Posted on 01/12/2003 2:44:07 PM PST by Remedy
Meanwhile, ACLU worked overtime to take Christ out of Christmas and PBS celebrated Islam
A week before Christmas, MSNBC talk-show host Phil Donahue used his program as a vehicle to show his contempt for foundational Christian beliefs - particularly that salvation comes only through faith in Jesus Christ.
The December 17 program - titled "Do You Have to Be a Christian to Get into Heaven?" - was a follow-up to Donahue's December 3 show during which he asked Christian evangelist and Liberty University founder the Rev. Jerry Falwell if he (Donahue) had to accept Christ in order to go to heaven. The Rev. Falwell replied that the only way to heaven was "what Jesus said in [the New Testament Book of] John 14:6. He said, 'I am the way, the truth, the life, no man cometh unto the Father - no man - but by me.'"
When many in the audience applauded the Rev. Falwell's statement, Donahue expressed disdain for their reaction and evidently decided to hone in on the topic with theological guests from both sides.
For the December 17 program, Donahue assembled the Rev. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky; Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, national talk-radio host and author of "Judaism Is for Everybody"; Michael Brown, a Messianic (Christian) Jew; Dr. Joe Hough, president of the Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan; and evangelist Flip Benham. Mohler, Brown, and Benham support the Biblical viewpoint while Rabbi Boteach and Dr. Hough hold opposing views.
Donahue first posed the question of "who goes to heaven" to the Rev. Mohler, who answered that a person goes to heaven only by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Donahue showed his scorn for Mohler's statement by replying, "I just think that [view] has the potential, and already has caused an awful lot of havoc here among the Lord's people. If you tell me that I'm not going to heaven, then why should you respect me? If the Lord doesn't respect me, why should you?"
The Rev. Mohler replied: "Well, the Lord respects you enough to have sent Jesus Christ, his son, to assume human flesh, to die on Calvary's cross for your sins." Unimpressed, Donahue asked Rabbi Boteach to respond:
Well, Phil, sadly, Rev. Mohler is a spiritual racist. And it's not enough for him for Jews to be at the back of the heavenly bus, and not only can they not drink from the good old water fountain, he wants nothing less than a spiritual lynching. … [T]hink about how perverse this is. You take a Middle Eastern Jew named Jesus, one of the greatest teachers the world has ever known. You give him blond hair and blue eyes. You then put a Ku Klux Klan outfit on him with a hood and a white sheet, and you make him into the chief enforcer of anti-Semitism the world has ever known.
Phil Donahue then tacitly agreed with the rabbi's vitriolic assessment of Christianity, noting, "And he [the Christian Klansman] goes to heaven. The guy in the sheet goes to heaven, I think is what he's saying."
Although the Rev. Mohler vehemently disagreed with the association of Christianity with the Ku Klux Klan and anti-Semitism, Rabbi Boteach continued his comments, asserting that Mohler's views transcend the issue of "just people making decisions about faith. We are talking about Jews being persecuted, slaughtered ... massacred, turned to bars of soap because of 2000 years of Christian anti-Judaism. The Holocaust didn't take place in Buddhist Europe or in Hindu Europe. It took place in Christian Europe."
To the assertion equating Nazi and Christian worldviews, Donahue responded, "I agree with you."
As the program continued, Donahue chastised a female audience participant who expressed her view that the Bible says Jesus is the only way to heaven. Donahue:
Aren't you concerned about hurting the feelings of all those other people of other faiths? And isn't it a little arrogant to say, you know, I know and you don't. …[W]e're happy that you believe that. And I am very proud, as you are, to live in a country that you're allowed to believe that. But you're imposing something else there. You're not only saying Jesus is my way. You're saying he's for everybody, and if you don't accept him, you're not going to heaven. I have problems with that.
Donahue then introduced Dr. Michael Brown, who identified himself as a Messianic Jew - a member of the Jewish faith that accepts Jesus Christ as the Messiah and fulfiller of Old Testament prophesies. Upon hearing Dr. Brown's statement, Donahue said sarcastically, "Boy, oh, boy, you're breaking the hearts of a lot of very, very devout faithful Jewish folk with that. I mean, really. You don't think it's an oxymoron?"
Dr. Brown replied, "He [Jesus] came to fulfill what's written in Moses and the prophets. So either…the whole world should believe in him or reject it." Rabbi Boteach then called Brown "a spiritual bigot" and mocked the notion that Jesus is the only way to heaven.
Donahue ridiculed Dr. Mohler for suggesting in his writings that Islam is a faith that "lies about God" and presents a false gospel. "I mean, please. You're going to be sending how many people to war if you keep up commentary like this? You don't see the un-Christian nature of that comment?"
The Mohler replied: "It's not an un-Christian comment, because it is the gospel. And also, well, let's put it this way. If you have a true Muslim who understands what we believe about Jesus, he believes that we are wrong. And you [as a Christian] have to have a basic respect for truth."
Donahue then said, "But I don't know if he [a Muslim] is out there really throwing mud and calling names to people who believe otherwise. I think we can lose just a little less devotion and [have] more love and understanding and reaching out." He called on Dr. Hough to respond:
The basic problem here, I think, is that God is too small. So for me, I'm passionately Christian. I am a Christian. I believe in Jesus as the One who showed me the way. But I would be the last person to be so arrogant as to assert that my God has so little imagination, that she or he could not reach out to other people in other cultures in other ways. I'm happy about that. [Emphasis added.]
Donahue agreed and said, "You speak for me. When I see a holy person, I'm happy about that."
Christians as 'Bigots'
Throughout the program, the views of the Rev. Mohler, Dr. Brown, and the Rev. Benham were characterized as bigoted, ignorant, hateful and unenlightened, about which Donahue typically agreed. Perhaps the most telling moment in the broadcast came when one audience member asked Boteach, "Rabbi, I was wondering what you believe. … Who is going to hell? Because it seems everybody believes everybody's going to heaven, and that cannot be the case."
The rabbi responded:
Do you realize that I really don't give one darn if I'm going to heaven or hell? I didn't have children so they look after me when I'm a doddering old fool with drool coming out of my mouth! I had them because I love them! I serve God because I love him! Whatever he does with me. Why are you so fixated with heaven and hell. … [I]t's not a valid question because I'm means-oriented!
Later in the conversation, Rabbi Boteach showed his complete misunderstanding of sin, God's grace, and forgiveness: "If heaven is a place riddled with murderers who believed in Jesus, and hell is a place riddled with victims who had died with the wrong faith, I would choose hell every, any single day. I prefer to be with the innocent victim than to be in a heaven riddled with murderers."
In other words, the rabbi doesn't even believe in heaven, hell, judgment, grace, or forgiveness, but nevertheless is hypercritical of Christians who do. Furthermore, essentially all religious faiths practice exclusionary principles regarding salvation and the eternal destiny of the human soul. The rabbi readily confessed his unbelief; Hindus and Buddhists believe in repeated reincarnations until the soul is relieved of its bad "karma" through good works, at which time the soul simply sheds its existence; Muslims believe in a works-based judgment and that only those who accept Allah as the one true God may achieve a Paradise of abundant sensual pleasures, while nonbelievers will suffer the torments of hell.
It is a uniquely Christian belief that works cannot earn a person salvation, as St. Paul notes in Romans 3:23: "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God." For Christians, acceptance into the heavenly kingdom comes only by God's grace and entering into a personal trust relationship with the Living God, Jesus Christ, whose sacrifice on the cross served as an atonement for sin. Thus believers are justified in the eyes of God.
By focusing exclusively on Christianity and ignoring the beliefs of other faiths, Phil Donahue's primary motivation was to ridicule the beliefs of Bible-believing Christians, whom he regards as intolerant to his own ultra-liberal views. Unfortunately, he missed an opportunity to present a reasoned discussion of Christian doctrine concerning salvation, which could have served to enlighten his viewers and sweep away the misconceptions raised by the audience's questions and shared by some panel members.
Perhaps Donahue's open contempt for Biblical truths and the Christian faith helps explain his dismal ratings. His MSNBC program is reportedly losing the ratings war to more conservative talk shows on the FOX network.
'Twas the Season Without a Reason
In retrospect, the 2002 Christmas holiday season can perhaps be best remembered as "the season without a Reason." Holiday greetings, which were once universally expressed as Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, have long since been replaced by the generically acceptable, Happy Holidays, while millions of schoolchildren who used to look forward to 'Christmas vacation' now simply enjoy their 'winter break.'
Even though Christmas is a federal holiday that celebrates and reflects the nation's Christian heritage, anti-Christian organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have been remarkably successful in eliminating Christmas symbolism from the public arena - most often by threats and intimidation without legal merit. This past Christmas season showed a continuation of this relentless assault. Among the more outrageous examples were:
PBS Shills for Islam
The media, which once offered a multitude of Christmas-oriented programs, are now almost devoid of serious Christian themes. The Public Broadcasting Service did present a serious religious program shortly before Christmas - a two-hour discourse on the life of Muhammad produced by Muslim convert and apologist for the Islamic faith, Alex Kronemer. "Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet" aired on most of the 349 PBS affiliates nationwide beginning December 18, while the Washington, D.C., PBS station broadcast the program on December 26.
Kronemer, who has a master of divinity degree in theological studies from Harvard Divinity School, recently wrote an article for the religion Web site Beliefnet.com called, "Was Muhammad a Terrorist." In the article, Kronemer credits Muhammad for ending the "Biblical period" of violence: "By today's standards, Muhammad engaged in an appalling amount of violence - but he brought peace to the Holy Land." [Emphasis added.] Muhammad also brought a repressive code of 7th century religious laws that continues to enslave a large portion of the world to this day.
If, indeed, Muhammad brought "peace to the Holy Land" by the violent conquest of its inhabitants, it was quite obviously short-lived, which Kronemer later admits in his article: "Christianity and Islam have challenged and competed with one another ever since. The relationship has spurred both civilizations to greater creativity, but has also been the source of conflict over the centuries, which is now re-ignited on both sides of the divide."
Daniel Pipes, director of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum, called the PBS documentary "an outrage … an airbrushed and uncritical documentary of a topic that has both world historical and contemporary significance. Its patronizing film might be fine for an Islamic Sunday school class, but not for a national audience."
Mr. Pipes was also critical of taxpayer support of the film:
The U.S. government should never fund a documentary whose obvious intent is to glorify a religion and proselytize for it. Doing so flies in the face of American tradition and law. On behalf of taxpayers, a public-interest law firm should bring suit against the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, both to address this travesty and to win an injunction against any possible repetitions.
PBS has supplemented its documentary by offering educational materials on its Web site about Islam and its relationship to women, jihad, and other religions, as well as offering a "virtual Hajj" (the Muslim's sacred pilgrimage to Mecca), information about the Koran, and a discussion forum.
And plenty of Methodist, Episcopalian, Baptist, Lutheran, etc. ministers and reverends have been in trouble for child molestation as well.
One example: the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, a very conservative Biblical denomination, had a scandal in the mid-90s where 14 pastors and ministers were credibly accused of sexually abusing young boys under their spiritual care. The church covered up many of these cases - in one case, that of Daniel Reeb who had actively molested boys for 30 years - the perpetrator admitted to his conduct and was still permitted to preach. Several of these men had their legal defense paid for by the church.
There are 2.5M baptized LCMS Lutherans. There are 62M Catholics. There are 8,000 LCMS clergy and 47,000 Catholic clergy in the US or six times as many.
75 priests in the US are credibly accused of molestation, or about 5 times as many.
Statistically, you are slightly less likely to be hurt by a Catholic priest than an LCMS minister.
However, the media and conservative Protestants like to play up the problems in the Catholic Church as if they were unique to the Church and more widespread than in any other denomination. That's demonstrably false.
It's particularly silly to see conservative Protestants pile on in this way - I only know about the LCMS problems because they were somewhat publicized by liberal Midwestern newspapers. I'm sure much more liberal denominations have worse problems which are never reported.
Protestants who harp on the Church's difficulties are undercutting the largest pro-life organization in America and putting weapons into the hands of Christianity's enemies.
I want to see these filth punished even more than you do - but not at the price of seeing the good name of 99.95% of the Catholic clergy dragged through the mud.
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