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his situation is a bit unique in that his parents were of different beliefs... if both his parents were muslim and they had stayed in a muslim country.... chances are almost zero that he'd have become a christian.
his situation is a bit unique in that his parents were of different beliefs... if both his parents were muslim and they had stayed in a muslim country.... chances are almost zero that he'd have become a christian.
I ask two simple questions and I cannot get a simple answer to either.
And how is religion related to that? You're basically telling me that either:
- There were no religious people before the founding fathers in this nation
... or ...
- Dominant conviction has nothing to do with religion
Gee, I wonder what's the right answer...
Jefferson was not a Christian. Some, but not all, of the founding fathers were Christians. You are the one being knee-jerk, not me.
Because he can't concede that where you are born greatly influences what religious beliefs you take on.I ask two simple questions and I cannot get a simple answer to either.
I guess I'm missing how you drew those two from what I posted. What I'm saying is that the dominant conviction of the time of the founding fathers was based heavily in Christianity, and that conviction strongly influenced the framing of the cons ution. To deny that is intellectually dishonest.
Will bring this article here as to not hijack Manny's decision thread.
Lengthy but excellent article. These were my favorite parts:Thanks! I'll read it.
http://www.relevantmagazine.com/life...le.php?id=7616
Campolo agrees. “My contention is that if anybody asks if you’re a Democrat or a Republican, the answer should be, ‘Please name the issue,’” he says. “On certain issues, I’m going to come across as someone who likes what the Republicans say, and on other issues I will come across as saying what the Democrats say.”In fact, Campolo became so disenchanted with the politicization of evangelical Christianity that he and a group of Christian authors and thinkers have chosen all themselves Red Letter Christians, a reference to the words of Christ being printed in red in some Bibles. Campolo hopes to break the stereotype that one political party has a monopoly on Christianity.For us, the litmus test for whether we’re a Christian nation is, does it look like Jesus?
Haw adds that the idea of nationalism is often theologically unsound. He says that being “born again” should mean, from a theological standpoint, that Christians have a new and different citizenship. “Theologically, born again didn’t just mean that you have a spiritual at ude to your life. It literally meant that you’re joining into this people of Abraham that are a holy nation, set apart. There seems to be evidence all over the Bible that this is a very concrete people. You’re latching yourself onto this other nation. Now when you use the word we or our, your iden y is connected to a different group of people, a diasporic people. That’s not just linguistic gymnastics. It’s biblical realism. Without that, our nationalism is misguided.”Claiborne says that this was a concept understood well by the early Church. In a time when allegiance to Rome was not only expected, but required, early Christians maintained a peculiarity and at ude set apart from the empire in which they lived. “The early Christians said a Christian could only be emperor if he decided not to be a Christian,” Claiborne says. “There was a deep collision of iden ies between your citizenship on earth and your citizenship in heaven.”Thus, say Claiborne and Haw, Christians should belong to a citizenship that is transnational. “What does it mean to be born again?” Claiborne asks. “For Christians, there’s got to be a sense that there’s something that runs deeper than what’s born of the flesh—my biology, my ethnicity, my nation-state. Our central iden y is in this reborn people of God that’s transnational.”
In this context, patriotism can seem like a vice. However, Claiborne and Haw believe it’s all about keeping an appropriate perspective. “A love for our own people is not a bad thing, but it’s a love that doesn’t stop at the border,” Claiborne says.Claiborne believes Christians can celebrate the good in America without falling prey to the idea that the United States, rather than Christ, is the hope of the world. “We want to celebrate the things that America and leaders of this country do well and right,” he says. “There’s plenty of them, but there’s also plenty of things historically and currently that don’t look like Jesus. That’s why it’s so important to differentiate them. Our hope and what we’re called to is to remind the world of Jesus, to be like Jesus, to take the words of Jesus seriously. We will applaud people when they do that, and we will interrupt and prophesy when they don’t.”With this in mind, how can we chart a new course? How can we see society transformed when we have to be wary of involvement in the system? Claiborne and Haw believe that the importance lies in keeping our perspective. “There are a lot of models in Scripture,” Claiborne says. “There are prophets who are on the margins. There are prophets in the royal court. There are people who are engaged in a lot of different ways. One of the tricky things is to maintain the peculiarity and the distinctiveness of being a Christian.”“For those of us working legislatively, we can’t compromise on things like, ‘We’re going to beat our swords into plowshares,’” he says. “That’s what we’re called to, and to bless the poor and meek. If we don’t hear any of these parties saying something that embodies that, then we don’t put our hand in with it. There are a number of ways you can call that. You can work for the Kingdom of God and align yourself with whatever seems to move us closer to that. It’s possible to say we’re also going to interrupt with grace and humility whatever seems to be standing in the way of the reign of God. One way of looking at voting is that it’s damage control. We’re in a sense voting against whatever is going to do the worst damage.”Part of the beauty of it is saying, ‘We’re going to trust that the Spirit is at work in different people’s hearts in different ways.’ Ultimately, [we hope] whatever they do is seeking first the Kingdom of God and embodying their politics with their lives rather than just trusting in a single candidate or a single politician to change the world for them.”
Haw adds that action on the part of Christians far eclipses their party affiliation. “What is more important than how we vote on Nov. 4 is how we live on Nov. 3 and Nov. 5,” he says.So, how should Christians engage the political arena? That is the question. If Claiborne and Haw are any indication, the choice is up to the individual. No matter what that individual decides, though, they must realize that true change will never happen through legislation alone. And, no matter what the individual chooses to do, they must realize that they are already voting through the way they choose to live.
“We vote every day with our lives,” Claiborne says. “We vote every day with our feet, our hands, our lips and our wallets. We vote for the poor. We vote for the peacemakers. We vote for the marginalized, the oppressed, the most vulnerable of our society. Ultimate change does not just happen one day every four years.”
I provided my answer in a discrete way.I ask two simple questions and I cannot get a simple answer to either.
I figured it was a fitting proposition to your hypothetical question...
Assuming it was a genuine question.
You completely dodged the first question, and gave a lame response about a guy born and raised in America who lived a few years in a Muslim culture and is Christian.
How about this... if you were born in and spent your entire life in Asia, the Middle East, or Africa would you be Christian?
They were asking him to answer a hypothetical question as fact- am impossible task.
He gave you all the facts he could.
Great minds. I responded before I saw this.
So angel_luv, what are your views on capital punishment?
It's between them and their god, we just arrange the meeting.
I have to say...
Bad plan by Ben. Once you die it is too late to accept the Truth.
Well, let me ask you, if you were born in Saudi Arabia or India, would you still be a Christian?
Yes, because there's no physical process controlling thought anymore and you're just a piece of meat at death.
I am against it because I think it is wrong for a man to take another's life- period.
I know they stoned people in the old testament, but I also look to the New Testament when Jesus pardoned the woman caught in the act of adultry.
If Jesus can spare a life, how much more should I be willing to.
That said, with the exception of Bush in 2000, I have not refused to vote for a candidate because they were pro death penalty.
Much more important to me that a candidate stand against abortion because, while citizens are aware of the potential consequences of committing murder ( and therefore choose thier own condemnation), an unborn child has no way to protect itself, and thus ought to be advocated for.
No, because you are immediately entered in the eternity you already chose for yourself on earth.
I believe that God speaks to every heart through the course of a person's life and gives them the ability to choose him.
There have been people born in Saudi Arabia and India have become Christian, so it is possible.
Also, just because I live in the United States, it did not ensure by any means that I would choose to live my life for Christ.
There are several people who were born here in America who if asked would not want to call themselves a Christian- example the declared agnostics in this very thread.
You mean the dominant RELIGION. A conviction is having a strong belief, and can be applied to many non religious things. For example, I'm sure the founding fathers had a strong belief in freedom, separation of power, etc.
I disagree completely. I think if Christianity would have had such influence, you'll see a lot more God and Jesus Christ imbued all over the Cons ution.
Thankfully that's not what happened.
Your post was very respectable until this. Why is abortion more important? I brought it up in another thread but do you know how many people are wrongly convicted of murder and sent to death row? Where are the people fighting for them? Who knows how many innocent PEOPLE we have killed since we started allowing capital punishment again. See that's what kinda ticks me off. People stand up for fetuses but they don't make capital punishment an issue when it's on the same level.
So, how do we spin the Inquisition to fit into all that above?
I have to leave this work computer soon, so if I vanish suddenly from the discussion, that is why.
+1
Well said.
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