<p>Most of my friends are believers, said Shannon Staiger, a psychotherapist and church member, and they think if youre a believer, youll vote for Bush. And its scary to go against that. </p>
<p>Sermons like Mr. Boyds are hardly typical in todays evangelical churches. But the upheaval at Woodland Hills is an example of the internal debates now going on in some evangelical colleges, magazines and churches. A common concern is that the Christian message is being compromised by the tendency to tie evangelical Christianity to the Republican Party and American nationalism, especially through the war in Iraq. </p>
<p>AM: Do you have numbers as to how many Americans belong to “evangelical” or “fundamentalist” churches? I looked it up last week and the percentages are TINY, compared to mainstream religions. I believe Catholicism is by far the largest religious group in this country. I tried but could not link to the pie chart I found. I still remain perplexed at the left’s obsession with the religious right. There are groups which for the most part reflexively vote for Democrats (feminists, gays, union workers, African Americans, teachers, college professors, etc.) – so what?</p>
<p>“mini, when was the last time Christians used suicide bombs or hijacked airliners to murder innocent people, in the name of God? I’ve said that Christianity has a few things to answer for in its past, but to the best of my knowledge there isn’t anything equivalent to a jihad going on in the Christian world.”</p>
<p>It wasn’t all that long ago that people who called themselves Christians were blowing each other up in Northern Ireland. (They weren’t “suicide” bombers, exactly; no one wants to be deprived of the rites of Christian burial, after all.)</p>
<p>There are many factions of Christianity that are perfectly comfortable with the use of bombs and airplanes to carry out violent acts. The last two occupants of the White House (a Methodist and a Baptist) are surely numbered among them. Were some of their targets “innocent” people? One could raise the theological argument that there are no “innocent” people, that all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; our righteousness is as filthy rags! Or one could rely on the secular legal argument that a reasonable person is presumed to understand the natural consequences of his actions, and is thus held responsible for them, whether or not he specifically intended them.</p>
<p>Most of us look the other way when a Christian president sends his air force to bomb sewage treatment plants (in essence concemning to death thousands of children); the Muslim who detonates an explosive vest in a crowded marketplace provokes much more of our ire. “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considereth not the beam that is in thine own eye?”</p>
<p>Here is a powerful and amazing statement on Al Jazeera television. The woman is Wafa Sultan, an Arab-American psychologist from Los Angeles. I would suggest watching it ASAP because I don’t know how long the link will be active. We always wonder why Arabs don’t criticize their own people - well, here it is.</p>
<p>Greybeard, as a first generation Irish American, I can tell you that the conflict in Northern Ireland is political not religious. No one is trying to convert anyone. The opposing parties just happen to belong to different denominations of Christianity.</p>
<p>One could make such claims about the perpetrators of sectarian violence just about anywhere. Are the Sunnis and Shia trying to convert one another with their bombs, or merely jockeying for political power?</p>
<p>I read once that the actual percentage of evangelicals was about 18% of the US population, but it is a powerful percentage, since there is very little dissent in opinion, or political splitting. I also remember reading that evangelical affiliation has increased over 300% in the past ten years, so it is a movement growing much more powerful, not less so, and its influence on US domestic and foreign affaird cannot be ignored.</p>
<p>*Total Christian 79.8 * (down from 85% in 1990)</p>
<p>Catholic 25.8
Baptist 17.2
Methodist 7.2
Christian
Non-denom. 7.2
Lutheran 4.9
Presbyterian 2.8
Protestant
Non-denom. 2.4
Pentacostal/
Charismatic 2.2
Episcopal/
Anglican 1.8
Mormon/LDS 1.4
Church of Christ 1.3
Congregational/
United Church of
Christ 0.7
Jehovah’s Witness 0.7
Assembly of God 0.6
Evangelical 0.5
Church of God 0.5
Seventh Day
Adventist 0.4
Eastern Orthodox 0.3
Other Christian <0.2</p>
<p><em>Total Other Religion 5.2</em></p>
<p>Jewish 1.4
Non-denom. 1.3
Muslim 0.6
Buddhist 0.5
Hindu 0.4
Unitarian Universalist 0.3
Other <0.7</p>
Then perhaps it is just as dim-witted and underhanded to ascribe the goings-on in Ireland to a doctrinal dispute of bombing-theologians with inky-fingers and a hair-trigger. </p>
<p>Even if, in so doing, you get all up on a whip-snapping anti-religious agenda (or is it merely anti-Christian? …or anti-Papist? [you stump-jumpin,’ corn-pipe smokin’ Baptists have something of a history of that you know!?]). Whatever it is, it’s in a hateful-hurry.</p>
<p>You anti-faith gang-bangers play rather loose and fast with your stiletto-facts. Talk about hit-n-runs and drive-bys…just diggin’ the scene with a gangsta lean, I suppose.</p>
<p>HH, there’s a great deal of overlap though, with voting and wedge issue patterns, between evangelicals and other Christian denominations. That is a big percentage, (total Christians) no matter how you look at it. Not saying they are all in lockstep with Bush and right wing policy, at all, but just saying those percentages you have listed in no way tell the whole story (like look at voting patterns of Baptists, LDS, etc).</p>
<p>Wasn’t it in Wiki where the 300% evangelical growth was listed?</p>
<p>Gotta get back to work, but I will check later.</p>
I can’t imagine that Christian evangelicals constitute 18% of the US population or even the electorate. I live in the reddest part of a Southern red state and evangelicals constitute less than 5% of my town. In addition, I’m not convinced that Christian evangelicals vote exclusively for the GOP. Many do, of course, but the problem for the GOP isn’t that evangelicals might vote for a Democrat but that they might not vote at all. Their power is based on their willingness to sit out elections.</p>
<p>Even if everything you say is true, however, why is this a problem while it’s okay for other groups (like blacks) to vote overwhelmingly for Democrats?</p>
<p>“Are you suggesting that the conflict in Northern Ireland is equivalent to a jihad?” I’m suggesting that the mixture of sectarian violence and political struggle that occured in Northern Ireland parallels to some degree the mixture of sectarian violence and political struggle one sees in Israel/Palestine, and in Iraq. We may not use the term “jihad” for our struggles in Christiandom, but we’re not immune from adding religion to the mix in our geopolitical struggles. Isn’t that the whole point of the neologism “Islamo-fascist”?</p>
<p>This would be a good time to consider again just how it was that the Muslim world received its information as to the Pope’s comments–the good old BBC
<h2>“Hitler, by the way, was raised Catholic but turned on virtually all religions, except perhaps Lutheranism, since they demanded allegiance to something other than Germany – or the state. Lutheranism was tolerated by him only insofar as it was subservient to the state.”</h2>
<p>A little clarity on the Lutheran/Hitler relationship. I’ll keep it simple.</p>
<p>Martin Luther in his early days after the split with the Catholic Church wrote many articles in praise of the German Jews and the Jewish faith. He strongly preached that Christ was a Jew and that Christianity had strong ties to the Jewish faith which should be explored. Luther had hope to convert these Germans to Christ and to achieve a reconciliation of the two faiths. When he failed, he became disillusioned and began writing articles critical of Judaism and the rejection of Christ. It is these articles that Hitler focused on when trying to come up with some sort of historical gravitas for a new system of beliefs that he hoped to inflict on the German people. In the early part of Hitler’s rise to power when he espoused a fairly passive take on Christianity or ‘positive Christianity’, he found support in most Protestant denominations. At that time, most Germans adored Hitler in fact. However, after the publication of “Mein Kampf”, many Lutheran pastors, who were also concerned with the perverted interpretations of the Bible and Luther’s writings, as well as disturbing imagery such as the ‘broken cross’, form a resistance called the Confessing Church. This resistance was even praised by Einstein as the only German-grown movement against Hitler. However, even before Hitler implemented the Final Solution, he moved against this resistance, destroying the church and imprisoning almost 1000 Lutheran pastors in concentration camps where most died.</p>
<p>So yes, there was a time when Lutherans, like most Germans, were infatuated with and subservient to Hitler. But that is only part of the story.</p>