Simply not true, FRiend.
In fact, the beliefs I defend here reflect the Unitarianism of some Founding Fathers, plus what are today known as "Restoration Churches" -- i.e., Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, New Apostolic Church, etc. -- a total of circa 50 million Christians worldwide.
I think most of these people qualify as genuine conservatives, and therefore deserve respect and a welcome home on Free Republic.
Do you disagree?
I think most of these people qualify as genuine conservatives, and therefore deserve respect and a welcome home on Free Republic.
***Here you seek to expand the definition of “conservative” to include heretics. Heretics do not deserve respect nor a welcome, because Jesus Who was God Himself properly condemns false teachers as ‘vipers’ and ‘sons of the devil’. Free Republic is “Pro-God”, not “Pro son-of-the-devil”.
Front page of FR: FR is “PRO GOD”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1103363/posts
While individual members of the cults you’ve listed may or may not adhere to conservative principles, their respective belief systems are not authentic Christian theism.
For instance, from the beginning Unitarianism was a “quiet” pantheism bespeaking an immanent god-force. Today’s Unitarianism is “out of the closet,” its’ neo-pagan foundation no longer under wraps but out in the open. Unitarian minister Michael Dowd, for instance, openly describes himself as a Religious Naturalist (pagan) and evolutionary evangelical.
As for Mormonism, when its outer pretense of Christianity is moved aside, its’ naturalistic and evolutionary foundations are revealed.
Following excerpts: Why Mormonism will Surrender to Homosexuality
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2988025/posts
Joseph Smith taught that matter is eternal and the Mormon God Elohim had no power to create out of nothing. Elohim merely reorganized already present elements, which have no beginning or end and cannot be destroyed:
“Since Mormons believe that the elements are eternal, it follows that they deny the ex nihilo creation.” (Encyclopedia of Mormonism 1:400).
From this it follows that a mere man can become God, as the great Mormon prophet Joseph Smith explains:
“It is necessary we should understand the character and being of God and how he came to be so; for I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and suppose that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you may see. and that he was once a man like us; yea, that God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself did... Here then, is eternal life – to know the only wise and true God; and you have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves, and to be kings and priest to God, the same as all Gods have done before you, namely by going from one small degree to another, and from a small capacity to a great one. . . . (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 345-47
The Mormon God is a creature from within creation (nature). In fact, Mormon scripture states that he is merely a physical, exalted man who lives on a planet near the great star Kolob where he and his wives busily procreate millions of spirit children who are sent into this material realm of suffering and evil to live according to the laws of the gospel and thereby earn their own godhood over their own planet:
The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit. Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us.” (D&C 310:22, Ed Decker, “The Lesser gods of Mormonism”)
In the Genesis account the living, supernatural Triune God created all things ex-nihilo, or out of nothing. He is self-existent, eternal, immutable, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. He is the sovereign Lord of the universe. He is the God of all creation. He is the God who stands outside of the space-time dimension, thus creation actually began before time came to be as God spoke life, soul/spirit, matter and all else out of nothing. The living, supernatural God is the First Cause of all things. (Psalm 33:6; John 1:3; Romans 4:17; Hebrews 11:3):
“For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Col. 1:16, 17
In the “Pagan Temptation,” Christian scholar Thomas Molnar reports that the idea that matter is eternal is a pattern of thought stretching back to the ancient Babylonians, Egyptians, and Greeks in the West and in the East to the Upanishads:
“Matter is regarded as the opposite of God, equal to him or even greater in power, and thus absolutely evil. All of the great philosophers of Greece believed this....with the exception of Aristotle (and the materialists, of course.)” (P. 26)
In this way of thinking, everything somehow emerged/evolved out of either eternally existing matter as the ancients and Joseph Smith taught, or in contemporary terms from matter spontaneously-generated during the Big Bang, or Cosmic Egg as ancients called the Big Bang.
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Foundations of America’s Constitutional Republic:
http://www.amazon.com/Early-New-England-Covenanted-University/dp/0802813526?tag=viglink126964-20
http://www.amazon.com/The-Puritan-Origins-American-Self/dp/0300172419?tag=viglink126964-20
Preeminent early American minister Cotton Mather wrote his Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), proclaiming: “I WRITE the Wonders of the CHRISTIAN RELIGION, flying from the Deprivation of Europe, to the American Strand.” Bercovitch cites Cotton Mather’s biography of Winthrop, “Nehemias Americanus:”
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~drbr/cotton1.html
what are today known as “Restoration Churches” — i.e., Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses,
***Classic heretical churches.
JimRob’s words:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2917406/posts?page=4660
At least two moderators resigned this afternoon after I flatly refused to rein in a so-called anti-Mormon “bigot” on FR. Well, if being in opposition to false prophets and false prophecy makes a Christian believer a bigot, then I guess I’m a bigot. I’ve posted before that I flat do not believe that the Book of Mormon is the true word of God. Nor do I believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. The Christian bible warns us to be weary of false prophets and that I am. Romney being the presumptive Republican nominee does not change that fact.
At least two moderators resigned this afternoon after I flatly refused to rein in a so-called anti-Mormon “bigot” on FR. Well, if being in opposition to false prophets and false prophecy makes a Christian believer a bigot, then I guess I’m a bigot. I’ve posted before that I flat do not believe that the Book of Mormon is the true word of God. Nor do I believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. The Christian bible warns us to be weary of false prophets and that I am. Romney being the presumptive Republican nominee does not change that fact.