Same crap, different campaign March 30, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : Government , add a commentMy last post on Senator Obama drew a little fire because there was a quote that some felt was contextually changed by shortening it. I saw a similar instance. again today. of Senator Obama referencing the 100 year in Iraq remark again in reference to Senator Mc Cain, so the Senator himself is engaged in out of contextual remarks. That said, as I have throughout, will do my best to make sure the political postings won’t be like Bush’s 2000 South Carolina Primary Campaign.
I am surprised Obama’s pants didnt burst into fire on this video:
Hat tip to Jay for the following:
“When Mitt Romney stated that he saw his father march with Martin Luther King Jr., there was wall to wall media coverage reporting how he had to start backpeddaling. Even after witnesses came forward claiming they had seen his father march with him, the media story of Mitt fabricating the story still persists.
Will Obama get the same media treatment with his lies? Don’t hold your breath. In a speech to a Selma, Alabama crowd meant to pump up his civil-rights movement authenticity and his Kennedy Camelot image, Barack Obama claimed that the Kennedy administration paid for his Kenyan father to travel to America on a student scholarship and therefore was responsible for his “very existence”. However, the first march on Selma took place on March 7, 1965. Obama would have been about three and half years old at that time. For some reason the media never did the math on this.
The Washington Post Fact Checker delves deeper.
Addressing civil rights activists in Selma, Ala., a year ago, Sen. Barack Obama traced his “very existence” to the generosity of the Kennedy family, which he said paid for his Kenyan father to travel to America on a student scholarship and thus meet his Kansan mother.
The Camelot connection has become part of the mythology surrounding Obama’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. After Caroline Kennedy endorsed his candidacy in January, Newsweek commentator Jonathan Alter reported that she had been struck by the extraordinary way in which “history replays itself” and by how “two generations of two families — separated by distance, culture and wealth — can intersect in strange and wonderful ways.”
It is a touching story — but the key details are either untrue or grossly oversimplified.
Contrary to Obama’s claims in speeches in January at American University and in Selma last year, the Kennedy family did not provide the funding for a September 1959 airlift of 81 Kenyan students to the United States that included Obama’s father. According to historical records and interviews with participants, the Kennedys were first approached for support for the program nearly a year later, in July 1960. The family responded with a $100,000 donation, most of which went to pay for a second airlift in September 1960.
Obama spokesman Bill Burton acknowledged yesterday that the senator from Illinois had erred in crediting the Kennedy family with a role in his father’s arrival in the United States. He said the Kennedy involvement in the Kenya student program apparently “started 48 years ago, not 49 years ago as Obama has mistakenly suggested in the past.”
[…]
Obama’s Selma speech offers a very confused chronology of both the Kenya student program and the civil rights movement. Relating the story of how his parents met, Obama said: “There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Junior was born. So don’t tell me I don’t have a claim on Selma, Alabama.”
After bloggers pointed out that the Selma bridge protest occurred four years after Obama’s birth, a spokesman explained that the senator was referring to the civil rights movement in general, rather than any one event.”
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I would point out that, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. Ph.D. from Harvard, native of Kenya (which has dissolved into bloody riots in early 2008) and government economist there, separated from Obama’s Jr.’s mother when Junior was two years old, so they were not even together by the time of Selma.
And then there were twelve March 28, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : Government , add a commentWednesday night, the Du Bois Chamber of Congress sponsored a meet the candidates for Congress at the Clarion Inn. The fifth district is a large rural area that has it’s own unique challenges.It really gave people a chance to hear and see the reactions of the candidates to unexpected questions posed to them and see who was spinning from the gate. I was able to eliminate candidates and I have three to choose from for the primary.
Each candidate had a two minute introduction and then were each asked questions which they had ninety to respond to, and then a series of yes or no questions. Grass roots politics are great, and it is good to be able to meet and talk with the candidates personally afterward. John Peterson also attended the forum, which was well attended by both parties.
U.S. Congress
On the ballot to fill the retiring John Peterson’s seat in Congress are no fewer than nine Republicans and three Democrats.
Democratic candidates for Congress include:
lMark B. McCracken, a Clearfield County Commissioner.
lBill Cahir, an Iraq War veteran from Bellfonte.
lRichard P. Vilello Jr., Mayor of Lock Haven.
Republican candidates for Congress include:
lChris Exarchos, a Centre County Commissioner.
lJohn T. Krupa, a Clinton County businessman.
lLou Radkowski, Elk County Coroner.
lKeith Richardson , a Baptist minister from Clarion.
lMatt Shaner, a Centre County land developer.
lJeff Stroehmann, a Lycoming County businessman.
lJohn Stroup, Mayor of Clarion Borough.
lGlenn W. Thompson, Centre County Republican Party chairman.
lDerek A. Walker, a Clearfield County businessman.
The Silver Ring Thing March 25, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : culture, Theology , add a commentWHAT IS THE SILVER RING THING? (In a nutshell)
The Silver Ring Thing is a unique para-church youth ministry that promotes the message of abstinence until marriage using two avenues- an intense Live Event and the packaged SRT 434 Program.
LIVE EVENT- SRT’s 2.5 hour stage performance incorporates high energy music, special effects, fast-paced video, personal testimonies, and comedy all delivered in a concert-style approach with which teenagers can respond and relate. The program also presents an evangelistic message focused on forgiveness and new beginnings with an opportunity to embrace a “second virginity.” Students who make a commitment to abstinence may purchase a silver ring as a symbol and reminder of their decision. After each event, students who make this commitment are followed-up by SRT staff with 40 e-mails over the next 4 months that encourage and equip these students in their commitment. This event is targeted at middle/high school students (ages 12-18) but is also relevant to college and young adult ages. A parent’s seminar is also held at each event to educate parents about what is happening in today’s youth culture and how they can encourage and support their child’s abstinence commitment. To view the Live Event Schedule- click here
To view photos from past Live Events- click here
To watch the promotional videos- click here
To contact us about bringing a live event to your community, please fill out our online booking inquiry form- click here
SRT 434 PROGRAM- The SRT 434 Program offers four DVD-enhanced Bible study sessions on sexual decision-making facilitated by a youth pastor or leader in a small group or youth group setting. The program is shaped after the energy and excitement of the Live Event and challenges teenagers to make and keep a commitment of abstinence until marriage. For more information about the SRT 434 Program- click here
+++++++++++++++++
Free event
or:
DuBois, PA |
|
Wednesday, May 21, 2008 |
è Parents Session starting at 7:00PM (What’s this?)
- DuBois Area Middle School
- 404 Liberty Blvd.
DuBois, PA 15801
Maps/Directions -
$5 Online Tickets or $8 at the door*
Online tickets starting 4/1/08
BRING $15 FOR THE RING!!Event Poster
(Coming soon)
Purchase tickets online and save at least $3 on entry!!
marie@silverringthing.com 412.424.2418
*Click here to review the SRT Ticketing Policy
Running on Experience March 21, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : Government, Media , add a commentWe have heard the candidate with the most experience for the White House is the one who lived there and claims that experience. With the recent pastoral controversy perhaps it would only be fair that the “experienced one” relieve some of the pressure off the “eloquent speaker” and admit their political association as well
Upcoming
In the spirit of fairness, I am also going to do a comparison of preachers messages after Easter, as “another gospel” is another gospel and all are equally dangerous. ECD Pilgrim discusses one aspect of this today.
NAFTA
The politician most associated with the passage of NAFTA is former President Bill Clinton. Since NAFTA has become such a liability in the race for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton has attempted to paint herself as being opposed to NAFTA all along. This CNN video of Anderson Cooper with Carl Bernstein shows that Hillary and her campaign were trying to sell the idea that Hillary was opposed to NAFTA and actually argued with Bill Clinton in 1993 not to pass NAFTA. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahXDVLesZSA
In fact, the documents released today show a meeting that Hillary chaired at the White House on November 10, 1993 where she promoted the passage of NAFTA to 120 people. Reports are coming out in every news agency pointing out the contradictions between her stated positions since announcing her bid for the Presidency and everything before that. ABC News’ Jake Trapper on Political Punch interviewed several of the attendees of Hillary’s November 10th meeting http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/03/clintons-1993-n.html. Trapper reports:
Two attendees of that closed-door briefing, neither of whom are affiliated with any campaign, describe that event for ABC News. It was a room full of women involved in international trade. David Gergen served as a sort of master of ceremonies as various women members of the Cabinet talked up NAFTA, which had yet to pass Congress.
“It wasn’t a drop-by it was organized around her participation,” said one attendee. “Her remarks were totally pro-NAFTA and what a good thing it would be for the economy. There was no equivocation for her support for NAFTA at the time. Folks were pleased that she came by. If this is a still a question about what Hillary’s position when she was First Lady, she was totally supportive of NAFTA.
That first attendee recalls that the First Lady’s office in the East Wing put together “the invitation list, who was invited authorizations and all that stuff.”
And what is this attendee’s response to Clinton today distancing herself from NAFTA? “For people who worked hard to pass NAFTA and who support the importance of markets opening for the economy in the long term, they’re very upset. A number of the women who were there are very upset. You need to have some integrity in your position. The Clintons when Bill Clinton was president took a moderate position on trade for Democrats. For her to repudiate that now seems pretty phony.”
Do you believe this ?
Welcome to the “Re-create 68″ website, your virtual activists’ Convergence Center for the Denver Democratic National Convention of 2008. This website was created for all the grassroots people who are tired of being sold out by the Democratic Party.
R-68 agrees with the proposition, POTESTAS IN POPULO, “all power comes from the people.” What stands between the people and power are the party machines. The parties were devised as a means to represent the people. Today they represent nobody, not even party members, but only party bureaucracy. The people have been left without appropriate institutions for their representation. We intend to create those institutions!
Join us in the streets of Denver as we resist a two-party system that allows imperialism and racism to continue unrestrained.
“Re-create 68″
August 24 - 28, 2008
DO IT IN DENVER!
SEE YOU THERE!
WORKING MEETINGS
Every Thursday at 6:30 pm (until further notice)
Gypsy House Cafe, 1279 Marion St., Denver
read more about what Recreate 68 means
Dream Ticket?
The discussion of the dream ticket of Obama/Hillary or Hillary/Obama most likely won’t happen. The best chance for the democrats to get elected this fall may well be the dream ticket of two firsts- Obama/ Governor Bill Richardson. The first black and the first Hispanic would be a much more believeable ticket and one that people who supported Senator Clinton would probably back. It could put a tourniqet on the anger of the supporters of whomever does not get the nomination from defecting.
Not dedicated to democratic ticket
As Democratic Senators Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Clinton of New York slug it out for the nomination, many of their supporters — at least in Pennsylvania, site of the next major primary — aren’t committed to the party’s ticket in November, according to a Franklin & Marshall College Poll.
Among Obama supporters, 20 percent said they would vote for Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the Republican nominee, if Clinton beats their candidate for the nomination. Among Clinton supporters, 19 percent said they would support McCain in November if Obama is the Democratic nominee. (See poll)
The significant number of potential defectors underscores how divisive the Democratic primary has been.
Democrats won Pennsylvania in the 2000 and 2004 presidential races, but it was a competitive state in both election cycles. McCain, meanwhile, has touted his appeal to swing voters.
“Pennsylvania is a must-win state for a Democratic presidential nominee,” Nathan Gonzalez, political editor of the Rothenberg Political Report, told Cybercast News Service. “If there is a significant weakness for a Democrat in Pennsylvania, it could indicate a weakness in Ohio or other key states.”
Why is Pelosi sabre rattling , is she insane?
US Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi made one of the highest-ranking U.S. official visits ever to Dharamsala, India, the exile home of the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Llama, today.
While standing next to the Dalai Llama, she denounced “China’s oppression of people in Tibet.”
“If freedom loving people don’t speak out against China’s oppression of people in Tibet, we have lost all moral authority to speak out against any oppressed people.”
This visit by 10 members of Congress to the Dalai Lama’s home in exile was planned long before the current protests in Tibet began.
But Pelosi said, “Little did we know, we would be coming at such a sad time. Perhaps it was our karma, perhaps it was our fate … it was our karma because we are here to help the people of Tibet.”
Pelosi and the rest of the congressional delegation were welcomed by the equivalent of a state visit, including 2,000 monks and other supporters waving Tibetan and U.S. flags. Pelosi and the rest of the congressional delegation were having lunch Friday with the Dalai Lama and will later hold pose for photographs, and perhaps take questions from the press.
| US lawmaker demands Tibet inquiry | |||||
A senior US lawmaker, Nancy Pelosi, has called for an independent investigation into China’s claims that the Dalai Lama instigated the violence in Tibet.Ms Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, also called on the international community to denounce Chinese rule in Tibet. She spoke out while holding talks in northern India with the Dalai Lama. China says 16 people have been killed by rioters in Lhasa, the main city. The Tibetan government-in-exile - headed by the Dalai Lama, regarded by many Tibetans as their spiritual leader - says at least 99 people have died in the crackdown by Chinese troops. Chinese Troops Converge in Tibetan Areas
ZHONGDIAN, China (AP) - The government stepped up its manhunt Friday for protesters in last week’s riots in the capital of Tibet, as thousands of troops converged on foot, trucks and helicopters to Tibetan areas of western China. The violence in Lhasa - a stunning show of defiance against 57 years of Chinese rule - has sparked sympathy demonstrations in neighboring provinces, prompting Beijing to blanket a huge area with troops and warn tourists and foreign journalists to stay away. Good News If there has ever been a time for Christians in America to refocus that we serve a King and a Kingdom and that our hope is not in the government or political but in the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Passion Week is such a time. Worship the King Who is our blessed hope |
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Nancy Pelosi 
Once a mistake, twice a rank idiot March 21, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : Church/State, culture, Ethnicity, Government, Media , add a commentDr. Jeremiah Wright told us a year ago who shaped his worldview and his theology. If any of the “news people” had bothered to simply check out who Dr. Wright named there would be no ‘real shock’ at the rhetoric of Dr. Wright. Mind you, “no shock” does not equal agreement with a statement, rather it means you understand a state of an existence of a theology being taught in our seminaries and in some churches.
Lets do for ourselves what the paid MSM failed to do. James H. Cone, is a Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary. First, Union Theological is not some backwater , obscure institution, but rather has been in existence since 1836. But many are not quite aware of the fact they proudly state:
“Our ecumenical, interfaith commitment grows and strengthens through programs of exchange with churches and seminaries throughout the world. Informed by the insights of liberation theologians, the Seminary embraces and addresses the richness and realities of religious pluralism. “
If people grasped religious pluralism then Wrights rhetoric would be no surprise.James Cone has been featured in PBS’s This Far by Faith Series
A CRISIS IN FAITH
It was the voice of Malcolm X that first made James Cone question his theology. Malcolm X proclaimed loudly that “Christianity is a white man’s religion,” and said that blacks should adopt an understanding of God that grew out of their own history and experience. He railed against a blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus and a belief in the delayed rewards of heaven.
Still, Cone, then on the faculty of Adrian College in Michigan, continued to believe in the nonviolent, Christian love of Martin Luther King, Jr.
It was the northern riots and Stokely Carmichael’s call for “Black Power!” during the Meredith March in Mississippi that led him to a crisis in faith.
CHRISTIANITY AND BLACK POWER: REINTERPRETING HIS FAITH
“For me, the burning theological question was, how can I reconcile Christianity and Black Power, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s idea of nonviolence, and Malcolm X’s ‘by any means necessary philosophy?’” (Preface to Black Theology and Black Power, p. viii.)
Christianity, as he understood it, no longer explained or held meaning in the turbulent years of the late 1960s. “I was within inches of leaving the Christian faith.” If he were to remain a Christian, Cone would have to reinterpret his faith to respond to such demanding times.
Not exactly what most of us would find to be common in church on Sunday Morning, but how can the informed Christian be ignorant of the existence of this? Corruption of the seminary has ahistorically been the beginning of the theological shifts in denominations to a more liberal stance.
It would be good to note, both Dr. Wright and James Cone comes from the generation prior to the American Civil Rights Movement and their experiences shaped a worldview of resentment towards the treatment blacks had received in that area. That their rhetoric reflects that should no more surprise us then the rhetoric of the colonial pastors inspired the American Revolution.
Dr. Wright also mentions , Dr. Dwight N. Hopkins, whose works include: Being Human: Race, Culture, and Religion; Walk Together Children: black and womanist theologies, church and theological education; Another World Is Possible: Spiritualities and Religions of Global Darker Peoples; Loving the Body: Black Religious Studies and the Erotic (coeditor); Heart and Head: Black Theology-Past, Present, and Future; Introducing Black Theology of Liberation; Down, Up and Over: Slave Religion and Black Theology; and Black Faith and Public Talk: Essays in Honor of James Cone’s Black Theology and Black Power (editor). His previous texts include Black Theology USA and South Africa: Politics, Culture, and Liberation; Shoes That Fit Our Feet: Sources for a Constructive Black Theology; and We Are One Voice: Essays on Black Theology in South Africa and the USA (coeditor). He is an editor of Religions/Globalizations: Theories and Cases; Changing Conversations: Religious Reflection and Cultural Analysis; and Liberation Theologies, Postmodernity and the Americas.
Dr. Hopkins is a Professor of Theology in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. This school is well known and respected for it’s scholarship in the study of religion and religious tradition.
Chicago reflects only one orthodoxy: that the rules of evidence and argument must discipline conversation, and that such rules are especially important when the topic is religion. Our faculty and students present a remarkable range of attitudes about religion as a force for good and for ill in the world. These attitudes bespeak the shared view that religion is one of our most fascinating and enduring windows into central truths about human life and being. The School aims to develop out of that conviction the richest possible conversation, and direct it to the central, complementary ends of scholarly excellence and moral engagement.
Dr. Hopkins is more of an academic than James Cone, but whose worldview is certainly shaped by the James Cones and the Jeremiah Wrights he grew up under. Dr. Hopkins , an American Baptist minister believes,
The descendants of American slaves are due reparations. Their foremothers suffered oppression because of the slaveholding structure of American society, and they suffered injustice at the hands of individual Americans, both those who owned them and those who acted like they owned them. White Americans forced these women to work as house and field laborers, and white American men treated these women as objects, not humans, when they raped them. The ancestors of today’s Americans even suffered the additional outrage of rape as a form of profit maximization: If an enslaved woman gave birth, her child would increase her owner’s wealth and provide him with yet more free labor. The psychological damage that these women and their families suffered is incalculable. Yet enslaved American black women did not retreat into passivity. They forged a theological understanding of their relationship with a God who would one day pass judgment on the slaveholders and compensate the enslaved-In Heaven and on Earth. What we need now is a discussion of how we can best compensate the descendants of these women and thus strengthen our society today.
None of this is secretive information, but rather readily available in a google search, yet people are “shocked”. Some will even say, well that is racist and I won’t even acknowledge racism . That is like not talking about sex, 
STD’s , drugs or alcohol with our children will make it go away. It has the same effect, you leave people unprepared. And “shoocked” it even exists, instead of armed and prepared.
In all probablity this type of theology and the black experience had more effect on shaping Michelle’s worldview than it did Barack’s. This is reflected in her Princeton thesis which you can read here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.
Barack on the other hand was raised in a mixed cultural environment that was not walled in by the black experience (which why many claim he is not black enough). He was taught Islam, but from a political more than a religious standpoint in his home in Indonesia as a child. But Barack has more of a antropological view and reaction to society than his wife Michelle does.
I am much less concerned about Dr. Wright’s view than most, it is what it is. I tend to believe the social political aspect of Trinity UC church is part of the political reality of a Chicago politician more than a true indicator of Barack Obama’s belief system. I believe even though Dr. Wright had a lot of influence on Barack and is loved and respected by Barack as a fatherly type figure, he is intelligent enough to hold Wright’s radical (to us) views in tension and keep them in perspective.
Why? Because of his mother. HIs mother and his grandmother and his wife are powerful influences in his life. But not so much that he married a white woman. He married a true black woman-nobody will ever question if Michelle is black enough. Barack loves and respects her and she runs the house.Never underestimate the influence of a wife who b-slaps her husband in public. Early in Obama’s campaign, Michelle Obama could not restrain herself from belittling the senator.
”I have some difficulty reconciling the two images I have of Barack Obama. There’s Barack Obama the phenomenon. He’s an amazing orator, Harvard Law Review, or whatever it was, law professor, best-selling author, Grammy winner. Pretty amazing, right? And then there’s the Barack Obama that lives with me in my house, and that guy’s a little less impressive,” she told a fundraiser in February 2007.
“For some reason this guy still can’t manage to put the butter up when he makes toast, secure the bread so that it doesn’t get stale, and his five-year-old is still better at making the bed than he is.” New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd reported at the time, “She added that the TV version of Barack Obama sounded really interesting and that she’d like to meet him sometime.” Her handlers have convinced her to be more tactful since then.
Michelle Obama speaks with great warmth of her mother-in-law . “She was kind of a dreamer, his mother,” Michelle Obama was quoted in the January 25 Boston Globe. “She wanted the world to be open to her and her children. And as a result of her naivete, sometimes they lived on food stamps, because sometimes dreams don’t pay the rent. But as a result of her naivete, Barack got to see the world like most of us don’t in this country.” How strong the ideological motivation must be of a mother to raise her children on the thin fair in pursuit of a political agenda.
I think time has come to put this whole Trinity church affair in perspective and realize it is what it is. However, lets learn the lesson from it. Let’s not wake up a year from now and realize someone told us something and we missed it.Words have meanings and do not trust the Sean Hannity’s and the Fox’s and the CNN’s to do their research, do your own.
I would be much more concerned about the effect Michelles worldview has on Obama than Jeremiah’s.
Maundy Thursday Resources March 20, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : Theology , add a commentMaundy Thursday
What Everybody Knows Before the Gospel Comes
Maundy Thursday Communion Meditation
April 5, 2007
Maundy Thursday
Hebrews 1:1-4
April 4, 1996
Download: 
Audio
The Dangers of Following Jesus
Maundy Thursday Communion Meditation
Matthew 10:24-25
March 23, 1989
Download:
The Holiness of God, Our Sin, and the Love of Jesus
Maundy Thursday
April 16, 1981
Arrogance or ignorance ? March 17, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : Church/State, culture, Government, Media , 3commentsHow can the news media look into the camera with a straight face and act shocked by Dr. Jeremiah Wright? If anyone should be the source of controversy, it should be Fox News and Sean Hannity. This is the story behind the story in this “news event”. Let’s go back to Friday night the 14th of March.
With all the drum beats of the videotape of Dr. Wrights sermons, and then Sean Hannity turns up the shrill that if this is all true then Senator Obama needs to withdraw from the race and resign his seat in Congress.. I thought to myself they must be onto something really hot for Hannity to look like George Bush was just elected for a third term and picked Mitt Romney for his running mate. But the truth of the matter is, Sean Hannity and Fox News had this story a year ago and were either too ignorant or too arrogant to even realize it. I realize that is quite a statement to make, but it is well founded folks. They just failed to listen and to be able to discern what they were being plainly told.
Sean announced as they came on air that they are going to be interviewing Senator Obama on their program on Friday evening so I watched their show to see that interview. While I am waiting to hear the interview (actually done by Major Garrett) Sean starts bragging that he had interviewed Obama’s pastor a year ago and they were going to play it in full. As I sat there and watched the interview my jaw dropped in disbelief. No, not at Dr. Wrights answers but at Sean Hannity’s incompetence as a investigative journalist. Dr. Wright was telling him a year ago what he is just now understanding and Sean was too busy wanting to one up him to get the real story, that Dr. Wright was trying to give him! Sean was too busy telling him he studied theology to even grasp it and Dr. Wright was even telling him what theologians world view shaped his. But due to either arrogance or ignorance (or both) everyone missed the story.
Ok, Sean Hannity is not the best investigative journalist, that isn’t breaking news. But what about the entire staff at Fox or CNN, NBC,ABC, CBS or MSNBC for that matter? After I saw this I emailed “my group” and tagged Fox as being “Hillary’s do-boys” and not realizing it. (Mc Cain endorsers worldviews were also being compared in argument that night but not a word about Hillary’s and I started to laugh thinking, Hillary’s team actually listened to that interview a year ago and compiled this for the right time -purely my speculation-educated guess)
On March 6, I posted “How can you cure what you don’t understand?” (link) referencing the false claim of Senator Obama being a Muslim, and examining his judgement on issues. I also asked readers to examine the doctrines of his church. While it seemed to be liberation theology, it did not appear to be the classic liberation theology I was familiar with so I made reference to the social gospel and compared their doctrines to biblical doctrine, and left the reader to draw their own conclusion. Again, once I saw the interview from a year ago, I understood it was indeed liberation theology and that most people don’t understand it.
Today, while reading Asia Times Online,I saw Spengler had run a column on “The peculiar theology of black liberation“.
Spengler, in his own style and worldview,explains black liberation theology. In the event you are not familiar with it nuances, and are trying to reconcile it with your own Christian beliefs I have included excerpted pieces of the article below:
” Senator Barack Obama is not a Muslim, contrary to invidious rumors. But he belongs to a Christian church whose doctrine casts Jesus Christ as a “black messiah” and blacks as “the chosen people”. At best, this is a radically different kind of Christianity than most Americans acknowledge; at worst it is an ethnocentric heresy.
What played out last week on America’s television screens was a clash of two irreconcilable cultures, the posture of “black liberation theology” and the mainstream American understanding of Christianity. Obama, who presented himself as a unifying figure, now seems rather the living embodiment of the clash.”
He references the interview that Hannity was bragging about and I referenced:
Wright asserted the authority of the “black liberation” theologians James Cone and Dwight Hopkins:
Wright: How many of Cone’s books have you read? How many of Cone’s book have you read?
Sean Hannity: Reverend, Reverend?
(crosstalk)
Wright: How many books of Cone’s have you head?
Hannity: I’m going to ask you this question …
Wright: How many books of Dwight Hopkins have you read?
Hannity: You’re very angry and defensive. I’m just trying to ask a question here.
Wright: You haven’t answered - you haven’t answered my question.
Hopkins is a full professor at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School; Cone is now distinguished professor at New York’s Union Theological Seminary. They promote a “black power” reading of Christianity, to which liberal academic establishment condescends.
Obama referred to this when he asserted in a March 14 statement, “I knew Reverend Wright as someone who served this nation with honor as a United States Marine, as a respected biblical scholar, and as someone who taught or lectured at seminaries across the country, from Union Theological Seminary to the University of Chicago.” But the fact the liberal academy condescends to sponsor black liberation theology does not make it less peculiar to mainstream American Christians. “
Spengler further notes, (and please note when he says black theology he means black liberation theology)
During the black-power heyday of the late 1960s, after the murder of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr, the mentors of Wright decided that blacks were the Chosen People. James Cone, the most prominent theologian in the “black liberation” school, teaches that Jesus Christ himself is black. As he explains:
Christ is black therefore not because of some cultural or psychological need of black people, but because and only because Christ really enters into our world where the poor were despised and the black are, disclosing that he is with them enduring humiliation and pain and transforming oppressed slaves into liberating servants.
Biblical theology teaches that even the most terrible events to befall Israel, such as the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, embody the workings of divine justice, even if humankind cannot see God’s purpose. James Cone sees the matter very differently. Either God must do what we want him to do, or we must reject him, Cone maintains:
Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community … Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love. [1]
In the black liberation theology taught by Wright, Cone and Hopkins, Jesus Christ is not for all men, but only for the oppressed:
In the New Testament, Jesus is not for all, but for the oppressed, the poor and unwanted of society, and against oppressors … Either God is for black people in their fight for liberation and against the white oppressors, or he is not [Cone].
That is the “biblical scholarship” to which Obama referred in his March 14 defense of Wright and his academic prominence. In his response to Hannity, Wright genuinely seemed to believe that the authority of Cone and Hopkins, who now hold important posts at liberal theological seminaries, was sufficient to make the issue go away. His faith in the white establishment is touching; he honestly cannot understand why the white reporters at Fox News are bothering him when the University of Chicago and the Union Theological Seminary have put their stamp of approval on black liberation theology.
Whether Obama takes seriously the doctrines that Wright preaches is another matter. It is possible that Obama does not believe a word of what Wright, Cone and Hopkins teach. Perhaps he merely used the Trinity United Church of Christ as a political stepping-stone. African-American political life is centered around churches, and his election to the Illinois State Senate with the support of Chicago’s black political machine required church membership. Trinity United happens to be Chicago’s largest and most politically active black church.
Obama views Wright rather at arm’s length: as the New York Times reported on April 30, 2007:
Reverend Wright is a child of the 60s, and he often expresses himself in that language of concern with institutional racism and the struggles the African-American community has gone through,” Mr Obama said. “He analyzes public events in the context of race. I tend to look at them through the context of social justice and inequality.
Obama holds his own views close. But it seems unlikely that he would identify with the ideological fits of the black-power movement of the 1960s. Obama does not come to the matter with the perspective of an American black, but of the child of a left-wing anthropologist raised in the Third World.”
1. See William R Jones, “Divine Racism: The Unacknowledged Threshold Issue for Black Theology”, in African-American Religious Thought: An Anthology, ed Cornel West and Eddie Glaube (Westminster John Knox Press).
Again, my inclination is that Senator Obama does not really hold to the same doctrine of Dr. Wright but to watch him squirm in that interview and carefully parse his words, makes me leery. Why? I served with people in churches who never wanted to offend anyone, by using a pluralistic formula of agreeing with everyone. In the end you not only offend more people but become known as standing for nothing. I managed businesses where people were afraid to make a decision and run with it for fear it is wrong or would hurt someones feelings. They never see their failure to take a position is in itself a position and makes one question their judgement.
In conclusion, the MSM, Fox News really blew this story a year ago. Now we will have a examination of ministers and what they believe and have to hear denials in which I have no interest and is a distraction. I believe this may have ended any chance of a VP position for Mitt Romney as well-if you can’t live with liberation theology, KOBOL, and Mormon doctrine may be too much as well. Ironic as it may be, I thought the press pushed a separation of church and state and we were for the right to believe what we wish, rather than bring our pastor to be interviewed.
Spengler concluded, with what well may be the question of the convention:
“It is possible that because of the Wright affair Obama will suffer for what he pretended to be, rather than for what he really is.”
No questioning the official line allowed March 16, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : culture, Government , add a commentMany of us have seen resistance to questioning government versions of events with any deviation called a “conspiracy theory”. Those of us who care about the constitution realize that “no questioning the offical line” is not a healthy political environment, but it is what it is.
But it seems like the same happens today in science as well.
Deserves a raise, not a pink slip March 14, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : culture, Government , add a comment
Librarian Fired for Reporting Man Viewing Child Pornhttp://www.breitbart.tv/?p=62234
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Casting Crowns at Penn State March 14, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : culture, Theology , add a comment
My daughter and I (and her friend) really enjoyed seeing Casting Crowns . They have a very practical Christian message and always are challenging the believer . Mark Hall came and sang and ministered after having a surgical procedure in the morning in Atlanta, flying into Harrisburg and making the trek to State College by car.
Leeland was the big surprise of the night for us and John Waller is also talented .
