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May 20, 2013
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A ‘Third Way’ for Liberals and Conservative ChristiansPosted on Oct 9, 2007WASHINGTON—You know the religious right is in trouble when some of its leaders threaten to bolt the Republican Party if it nominates a candidate who supports abortion rights. But the well-publicized warning directed against Rudy Giuliani earlier this month is decidedly not the most important sign that religious conservatives are facing the disintegration of their movement. What matters more is that a new generation of evangelical leaders, tired of the rancid partisanship, is breaking away from the culture wars. The reach of this new evangelical politics will be tested this week with the release on Wednesday of a statement under the very biblical title, “Come Let Us Reason Together.” The question for the future is how many in the evangelical ranks will embrace this call? Organized by Third Way, a group that is close to many leading moderate Democrats, the statement calls for “first steps toward bridging the cultural divide between progressives and evangelicals.” Third Way’s effort is not happy boilerplate about how religious Americans and liberals share a concern for helping the poor, protecting the environment and reaching out to the victims of AIDS—although these areas of agreement are important and too often overlooked. Advertisement For example, while not backing away from Third Way’s support for stem cell research, the statement urges a series of restrictions to prevent the sale or manipulation of human embryos and reproductive cloning. “Americans have a deep faith in science, but also worry that scientific advances are outrunning our best moral thinking,” Jones and Laser declare. Worrying about ethical issues raised by science is not the same as being anti-science. The statement identifies other areas, including abortion, gay rights and strengthening families, where progressives and religious conservatives might continue to disagree but still make progress. One passage nicely summarizes the possibilities of a less polarized, post-Bush future: “The differences in how evangelicals and progressives see government’s role in affecting social change—one of changing hearts, the other building institutions—need not be in conflict.” Social improvement requires both. Now declarations and manifestoes come and go in our nation’s capital with the speed of the news cycle. What matters is whether they can catalyze action. Laser, who sets herself only a modest goal—“We want to end the culture wars,” she says firmly, but with a smile—knows this, which is why she worked to win support for the statement from evangelicals who can fairly be regarded as conservative. One of the most interesting is the Rev. Joel Hunter, senior pastor of Northland Church in Longwood, Fla. In 2006, Hunter was slated to become the head of the Christian Coalition. He wanted to broaden the group’s agenda to include questions such as the environment and poverty. That turned out to be a deal-breaker. “‘These are fine issues, but they’re not our issues,’” Hunter recalls being told. He says this without bitterness, and insisted in an interview that liberals and conservative evangelicals could work together where they agree without compromising their core principles. “We don’t all have to fit in a label,” he says. “God does not see the world in terms of liberals or conservatives.” A fine sentiment, but how can progressives and conservative evangelicals work together on issues such as abortion and gay rights? Here, Hunter gets very specific. “I am pro-life, and since I believe that what is in the womb is a baby, I would be excited if Roe v. Wade were overturned,” he says. “But that is not what I spend my time on. What if we could save babies who would be aborted ... if we gave help to low-income women who want to carry their babies to term? They really don’t have a choice. The old ways of encouraging the reduction of abortion, the strident ways, aren’t productive.” Hunter is opposed to gay marriage, yet he believes that “honoring human dignity and protecting committed relationships” requires recognition of “the basic human rights” of gay and lesbian couples. That doesn’t settle the gay marriage issue, but it would lead to a more—dare one use the word?—Christian approach to a matter that has bred so much anger. I’m not sure Laser will get her wish about ending the culture wars. But Americans are so tired of being on a political and cultural road to nowhere that her hope seems almost realistic. E.J. Dionne’s e-mail address is postchat(at)aol.com. © 2007, Washington Post Writers Group New and Improved CommentsIf you have trouble leaving a comment, review this help page. Still having problems? Let us know. If you find yourself moderated, take a moment to review our comment policy. |
By rage, October 15, 2007 at 5:33 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
America is never going to bother the religious right about their being supersaved and rapture ready. In fair reciprocation, the America from whom the supersaved wish to be piously separated should not be overbearingly subjected to their dogmatic traditions and dictates. American law mandates a separation of church and state. The Christian Bible mandates an exclusion of the sanctified from the secularly profane. Consequently, evangelical’s letting their light so shine that men may see His glory is never going to be realized as the result of their hostile subjugation of American civil law to their ludicrous scripture-twisted contortions of Jesus’ teachings and will for the Nation. America is either going to acknowledge and adhere faithfully to the tenets mandating the full separation of church and state established in The Constitution and The Bill of Rights, or cave to the religious coersion of the evangelical sect of Christendom in America, whose schismatic legitimacy many longer established orders of Christian faith (e.g. Catholics, Protestants, Anglicans, etc.) either question or fully renounce as anathema. Continued pacification of these Falwellian voters through any extention of offered civil gestures to incorporate their recalcitrant tyranical untuousness into mainstream society unfairly infringes on the rights and religious liberties of the true majority of Americans who just as adamantly wish to freely and liberally elevate other respective standards of dogma and canon.
Thus, if Dr. Dobson and his horde of miffed Pharisees wish to renounce the political right because of the dress-wearing, serial adultrous antics of Dame Edna Guiliani, let them move on. Let these selfrighteous zealots finally see themselves politically for who they really are - a bunch of bigoted, covetous, narrowminded, deluded, puritanical, hypocritical, out-of-touch, cynical, misinformed isolationists who statistically aren’t as culturally prominent in American society as they esteem themselves to be. Scandals like Ted Haggard and Richard Roberts have critically weakened evangelical credibility, making a Dobson endorsement a lot less valuable now than when Turdblossom Rove used megachurch members to win the White House in 2004 when Bush only narrowly cheated his way back to a 2nd term. By 2006, when the Democrats took both the Senate and the Congress, with a lot of red states turning blue or a cool shade of purple, it was obvious time, chance, and circumstance had diluted the evangelical voting strength.
Report thisBy rowdy, October 11, 2007 at 9:08 pm Link to this comment
e.j. these KKKristians you quoted are as full shit as a thanksgiving turkey. you sir are equally as full of shit for giving these fools even one line of press.
Report thisBy Grappa, October 10, 2007 at 10:11 pm Link to this comment
Stop responding to brain dead dribble like this so called Chistian, there is nothing like christ about their comments, only hate , and hate is a cancer that will eat you up.
Report thisBy driving bear, October 10, 2007 at 4:23 pm Link to this comment
Reply #106090 by Akira_Maritias on 10/10 at 1:54 pm
As for your being offended by the NAZI comment Guess what My family to knows about the NAZI’s A branch of my Family is Jewish from Hungry. After the war they stopped counting the loss after 275 because they could not bear it.
As for my wife she is more pro life than me, and she still has friends from her rape support group and they still meet about once a week. In her group some of the ladies became pregnant, some kept the baby and some aborted , and ALL who aborted regret the decision. NONE who kept their baby regret it.
MY problem with you is that you can sit by and watch a greater evil that our Jewish brothers and sisters suffered at the hands of the NAZI’s and not give a S**T . THIS MAKES YOU WORSE THAN A NAZI
Report thisP.S. how many people did Falwell kill , zero.
Bin Laden killed thousands ,
Do I want bin Laden dead , no do I want him stopped yes , will it take killing him to stop him , most likely
By Akira_Maritias, October 10, 2007 at 2:54 pm Link to this comment
I’m pleased that Falwell is dead, not babies. But apparently you can’t read, so you keep assuming that I like dead babies.
If you don’t think there’s something wrong with Falwell, then I want you to wear aluminum in public so I know who you are.
Of course, I’m guessing that an honest Christian like you wants no one dead, correct? Not even Osama?
Too busy being a hypocrite to care…
At any rate, I am done with you. It infuriates me that you are utterly failing to understand why I am pro choice. It’s not your body, and you shouldn’t be making decisions for it. And of course rape victims remember rape. But they WANT to forget. Imagine seeing a reminder of the rapist. Every. Single. Day. And, you have to care for it. Love it. Nurture it. Nurture what came from that terrible person, and smile at it when it smiles at you.
But, you don’t care. No amount of my talking will coerce you. You are convinced of your rightness (or is it righteousness?) and I, an atheist at that, will never get you to change your mind.
Ask your wife. Ask her if it is her choice or the choice of old men if she is ready to care for a child. Ask her if she would rather have someone else tell her what to do in such a private matter.
By the way, it wasn’t a comparison. A few weeks into pregnancy, a fetus looks identical to a tadpole. We have gills at some point, too. We don’t develop a brain until the very end, to boot. That brain gives us our feelings.
Don’t talk down to me about Nazis. Please don’t. A good chunk of my family is buried in a mass grave right now; a chunk that MY family didn’t even know about until they released that article about a recently discovered mass grave a few months back. Do you know how shocking that is? To discover that many of your missing relatives have been rotting in such a foul place? Do NOT act like I am a Nazi, at ANY point in time. Call me whatever you like, but call me a Nazi, and you lose all hope of being a dignified human being in my eyes. Yes, I consider you a disgrace to Christianity for such an unnecessary outcry, and THAT is coming from an atheist.
Mike Mid-City is a decent Christian; I can glean that from what little I have seen of his posting throughout the site. You could learn a thing or two about him, instead of prattling on about entire groups of people being Satanists. I have liberal friends who are Christian. Are you so base to think that their desire to end the war and give people the free will to make their own choice about their bodies is considered Satanism? If I recall, God wanted us to have freewill, and at NO point is the removal of abortion considered a good thing.
Besides, the people HAVING abortions that you seem to loathe probably shouldn’t be continuing their bloodline. Think about it; do you REALLY want the woman who wants to murder children to have a child and raise it on such beliefs?
Now, I leave you to quietly stew…because I have no tolerance for people throwing ‘Nazi’ around. None. At. All.
Report thisBy driving bear, October 10, 2007 at 1:39 pm Link to this comment
I hate to break to you but girls who are raped will be “living with it ” long after 9 months if they are pregnant or not , If you doubt me just ASK MY WIFE , They don’t need a baby to remind them of the RAPE. And what kind of Asshole like you is happy that another human is dead ( not only babies but Jerry Falwell think about it ) And to answer your question about the war I opposed it at the start , but now if we ( the USA ) pulls out a bigger Blood bath will happen and when Iran takes the place over we will have to go back. My view of the Iraq can best be described by the famous words of the movie full metal jacket ” it’s a big S**T sandwich and we all are going to have to take a bite”
As for torture is regrettable but necessary evil.
Or in the words of Spock from Star trek ” the good of the many out weigh the needs of the few or the one”
As for my demand that millions obey me , Guess what we already do, or have you not heard of this thing called ” THE LAW” and if your don’t obey you pay both boys and girls .
As for your comparison to a baby in the mothers womb to a tad pole where or where has the world heard that before , now I remember it was the Nazi’s who justified killing Jews because to them Jews were “sub human ” and in the US south in slavery days because to the crackers black were only 60 % human
Report thisBy Akira_Maritias, October 10, 2007 at 12:38 pm Link to this comment
“So Your answer to rape is to commit MURDER. And by the way rape incest account for less that 1 % of abortion and you know it. I dont know why you get a thrill by the thought of dead babies other than the fact your are a Satanist. By the way the new medical technology called the sonogram that exposed the pro death liberal satanic lefts lies .”
And your answer to rape is to force the woman to live with a constant reminder of what happened? Never mind that the child could have been miscarried or been abused, it’s MURDER to kill a single celled organism.
Regardless of how many are raped, there are still women who ARE raped. If you are so damn determined in your twisted little world to stop all abortion so that THOSE women don’t matter at all, then you are a sick soul who should not be permitted internet access, no more than holocaust deniers and KKK members.
I don’t get a thrill from it, but apparently YOU do, since it’s on your mind. I’m not saying that it’s always justified or right, and there are people who should not be allowed to use it as they do, but that doesn’t give you the right to take away that right from someone else. Say that you force these people to give birth. Suddenly the population is forcefully being increased by an extra ONE MILLION every year. You had better hope that Jesus whisks us all away naked, ‘cause we’ll run out of room that much faster on Earth.
Your last sentence is a slap to the English language. It makes no sense. No ending, no punch line, no kick. You started it, then left it to rot. Sonogram don’t do shit, you moron. Yeah, it twitches about. They don’t allow abortions that far in, usually. Usually, it’s allowed when the baby is no more than a squirming tadpole-with gills, no doubt.
You’re apparently so caught up in sucking God’s metaphorical cock that you forgot just how irrational it is to DEMAND that MILLIONS OF WOMEN OBEY YOU. You neatly avoided the fact that these women WOULD STILL GET THE ABORTION, regardless of how legal it was, to call me a Satanist. I’m one worse: atheist. Damn, get the fire now! Gotta burn a heretic! Of course, you would know that if you could read.
What sickens me is that you don’t understand why some women get abortions. They get them because they are not READY to care for a child. If YOU got your way and their right was stolen from them to make that decision, THEY would have no choice, and they would HAVE to raise that child, or put them up for adoption and HOPE that they get adopted to a loving home. If they took care of them, the child would suffer, probably lose whatever faith they had, and maybe even die from starvation or the like. But damn if you care; it’s just a FRACTION of the people.
By the way, asshole, 1% of 1 million is 10,000. Guess that 10,000 women suffering and 10,000 babies that would be violently aborted illegally doesn’t matter. You could care less if the number was 999,999; so long as you saved ONE baby by forcing ALL of these women to obey YOU.
You do realize that NOWHERE does God utter ‘and women shalt not be allowed to end their child’s life’. Nope; you’re just happy to stumble after Bush and kiss his ass as much as possible, aren’t you? Can’t make your own choices, so you let people like Jerry Falwell (thank GOD he’s dead) make decisions for you so you can blindly follow. You don’t care; it just means NO thinking on your behalf.
Have I stated that I think you’re an idiot? Calling me a satanist…THAT’S original. Tell me, did you support the war in Iraq? Do you support torture? Where do you draw the line? Is it okay to kill people, so long as they are adults? Or do you only care about single celled beings that don’t actually have feelings or a brain until nearly 9 months in?
Report thisBy mary, October 10, 2007 at 11:35 am Link to this comment
Why did we let the ridiculous right even use the words PRO-LIFE. Whose life, theirs. What about putting an end to the death penalty. Why no outrage for those wrongly convicted and jailed for ever! But of course this group sees nothing wrong with giving up someone else’s life, sending someone else’s child to die in wars. The sheep are finally being led to barren pastures to wither and die. Works for me…..
Report thisBy driving bear, October 10, 2007 at 11:31 am Link to this comment
reply to #106018 by Akira_Maritias on 10/10 at 9:47 am
So Your answer to rape is to commit MURDER. And by the way rape incest account for less that 1 % of abortion and you know it. I don’t know why you get a thrill by the thought of dead babies other than the fact your are a Satanist. By the way the new medical technology called the sonogram that exposed the pro death liberal satanic left’s lies .
Report thisBy Dr Richard Blackmoor, October 10, 2007 at 11:15 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Superstition is incompatible with reason.Reason meaning empirical,scientific evidence gathering.
Report thisReligion should be a personal private thing. If you need to believe in agreat whit father keep it to yourself.
The Founders of our country had a very low opinion of religion based on their actual writings. Lincoln also has a couple of quotes that show how disguted he was with the concept of religion.
Being moral is an important part of being a Human. We are herd animals after all. Being moral has little to do with what one does to ones self. It involves how you treat others.
Public policy should NEVER be decided by anything other then empirical thinking. It is the ONLY way that humans have developed of determining reality.
History is full of examples of more scientifically based cultures coming into contact with superstitious,faith based cultures.
The scientific culture ALWAYS takes over and dominates the superstitious ,faith based culture.
We will be under Chinese control if we continue with current policies.
By VillageElder, October 10, 2007 at 11:12 am Link to this comment
Democracy not theocracy!
The hubris and mendacity of the religious right is beyond rational comprehension. We must accept their arrangement of superstitions and embrace them fully before they will talk to us.
We must discard science and rationality along with cultural and personal enlightenment. Since there can be no evolution shall we discard the germ theory of disease? We can embrace the dark ages and burn books libraries and any other means of allowing satan to cloud over vision.
These extremist are a fringe which came to the fore front with Ronald Regan (another of his legacies). The sooner we react to these reactionaries the better. Let them go back to the shadows of superstition from whence they crawled.
Report thisBy Akira_Maritias, October 10, 2007 at 10:47 am Link to this comment
So, going by your ideal, a 17 year old girl should be forced to deal with being raped and getting pregnant, and she MUST bear that child despite the horrifying memories it will bring to her, because you are CONVINCED that ALL abortions are evil things.
You then go on to ASSERT that this is good. YOU have no problem forcefully ordering millions of women to do EXACTLY as you say, but YOU have a problem with ME saying that everyone has free will.
I suppose that while she’s at it, that girl should marry her rapist, as is decreed by God, so that the rapist is not a sinner.
You are a truly sick person to claim that abortion is murder of children, when you undoubtedly cheer on war. I say it should be a choice, you idiot, because if it isn’t, it will still happen. That’s right: make abortion illegal, and that just stops the right way of doing it. They’ll be shoved down stairs, or they’ll go to back alleys and get a wire coat hanger shoved up there to do the abortion. These ways endanger the mother as well, so by making abortions illegal, which you think is exactly what God wants, you could quite possibly end up DOUBLING the death caused by abortion.
Doesn’t sound so pretty now, does it? Too busy thinking of all of those unborn Christ-followers to even think of the mothers, eh? Hell, illegal abortions happen now, and they are so much more risky than doing it at a clinic. Never mind that; there’s lives to ruin, and Christians will be damned if they can’t interfere in other people’s lives!
And yes, you ARE forcing your beliefs on others, because when I say pro choice, I am taking NOTHING from people. When you say pro life, you are taking away a woman’s right to abort her child, for whatever reason.
Report thisBy driving bear, October 10, 2007 at 10:36 am Link to this comment
Reply to #105956 by Akira_Maritias on 10/10 at 5:31 am
It’s clear to me that you are the crazy one. Who Kills people the most black people, the pro death abortionist. Fact Blacks make up about 12% of the US population, and black babies account for about 1/3 of US abortions. Fact Justice Blackburne the author of Row v wade was a former member of the KKK. Fact The founder of Planned Parenthood Margret Spelling said abortion would be useful to control excess population in our intercity area of the US ( Poor intercity is code for black and brown people)
Connect the Dots on the above facts and see who the true racist are .
As for absurd charge of forcing our believes on other , you apparently have no problem imposing your satanic pro death views on 1 million innocent children per year.
When I call the liberal left satanic is a Just statement of FACT. or as the Bible says “by their action will yea know them”
Report thisBy Akira_Maritias, October 10, 2007 at 6:31 am Link to this comment
Wow…liberalism is satanism? And I thought Christians were supposed to be getting less crazy…
Yeah, I hope that Christians eventually get pushed down and get told to shut up. No offense to the moderate ones, but the extremist ones are ruining it. They really are. I’m not a liberal or a conservative; I sit in the middle, and I sit in the middle as an atheist. Hell, I just need to be gay and black and bingo! Those crazy ass Christians will have every reason to try and kill me.
With people that backwards in their beliefs, I see no reason for Christians to be permitted to control the nation. It’s disgusting the rights that we have lost because of them. When did the argument for a woman’s decision over whether or not she is ready to care for a baby become the argument held only by aging Christian men? When did marriage become a ‘holy’ thing that gays are not allowed to taint? These are issues swept aside by Christian extremists, because we’ve gotta go kill those Muslims in the name of God!
Kind my ass. Christians only think that they are good because they are in this Christian country, and I am VERY ashamed of America for choosing to do that. We CANNOT be a free country when Christianity holds the reigns. It is IMPOSSIBLE, because Christians will hold back the rights of SOMEONE. We see proof of that NOW: gays and women. Oh, and liberals too, apparently.
Report thisBy Chuckwagonchuckie, October 10, 2007 at 5:26 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
It is interesting to listen to the Democrats/Progressives/Liberals harp over the Neocons and Religious Right caving in on the culture wars. No one wants to point out this group is the Neomarxist of today, They have taken Marx and marketed his views as the future utopia. Our two party system has slid down the slope of the Marxist agenda hook line and sinker.
Report thisThe next 10 years will see the Bible and Conservative Christian doctrine exposed as HATE doctrines and cut out of mainstream culture. I am sure Third Way will find support among the LIBERAL Church groups thus moving another inch to State Supported Religion with its Czar of Religion.
By driving bear, October 10, 2007 at 1:05 am Link to this comment
I am a proud christian conservative and I say to this so called third way movement Don’t go away mad just go away. This is nothing less than the liberal left ( satanist ) way of trying to salvage a slight victory from the jaws of defeat. The chrisian right is winning the culture war and therefore I have no plans to surrender to the Democrats/Satanist
Report thisBy Douglas Chalmers, October 9, 2007 at 10:24 am Link to this comment
“Come Let Us Reason Together”, of course, is an admission that their spiritual faculties of inspiration and intuition long ago failed them. Now, they have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the light of REALITY.
Marvellous, though, how people can predicate their “moral concerns” with saluting the flag and marching off to a war of their own country’s making or, worse still, send someone else’s kids off to their filthy profit-driven wars.
Sweeping your own doorstep is always the best course of action before criticizing others. The problem is that once people have religion, they inevitably end up thinking that they own “god” (no wonder ‘it’ always has to be a male god, ha ah!).
One thing that science has more or less accepted is that there really is a “creation” - the big bang. Ironically, not all religious believers want to accept that there really is a “creative force” and they still cling fearfully somehow to their accustomed image of an old man with a beard up in the clouds.
What is more frightening than accepting that they evolved out of some “biological soup”, however, is that they might also be able to regress back into it. That really puts an end to their fantasies that their god will always make it all right for them, no matter how they err. TRUTH is too difficult for them in Its entirety.
Once the genie of human and animal cell research has reached a certain stage, emotional thinking will not save any one of us from its consequences. Already, one Christian church has failed to understand what is the likely outcome of its pathetic choices regarding human-animal hybrids.
No wonder, then, that there is concern as well as outrage and confusion. It is free will taken to its absurd conclusions and solely on a church’s authority over its ignorant flock but utterly devoid of any responsibility for the consequences. See “The Roman Catholic Church has called for women to be allowed to give birth to human-animal hybrids created in the laboratory….” http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article1993579.ece
Report thisBy thomas billis, October 9, 2007 at 9:44 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Yes EJ there is a third way the religious right fades into the oblivion where they have lived since the days of Father Coughlin and the rest of us get on with the job of fixing the mess their golden boy George Bush has gotten us into.This is not a liberal conservative issue.This is insanity vs sanity.Before the moral majority we did not always agree but we were not at each others throats.Karl Rove pushed that hatred and turned it into a campaign.To show you that it is worse now than ever:When George Romney ran for President there was not any prejudice toward a Mormon running for President as it should be.Well take a look at the talk with his son Mitt Romney running.Stark isn’t it?Who manufactured this great leap backward?
Report thisBy Akira_Maritias, October 9, 2007 at 5:34 am Link to this comment
And, as always, the politicians quietly step around to save their own asses. Against gay marriage, but for gay rights, against abortion, but for choice.
Not looking forward to this upcoming election. Not at all. Gays are gonna get screwed, and they’ll probably make abortions illegal. If not, I may just eat my entire laptop-or die from shock, whichever comes first.
Report thisBy Debbie French, October 9, 2007 at 5:11 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
I am a mother who is personally pro-life personally, but pro-choice in general. No body has the right to tell someone else what they should do with their life! Nobody has the right to judge anyone’s descions. PERIOD
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