I find it so ironic that the Evangelicals who want to place the Ten Commandments in public schools and public places fail to grasp even the first commandment. “I am the Lord your God, you shall not have strange gods before me.”
I am a practicing Catholic, although I don’t agree with all the Church’s teachings. This evening’s sermon was the closest I’ve heard mixing politics with our Christian beliefs in many, many years. Two of the readings were about shepherds, ending with Mark’s Gospel where Christ takes pity on the people because they were “like sheep without a shepherd.” The priest based his sermon on shepherds, saying that on one side we have people burying their heads in the sand and on the far side someone preaching violence, retribution and lack of pity. Then the priest stopped and said, “Who is your shepherd?” and returned to his seat. I live in an upper class red county in a blue state, so I’m sure people were displeased - but I applaud his bravery. For me it was a breath of fresh air.
It is interesting to watch people who cheered Ken Starr on for chasing Clinton as character matters to today when questioned about Trump—“well, we aren’t electing a pastor”. It’s odd. I don’t think that they could follow the 10 commandments—but they sure want others to be forced to do so. Thanks for this article.
As a practicing Christian, it has been so painful to watch how Trump has won the approval of a large plurality of professing Christians. Jesus called for sacrificial love, but most people prefer political power, and he offered it to them. Many parallels to the Pharisees of Jesus' day.
I taught a college class on American exceptionalism for over a decade, and I devoted a significant amount of time to distinguishing between America's civil religion and the Christian faith embraced by the faith-based institution where I taught. It was a difficult concept to disentangle for many of my students because the melding of the two into a distinct faith of its own is practically in our cultural DNA, and the current populist political movement is taking advantage of it to amass power and promise it to a fearful subset of American evangelicalism that decries our secular, pluralistic society and refuses to have faith in God's redemptive plan.
I find it so ironic that the Evangelicals who want to place the Ten Commandments in public schools and public places fail to grasp even the first commandment. “I am the Lord your God, you shall not have strange gods before me.”
I am a practicing Catholic, although I don’t agree with all the Church’s teachings. This evening’s sermon was the closest I’ve heard mixing politics with our Christian beliefs in many, many years. Two of the readings were about shepherds, ending with Mark’s Gospel where Christ takes pity on the people because they were “like sheep without a shepherd.” The priest based his sermon on shepherds, saying that on one side we have people burying their heads in the sand and on the far side someone preaching violence, retribution and lack of pity. Then the priest stopped and said, “Who is your shepherd?” and returned to his seat. I live in an upper class red county in a blue state, so I’m sure people were displeased - but I applaud his bravery. For me it was a breath of fresh air.
It is interesting to watch people who cheered Ken Starr on for chasing Clinton as character matters to today when questioned about Trump—“well, we aren’t electing a pastor”. It’s odd. I don’t think that they could follow the 10 commandments—but they sure want others to be forced to do so. Thanks for this article.
As a practicing Christian, it has been so painful to watch how Trump has won the approval of a large plurality of professing Christians. Jesus called for sacrificial love, but most people prefer political power, and he offered it to them. Many parallels to the Pharisees of Jesus' day.
I taught a college class on American exceptionalism for over a decade, and I devoted a significant amount of time to distinguishing between America's civil religion and the Christian faith embraced by the faith-based institution where I taught. It was a difficult concept to disentangle for many of my students because the melding of the two into a distinct faith of its own is practically in our cultural DNA, and the current populist political movement is taking advantage of it to amass power and promise it to a fearful subset of American evangelicalism that decries our secular, pluralistic society and refuses to have faith in God's redemptive plan.