Today’s Reading List – September 28, 2007
As Proof…
…that Evangelicals are squandering the power they have accumulated, a blogger reports on Richard Land on Laura Ingraham. We have already seen Land virtually endorse Thompson and nothing changes here. He also repeats his call for Romney to "explain," while contending that he has the right to believe as he sees fit. There is something quite odd about that, if it is Romney's right to believe as he sees fit, then why is explanation necessary? More importantly, to whom?
Parsed as Land has so many times now, it just sort of sounds like "guilty until proven innocent."
From the left…
Comes what amounts to a hate piece. Starting with Warren Jeffs, Jackson Williams winds his way through racism and ends up calling for Romney and the CJCLDS to be "put it on the table and under the microscope…." It is, of course, courtesy of the Huffington Post.
Williams, in a obvious drive to get somewhere that the facts just do not lead, makes connections so tenuous as to qualify as an old school free association psych test. But more importantly, the bottom line is that an evil act by someone not even vaguely related to a religion calls for the religion to lose its constitutional right to free practice.
Only from the left.
And while we are talking hit pieces…
…here's one from the far religious right. It is, sadly funny; however. Being headlined "White Evangelicals Have Least Positive View of Mormons" I think it hurts white Evangelicals (Hey! Wait! – That's me?!?!?!) more than it hurts Mormons. Won't be long before someone at the Huffington Post uses it to prove we are all bigots.
And a letter writer to the SLTrib shoots back. Guy has a heck of a point. I think I have heard it somewhere before.
And now, I'll take a shot…
I will be grateful when the also-rans are out of the game.
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Jackson on 01 Oct 2007 at 11:45 am #
I see you’ve mentioned my HuffPo blog entry about Warren Jeffs and Mitt Romney. You state what you claim to be the thrust of my piece thusly: “…the bottom line is that an evil act by someone not even vaguely related to a religion calls for the religion to lose its constitutional right to free practice.”
You’re certainly entitled to your opinion, John, but you’re not entitled to put words or thoughts in my mouth that are not there.
I never once “call for” – or even hint – that Mormonism should “lose its constitutional right to free practice.” Indeed, such a thought would be anathema to all I stand for. Shame on you for flat-out lying about what I wrote. The gang at Young Life would not be proud.
What I clearly wrote on HuffPo was that LDS has a modern history (1978 is very modern) of doctrinal discrimination against blacks. That’s a fact. I also wrote that Republican/conservative candidates wear their religion on their sleeve these days and that their religious views color their thinking on issues that affect all of us (such as evolutionary biology), whether we share their particular faith or not. That’s also a fact. Given those facts, I believe it behooves the voters to educate themselves and take into account the religious practices of those who would lead us, “free of fearmongering” as I put it in my HuffPo piece.
But of course, you know all of that because you read my piece. You just pleasantly chose to characterize it dishonestly.
Jackson Williams
coltakashi on 01 Oct 2007 at 4:08 pm #
Gosh, Mr. Williams (since you read this blog), the entire United States has a history of political discrimination against blacks, as well as Asians, which of course extended past the 1964 Civil Rights Act, certainly “modern times”. What kind of exercise in “mea culpa” is necessary for you to let someone get past breast beating in penance for past discriminatory thoughts, even though there is no evidence that the individual himself ever acted in that way?
You are probably ignorant of the fact that even prior to 1978 there were people of African descent who decided to join the LDS Church, including families in the congregation in downtown Salt Lake City where I lived as a child in the 1950s, and an Army sergeant whom I taught and helped baptize in 1974 in Colorado Springs, who told us he had visited many other churches in the city, but ours was the first where he was truly welcomed. As soon as the policy on priesthood ordination was changed in 1978, thousands of people in Nigeria and Ghana were baptized into the LDS Church, after waiting for years for that opportunity, having been converted by reading the Book of Mormon and other LDS literature. Today there are LDS Church temples in Abba and Acra, and we have even had an LDS missionary from Kenya (Elder M’botu) work among the people here in our small Idaho town.
But that is not all. Among the first Mormon missionary activities were efforts to teach American Indians. The first LDS missionaries in Polynesia arrived in 1844, and the BYU-Hawaii campus and the temple in Laie reflect the warm reception given to the LDS Church by natives among the Hawaiians, Samoans, Tongans (where the LDS Church is over a third of the population), and the Maori of New Zealand. LDS missionaries began their efforts in Japan in 1901, and there are hundreds of thousands of Mormons in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Mongolia, and other parts of Asia. There are over a million Mormons in Mexico, and nearly that many in Brazil. Because of these conversions, over half of the Mormons in the world do not speak English as their primary language. Exactly how does that history square with your idea that Mormons are racially biased? Gosh, Lou Dobbs is excoriating Mormons for being extra nice to illegal immigrants!
(By the way, my mother is Japanese and I was born in Japan.)
Mr. Williams, you are displaying not only your ignorance, but also your religious bias by your willingness to admonish Mormons out of your abundant ignorance.
–Raymond Takashi Swenson
Founder on 07 Oct 2007 at 11:02 am #
“Ron Paul people, even those that are my Evangelical brethren, are just flat out not entirely attached to reality.”
Its easy to say one is wrong but quite another to provide evidence.
I find it disingenuous when people who call themelves Christians, bearers of the truth, would stand behind any whose manner it is to say one thing and do another.
Suddenly, the 3,000 aborted children per day no longer matter. While you are casting your vote for one who rides the presiding political wave on the abortion issue think of the one who never has to explain himself on abortion.
Quite frankly, as people who should insist on the veracity of oaths, we are quick to join hands with those who are thinking how they can violate their oath while they take it.
Practice what you preach.
I have heard Christians scream for years for a candidate with integrity and when one comes along suddenly we are more concerned about killing our fellow man than we are about seeking real solutions for peace. Should we ignore the command to live at peace with all so much as lies within you?
Are so many so fearful of an enemy who really doesn’t care about us except with regards to what we do over there.
When Ron Paul suggests that it is our meddling people go crazy.
Foreign Policy is a very simple thing:
If I relieve myself in your backyard you are going to have something to say about it. That is a causal relationship. A.k.a., blowback – or if you prefer – the consequences of an action. But when it is suggested that they attacked us because we are meddling in their affairs people come apart at the seams. Its as simple as one neighbor to another.
I guess that whole “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” thing is just a bunch on nonsense. What does that Jesus guy know anyway.