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<p>Oh, for crying out loud. If you don’t want to influence the opinions of others, why do you keep posting to these threads? Really. Let’s hear it. So far, in my limited time reading this forum, you keep beating the drum that you don’t want others to try to win converts to their beliefs, while constantly posting that you want others to share your belief that sharing strongly-held beliefs is wrong. Your silence would be a valuable example of the philosophy you expound.</p>
<p>"posting that you want others to share your belief that sharing strongly-held beliefs is wrong. "</p>
<p>No, you’ve missed the point. Sharing strongly-held beliefs is always welcome.</p>
<p>What is NOT welcome is people trying to cram it down other people’s throats after they have declined interest.</p>
<p>Obviously, everyone who visits this thread is open to hearing other ideas, so it is not possible for anyone to cram anything down anyone’s throats on a discussion forum. People can just opt to not read the posts!</p>
<p>In real life, however, it’s not like that. People can be in your face and not back off after you’ve politely asked them to. They can harass and make life difficult.</p>
<p>There is a huge difference.</p>
<p>Rick, you have gathered a lot of posts in your one month tenure here on CC, but I don’t think you could possibly that read all of my many influential opinions in the 30 or so days you have been here. So, I think I will remain very comfortable here, and nah, you can’t bully me into silence.</p>
<p>Good try though!</p>
<p>I am Christian but have grown up in a Jewish community.I am grateful for the opportunity to know these folks well. They are wonderful religious people. I have never tried to convert anyone however there have been occasions when Jewish folks are so comfortable around me they have disparaged the Christian religion and my practices .(Like the time a Jewish friend gave my husband a dirty book as a Christmas present.) On these occasions I have had to point out the tenants of Christianity to them. You see Jewish folks do not know or practice the virtue of ‘being a good Christian’. We must never expect that of them however we are shocked over and over when this does not occur.</p>
<p>Yes, it is the responsibility of Christians to support the Jews in Israel. Jews should not look down on this. It’s just something we have to do if we are a good Christian.The Bible mandates it.</p>
<p>
Kansas. And they didn’t just <em>try</em>, but succeeded. In fact, our science standards change regularly depending upon who’s voted into office 
. I even have a bumper sticker on my car which says, “Kansas, Get a Clue. Love, Dover, PA”</p>
<p>Our current attorney general, a man of loudly professed Christian faith, was recently voted out as he decided that his anti-abortion efforts should include the delving into private abortion records of Kansas women in an effort to determine criminal activity. Even conservative Kansas voters gave this misguided man a decisive spanking at the polls. </p>
<p>To claim that there are never efforts to foist extremist religious beliefs and values on others is erroneous. That said, the vast majority of my friends are Christians, and I would never seek to generalize from the actions of a few radical people. ~berurah</p>
<p>Well, you know how it goes. Stay our of conversations about Politics and Religion. I always avoid discussions about these subjects with friends.I don’t want to get into hot water , offend anyone or raise anyone’s blood pressure.</p>
<p>Some Christians do think it is their mission to make converts as this was the mission of the disciples.(sp, aah, I won’t look it up) I accept it. Jewish folks should not feel threatened. I do not feel threatened by them.</p>
<p>The point is RESPECT. We must respect them and their religion and they ours.</p>
<p>Frankly, I regretted that I incorrectly stated my question. I meant to say “where have they succeeded in pushing ID into schools” and “where have they succeeded in teaching the Bible as religion in schools.” As cgm informed us, of the thousands and thousands of public schools in this country (501 districts in PA alone) not ONE is presently teaching ID or teaching the Bible as religion. </p>
<p>I think that is an astounding fact, especially considering all the grave concern expressed by many on this board that we are destined to live under a theocracy in the near future under the Bush administration. As I said, I think there are people in this country deliberately inflaming these unfounded fears in order to advance their own agendas (which is pretty despicable in my book). The problem is that living under a perceived threat/fear can cause people to become bigoted without their even realizing it. I don’t suppose anyone here would tolerate people disparaging the Koran or the Muslim religion because of the actions of some extremists. However, that is exactly what some people are doing when it comes to evangelicals, and by extension, other Christians.</p>
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<p>I am Jewish, and I do not feel “threatened” when some Christians make efforts to convert me. I try very hard to view proselytizing as an essential part of THEIR beliefs, and I politely explain that we have our own system of beliefs and are happy with that. </p>
<p>In addition, as the only Jews in our school district, my children regularly take part in all manner of Christian activities, particularly around Christmas. My kids have been elves in Christmas plays and have sung in Christmas choir programs. They celebrate Christmas and its associated traditions with friends at their houses. In our multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religious world, I feel that it is <em>extrememly</em> important to not only tolerate the beliefs of others but to make a true effort to understand and embrace them where possible.</p>
<p>~berurah</p>
<p>Getting back to the OP, The Rev Hagbee is a Christian Zionist and Millenialist which represents the most reactionary branch of Christianity and of course they are free to believe what they choose to believe, interpret the Bible as they choose to interpret it. However to have its representative to be invited into the White House and perhaps influence our foreign policy is frightening.</p>
<p>One reason evangelical Christianity is growing so fast is that they live in a very black and white world largely deviod of nuance. Does the phrase, “your either for us or against us” ring a bell? The true answer to a statement like this is always somewhere in between and foreign policy is all about nuance.</p>
<p>Yes we need to support Israel but she is more threatened today that at any time in recent history because we have lost all credibility as being an honest broker in the region. Our foreign policy, supported at the ballot box, has been deminished to one of force of verbal threat and pre-emptive war. “…and all those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword.”</p>
<p>And looking back perhaps the two greatest hopes in this region of the world were Anwar Sadat and Yitzhak Rabin, both assassinated, not by alien assassins but by homegrown conservative radicals.</p>
<p>And today? </p>
<p>I do not have any good answers, but we have been warned of the way of the sword.</p>
<p>HH, do you think that there is, as is rallied about often in the Bill O’Reilly world, a “war on Christians” (or was it just a war on Christmas? :))? I ask you seriously (and anyone else) whether, as the mainstream American religion, you honestly feel that your religion is under fire from those in the minority.</p>
<p>It was nice to read your posts, berurah.
AM, I would answer your question if I thought you were asking it in good faith, which I don’t.</p>
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<p>I guess I didn’t realize that Hillary Clinton was one of those black/white evangelicals:
<a href=“http://www.freedomagenda.com/iraq/wmd_quotes.html[/url]”>http://www.freedomagenda.com/iraq/wmd_quotes.html</a>
Note that Hillary was the first to use this quote post 9/11.</p>
<p>backhandgrip - I have heard of the ‘tenets’ of Christianity but not of its “tenants”. Please enlighten me ; )</p>
<p>Point on Judaism: It is known that Jews are generally regarded as smart. Smartness to me is a good thing (though not as good as intelligence – not implying here that Jews are more smart than intelligent), it helps one navigate through the complex and unpredictable seas of life, and helps one be free of what may be considered the ‘enslaving’ belief systems that abound in societies. And, that ‘smartness’ ‘evolved’ (for all the humanists among us) as a defense mechanism against systems that the Jews felt more and more alienated from – sort of a vicious cylce, as it were.</p>
<p>I do not know but perhaps that is the main driving force for Jews with regards to the rest of the world. That is, they feel the need to “free” themselves from the constraints of ‘irrational’ beliefs, beliefs which have supplanted the very real, physical, enslavement which was their lot so very long ago, yet which have left them ever searching (inexplicably so) for the freedom denied their ancestors.</p>
<p>Realizing that Judaism is older than Christianity and Islam, is it possible that many if not most/all Jews adhere to their “faith” (thus allowing themselves to, at least in this case, forsake their ‘smartness’ for a set of beliefs) not for some ‘rational’ reason (pardon the redundancy) but simply because it is there (and has been for a long time) and, more importantly, it is THEIRS and theirs alone?</p>
<p>If so, am I correct is saying that ‘smartness’ is not an end in itself for the Jew but rather a means to it, with the end (Judaism’s set of beliefs) being one
of convenience and comfort to the Jew and therefore a solid (hmm…a solid belief – oxymoron if I ever heard one) rock on which to defend himself. That even as the Jew is considered (self-admittedly so) a cynic insofar as the rest of the world is concerned, he can be and is the very model of a person of faith.</p>
<p>I wonder if any of you here who are Jews feel there is some truth in that, or am I oversimplifying things.</p>
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<pre><code>I take exception to this rather sweeping generalization about “Jewish folk” because I have several Jewish friends who are kinder, more generous, more charitable, better “Christians” if you will, than some of the Christians I know. Except for the part about believing that Jesus is divine. Jewish kids are taught from an early age in religious school that it is their obligation to work to “repair the world” and that includes charity to the poor, taking care of the environment, visiting the sick and elderly, and striving for justice and fairness. These were Jewish values long before they became “Christian” values and a lot of Jewish people take them very seriously.
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<p>No sweat, HH. I didn’t think you’d answer, although the quetsion was posed in good faith.</p>
<p>I dont think there can be any doubt that public presence of Christianity has diminished through the years. Does anyone really doubt this? </p>
<p>It matters not at all to me in terms of my beliefs; Christianity did not need to exist in my world–but for its bringing to life the modern world of science and technology which I now live in and enjoy all over the world.</p>
<p>[sorry, I meant to include the following:]</p>
<p>This evaporating of Christianity as the dominant culture in the West can be seen as the natural course of a modern pluralistic democracy or it can be seen as the natural activism of the non-Christian disidents that are offended by such Christianity as is thickly woven into the public life of the American Republic, American identity and American way of life.</p>
<p>There are probably people, evangelicals, who would like to see America culture become or remain exclusively Judeo-Christian. What many people here refer to as a theocracy. And although I have never met this person, this theocrat, I suppose he exists somewhere in the crevices of middle-America. </p>
<p>Has anyone else here actually met a person, a theocrat, who holds such an exclusivist or dominion-ist view? They must be, by the look of things, an extreme minority, although they almost certainly must exist somewhere on down the line. Some would use the expression hiding under a rock.</p>
<p>I am not at all offended by the predominance of the Christian culture in America. </p>
<p>In India, you have a predominance of Hinduism; China, Atheism; Israel, Zionism-Judaism; Turkey, Islam etc. Each culture also has minority beliefs, whether traditional or secular. The traditional beliefs are the key to the culture of a people, the secular to the power of a people. In the modern world for either one to dominate the other, the people so dominated will become corrupted in both spirit and nature.</p>
<p>It is the reality of a nation, of a people deserving of the title a nation.
Some, in all countries, would prefer to change that reality as they are either 1) offended by the culture or 2) oppressed by the culture as they see it in their own lives. </p>
<p>From what I know of American history Americans as a people have forgiven themselves there faults by claiming that they were not American in origin but were, rather, religious in origin–it is the fault of their fathers in a peculiarly childish way, not themselves; Americans did not oppress black people, they were forced to because of their fathers traditions or religion–it cannot be that they are avaricious and mean all on their own (like most people in this world) , their fathers old religion just brainwashed them into acting poorly as human beings, etc, etc. It is not their fault or nature.</p>
<p>Transferring the problem to religion (a modern psychoanalytic trick), even Christian religion (the most modernist of all religions), is a diversion, a way of shifting the blame to something other than your own inferior feelings and actions. </p>
<p>The problem, people, is in your soul, not your religion. Although it may make you feel better about yourself to believe otherwise.</p>
<p>There is nothing to blame but yourself. Shed yourself of your culture and you will be culturally poor, whatever the culture; here, from representative democracy, to gospel & blues, to rock and Jazz, to modern medicine to computers, to consumerism to a libertarian spirit of freedom. </p>
<p>Instead shed yourself of your low self-esteem and hate. Religion is not a prior condition of hate. Only people themselves are; they are the necessary and sufficient condition of hate, anger and bitterness.</p>
<p>I read a lot of bitterness here. Maybe this is also part of the American culture.</p>
<p>fresin~</p>
<p>Is there a particular reason why you will not post under your regular user name? Since you joined this month, I sincerely doubt you are a true newbie. Just wonderin’??</p>
<p>DiTTTTTO, Berurah!</p>
<p>Those great minds…:p</p>
<p>I’m not sure I understand your question, Berurah. I was assuming everyone here is using an anonymous name. I would rather not publish on this forum my actual name. Is this not the common way?</p>
<p>If my thought was offensive to any one in any way, I apologize and will discontinue submitting them. </p>
<p>I thought, perhaps, I might add thoughts different to the discussion. It is not important though and I do not mean to disturb.</p>
<p>I have a child who uses this forum. He has been very helped by the people here. I have also found the information so helpful in very many ways important to me as a mother.</p>
<p>I will continue reading and stay out of your discussion. I found it interesting.</p>
<p>Good day to all.</p>