as a heretic.
I am not denying Lincoln faithfullness. But he was an Unitarian. I am definitely saying Mitt is a stronger believer in Jesus than Lincoln was!
J.A. Reed, in preparing his biography of Lincoln, asked a number of people if there was any evidence of Lincoln being an infidel in his later life. The reply from Phineas Gurley, pastor of the same New York Avenue Presbyterian Church while Lincoln was an attender, was:
“I do not believe a word of it. It could not have been true of him while here, for I have had frequent and intimate conversations with him on the Subject of the Bible and the Christian religion, when he could have had no motive to deceive me, and I considered him sound not only on the truth of the Christian religion but on all its fundamental doctrines and teachings. And more than that, in the latter days of his chastened and weary life, after the death of his son Willie, and his visit to the battlefield of Gettysburg, he said, with tears in his eyes, that he had lost confidence in everything but God, and that he now believed his heart was changed, and that he loved the Savior, and, if he was not deceived in himself, it was his intention soon to make a profession of religion.”
Noah Brooks, a newspaperman, and a friend and biographer of Lincoln’s, in reply to Reed’s inquiry if there was any truth to claims that Lincoln was an infidel, stated:
“In addition to what has appeared from my pen, I will state that I have had many conversations with Mr. Lincoln, which were more or less of a religious character, and while I never tried to draw anything like a statement of his views from him, yet be freely expressed himself to me as having ‘a hope of blessed immortality through Jesus Christ.’ His views seemed to settle so naturally around that statement, that I considered no other necessary. His language seemed not that of an inquirer, but of one who had a prior settled belief in the fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion. Once or twice, speaking to me of the change which had come upon him, he said, while he could not fix any definite time, yet it was after he came here, and I am very positive that in his own mind he identified it with about the time of Willie’s death. He said, too, that after he went to the White House he kept up the habit of daily prayer. Sometimes he said it was only ten words, but those ten words he had. There is no possible reason to suppose that Mr. Lincoln would ever deceive me as to his religious sentiments. In many conversations with him, I absorbed the firm conviction that Mr. Lincoln was at heart a Christian man, believed in the Savior, and was seriously considering the step which would formally connect him with the visible church on earth. Certainly, any suggestion as to Mr. Lincoln’s skepticism or Infidelity, to me who knew him intimately from 1862 till the time of his death, is a monstrous fiction — a shocking perversion.”
from Wiki
DQ means disqualified.
You expressed your position that a Mormon, in your view, certainly is DQ’d from being POTUS and “MAYBE” DQ’d from lower offices. In your world, what “lower offices” might a Mormon “MAYBE” be okay to get your vote? Is a Mormon “MAYBE” okay to get your vote for, say, dogcather or garbage collector?
In your world, Mormons can be a member of the Republican “club”, but they just can’t receive the nomination in the Republican “club” to run for an office. Or is it your personal preference to also exclude Mormons from belonging to the Republican “club?”
In case, you don’t get it, that is what Tantiboh was saying. According to you, Mormons can ride the bus, just as long as they ride in the back. Scarey.
CUH,
I have made it clear that I personally will not
vote for anyone in a cult for POTUS.
Everything else you wrote came from somewhere else.
I am in charge of no republican club. I have one
vote, the same as any American. I won’t squander
it in elevating someone in a cult.
My call.
best,
ampu
“I am not denying Lincoln faithfullness. But he was an Unitarian. I am definitely saying Mitt is a stronger believer in Jesus than Lincoln was!”
Lincoln was never a Unitarian.
The Jesus Mitt believes in as a mormon is a different
Jesus than Lincoln believed in as he read the Bible.
ampu
Lincoln’s friend Jesse Fell noted that the president “seldom communicated to anyone his views” on religion, and he went on to suggest that those views were not orthodox: “on the innate depravity of man, the character and office of the great head of the Church, the Atonement, the infallibility of the written revelation, the performance of miracles, the nature and design of . . . future rewards and punishments . . . and many other subjects, he held opinions utterly at variance with what are usually taught in the church.”
Prove it!
#588- been there done that.
You claim: “Everything else you wrote came from somewhere else.”
Not hardly. In post #380, which I quoted in #562, you state:
“I have dear friends who are in mormonism. I truly like them.
I’d do anything for them as friends. That doesn’t mean
I have a good view of moromonism (it’s a cult) or would
vote for a mormon who ran for POTUS. Lower offices, maybe.
POTUS? No.”
Those are your words. And that is why I asked in my last post:
“You expressed your position that a Mormon, in your view, certainly is DQ’d from being POTUS and “MAYBE” DQ’d from lower offices. In your world, what “lower offices” might a Mormon “MAYBE” be okay to get your vote? Is a Mormon “MAYBE” okay to get your vote for, say, dogcather or garbage collector?
In your world, Mormons can be a member of the Republican “club”, but they just can’t receive the nomination in the Republican “club” to run for an office. Or is it your personal preference to also exclude Mormons from belonging to the Republican “club?”
So why not answer the questions, instead of claiming you didn’t espouse such an opinion?
That is insufficient proof. I showed you contrary evidence. I can show just as nonsensical evidence as well. Heck I can show his support of Mormonism. His Gettysburgh address sounds like Joseph’s Anti-Slavery Platform which Lincoln heard when they both lived in Illinois. Or how about this beauty:
Abraham Lincoln walked down the cold streets of Washington, D.C., on November 18, 1861, to the Library of Congress and checked out a couple of books. Lincoln’s signature and his government office, “President, U.S.,” appears in the library ledger which notes that he took a copy of the Book of Mormon. Records show that he returned the book on July 29, 1862. He later had two other books delivered to the White House, Gunnison’s Mormons and Hyde’s Mormonism. Lincoln was already familiar with the Latter-day Saint people since he had met Joseph Smith in Illinois and was a signer on the original charter for Nauvoo.
Dang, more evidence that Lincoln was the most Mormon friendly U.S. President ever.
Many Mormons in Utah viewed the events in the east as fulfillment of statements made by their prophet/founder Joseph Smith nearly thirty years earlier: “Verily, thus saith the Lord concerning the wars that will shortly come to pass, beginning at the rebellion of South Carolina.” In a later statement made in 1843, Smith added: “The commencement of the difficulties which will cause much bloodshed previous to the coming of the Son of Man will be in South Carolina. It may probably arise through the slave question.”
Even while the Latter-day Saints believed that the dissolution of the Union vindicated their prophet’s statements, they also had profound regard for and belief in the divine nature of the U.S. Constitution. Such potentially conflicting emotions created a unique atmosphere in Utah.
Because some Saints construed Smith’s words to mean that the Second Coming of Christ was near at hand, they also had mixed emotions about the Civil War. In addition, they still were insecure in the aftermath of the Utah War. While they were interested in self-rule and state’s rights questions, it is apparent that the people in Utah never really seriously considered supporting the Confederacy. In fact, on numerous occasions they affirmed their loyalty to the Union. Although the majority were suspicious of Lincoln’s policies during the early days of his presidency, the Saints changed their attitude, especially after a reported favorable statement made by Lincoln about them gained general circulation in Utah.
President Abraham Lincoln, it was reported, said that when he was a boy there was a lot of timber to be cleared from his farm. Sometimes he came to a log that was “too hard to split, too wet to burn, and too heavy to move,” so he plowed around it. That, Lincoln contended, was exactly what he planned to do about the Mormons in Utah. “You go back and tell Brigham Young that if he will let me alone I will let him alone.”
The Saints did not send men to the battlefields in the east to fight in the war, nor were they invited to do so. Some Utahns did go, but on an individual basis. Brigham Young believed that the dissolution of the Union would possibly be the end of the nation. The war was also seen by many Mormons as divine retribution upon the nation that had allowed the Saints to be driven from their homes, unprotected from the mobs, on several occasions. Following the departure of Cumming and Johnston, the troops at Camp Floyd also left by July 1861. This allowed the Saints to demonstrate their loyalty to the Union. Members of the Nauvoo Legion, the local militia, performed short-term volunteer service guarding the mail line. Another significant act of loyalty occurred when Brigham Young was given the privilege of sending the first message from Salt Lake City on the newly completed transcontinental telegraph in October 1861. His message to Lincoln: “Utah has not seceded, but is firm for the Constitution and laws of our once happy country.”
In April 1862 President Lincoln asked Young to provide a full company of one hundred men to protect the stage and telegraph lines and overland mail routes in Green River County (now southern Wyoming).
CUH,
Please read more carefully.
I mentioned no Republican Club ever.
I didn’t say anything about DQ’d. You did.
I simply said I won’t vote for a cultist.
I’m not even sure there is a “Republican Club”
as you write about it. Can they legally run for
office while registered as Republicans? Sure.
Do I have to vote for them? Of course not.
I don’t have to vote for anyone. I won’t vote
for someone in a cult. According to recent
polls, like Rasmussen’s, 43% of Americans say
they won’t vote for a mormon - across the
board where male female, Republican, Democrat,
Christian, atheist, any age group.
Why???
Obviously, the word “Mormon” has a meaning that to
Americans (30-61%, depending on demographics) is
negative. Rightly so. Mormonism is a perversion of
Biblical Christianity. It also carries the stigma
of “the cultist at your door.”
As to clubs and DQ’s and all that, ask someone
who knows about it. I do not.
best,
ampu
You are trying to prove something here. Sure got me
as to what you’re trying to make it mean. But keep
after it.
I’m with nowandlater. Hearsay just doesn’t cut it. Show some definitive proof, not secondhand accounts. There should be plenty of Lincoln’s writings to rely upon to document where he expressed a belief in Christ as his Savior if that is what he believed.
Please don’t prevaricate. You won’t vote for a Mormon for POTUS. In other words, he is, in your view, disqualifed for such office.
I asked you what “lower offices” “MAYBE you might vote for a Mormon. Can you answer that?
The Republican “club” is the Republican party. As I said, in your world, Mormons can belong to the club, but just don’t expect to let a Mormon hold an office in the club according to AMPU’s opinion, right? In other words, they can ride in the bus, but just sit in the back, right?
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