Two . . .

http://clipart-library.com/two-cliparts.html

. . . suggestions from which to choose .Mssrs. Pompeo and Barr,
Either apply your moralizations to the current commander-in-chief, without exception, or stop your digressive and devolutionary pontifications.


(from usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/10/14/state-dept-website-promotes-mike-pompeo-speech-critics-decry/3980544002/)
". . . Pompeo . . . (touted). . .  Christianity throughout the remarks, describing how he applies his faith to his government work, referencing God and the Bible during the entirety of the speech. . . Attorney General William Barr, also gave a speech on religion on Friday, decrying secularism as a root of some of society's problems, including drug overdoses, mental health issues, and violence. . ."


(from https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens)
Faith is the surrender of the mind; it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals. It's our need to believe, and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. Of all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated.

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Reasons . . .

. . . from men of dubious character, to reconsider . . .



(from http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/march-web-only/theology-of-donald-trump.html)
". . . Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr. hailed him as “one of the greatest visionaries of our time” and a wonderful Christian brother “who reminds me of my dad.” The redoubtable Pat Robertson gushed in an interview with the empire-builder, “You inspire us all.”. . ."

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Challenge . . .

(from Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy by John Shelby Spong)
". . . If we reduce this Matthean character (the Canaanite woman) to  literal person, we can deal with her once and for all and then move on.  If she is a symbol, an icon, her challenge will be eternal; her face will change throughout history, but her demands will remain, constantly challenging our security and eroding our barriers.  Jewish readers of Matthew's gospel knew that she was a symbol. Gentile readers, later, would assume that she was a literal figure and that they had dealt with her once they had brought themselves to accept Canaanites.  Perhaps we need to confront the possibility that Christianity has not failed, as our critics constantly assert; the reality, I believe, is that Christianity has never been understood and thus has never really been tried. . . "

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Stain . . .

(from Born of a Woman by John Shelby Spong)
". . . When I listen to Easter and Christmas sermons, I hear time after time a still-vibrant neoliteralism even in those mainline churches that would be embarrassed is someone suggested they were fundamentalistic. Likewise, the official documents, studies, and pastoral letters issued by ecclesiastical bodies or groups or bishops are often buttressed by straightforward appeals to the literalism of Scripture. One bishop was quoted in the press as asserting that in seven specific passages of the Bible homosexuality was condemned, as if that somehow guaranteed it to be so forever. Every movement to end oppression in any form in Western history has had to overcome the authority of a literal Bible. Christianity, with is Scriptures intact, persecuted pagans and spawned a vicious anti-Semitism that fueled everything from the Crusades to the Holocaust to the defacement of synagogues. That demonic gift from biblical literalism plagues us even today. A literal Bible still sees the Jews as those evil people who killed Jesus. "His blood be on us and on our children" (John 8:44), and they are defined as possessing a God-given stupor: "eyes that cannot see and ears that cannot hear" (Rom. 11:8). There are times that I literally shudder when I hear the Good Friday read and realize once again that the biblical use of the words 'the Jews' in that narrative will once more feed that dark stain on the historic soul of Christianity. . . "

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Next. . .

. . . in line

. . . to be read. . .  


(from "The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic" by John Shelby Spong)
". . . Throughout most of my professional career I was not drawn to the Fourth Gospel;  indeed I found it almost repellent. . . . Because this book was thought to have spelled out 'orthodox Christianity.'  John's gospel helped to fuel such dreadful events in Christian history as heresy hunts and the Inquisition. . . . [Eventually, though,] John's gospel began to unfold before me as a work of Jewish mysticism and the Jesus of John's gospel suddenly became not a visitor from another realm, but a person in whom a new God consciousness had emerged. . . . John's gospel is about life - expanded life, abundant life and ultimately eternal life - but not in the typical manner that these words have been understood religiously. . ."

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Redemption. . .

. . . from WHAT?

(from http://myfox8.com/2013/05/25/heaven-for-atheists-pope-sparks-debate/)
". . . Atheist leaders welcomed Pope Francis’ comments that God has redeemed atheists, saying that the new pontiff’s historic outreach is helping to topple longstanding barriers. “The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone,” the pope told worshipers at morning Mass on Wednesday. “‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone!” Francis continued: “We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.” Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association, said that although he has been skeptical of Francis’ outreach to the nonreligious, he welcomed Wednesday’s comments. . ."


(from http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/511016-i-find-something-repulsive-about-the-idea-of-vicarious-redemption)   [Christopher Hitchens, world-reknown atheist who preferred to NOT be called an atheist]
“I find something repulsive about the idea of vicarious redemption. I would not throw my numberless sins onto a scapegoat and expect them to pass from me; we rightly sneer at the barbaric societies that practice this unpleasantness in its literal form. There's no moral value in the vicarious gesture anyway. As Thomas Paine pointed out, you may if you wish take on a another man's debt, or even to take his place in prison. That would be self-sacrificing. But you may not assume his actual crimes as if they were your own; for one thing you did not commit them and might have died rather than do so; for another this impossible action would rob him of individual responsibility. So the whole apparatus of absolution and forgiveness strikes me as positively immoral, while the concept of revealed truth degrades the concept of free intelligence by purportedly relieving us of the hard task of working out the ethical principles for ourselves.”


(from http://content.unity.org/homepageArchive/features/ponderFuture.html on John Shelby Spong's writing)
". . .The trouble with traditional Christianity, he said, is that it is built on two assumptions that are inadequate and dying. First, salvation must come from a God outside us—a theistic God, in Spong's term. Second, human beings are fallen, broken, sinful and in need of redemption. In other words, Christianity is based on a God with the power to save and humans who need to be saved. People are cast as “quivering children before a punishing, divine parent figure.” Human depravity is necessary before we can see the grace of God, who “saved a wretch like me,” Spong said, quoting the old hymn. No one has been helped by being told how wretched they are. . . “”

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My friend Howard. . .

.  . is a very wise man

 . . . not that Howard.  Howard Bess. The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister, who lives in Palmer, Alaska.  His email address is hdbss@mtaonline.net. 

Howard says this week, and rightly so, that it's just plain impossible to leave religion out of politics. In fact, lots of Christians actually believe that American was formed by Christians and for Christians to be a purely Christian nation. In believing this, they think that the 'will of God', as they perceive it, takes precedence over all. In short, says Howard, they want control. Population growth is huge, air and water are becoming more and more polluted and we still sidestep the fact that this is all caused by fundamental religious conviction.  Howard says quite correctly that the Catholic church is a major polluter of the world through the promotion of population growth.

The recent misstatements on the part of a presidential candidate and a number of religious folks saying that the government is inhibiting their freedom of religion betray their ignorance. They can ". . . believe whatever they like, but when they propose that their doctrinal beliefs be made the law of the land, their beliefs become proper subjects of discussion in the political arena. . . " says Howard.

I can't speak for Howard, but from all I've read from him, he thinks similarly in this regard, but I, John Shelby Spong, Science of Mind adherents and a growing number of thinking, questioning, educated seekers do not pretend to know the 'will' of a 'God' based upon ancient texts, mistranslated and misinterpreted over thousands of years.  In fact, God to us is the ground of being.  It (notice I didn't say "HE") is a life-power flowing among all things, but first and foremost, from human beings.  So it stands to reason that anyone who holds an agenda to diminish the life of any human person, especially because they think that a book which contains the last word on the subject, tells them to, is very sadly mistaken. Likewise when they think that book entitles them impose some archaic social practices on the rest of the population, they once again err grievously.

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