Phil Donahue Ridicules Christian Salvation Doctrine

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:

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:

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:

Donahue agreed and said, "You speak for me. When I see a holy person, I'm happy about that."

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."

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.

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:

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."

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.

being persecuted, slaughtered ... massacred, turned to bars of soap because of 2000 years of Christian anti-Judaism.

spiritual racist

chief enforcer of anti-Semitism

hurting the feelings

it a little arrogant to say

you're imposing something

throwing mud and calling names

Christians as 'Bigots'

We could eliminate the Jewish danger in our culture because the people had recognized it as the result of our propaganda.

The cleverest trick used in propaganda against Germany during the war was to accuse Germany of what our enemies themselves were doing.

Political propaganda in principle is active and revolutionary. It is aimed at the broad masses. It speaks the language of the people because it wants to be understood by the people. Its task is the highest creative art of putting sometimes complicated events and facts in a way simple enough to be understood by the man on the street. Its foundation is that there is nothing the people cannot understand, rather things must be put in a way that they can understand. It is a question of making it clear to him by using the proper approach, evidence and language.

If such an art of active mass influence through propaganda is joined with the long-term systematic education of a nation, and if both are conducted in a unified and precise way, the relationship between the leadership and the nation will always remain close. From authority and following will develop that type of modern democracy for which Germany is the model for the entire world in the Twentieth Century.

There are no parliamentary parties in Germany any longer. How could we have overcome them had we not waged an educational campaign for years that persuaded people of their weaknesses, harms and disadvantages? Their final elimination was only the result of what the people had already realized. Our propaganda weakened these parties. Based on that, they could be eliminated by a legal act.

The positive national discipline of the German press would never have been possible without the compete elimination of the influence of the liberal-Jewish press. That happened only because of the years-long work of our propaganda. Today particularism in Germany is something of the past. The fact that it was eliminated by a strong central idea of the Reich is no accident, rather depended on psychological foundations that were established by our propaganda.--- Totalitarian Propaganda Background: If you have seen a clip of Goebbels speaking, it is likely the conclusion to this speech, taken from Riefenstahl's film of the 1934 rally, Triumph des Willens. Goebbels gave a speech each year at the Nuremberg Rally, often focusing on propaganda. Here he presents Nazi propaganda as the model for the rest of the world, calling it the "backgroud music" to government policy.The Source: Der Kongress zur Nürnberg 1934 (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP., Frz. Eher Nachf., 1934), pp. 130-141.

Our Secularist Democratic Party (Long, Important Analysis) The two groups in the front lines of the culture wars are evangelical Christians, including fundamentalists, characterized by their high levels of religiosity and conservative attitudes on cultural issues, and secularists, who reject traditional religious values and tend to espouse liberal views on cultural and church-state issues. ...Secularists also distinguished themselves from moderates and traditionalists by the antipathy they expressed toward Christian fundamentalists (38 degrees on the thermometer scale) and their belief that the involvement of religious groups in politics is divisive and harmful for society.

The Claremont Institute: Is Religion Dangerous for America? As all four of the dissenters imply, in varying degrees, those who take their religious faith seriously enough to pursue religious education for their children may pose a danger to society. You see, taking one's religious faith seriously may mean taking it too seriously for the public good, or so these wise men argue. All three dissenting opinions contend that such religious devotion is a grave threat to America, and advocate the use of the Constitution's Establishment Clause as a weapon against it. ....It is crucial to be aware of the dissenters' views of the Establishment Clause and of their hostility to organized religion generally, because they make clear that they intend to implement these views should they ever gain another vote on the Court.

What Libertarianism Isn’t If the war against Big Government really is lost, then everything else conservatives hope to preserve is lost as well, for the apparatus of the modern secular state is, and for structural reasons inevitably will be, in the hands of those hostile to traditional morality. If it is in the state’s self-interest continually to increase its citizens’ dependence on it, it follows that it is in its self-interest to undermine any obstacles to that dependence – and thus if, as all conservatives believe, the independence of the individual depends on the sanctity and stability of the family and on a strong and substantial religious belief, it follows that it is in the state’s self-interest to undermine the family and religion. So it is no surprise that, as conservatives have so often argued, state policy has in fact had precisely this result. Ergo, expanding the state’s tendrils into private schools (via vouchers) and religious organizations (via federal funding) will hardly reverse these effects – in fact in the long run this is liable only to exacerbate them, as the state gradually imposes its will and the Leftism that is its operational ideology on those private institutions.

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