My Faith: Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), from Catholic to Muslim

CNN ^ | 9/1/11 | Chris Welch

[marshmallow]

Minneapolis, Minnesota (CNN) –Prior to 2006, few people even knew that then-Minnesota state legislator Keith Ellison was a Muslim. Because of his English name, he said, no one thought to ask.

But five years ago, when he ran for a seat in the United States House of Representatives - a race he would go on to win - word of his religious affiliation began to spread.

“When I started running for Congress it actually took me by surprise that so many people were fascinated with me being the first Muslim in Congress,” said Ellison, a Democrat now serving his third term in the House.

“But someone said to me, ‘Look Keith, think of a person of Japanese origin running for Congress six years after Pearl Harbor–this might be a news story.’”

Though Ellison's status as the first Muslim elected to Congress is widely known, fewer are aware that he was born into a Catholic family in Detroit and was brought up attending Catholic schools.

But he said he was never comfortable with that faith.

“I just felt it was ritual and dogma,” Ellison said. “Of course, that’s not the reality of Catholicism, but it’s the reality I lived. So I just kind of lost interest and stopped going to Mass unless I was required to.”

It wasn’t until he was a student at Wayne State University in Detroit when Ellison began, “looking for other things.”

[caww]

Anyone who thinks they have learned it all is fooling themselves, as you know, we never stop learning and growing unless we quit...and some do.

Even so some have an ability to understand deeper things than others.....it is not uncommon on these threads I have to slow down and try to understand some of the vocabulary used....before I can understand what the poster is actually saying. Daniel does that to me often.....as do you and others.

In other cases it doesn’t take very much to see a poster is blowing alot of wind and saying noting at all.

[Natural Law]

"What I would like to see is a piercing of the library doors!"

I'm afraid it's too much to ask for. All I see evidence of is people beginning with a crack-pot theory and then searching the internet until they can find a few snippets that they think support it. No background research, no testing the theory, no checking of sources, no memory of previous rebukes, no application of logic, no application of Christian principles against lying, no conscience, no nothing excepting rushing back to the thread to hammer a Catholic.

[boatbums]

The crux here is that we have free will and must attend to our own salvation to join into what He did. He paid His debt and opened the Gate - we must make our own way through the Gate.

What debt did Jesus have to pay that was "his debt"? Do you understand that he paid OUR debt? He not only opened the gate but he is the DOOR, we go through him to get to Heaven. We receive him, believing on him as our savior, trusting in him who paid our sin debt and THAT is how we go through the door. He said, "I am the way, the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father but by me.". You know the saying, "It's my way or the highway"? Well the Father says his way is through Jesus who is THE only way. The way we "make our way through the gate" is by faith. BY grace THROUGH faith.

[caww]

universal rejection ("protest") of all things Catholic, when you should know very well that is not a true statement.

That was a pretty lame statement wasn't it?... Most Protestants have catholic friends and we can fellowship about the things of Lord regardless of some of those differences...... We can also debate those differences because our catholic friends don't see themsleves as victims.

It would seem there are some who have great difficulty getting beyond the middle age mentality.....and realizing truth can be discussed and sought after among friends.

[Natural Law]

"What difference does it make that there are dozens of "Catholic" denominations?"

Step off the soap box. I'm not buying the fake righteous indignation act. History, Scripture and the facts are not on your side. The gates of hell are not going to prevail against the Church. A pack of virulent anti-Catholics posting anonymously from the comfort of their double wide trailers isn't going to leave a mark.

[boatbums]

I did the due diligence by reading the internal reports providing me with the 30000 plus number

Need I remind you that you admitted that:

There are some secular non profit entities listed but while perusing pages years ago I noticed that the protestant churches are quite evident on randomly selected pages I made from several volumes. To obtain a number the entity must furnish and update their information some of which informs the reader of religious affiliation. I did not look at the documentation so I can not categorically state that there was not some affiliation between each entry. That would take a lifetime of research.?

So either you stated falsely when you said that, or you are speaking falsely now, which is it?

[Running On Empty]

bb:”Do you understand that he paid OUR debt”

I would guess that stonehouse understands that. It may help to ask him first if he means that when Jesus “became sin for us” and took our sins in his body upon the Cross that He paid his debt.

It may just be a manner of expressing on stonehouse’s part that isn’t as clear as it should be.

Let him explain himself.

[boatbums]

Refresh my memory. What is written above the head of Jesus on the Cross and what are the events of Resurrection Sunday, if you please.

Here's the link again, maybe this time you should read it: http://christianthinktank.com/ordorise.html

[Judith Anne]

If you could put yourself on the other side for once and read the condescending, insulting and hatefully snide comments that come from some on your side, you may get a glimpse of why these threads take a hostile turn at times.

OIh, please. The garbage and junk we have had to read in order to read from your side in these threads over the years is enough to create a landfill. You think Catholics are "hatefully snide?" We aren't the ones who called Pope Benedict a Nazi. Maybe you can understand why these threads take a hostile turn at times, if you go back and read over some of the "loving" things Quix posts. Or Metmom. Just look in the mirror! Why are you so afraid of facing your vicious sinful natures? Are you unsure of your salvation? Are you not convinced Christ loves you enough to give Himself for you? If you had all that surety you boast about, you'd proclaim your own sinful nature in order to glorify Him. Sadly, you can't. Fear of being hellbound prevents you from accepting your salvation.

[stonehouse01]

Jesus paid our debt - it was not His debt. We do not disagree.

I am sorry if that was not clear. I assumed that Christians would know what I meant. -His debt is Our debt - that is why he is the Redeemer.

Grace, Faith and works my friend - there is no free ride to heaven - you have to work it

[bronx2]

Please note as I have told others in previous posts to no avail, it is the Form 990 which contains the data of these discrete Church entities from which the Pub 78 is complied.

Have you obtained access to these documents also? If not you will be unable to make any informed judgments. In past posts I related about the F 990 and attendant documents which performed analysis of same.. Perhaps these salient facts were ignored for a reason?. Is there some sinister agenda breeding here.

Sorry, no self serving testimony allowed. You need to accept evidence which does not comport to your sense of objective reality. You can play fast and loose with individual interpretation of the Bible since all are allowed their opinion and can become a magisterium of one. but in this realm one is held to a higher standard ,one that you have not attained.

Asserting discrete entities do not equal denominations without providing rigorous probative evidence will not be accepted.

Why is it so difficult to accept that the reformation led to untold fractions within Christianity. Just open your eyes and see how many Mom and Pop store front churches there are in this nation.

It appears your current analysis of secular data parallels the individual interpretations of spiritual data namely the bible and so is it time for you to swim the Tiber or become atheists?

[boatbums]

Impossible. 1) Everyone questioned by the inquisition was asked who their enemies were. All the woman would have to do is say that the priest was her enemy and that would be the end of it. 2) People were NEVER tortured to death and in fact torture was extremely rare. Off the top of my head, I know of no cases at all of women being tortured. 3) Torture - really a form of water boarding - was used to gain information. No blood could be spilled. No bones broken. No permanent harm done. No one could be tortured more than once and no one could be tortured for more than 15 minutes.

You know of no cases of women being tortured? Have you read about Anne Askew? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Askew

[boatbums]

Nope, no scouring of anything concerning that subject. I hoped you would be able to answer this seeing as you seem so determined to insist we all MUST believe it. I understand any reluctance you may have in trying to prove something your church demands the faithful to believe.

[boatbums]

By the way, Luther and many of the “Reformers” denied St. Paul wrote the Letter to the Hebrews.

If you go back you will see that this was to answer a Catholic who questioned if Paul wrote Hebrews and asserting it didn't matter anyway. I posted back that the Catholic Church DID say that Paul wrote it. That's all.

[boatbums]

Why are you so afraid of facing your vicious sinful natures? Are you unsure of your salvation? Are you not convinced Christ loves you enough to give Himself for you? If you had all that surety you boast about, you'd proclaim your own sinful nature in order to glorify Him. Sadly, you can't. Fear of being hellbound prevents you from accepting your salvation.

You, obviously, are not doing a very good job of reading the posts we have been writing on this very thread for nearly a week now. Not one time have I or or anyone else denied our desperate sinful condition before an all holy and righteous God. I rejoice in the God of my salvation because without the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf, NO ONE can ever merit eternity with him. NO ONE! I am not excusing anyone who posts out of anger or hate. I sincerely try to make sure I don't. I faced my utter depravity and my impotence to ever redeem myself and I thankfully and gratefully accepted the grace of God to save me from my sins. I trust in his precious promises to me, and that is the ONLY reason why I can say I know I am going to heaven. God wants us to have that blessed assurance and he does NOT consider it boastful, rather it is another evidence of faith.

[Mad Dawg]

I guess the first thing to say is that "circularity" doesn't seem to be as bad as people say. I mean that, in my alleged thinking, each part supports (or ought to) support every other part. So my remark isn't the put-down it might appear to be.

Except that if we're going to go after each other's way of thinking, then I think we have to try to the (1) establish agreed upon premises;(2) ask,"how in the name of, um, Torquemada do you get where you are from those principles we agreed on?"

At least that's what I think. but then, I haven't finished my first cup of coffee yet ...

Okay
If He thought Enoch and Elijah important enough to mention, why would He not have mentioned Mary....?

Here's how I see it:

IF we assume Sola Scriptura as a "driving principle" and then, as a lesser principle, that Councils can err, and "the Church" is 'invisible' and not to be identified with any identifiable corporate group, and so forth,
THEN it is consistent with that view that the Marian dogma (and a bunch o' other stuff) cannot be relied upon to be true.

IF you're right about Bible, Church, so-called "sacred Tradition", THEN your position on Mary follows, and the sub-argument that if her assumption were all that, it wold have been clearly presented in Scripture also follows.

Am I okay so far?

Now, on the other hand, if we are right (swallow hard, you can pretend for a minute ...)
If the Holy Spirit does work with the slop-buckets of humans,
If the Scriptures and "sacred tradition" emerge together, each clarifying and correcting¹ the other,
If "the Church" CAN be identified in some way (and that hedging phrase is important to us) with some particular collection of earthen vessels,
if the Lord's saying about the (then) future coming of the Holy Ghost revealing all things, and so forth,
THEN it is utterly unremarkable that the history of the Church after Pentecost would include the development (unfolding) of dogma, including Marian teachings.

Your arguments reinforce your position, but do not touch mine; my arguments ditto, mutatis mutandis. Some of our conclusions, are absurd in the light of some of your premises, and some of yours ... with ours. But we don't make contact. That's what I'm trying to say. Is that anything less than utterly obscure?

In related news, yesterday at chapter (the monthly meeting of our coven of Lay Dominicans) during "Formation"(the edumicational part of the meeting) we started going off on how wrong the Protestants are about how to read Scripture. That sort of thing always makes me squirm in my seat. Personally I've learned a lot from Protestantism, it was in Protestantism that I came to Jesus (or,more accurately, He came to me), and I find it more useful to talk about how wrong I am and about how and in what respects my "opponent" is right. I fear a kind of dangerous self-hypnosis in talking about how very wonderful I and my opinions are.

Both our 'sides" include wonderful, smart, devout people. (And then there's Quix ....) :-) And God has touched and changed our lives. It simply cannot be under a gracious Lord who mourns at our divisions that we cannot learn from one another.

I wanted yesterday to say,"Brothers and Sisters in Jesus and Dominic: Our Lord is Victor, our faith is rich and strong. Are we not secure enough then to settle down and see what we can learn from our Protestant brethren?

And I noticed a 'kink' in communication, thus: We were talking about the phrase "economy of salvation," and I asked if the phrase "the work of Christ" showed up in Catholic thought.

Immediately one of my friends 'went off' on how it's perilous to try to re-invent terms and how the phrase "the work of Christ" was at once more vague and less satisfactory than "economy of Salvation."

He assumed I was proposing it as a synonym. He assumed. Evidently there was a kind of tenderness or fearfulness that pricked him to shut out an opposing thought before he looked at it and took the usual scholarly steps of FIRST understanding and then (if appropriate) stomping all over ...

If our trust in the Lord is so weak that we cannot listen to one another without getting all prickly (I condemn myself here) then we need to turn to Jesus and ask for more.

In the last century a Catholic sister and visionary advised -- and it's good advice -- that we learn to pray,"Jesus, I trust in you." It's especially helpful wwen nothing seems to be breaking our way.

But it's also helpful to me when I converse with "poison-handling, snake-drinking" Pentecostalists or with dispensationalists,such as your self. Clearly there is "a great gulf fixed" between us. But the light of Christ is pretty small beer if it cannot shine across that gulf and illuminate some of the good features on either side.

Anyway, that's what I think. Have an awesome Sunday!

---

(1) By suggesting that tradition "corrects" Scripture, I only mean in the sense of saying, e.g.: The Epistle of Hermas is OUT,Revelation is IN.

[Iscool]

Grace, Faith and works my friend - there is no free ride to heaven - you have to work it

That's the way it was before the Cross...So then why did Jesus die??? If you have now what you had before the Crucifixion, Jesus died in vain...

Rom 3:21 But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;

But you guys are right about one thing...If you deny the free gift of eternal life, you WILL be judged by what you do for Jesus...You will be judged by the Law...

And you will fail...

You have put yourself under the 'circumcision'...Just like the Jews before the sacrifice of Jesus...

Gal 5:3 For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law.

Jas 2:10 For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.

You won't make it...You have failed already...

Rom 4:4 Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt.
Rom 4:5 But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.
Rom 4:6 Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works,
Rom 4:7 Saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered.
Rom 4:8 Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.

The Lord will not impute sin??? There's no sin layed to my account??? Absolutely true...

Eph 2:8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
Eph 2:9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.

Salvation is free and there will be no sin posted on my account...Jesus paid it ALL

[Mad Dawg]

Wow! That is a completely suspicious figure! I'd wonder how the class"inquisitions" was defined.

I have a friend who is doing his doctoral research on the Spanish Inquisition. He says MAYBE in a century or two, 1k-2k people died in Portuguese,Spanish, and Italian Inquisitions.

This wide divergence of figures suggests to me that the term is being used in different ways by either side.

For example, I would distinguish between the inquisition of Albigensians and the War against them. If the latter were included in thhe former, which I think would be unjustified, since it's unclear how/whether piety motivated de Montfort, that would bump the figures up right smart.

I think exaggerated description and figures about thhe various inquisitions, along with the tendency to lump them all together as "the" inquisition, serve as a "reinforcing myth," like the myth that secualrrulers were in the pocket of the Church. Tell that to Thomas a Becket the martyred bishops of Europe, or the Guelphs and Ghibellines. It's handy, but it's just not true. Even the dread Unam Sanctam arose, I believe, because of strife between secular and religious leaders.

[Mad Dawg]

10-4

[Mad Dawg]

One of the interesting sub-fields of the study of inquisitions is the study of how the slanders got started, spread, and accepted. My doctoral student friend doesn't know, since he's focussed on the actual Spanish Inquisition.

The conjectures seem to focus on the Spanish/English strife of the 15th and following centuries, and Protestant northern Europe's understandable desire to paint Catholic Spain in the most damaging light.