Posted on 01/30/2003 7:10:03 AM PST by Dr. Scarpetta
"The President didn’t say it, but the country knows it: The union is in a state of great uneasiness. Many people are uncomfortable with a national priority that provides major tax cuts for millionaires and pays for them with funds that ought to go to help children without health care insurance, children who can’t get into Head Start, children whose families live on the edge all the time.
"Other Americans wonder why the President insists on escalating the national debt, saddling their children and grandchildren with an obligation that threatens the well-being of generations to come, just so a relative handful of wealthy Americans can add to their list of luxuries.
"The creation of a national department for homeland security does little for our sense of safety when the President fails to fund its budget, and when local communities cannot adequately fund their police, firefighters and hospitals.
"We should all be concerned about the tone of the President’s war rhetoric. Americans are right to be uneasy about the morality of a pre-emptive American invasion that, even with extreme care on our part, could kill a staggering number of innocent civilians.
The World Health Organization estimates that as many as half a million casualties would result from such a war, and UNICEF warns that 3 million people would be threatened with starvation.
"Just as unsettling, a unilateral American assault on Iraq would surely trigger a massive growth in anti-American terrorism that would make our homeland far less secure.
Counting those costs, our common sense tells us there must be a better way than war. Our faith compels us to search for that better way. "
When did Churches stop being charities and merely start advocating for more government charity?
Dream on. The clergy of most mainline Protestant Churches are so left wing they make the Democrats look reasonable. What is so galling is their congregations tend to be well to the right of the political spectrum. They are still trying to figure out why their numbers are rapidly declining.
The NCC spews enough crap, but they don't really say anything.
Oh, they get it, but the emotions (greed and envy) that drive the 9 lowest income men are the meat and potatoes of liberalism. Greed and envy are what drives Democratic voters to vote for Marxist candidates.
These same candidates then proceed to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs by taxing the hard working and enterprising citizens into poverty, but the Democrats don't care; they are not empowered by wealth and high standards of living. They are empowered by poverty, laziness, envy, greed, and dependency. So to stay in power they do what generates the most poverty, laziness, envy, greed, and dependency. It ain't a pretty picture.
I've never seen any of these NCC types turn down a gift from one of these eeeeeeevil millionaires!
Of course, they are reading from the RAT talking points, Bob Edgar is a former liberal RAT congressman from Pennsylvania.
BUMPmarked.
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The National Council of Churches wants to weave a coat of many more theological colors to stretch its shrinking wardrobe beyond mainline Protestantism.
Meeting in El Paso on Wednesday, the steering committee for the fledgling effort, tentatively called Christian Churches Together in the U.S.A., decided to invite a wide range of church bodies over the next several weeks to join the movement. If the membership campaign succeeds, the group would become the successor of the NCC.
While it is ostensibly broadly ecumenical, Christian Churches Together also is an attempt by the National Council of Churches to shore up its sagging revenues and, perhaps, rescue it from pending bankruptcy. Since auditors revealed in 1999 that the NCC had plunged deeply into deficit spending, the organization has been whittled down to one-fourth of its size and has lost one of its principal funding sources, Church World Service.
Church World Service, a widely supported ministry of financial, food and instructional aid, is now independent.
In El Paso, the steering committee of church representatives from 30 denominations, principally the NCC constituency, decided to invite others to join an alliance that would represent five segments of U.S. Christianity: evangelical/Protestant, historic Protestant, Orthodox, racial/ethnic and Roman Catholic. The Catholic church and most evangelical and Pentecostal denominations have shunned membership in the NCC because of its emphasis on social and political activism.
That has not changed. Within hours after President George W. Bush delivered his State of the Union speech Tuesday, Robert Edgar, a former Democratic congressman and now the general secretary of the NCC, published a blistering attack of Bush's domestic and international agenda on the NCC Web site.
The Presbyterian Church (USA) and the United Methodist Church are the two major contributors to the NCC. Despite its declining revenues and the need to trim the 2003 budget by nearly $1.53 million, the PCUSA has not reduced its commitment to the NCC – about $500,000 in cash and an unknown amount in the value of staff and other services. PCUSA Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick has been a strong advocate of PCUSA support for the NCC.
Thirty church representatives, including Kirkpatrick, announced the plans for Christian Churches Together in April 2002.
I don't suppose I have to tell you how much it pains me to have to reveal that the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is one of the largest contributors to the NCC.
The UMC is quite the socialist organization. Here are some quotes from their own web site
We assert the obligation of society and groups within the society to implement compensatory programs that redress long-standing, systemic social deprivation of racial and ethnic people. We support affirmative action as one method of addressing the inequalities and discriminatory practices within our Church and society.
Health care is a basic human right. ... We also recognize the role of governments in ensuring that each individual has access to those elements necessary to good health.
Massive programs of renewal and social planning are needed to bring a greater degree of humanization into urban–suburban lifestyles.
We hold governments responsible for ... the guarantee of the rights to adequate food, clothing, shelter, education, and health care.
The United Methodist Church regards effective gun control and regulation to be a spiritual concern and public responsibility. … As Christians who are deeply concerned about human life, we must do something about the unregulated and unnecessary access to guns
Remember Elian and their involvement in that?!
WHERE in Penna? (I live there)
Now that you mention it, I do.
I saw the light 10 years ago and walked away from the ELCA.
Unfortunately, most of my family still attends. They probably think I'm a right-wing nutcase. Actually, this is not true. Some know the truth and think I'm right but just haven't been able to make the break. Old habits are hard to break.
I had the same exact situation as you did when I felt I had no choice but to leave the church. I now go to a conservative pro-life church where the pastor actually prays for the president.
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