Posted on 09/19/2007 7:14:10 PM PDT by pissant
DENVER (AP) — James Dobson, one of the nation's most politically influential evangelical Christians, made it clear in a message to friends this week he will not support Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson.
In a private e-mail obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, Dobson accuses the former Tennessee senator and actor of being weak on the campaign trail and wrong on issues dear to social conservatives.
"Isn't Thompson the candidate who is opposed to a Constitutional amendment to protect marriage, believes there should be 50 different definitions of marriage in the U.S., favors McCain-Feingold, won't talk at all about what he believes, and can't speak his way out of a paper bag on the campaign trail?" Dobson wrote.
"He has no passion, no zeal, and no apparent 'want to.' And yet he is apparently the Great Hope that burns in the breasts of many conservative Christians? Well, not for me, my brothers. Not for me!"
The founder and chairman of Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family, Dobson draws a radio audience in the millions, many of whom who first came to trust the child psychologist for his conservative Christian advice on child-rearing.
Gary Schneeberger, a Focus on the Family spokesman, confirmed that Dobson wrote the e-mail. Schneeberger declined to comment further, saying it would be inappropriate because Dobson's comments about presidential candidates are made as an individual and not as a representative of Focus on the Family, a nonprofit organization restricted from partisan politics.
Dobson's strong words about Thompson underscore the frustration and lack of unity among Christian conservatives about the GOP field. Some Christian right leaders have pinned their hopes on Thompson, describing him as a Southern-fried Ronald Reagan. But others have voiced doubts in recent weeks about some of the same issues Dobson highlighted: his position on gay marriage and support for the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation.
Dobson and other Christian conservatives support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would bar gay marriage nationally. Thompson has said he would support a constitutional amendment that would prohibit states from imposing their gay marriage laws on other states, which falls well short of that.
Karen Hanretty, a spokeswoman for the Thompson campaign, said Wednesday in response to the Dobson e-mail: "Fred Thompson has a 100 percent pro-life voting record. He believes strongly in returning authority to the levels of government closest to families and communities, protecting states from intrusion by the federal government and activist judges.
"We're confident as voters get to know Fred, they'll appreciate his conservative principles, and he is the one conservative in this race who can win the nomination and can go on to defeat the Democratic nominee."
In his e-mail addressed "Dear friends," Dobson includes the text of a recent news story highlighting Thompson's statement that while he was baptized in the Church of Christ, he does not attend church regularly and won't speak about his faith on the stump.
U.S. News and World Report quoted Dobson earlier this year as questioning Thompson's commitment to the Christian faith — comments Dobson contended were not put in proper context. Dobson in this week's e-mail writes that suppositions "about the former senator's never having professed to be a Christian are turning out to be accurate in substance."
Earlier this year, Dobson said he wouldn't back John McCain because of the Arizona senator's opposition to a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
Later, Dobson wrote on a conservative news Web site that he wouldn't support former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani should he win the Republican nomination. Dobson called Giuliani an "unapologetic supporter of abortion on demand" and criticized him for signing a bill in 1997 creating domestic-partnership benefits in New York City.
Last week, Dobson announced on his radio show that the IRS had cleared him of accusations that he had endangered his organization's nonprofit status by endorsing Republican candidates in 2004. The IRS said Dobson, who endorsed President Bush's re-election bid, was acting as an individual and not on behalf of the nonprofit group.
If Dobson is having a problem stating whom he WILL support, maybe he should take this little questionnaire.
http://www.wqad.com/Global/link.asp?L=259460
Watch it, or the Flying Imams will morph into the Adoring Dude Group!
What has happened to Warren Jeffs would have happened to THEM!!!
WOW!!
Talk about a show to compete (or get on the bandwagon) with them ladies on Wisteria Lane!!!
Well, our GOD(s?) are NOT like GM/UAW!
SURELY the guys who slipped in BEFORE the 47 years were up will get to KEEP all their extra wives in heaven!
--MormonDud(Won't they???)
At LEAST you’ll all MAKE it to Heaven!!!
Us poor JW folks only get a re-cycled EARTH, ‘cause OUR ‘heaven’ got filled up with 144,000 a LOOooong time ago!
(and we won’t even get chainsaws or running water!)
—JehovahWitnessDrone(I’m thinking of switching)
You called “Dobson a pitiful excuse for a Christian” which is not in a Christian spirit as I see it. Are you a Christian? If not, what does your insult mean, that Christians are good and people should be good Christians, just not you?
Immanentize the eschaton is a non-theological term, in that it came into being discussing politics. I think Buckley and the National Review actually helped popularize it. The eschaton is the end of days (eschatology). Immanentize means to make immanent, to bring into being now. So it’s someone that thinks that they can create God’s heaven on earth in the present or in the future. Utopians. Cults. Democrats. Anyone trying to create heavenly perfection in the here and now. Immanentize the eschaton.
>LBJ’s War on Poverty was the culmination of the social gospel movement.
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Yes and no. And I suspect more no than yes! LBJ jiggered the tax code to try to keep preachers from talking about politics when he was a congressman because his local preachers spoke out against him, so I doubt he was religious. The left, from the out and out Marxists to the mushy hippie types to the social gospel type Christians were behind the great society programs, so I don’t think it was even mainly social gospel types that can be blamed for the programs.
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>They could focus on important things like building grand cathedrals and growing mega churches and even sending missionaries to poor countries instead of dealing with the filth in our own streets...
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I kind of agree with you here. I sort of wish American churches would support churches and people in San Francisco, New York, etc. rather than Haiti. But that’s a personal preference I think, not a Biblical one. I’ve had a few good Christians that I respect think I was sort of missing the point of evangelism and charity by wanting to focus close to home as opposed to anywhere else.
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>The funny thing is churches are automatically tax exempt. You don’t even need to file for 501c3 status. The only “advantage” to this is the protection of assets for church officials.
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I didn’t know this. So they are taking the incorporation to avoid personal liability, but it comes with government strings. Ugly.
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>There are still many individuals and churches working in the field, but, as a whole, the Church has little authority left in a sphere that is rightfully hers.
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Agreed.
Ping to response above, you were part of the discussion.
The church, sometime in the mid 1950’s, lost something. It became fat and happy. The church turned inwards and settled itself to just being there. The church didn’t put up much of a fight and before it was too late ungodly men were being elected, rights were being stripped away and abominations were being discovered as “constitutional” rights.
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I don’t know enough modern church history to know whether this is true or not . . . but it sounds right to me. Any particular reason you think this happened in the 1950’s?
That’s a great test that you posted. It’s the first one that pretty much got it exactly right for me. Hunter, Brownback, Thompson was the order for me for the candidates. Eliminate Brownback because I don’t think he’s presidential timber (and his switched vote on immigration) and it’s exactly right.
Silence . . .
I would posture two reasons:
(1) Imagine it's Jan 1, 1954. Your country has spent almost 8 of the previous 13 years fighting two wars--including WWII where the cost in sacrificial energy, attention & lives impacted every American. When "battle fatigue" sets in, the first thing you don't want to do is to stir up more fights, even if the conflict was of a different nature. People thought it was time to turn their sights to their homes; so they did.
(2) It's been said of those born in the 1930s that theirs was a generation "without a cause." Oh sure, the insecurities of the depression followed by WWII stuck with these folks...but most didn't "own" those events in bearing the direct burdens of them because they were either still minors/small kids (or not even yet born) during that 16-year period (1929-1945).
By the mid-50s, many who realized their fathers weren't able to work only 20 years earlier due to the depression saw employment (and overtime) opportunities as luxuries they couldn't "afford" to pass over. With growing business opportunities (and slightly less men in the labor force due to the wars), men not only focused on home life but labor ops. [If there's one thing that stands out about a few of the Twilight Zone episodes from circa 1960-1962 is the sheer drudgery that the daily work grind in Urban/Suburban America is depicted to be, with the booze flowing freely].
The one thing I've learned from a few of those born in the 30's is that a sense of insecurity seemed to stick with them their entire lives--that insecurity that stuck with them from the first 6 to 16 years of their lives. They didn't want their kids to have to go through that same level of insecurity; so they spoiled the boomer kids with materialism.
Let me get this straight: You don't like a faith that critiques another faith (what you call "attack"). But your faith is one that likes to attack those faiths which critique other faiths. (Isn't there an inconsistency there somewhere?)
Please explain why your faith is all hunky-dory to launch attacks from (upon other faiths); but others aren't. What gives your faith a free pass you don't allow others? Why are you so intolerant about perceived "intolerance" if so-called "tolerance" is your pet issue? Don't you undermine your own standard?
Good post.
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