11/17/2006 @ 2:58 pm
Filed by RAW STORY
After Minnesota State Senator Satveer Chaudhary defeated challenger Rae Hart Anderson, he received a rather unexpected congratulatory email, RAW STORY has learned.
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Anderson, an apparently devout Christian, spent most of the concession urging Chaudhary, a practicing Hindu, to convert to Christianity.
The full text of the email, as obtained by RAW STORY, follows:
#
Congratulations on winning the District 50 senate race. Your phone is "busy"...no doubt with good wishes!
I've enjoyed much of this race, especially the people I've met...even you! I see your deficits--not all of them, and your potential--but not all of it. Only your Creator knows the real potential He's put in you. Get to know Him and know yourself...you'll be more interesting even to you!
The race of your life is more important than this one--and it is my sincere wish that you'll get to know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. He died for the sins of the world, yours and mine--and especially for those who accept His forgiveness. His kingdom will come and His will be done--on earth as it is in heaven. There's more....I love belonging to the family of God. Jesus is the way, the truth and offers His life to you and each human being. Pay attention...this is very important, Satveer. Have you noticed Jesus for yourself...at some moment in time, yet???
God commends His love to us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8
Death came upon all and was defeated by the superiority of Jesus' life and His tomb is empty. God in Christ is reconciling the world back to Himself, with offered forgiveness--this is one choice we get to make nose to nose with the living God--fear Him and you need fear no other. Become His family and know the love of God that passes knowledge. See Isaiah and the Gospel of John...good reading while waiting for fishes to bite.
God sent not His son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. John 3:17
Jesus Christ lives in His earth family by His Spirit. He said He'd be back, and He said it first. You could invite Him to make the race of your life 'eternal'. God waits to be gracious to each person that knows they need to be forgiven. Do you? I think you do. Just ask. Christ won eternal life for you and said so. Take Him at His Word. Take some time to get acquainted with this power-filled Jesus...God with us. You could be a temple of the living God, by invitation---yours, TO GOD. :) There's nothing like belonging to Christ...not winning, not money, not degrees...it's the best.
Good wishes and better wishes...until you wish for the best!
Rae Hart Anderson
Liberal Christians
Friday, November 17, 2006
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Exactly! The Christian Right is Insane.
Michelle Goldberg
We Might Be Chosen, But We're Still Going to Hell: Jews and the Christian Right
Tuesday's New York Times had an interesting article about John Hagee, the San Antonio pastor who has emerged as America's most influential Christian Zionist. I was especially intrigued because, when I travel around the country speaking about my book Kingdom Coming , some of my most impassioned challengers have been Jews who are grateful for the Christian right's zealous support for Israel.
As many point out, Hagee is a major fundraiser for pro-Israel causes -- at his "Night to Honor Israel" celebration last month, he gave out $7 million to various Jewish and Israeli charities.
The theology that underlies Christian Zionism -- called premillenial dispensationalism -- is opposed to a two-state solution, a goal most American Jews continue to cherish, however far off it seems. As I described it in a 2002 Salon story "Put baldly, millions of evangelical Christians see forewarnings of Armageddon in the crisis in the Middle East. Followers of dispensationalism, a major strain within American evangelical Christianity, they believe that the return of Jews to Israel and the restoration of Jewish sovereignty over the Temple Mount is a precondition for the rapture, the apocalypse and the return of Christ... For them, there can be no negotiation over what they call 'Judea and Samaria' despite the fact that many Israelis, and Jews worldwide, hope Israel eventually pulls out of the territories. Randall Price, jet-setting founder of World of the Bible Ministries, says, 'In the book of Genesis, there are territorial dimensions for the land that is given to Abraham and his descendents. It's from the river of Egypt to the river of the Euphrates.' In his view, Israel's right to that land, which extends into modern-day Iraq, is absolute. As for the Palestinians, Price says, 'Ishmael has said that his descendants would live to the East of their brother. There's a much larger geographical territory allotted to them.'"
Maybe that sounds lovely to ultra-right Jewish maximalists, but the dispensationalist scenario ends badly for the Jews -- after a third world war in the Middle East, those who remain unconverted are dispatched to hell while believers enjoy a thousand years of peace on earth. Most Jews (and, of course, most Christians) see massive military conflict in the Middle East as something to be assiduously avoided, but for many Christian Zionists, it's a necessary step to paradise. Some Jews are willing to put such differences aside for the sake of political expediency, figuring they needn't trouble themselves with rapture fantasies that will never be fulfilled outside of Left Behind novels. The New Republic's Leon Wieseltier has famously called this bargain a "grim comedy of mutual condescension." (The Times story offered one striking example of such condescension from the Christian right: James Dobson grudgingly allowing that, "[d]espite all the spiritual shortcomings of the Jewish people," they are uniquely blessed by God.)
Last night, I gave a talk in San Antonio sponsored by the Texas Freedom Network, an amazing local organization that combats religious fundamentalism in one of the regions where it's strongest. I figured I'd get some questions about Hagee, so I read his most recent book, Jerusalem Countdown: A Warning to the World. There's an astonishing passage in it that Jews who partner with the pastor would do well to be aware of. Read the whole thing -- it takes a few paragraphs to see where he's going:
The Bible is a book of parables and word pictures describing principles of truth from God to man. The prophet Jeremiah puts his pen to parchment and paints a vivid picture of the human agendas God intended to use to bring the Jewish people back to Israel.
"But now I will send for many fishermen" declares the LORD, "and they will catch them. After that I will send for many hunters, and they will hunt them down on every mountain and hill and from the crevices of the rocks."
-- Jeremiah 16:16 NIV
I believe this verse indicates that the positive comes before the negative. Grace and mercy come before judgment. The fishermen come before the hunters. First, God sent the fishermen to Israel. These were the Zionists, men like Theodor Herzl who called for the Jews of Europe and the world to come to Palestine to establish the Jewish state. The Jews were encouraged to escape while there was still time. The situation for Jews in Europe would only get worse, not better.
A fisherman is one who draws his target toward him with bait. Herzl and his fellow Zionists were God's fishermen, calling the sons and daughters of Abraham home. Herzl was deeply disappointed that the Jews of the world did not respond in greater numbers.
God then sent the hunters. The hunter is one who pursues his target with force and fear. No one could see the horror of the Holocaust coming, but the force and fear of Hitler's Nazis drove the Jewish people back to the only home God ever intended for the Jews to have -- Israel. I stand amazed at the accuracy of God's Word and its relevance for our time. I am stricken with awe and wonder at His boundless love for Israel and the Jewish people and His divine determination that the promise He gave Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob become reality.
Unless I'm really reading this wrong, Hagee seems to be saying that Hitler was sent by God to drive the Jews back to where they belong. If that's the case, he might be a friend of the Israeli state, but he's no friend of Jewish people.
We Might Be Chosen, But We're Still Going to Hell: Jews and the Christian Right
Tuesday's New York Times had an interesting article about John Hagee, the San Antonio pastor who has emerged as America's most influential Christian Zionist. I was especially intrigued because, when I travel around the country speaking about my book Kingdom Coming , some of my most impassioned challengers have been Jews who are grateful for the Christian right's zealous support for Israel.
As many point out, Hagee is a major fundraiser for pro-Israel causes -- at his "Night to Honor Israel" celebration last month, he gave out $7 million to various Jewish and Israeli charities.
The theology that underlies Christian Zionism -- called premillenial dispensationalism -- is opposed to a two-state solution, a goal most American Jews continue to cherish, however far off it seems. As I described it in a 2002 Salon story "Put baldly, millions of evangelical Christians see forewarnings of Armageddon in the crisis in the Middle East. Followers of dispensationalism, a major strain within American evangelical Christianity, they believe that the return of Jews to Israel and the restoration of Jewish sovereignty over the Temple Mount is a precondition for the rapture, the apocalypse and the return of Christ... For them, there can be no negotiation over what they call 'Judea and Samaria' despite the fact that many Israelis, and Jews worldwide, hope Israel eventually pulls out of the territories. Randall Price, jet-setting founder of World of the Bible Ministries, says, 'In the book of Genesis, there are territorial dimensions for the land that is given to Abraham and his descendents. It's from the river of Egypt to the river of the Euphrates.' In his view, Israel's right to that land, which extends into modern-day Iraq, is absolute. As for the Palestinians, Price says, 'Ishmael has said that his descendants would live to the East of their brother. There's a much larger geographical territory allotted to them.'"
Maybe that sounds lovely to ultra-right Jewish maximalists, but the dispensationalist scenario ends badly for the Jews -- after a third world war in the Middle East, those who remain unconverted are dispatched to hell while believers enjoy a thousand years of peace on earth. Most Jews (and, of course, most Christians) see massive military conflict in the Middle East as something to be assiduously avoided, but for many Christian Zionists, it's a necessary step to paradise. Some Jews are willing to put such differences aside for the sake of political expediency, figuring they needn't trouble themselves with rapture fantasies that will never be fulfilled outside of Left Behind novels. The New Republic's Leon Wieseltier has famously called this bargain a "grim comedy of mutual condescension." (The Times story offered one striking example of such condescension from the Christian right: James Dobson grudgingly allowing that, "[d]espite all the spiritual shortcomings of the Jewish people," they are uniquely blessed by God.)
Last night, I gave a talk in San Antonio sponsored by the Texas Freedom Network, an amazing local organization that combats religious fundamentalism in one of the regions where it's strongest. I figured I'd get some questions about Hagee, so I read his most recent book, Jerusalem Countdown: A Warning to the World. There's an astonishing passage in it that Jews who partner with the pastor would do well to be aware of. Read the whole thing -- it takes a few paragraphs to see where he's going:
The Bible is a book of parables and word pictures describing principles of truth from God to man. The prophet Jeremiah puts his pen to parchment and paints a vivid picture of the human agendas God intended to use to bring the Jewish people back to Israel.
"But now I will send for many fishermen" declares the LORD, "and they will catch them. After that I will send for many hunters, and they will hunt them down on every mountain and hill and from the crevices of the rocks."
-- Jeremiah 16:16 NIV
I believe this verse indicates that the positive comes before the negative. Grace and mercy come before judgment. The fishermen come before the hunters. First, God sent the fishermen to Israel. These were the Zionists, men like Theodor Herzl who called for the Jews of Europe and the world to come to Palestine to establish the Jewish state. The Jews were encouraged to escape while there was still time. The situation for Jews in Europe would only get worse, not better.
A fisherman is one who draws his target toward him with bait. Herzl and his fellow Zionists were God's fishermen, calling the sons and daughters of Abraham home. Herzl was deeply disappointed that the Jews of the world did not respond in greater numbers.
God then sent the hunters. The hunter is one who pursues his target with force and fear. No one could see the horror of the Holocaust coming, but the force and fear of Hitler's Nazis drove the Jewish people back to the only home God ever intended for the Jews to have -- Israel. I stand amazed at the accuracy of God's Word and its relevance for our time. I am stricken with awe and wonder at His boundless love for Israel and the Jewish people and His divine determination that the promise He gave Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob become reality.
Unless I'm really reading this wrong, Hagee seems to be saying that Hitler was sent by God to drive the Jews back to where they belong. If that's the case, he might be a friend of the Israeli state, but he's no friend of Jewish people.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
George W. Bush: Supergenius
by DarkSyde
Tue Nov 14, 2006 at 02:01:53 AM PST
One can almost picture Bush or Cheney as Wile E. Coyote chasing the Roadrunner. You know the Looney Tunes classic: The delusional but ever optimistic Coyote runs out of land at about the same time his jet-powered Acme roller-skates sputter and die, and with eyes wide, realizes that he's suddenly, briefly, suspended in midair. No matter what Wile E. does at that point, he's in for a musical descent culminating in a tiny puff of smoke at the bottom of a long fall. After repeated failures, even a toddler comes to appreciate that the Coyote isn't exactly where a self anointed supergenius should be on the learning curve. Indeed, Bush's many blunders would make for some quality slapstick cartoon fun -- if they hadn't cost the lives and limbs of real, flesh and blood, human beings.
When in trouble, call Daddy: Incoming Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will inherit an ill-conceived war marked by the stunning incompetence of Don Rumsfeld. It's really difficult to judge which is more pathetic: That George Bush has to rely on Daddy's friends to bail him (And the entire nation) out from the consequences of his own piss-poor decisions, again, or that Baker and Gates may now have to essentially beg Iran and Syria to pitch in and save the Bush Family name. Either way, the traditional media is all a twitter with headlines like 'Bush Willing to Listen to Fresh Ideas on Iraq.' This is one of the better examples:
Sun News -- Taken together, the expanding roles of Baker and Gates appears to signal the return of foreign policy "realists" to positions of influence. Realists stress advancing U.S. interests by working with allies and avoiding idealistic policies, such as intervention in other countries to promote democracy. Most of the hawkish group that orchestrated the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, sometimes called neoconservatives, is gone, including Rumsfeld, former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Pentagon aide Douglas Feith.
Jebus-Republican-Mega-Church-Christ, realism? Was Bush so sealed in fantasy bubble wrap, that he was unaware that everyone from Russ Feingold to Jack Murtha to Pat Buchannan to a slew of senior combat officers knew he'd gone off the cliff over two-thousand KIA's ago?
Gates and Baker may bring a quasi-fresh perspective to George Bush, but it's highly debatable if this President can face the humiliating fact that his hare-brained Iraq pipe-dream is DOA, and no amount of 'fresh perspective' from old family confidants is going to re-animate that neocon corpus. The real question is if this egregiously overdue intervention by Bush senior will make any difference in the President's policy, or if George W. Bush, supergenius, will doggedly drag untold thousands more, along with his own party, down with him to an all too real puff of smoke at the bottom of a long, tragic, fall.
Tue Nov 14, 2006 at 02:01:53 AM PST
One can almost picture Bush or Cheney as Wile E. Coyote chasing the Roadrunner. You know the Looney Tunes classic: The delusional but ever optimistic Coyote runs out of land at about the same time his jet-powered Acme roller-skates sputter and die, and with eyes wide, realizes that he's suddenly, briefly, suspended in midair. No matter what Wile E. does at that point, he's in for a musical descent culminating in a tiny puff of smoke at the bottom of a long fall. After repeated failures, even a toddler comes to appreciate that the Coyote isn't exactly where a self anointed supergenius should be on the learning curve. Indeed, Bush's many blunders would make for some quality slapstick cartoon fun -- if they hadn't cost the lives and limbs of real, flesh and blood, human beings.
When in trouble, call Daddy: Incoming Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will inherit an ill-conceived war marked by the stunning incompetence of Don Rumsfeld. It's really difficult to judge which is more pathetic: That George Bush has to rely on Daddy's friends to bail him (And the entire nation) out from the consequences of his own piss-poor decisions, again, or that Baker and Gates may now have to essentially beg Iran and Syria to pitch in and save the Bush Family name. Either way, the traditional media is all a twitter with headlines like 'Bush Willing to Listen to Fresh Ideas on Iraq.' This is one of the better examples:
Sun News -- Taken together, the expanding roles of Baker and Gates appears to signal the return of foreign policy "realists" to positions of influence. Realists stress advancing U.S. interests by working with allies and avoiding idealistic policies, such as intervention in other countries to promote democracy. Most of the hawkish group that orchestrated the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, sometimes called neoconservatives, is gone, including Rumsfeld, former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Pentagon aide Douglas Feith.
Jebus-Republican-Mega-Church-Christ, realism? Was Bush so sealed in fantasy bubble wrap, that he was unaware that everyone from Russ Feingold to Jack Murtha to Pat Buchannan to a slew of senior combat officers knew he'd gone off the cliff over two-thousand KIA's ago?
Gates and Baker may bring a quasi-fresh perspective to George Bush, but it's highly debatable if this President can face the humiliating fact that his hare-brained Iraq pipe-dream is DOA, and no amount of 'fresh perspective' from old family confidants is going to re-animate that neocon corpus. The real question is if this egregiously overdue intervention by Bush senior will make any difference in the President's policy, or if George W. Bush, supergenius, will doggedly drag untold thousands more, along with his own party, down with him to an all too real puff of smoke at the bottom of a long, tragic, fall.
BAKER ON CLEANUP CREW AFTER 'SONNY'S' BIG ADVENTURE
WASHINGTON -- I spent an unusual day with George W. Bush in the fall of 2000, just before he was first elected president. During that interview, I innocently said to him, "I suppose you're getting a lot of help from Jim Baker ..."
To my amazement, his entire face contorted almost grotesquely. But the exchange over his father's close friend continued: "Oh, Jimmy," George W. then said, his voice thick with condescending derision. "I talk to him maybe twice a year."
How amazing is life! For now, that same "Jimmy" Baker stands on W.'s fractured horizon as the besieged president's only savior -- not to mention as the agent of his father's retribution.
On that day six years ago, we spoke too of his father, the first President Bush, and W. had tears in his eyes. But how cruel is life! For in his six years in the presidency, the younger Bush has moved inexorably, and until now effectively, to destroy his father's legacy by wiping out just about everything that the Eastern Establishment Bushes believed in and painstakingly built.
So now, James Baker III is moving back into Washington, his Baker Commission virtually the only hope for ending the Iraq war and returning America to its traditional place of respect in the world. We can see why he has so often been called the "velvet hammer": Baker is unquestionably the only American statesman of the last five administrations who combines brilliant cunning, supreme common sense and uncommon personal decency.
When he and his co-chairman, Democrat Lee Hamilton, release their report from the congressionally mandated Iraq Study Group in December, what rabbits will they pull out of their hats? What foreign policy tactics and truth SHOULD they pull out of their hats?
There are a few things we already know from leaks and speculation about their carefully guarded work: 1) The report will stress stability in Iraq rather than democracy; 2) it will set up appropriate systems for talking to Iran and Syria; 3) members will not advise for partition of the three Iraqi groups (Kurd, Shiite, Sunni); 4) they will seriously consider the idea of "redeploy and contain," moving American troops into surrounding countries to be used only in emergencies; 5) and they might advise the "stability first" idea, which would focus the United States on stabilizing Baghdad and turning it into a model for the rest of the country.
Jim Baker, as secretary of state under Father Bush, was not only instrumental in freeing Eastern Europe, in allowing the Soviet Union to collapse with some dignity, and in judiciously conducting the Gulf War of 1991, but he was intimately involved in attempting to bring peace to Israel/Palestine. It was Baker who designed, oversaw and carried to creative fruition the Madrid Conference in 1991, which made possible the 1993 Oslo Accords -- which nearly resulted in peace between the Israelis and Palestinians over five years in the mid '90s.
But President George W. Bush has been so enamored of his war-making capacities and so enchanted by the demands of the Israeli lobby that the hatred between those two peoples has festered almost to civil war there.
The Baker Commission needs above all to remove us from the singularity of Iraq, to move to re-establish American justice and power in the Middle East by convincing the moderate Arab regimes that we will tackle -- and solve -- the Palestinian problem. We need to alter the perception of "America" today as a country obsessed with Iraq, and return it to its historical fair negotiator role.
This would mean putting pressures on the Palestinians and Israelis alike -- and Jim Baker is practically the only one who could and would be tough enough to do it. (Oh yes, I know, you've heard this for YEARS -- that doesn't make it any less true.)
Ironically, despite the seeming hopelessness of the Iraq situation, many voices in the Middle East still support an Israeli/Palestinian settlement. The Saudi proposal of March 2002, signed by 22 Arab states -- calling for the two states to fully recognize each other, for a workable Palestinian state to be formed, and for a return to the pre-1967 borders -- is still viable. In only the last few weeks, Egypt, Jordan, Germany and Great Britain have called, again, for such a peace process. All it needs is for a serious American push.
With Baker, perhaps there is a chance to return to the centrist, moral, politically savvy values of Father Bush's administration, in place of the hubristic, imperialistic, amoral, politically ignorant values that "Sonny," as many of the senior Bush's generation now refer to the president, has imposed upon the country.
Think of the elegant words that Father Bush gave us earlier this year at a celebration of the uniting of the two Germanys, and you'll see where we came from -- and what we must return to.
"We rose above the recriminations of the past," he said, "and broke a chain of human discontent and resolved our affairs not with rifles but with reason. For once, mankind did not fall back on a primeval reflex for violence, but instead asserted the 'better angels' of human nature."
In the name of the father ... amen.
To my amazement, his entire face contorted almost grotesquely. But the exchange over his father's close friend continued: "Oh, Jimmy," George W. then said, his voice thick with condescending derision. "I talk to him maybe twice a year."
How amazing is life! For now, that same "Jimmy" Baker stands on W.'s fractured horizon as the besieged president's only savior -- not to mention as the agent of his father's retribution.
On that day six years ago, we spoke too of his father, the first President Bush, and W. had tears in his eyes. But how cruel is life! For in his six years in the presidency, the younger Bush has moved inexorably, and until now effectively, to destroy his father's legacy by wiping out just about everything that the Eastern Establishment Bushes believed in and painstakingly built.
So now, James Baker III is moving back into Washington, his Baker Commission virtually the only hope for ending the Iraq war and returning America to its traditional place of respect in the world. We can see why he has so often been called the "velvet hammer": Baker is unquestionably the only American statesman of the last five administrations who combines brilliant cunning, supreme common sense and uncommon personal decency.
When he and his co-chairman, Democrat Lee Hamilton, release their report from the congressionally mandated Iraq Study Group in December, what rabbits will they pull out of their hats? What foreign policy tactics and truth SHOULD they pull out of their hats?
There are a few things we already know from leaks and speculation about their carefully guarded work: 1) The report will stress stability in Iraq rather than democracy; 2) it will set up appropriate systems for talking to Iran and Syria; 3) members will not advise for partition of the three Iraqi groups (Kurd, Shiite, Sunni); 4) they will seriously consider the idea of "redeploy and contain," moving American troops into surrounding countries to be used only in emergencies; 5) and they might advise the "stability first" idea, which would focus the United States on stabilizing Baghdad and turning it into a model for the rest of the country.
Jim Baker, as secretary of state under Father Bush, was not only instrumental in freeing Eastern Europe, in allowing the Soviet Union to collapse with some dignity, and in judiciously conducting the Gulf War of 1991, but he was intimately involved in attempting to bring peace to Israel/Palestine. It was Baker who designed, oversaw and carried to creative fruition the Madrid Conference in 1991, which made possible the 1993 Oslo Accords -- which nearly resulted in peace between the Israelis and Palestinians over five years in the mid '90s.
But President George W. Bush has been so enamored of his war-making capacities and so enchanted by the demands of the Israeli lobby that the hatred between those two peoples has festered almost to civil war there.
The Baker Commission needs above all to remove us from the singularity of Iraq, to move to re-establish American justice and power in the Middle East by convincing the moderate Arab regimes that we will tackle -- and solve -- the Palestinian problem. We need to alter the perception of "America" today as a country obsessed with Iraq, and return it to its historical fair negotiator role.
This would mean putting pressures on the Palestinians and Israelis alike -- and Jim Baker is practically the only one who could and would be tough enough to do it. (Oh yes, I know, you've heard this for YEARS -- that doesn't make it any less true.)
Ironically, despite the seeming hopelessness of the Iraq situation, many voices in the Middle East still support an Israeli/Palestinian settlement. The Saudi proposal of March 2002, signed by 22 Arab states -- calling for the two states to fully recognize each other, for a workable Palestinian state to be formed, and for a return to the pre-1967 borders -- is still viable. In only the last few weeks, Egypt, Jordan, Germany and Great Britain have called, again, for such a peace process. All it needs is for a serious American push.
With Baker, perhaps there is a chance to return to the centrist, moral, politically savvy values of Father Bush's administration, in place of the hubristic, imperialistic, amoral, politically ignorant values that "Sonny," as many of the senior Bush's generation now refer to the president, has imposed upon the country.
Think of the elegant words that Father Bush gave us earlier this year at a celebration of the uniting of the two Germanys, and you'll see where we came from -- and what we must return to.
"We rose above the recriminations of the past," he said, "and broke a chain of human discontent and resolved our affairs not with rifles but with reason. For once, mankind did not fall back on a primeval reflex for violence, but instead asserted the 'better angels' of human nature."
In the name of the father ... amen.
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