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Locked on 08/03/2007 6:34:01 AM PDT by Religion Moderator, reason:
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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 ...
And not forget this gem. What does Lincoln read during the crisis of the Civil War? Yep, he was reading the Book of Mormon.
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.
04/07/1958 EVERLY BROTHERS
Some of your posts are so ‘restornu-esque’ in their imaginative propositions. With enough spinning, perhaps you could connect Geoge Washington and maybe even Columbus to Mormonism burbling to come out. The book of mormon cliams fictional peoples and a fictional history for the Americas, I’m sure with just a little spinning you could make the connections for our amusement.
lol, you are good.
I guess you missed the jest part!
I guess you missed the amusement part.
Yeah, the Anti’s are decidely sour-pusses.
Anyway, here is some serious analysis. Did you know that Lincoln wrote and published a book whose thesis was that Jesus Christ was not divine? And yet, Mitt declare Jesus is divine but he can’t be president. Geez, talk about a double-standard!
With regard to Lincoln’s religious views, he was widely known for being an “infidel,” i.e., a non-believer. As a young man, Lincoln read the writings of Thomas Paine, a well-known critic of Christianity and the Bible. It was common knowledge among Lincoln’s friends and neighbors that he agreed with Paine. One of Lincoln’s close friends said he accepted the theory of evolution. John Stuart, one of Lincoln’s law partners, said Lincoln “went further against Christian belief and doctrines and principles than any man I ever heard; he shocked me” (William Herndon with Jesse Weik, Life of Lincoln, New York: Fawcett Publications, 1961, reprint of 1888 edition, p. 349; Tripp, The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, p. 184). Years before he entered the political arena, Lincoln wrote a manuscript that argued against Christ’s divinity and rejected the inspiration of the Bible. Perhaps it’s revealing that when Lincoln ran for president in 1860, twenty of the twenty-three ministers in his hometown opposed his candidacy.
Lincoln’s defenders point to his presidential speeches in which he mentioned God and expressed gratitude for God’s blessings. But Bill Clinton did the same thing. Clinton regularly attended church, talked about reading the Bible, mentioned God in many of his speeches, and signed the Defense of Marriage Act. Yet, would anyone argue that therefore Clinton was a Christian president? John F. Kennedy mentioned God in some of his speeches, was known to read the Bible on occasion, and carefully cultivated the image of a devoted family man. But would anyone seriously assert that Kennedy was a Christian president?
Lincoln’s public speeches that expressed belief in God were intended to satisfy religious Republicans and were usually written by his Secretary of State, William Seward. When Judge James M. Nelson asked Lincoln about his overtly religious (and now famous) Thanksgiving Message, Lincoln replied, “Oh, that is some of Seward’s nonsense, and it pleases the fools.” Judge Nelson later said the following about Lincoln’s religious views in a letter to the Louisville Times in 1887:
In religion, Mr. Lincoln was about of the same opinion as Bob Ingersoll [an agnostic and ardent critic of the Bible], and there is no account of his ever having changed. He went to church a few times with his family while he was President, but so far as I have been able to find out, he remained an unbeliever. Mr. Lincoln in his younger days wrote a book, in which he endeavored to prove the fallacy of the plan of salvation and the divinity of Christ. (In Franklin Steiner, The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents, Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 1995, reprint, p. 137)
Lincoln’s original drafts of the Emancipation Proclamation and the Gettysburg Address contained no references to God. The references to deity that now appear in those documents were inserted at the suggestion of others in order to make them more politically appealing. It should also be noted that Lincoln never so much as mentioned Jesus in any of his speeches or writings.
Lincoln’s defenders also note that Lincoln was known for reading the Bible. But Lincoln rejected the Bible’s divine inspiration and viewed it only as a book of practical advice. Lincoln read Aesop’s Fables just as much as he read the Bible. William Herndon, Lincoln’s long-time friend and one of his law partners, said Lincoln rejected the Bible as a revelation from God:
As to Mr. Lincoln’s religious views. . . . He was, in short, an infidel . . . a theist. He did not believe that Jesus was God, nor the Son of God. He was a fatalist and denied the freedom of the will. Mr. Lincoln told me a thousand times, that he did not believe the Bible was the revelation of God, as the Christian world contends. (William Herndon, Life of Lincoln, p. 28)
C. A. Tripp commented on Lincoln’s Bible reading as follows:
On the other hand, later as president he was known to read the Bible (rather more than before) and would not infrequently quote words and phrases from it. Both these images—his Bible reading and borrowings from it—caused a few casual observers to believe he had become a convert, or at least that he came to lean more than he ever had before toward conventional beliefs. Far from it. Consistently through life . . . Lincoln was greatly disinclined toward prayers or praying or preachers; least of all we he ever prone to believe in, or to petition help from, any personal God. (The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, p. 189)
Orville Browning, who socialized often with the Lincolns at the White House, said,
I have seen him reading the Bible but never knew of his engaging in any other act of devotion. He did not invoke a blessing at table, nor did he have family prayers. . . . (in Tripp, The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, p. 185)
Browning noted that even when Lincoln’s favorite son Willie was dying a slow, painful death, and another son, Tad, was seriously ill, not once did he see Lincoln pray or express any hope for divine intervention. This is not surprising, given the fact that when asked specifically if he believed in an afterlife, Lincoln said, “when we die, that is the last of us” (in Tripp, The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, p. 80).
In a letter responding to claims that Lincoln had converted to the Christian faith, Herndon said,
Not one of Lincoln’s old acquaintances in this city [Lincoln’s hometown of Springfield, Illinois] ever heard of his conversion to Christianity by Dr. Smith or anyone else. It was never suggested nor thought of here until after his death. . . . I never saw him read a second of time in Dr. Smith’s book on Infidelity. He threw at down upon our table—spit upon it as it were—and never opened it to my knowledge. (In Steiner, The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents, p. 134)
Jesse Fell, an early Lincoln biographer who interviewed Lincoln at length, characterized Lincoln’s religious views in the following terms in 1870, five years after Lincoln’s death:
On 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 present and future rewards (as they are popularly called), and many other subjects, he held opinions utterly at variance with what are usually taught in the Church. I should say that his expressed views on these and kindred topics were such as, in the estimation of most believers, would place him outside the Christian pale. (In Herndon, Life of Lincoln, p. 351)
Only toward the very end of his life may Lincoln have begun to take religion seriously, and even then there is doubt about the depth and genuineness of his alleged conversion. In 1892 the Chicago Herald summarized Lincoln’s religious beliefs as follows:
He was without faith in the Bible or its teachings. On this point the testimony is so overwhelming that there is no basis for doubt. In his early life Lincoln exhibited a powerful tendency to aggressive infidelity. But when he grew to be a politician he became secretive and non-committal in his religious belief. . . . It must be accepted as final by every reasonable mind that in religion Mr. Lincoln was a skeptic.
Lincoln’s own wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, told Herndon that “Mr. Lincoln had no faith and no hope in the usual acceptation of those words” (Herndon, Life of Lincoln, p. 352). She added that Lincoln “was never a technical Christian” (Herndon, Life of Lincoln, p. 352).
Yeah, I heard about that. Very funny.
LOL
That was GOOD!
I am having a fun time reading theses things an i am splitting a inners laughing so hard...
You are right there a lot of sour pusses....
Sorry fell me in?
Private Replied. Make sure that you know.....yeah! LOL.
Don’t forget. You’re a religious bigot for “lesser offices” as well.
Heck, while you’re at it, why don’t you just add advocating the repeal of civil rights for Mormons altogether. Then you can really stick it to the cult and its members.
Wow, that sounds like the real thing. Typical tactic.
You say that members of your family are members of the church. I would think that they would find this sort of post by you to be offensive. Do you care how your loved ones feel?
Early morning in the dairy barn, juicing the maidens,(milking 40 Holsteins) with KNAK blasting all the latest music. All I had to do was dreeeeammm. Dream, Dream, Dream!
[I chose based on what the Holy Ghost told me was true.]
“As I’ve said several times on these threads, good for you for having a testimony. Just don’t argue YOUR testimony to be better than MY testimony in a debate. “
There goes that burning in my colon again.
Has it occurred to you that perhaps she cares about their eternal destiny ...
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