That's really unfair, Bob.

I mean - yes. That's what Christians believe. ALL evangelical Christians believe this. There is no evangelical christian anywhere who believes anything different. Evangelical christians do not believe that all roads lead to heaven - they believe that only ONE road leads to heaven.

Are you seriously suggesting that we ought to permanently exclude all evangelical christians from the national stage?

QT

Are you seriously suggesting that we ought to permanently exclude all evangelical christians from the national stage?
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Is this where the duck falls from the ceiling?

>>Are you seriously suggesting that we ought to permanently exclude all evangelical christians from the national stage?

I didn't mean to suggest that. But you're missing the larger point I'm trying to make. This is just another offensive remark in a long line of offensive remarks from Warren, QT.

However, I find it hard to believe that all -- I mean ALL -- evangelicals are that dogmatic. Enough to publicly declare: "You're damned to hell unless you totally abandon your cultural heritage."

QT:
You're my sister and all that (ethnically) but permanently excluding
evangelical christians from national politics would probably be a step in the right direction. (Of course, I don't know how I'd resolve that with my own live and let live approach to life.- That's another discussion) However, my plethora of interaction with them over the years leads me to believe that they have a bizarre cognitive dissonance going on in their belief system.
Reasoning is just not in their playbook. And, that's all well and good for them. People can believe whatever they want to . Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, etc. But national politics generally leads them to overstep into my personal business. They have no business there.

OK, in backwards order, Ajabu: Peace! :) I disagree with you, fundamentally. I think that lots of evangelical christians are capable of being reasoned with - and I think that the uncomfortable juxtaposition of their faith and their feelings for others is where reason can happen, or, where we can push them into increasingly intolerant stances.

Bob: the fundamental tenet of evangelical christianity is belief in Jesus Christ as your personal savior - and in this as a fundamental requirement of humanity imposed by God. As the Bible says, and evangelicals love to quote "No man comes unto the Father but by Me." Which, in evangelical theology means - unless you accept Jesus's sacrifice of his life as a substitution sacrifice for your own, then you're stuck paying the penalty of sin (which according to St. Paul, is death - or said another way, hell). It's a pretty black and white kind of outlook, and doesn't lend even to nuance. I actually experienced my first crisis of faith when I realized that this was indeed what I had accepted on faith as part of becoming "born-again."

There are a lot of ways for Christians who believe this to deal with that belief, but none of them involve saying anything but "yes" in response to a question "if people aren't born again, are they going to hell?"

QT

I think that even that disreputable hippie fellow with the radical ideas and the anger at money-changers would agree that evangelicals should be off the national political stage.

Wasn't he famously the guy who said "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's?" when asked about how to feel about taxes, moneys, and secular politics?

Of course, he also said some silliness about camels and needles and rich guys. Pastor Warren must have skipped that part while he was eating a yet another in an endless series of doughnuts while supressing the urge to pork every beautiful woman in eyeshot.

But I am loathe to even use biblical quotes to act as counterpoint, as all it does is add validity to an invalid and dated book of Roman-era cultism.

@QT

There's a difference between a belief in personal salvation (faith), and an omniscient certainty that everyone who isn't saved is therefore damned. A more acceptable answer from Warren would've been a version of President-elect Obama's now infamous, "That's above my pay grade." Put another way: "I don't know for sure. This is for God to decide." There's no lie or ego in this answer, nor does it imply that Jews ought to stop being Jewish.

>>An acceptable answer from Warren would've been a version of President-elect Obama's now infamous, "That's above my pay grade." Put another way: "I don't know for sure. This is for God to decide."

I happen to agree with this. The problem with 'evangelical' Christians (I put this in parenthesis because they are not the only Christians on the block) is that they seem to believe that they know the mind of God. It clearly states in the bible that NOONE knows the mind of God except for Jesus Christ because he is the Son of God.

What Warren and many other pastors do is judge those that they should be loving and accepting regardless of whether they believe them to be sinners or not. Just as Jesus did. What Jesus did do is condemn hypocrites posing as holy men of the cloth, when they were actually worse than those they called sinners.

Bob, let's try this:

I think it would be far more agreeable if you said that the unborn have rights that must be respected, and that women should only abort lives that are threatening their own.

I think that's a much more agreeable position to take than to say that just because a life is dependent on another it's right to life is dependent on someone else. After all - we don't say that about the severely handicapped. So - since you agree (from the other thread) that human life begins at conception, can't we agree that there really isn't a "right" per se, to abort that life - and then we can come together on issues of when it IS necessary to abort?

What say you? Can you, for the sake of being agreeable, say that?

***********************

Obviously - that's a fairly inadequate analogy. But my point here is - an honest answer is not always the agreeable one.

Born again, evangelical Christianity believes as its central tenet - that salvation depends upon acceptance of Christ as one's personal savior.

DEPENDS. It's not a negotiable point - it's not an area of uncertainty, it's not even a posture of egotism. As I said - my first real crisis of faith was around this very issue. Trust me when I tell you it isn't egotism at all in being forced to say "yes."

QT

This is sort of O/T, going back to teh Gay Marriage question, and all, but Mr. The Bob from 2004 had an interesting post about consequences of bigotry...

"I think that lots of evangelical christians are capable of being reasoned with"
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This is where you argument falls apart: Reason. To many evangelicals I know and I know way more than I care to as I used to be one of them, reason is the opposite of faith. Their idea of faith is counter to what the classic definition of faith as stated the book of Hebrews.

Reasoning with an evangelical is makes them feel like you're attacking their faith. 99.999999999999999% of the Universe is closed to debate in their mind. They have years of training to over-rationalize their faith and "spiritual" issues. They have succeeded, in their mind, inf separating the body from the mind. Body is bad - never mind that one is to love their "temple".

And then you stated this deceptive gem:
"it isn't egotism at all in being forced to say "yes." " Oh like hell it isn't. It's all ego! All of it! Every last bit of it! If that isn't clear to you then you shouldn't even be aware of it as a possibility!

Most evangelicals I know have Christ living strictly in their ego. How else to explain this intense, misplaced pride that they have in their ignorance? In their hatred and shunning of those who do not believe exactly like them?

I think everyone needs to go right back to Genesis 3 and read it out loud several time a day until it becomes clear that you were born a-okay the first time. That the fall of mine is nothing more than the father of all lies; the lie being that you are not like God.

The truth is right there: you ARE like God and the deception rests solely in the intrinsic characteristic of humans to believe whatever they are told to believe, thereby shutting out the light within.

So I refuse to make nicey nice with Warren and his ilk. There's no love there whatsoever, just dogma. They can't even bother to read their Bible without being blinded by their dogma and they've been amply warned of this in their Bible.

It's just like C.S. Lewis wrote: the elves are for themselves. Small minded people and their small minded dogma running roughshod over anyone who dares to hold up a mirror to their shriveled heart.

I would just like to point out that officially, Catholicism does not believe in birth control - but Italy has the lowest birth rate in Europe. And while officially evengelicals may think that all non-Christians are going to hell, I think you'd find a lot of real uneasiness when it comes to condemning their neighbors or even the millions of another culture they don't know. In fact, quite a few nominal evangelicals believe in reincarnation. Most people hold a fair number of contradictory views, which they may or may not iron out in the course of a lifetime. I find it offensively bigoted to equate religious faith with belief in the Easter Bunny (and to refuse to acknowledge the many varieties of belief or the intelligence of many people of faith). There have been intellectual believing Christians (or substitute any one of the world's great faiths) just as there have been intellectual atheists - probably an equal number of conversions from one side to the other.

Though I am definitely not arguing for Rick Warren.

>>I think that lots of evangelical christians are capable of being reasoned with

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

Who says Christians - even evangelical ones, have renounced the use of reason?

I get to a place where I can only partially "represent" because, after all, I'm no longer an evangelical Christian, and that came at least in part because of reasoning. But I still feel it unfair to accuse evangelical christians of not reasoning. That there are some aspects that aren't open to debate doesn't mean that they can't be reasoned with.

For instance - no reasonable Christian wants Jews to be persecuted for being Jews. Even though they believe that Jews are doomed to hell, that's for the after life. They don't want to hasten hell on earth for anyone. And that, btw, is a place to begin.

QT

It's a place to begin indeed. I don't get this whole after life thing, not when the Lord's Prayer says to have these good things done here and now as it is already in heaven.

Reasoning with Christians, to me, is just a waste of timea and energy. As Plato points out, they will recognize the shadows, but they won't be able to connect the light to the form that created the shadows.

To put it shorter, most evangelicals prefer their brass over gold any old day.

I've been trying to reconcile this stuff and I guess I really want to know why there is an inaugural prayer jockey in the first place. Our founding fathers wanted to keep religion out of government for just this reason. Where we should be dealing with lots of issues concerning our terrestrial world instead we are seeing a lot of divisiveness which always comes from religion.
Almost any minister would piss someone off. Warren represents a narrow minded brand of Jesus worship. I don't like him, nor his ilk. Is Obama compensating for Reverend Wright?
A liberal, open minded minister would piss of the fundamentalists. A mullah would piss off everybody.
Keep God in your hearts, and out of our government.

I posted this yesterday, and will again:

The first amendment (which includes the establishment clause, bolded) states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

There aren't, and can never be, any laws calling for an invocation. The invocation is a tradition, and it would be a violation of the first amendment rights of the President to tell him he can't have one. It would also be a violation of the first amendment rights of the President to tell him what kind he can have, and it is also a violation of the first amendment rights of the President to tell him that he must have one. All versions of telling the president what to do with his invocations are prohibiting the free exercise of religion.

QT

There cannot possibly be any surprise that a Christian minister only believes Christians go to heaven.

I was raised Catholic and among Catholics, there's really only one group of people who go to heaven - Catholics! The priest didn't have a problem saying it, even though lots of parishioners disagreed. But that is really the "official" view on things.

Warren has said some "out-there" things, but any member of the clergy of a religious group is likely to say that only their in-group receives the awards of the afterlife. That's hardly surprsing.

I'd be surprised if Warren hadn't said something like this.