I SAID, BROTHERS AND SISTERS, CAN I GET AN AMEN!

“Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost…”

That would be the Gloria Patri or “Glory be to the Father” in English.

Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto. Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et in semper, et in sæcula sæculorum. Amen.

We sang that doxology at the end of our services when I was a kid growing up in Mississippi. Used to always wonder who Gloria Patri was and what the song had to do with her.

You’re absolutely right about the “divided” part. Everytime I see a liberal squeal like Ned Beatty “We’re so divided in this country”, I say “no we aren’t. You might be, but not us”.

It’s the same thing with “bipartisan”. That just means that everybody must bend over, grab their ankles and agree with the liberals. The liberals promissed bipartisanship at the beginning of their stinking turd of a congress and look where that went.

Libs: “Give us what we demand, you racist, sexist, bigot homophobe!”

Bush: “No.”

Libs: “Oh we’re so divided in this country and it’s all your fault! WAAAAAHHHHH!”

Ummmm…wrong. Your statements are based exclusively on one of the core mantras of the Left that is utterly false. The Left’s agenda depends upon perpetuating the myth that evangelical Christians are a threat to the freedom of non-Christians because they want our government to become a Christian theocracy. (In fact, Liberals routinely argue that this HAS ALREADY OCCURRED!) They conveniently base this myth on the statements of a handful of Christian “leaders” who need to stay out of politics and stick with their jobs as pastors and deans of Christian colleges (we all know the 3 or 4 people I’m referring to). The Left and its disciples (like you) use these examples to label all evangelical Christians as enemies of freedom who want to “force their views” on everyone else.

The fact is that 99% of evangelical Christians (the group that the Left calls the “Christian right wing”–usually with spittle flying out of their mouths) are VEHEMENTLY OPPOSED to anything even approaching a theocracy. They have no interest whatsoever in mixing a secular government with their church, and why would they?! Evangelical Christians know better than anyone that government CORRUPTS religion. If that wasn’t true, then all of us would be British. Poisonous governmental interference with religion is the very reason that America exists in the first place.

Of course, I realize this goes completely against the liberal mantra you have been compelled to adopt without question and I’m sure you will not take the time to re-examine it based on what I say, but that is just another one of the great things about this country: you are free to believe whatever you want, even if it has no relationship to facts or reality.

At the commencement of every service, the pastor would enter the sanctuary and walk down the aisle to the front while leading the congregation in the same hymn. The hymn is the one that goes, “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost…” The controversy erupted when some of the members approached the pastor and complained that they were bothered by the fact that the hymn identified God as the “Father” because some of them apparently thought it was sexist, God might be female, blah blah blah–the same useless crap that liberals are always bitching about. The pastor caved, and the bulletins suddenly started listing the lyrics as “Glory be to the CREATOR…” (Yes, that specific word was in ALL CAPS.) However, most of the congregation continued to sing “Father” because they either weren’t aware of the controversy and didn’t need to look at the bulletin to know the words, or (like my parents) they refused to identify God as “Creator” just to make a bunch of idiot liberals feel better.

Well, when the congregation failed to cooperate and cave in to the liberals just as the pastor had, the pastor decided that the solution would be for him to crank his already bombastic singing voice up to 8000 decibels and bellow the word “CREATOR” like he was actually trying to summon God himself from the heavens. My parents and many others, disgusted by the controversy, responded in kind: they started singing the word “FATHER!” at the top of their lungs to compete with the pastor and his handful of liberal activists screaming “CREATOR!” This went on for MONTHS. Since every service began with this same hymn, it meant that every service began with total and complete vocal mayhem and by the time the pastor started his message, everyone in the congregation was pissed off. My parents were so disgusted by the pastor’s weakness in the face of political correctness that we left that church for a nondenominational evangelical Christian one that they still attend.

I have always remembered that story because it was so RIDICULOUS, but as I’ve gotten older, I see its relevance as the perfect illustration of why liberalism has absolutely no business mixing with religion. It is yet another example of how the Left has everything completely backwards–they want liberal values to define and reshape religion, instead of religion shaping American values. That’s why liberals are so ignorant of the core beliefs of Christianity and define it as basically some benign golden rule that Ann Coulter correctly defined as “be nice to people.” This is also why liberals love to talk about religion as being “divisive,” because true Christians refuse to abandon their beliefs or reshape them to fit the liberal agenda. Accordingly, if a Christian believes, e.g., abortion is murder and refuses to stipulate otherwise, he is labeled “divisive” by the Left. “Divisive” is just liberal code for “stubbornly refuses to summarily abandon their core beliefs shaped by their personal relationship with God in favor of a hyper-secular liberal agenda.”

So, it comes as no surprise to me that Hillary is a “lifelong Methodist.”

#101. Methodists respect the boundary between church and state. Born-again folks most often do not. There’s the difference. And the issue. It isn’t with the person, it is with the type of religious worldview that person espouses INASMUCH as it conflicts with the Constitution’s establishment clause. It is like the difference between Fatah and Hamas: one side subscribes to a certain kind of Islam that allows for a secular organization and the other demands that specific religious ideas shape and dictate policy, etc.

So in this case, the Leftists are like FATAH… a jihadi group that wraps itself up in the guise of secularism while christians are HAMAS?

nice analogy.

(And a sad testament of ignorance.)

They robotically (and angrily) claim that they are fighting for their constitutional right to be “free from religion,” but their aggressive pursuit of that right betrays what’s really going on in their hearts. No one believes they are truly oppressed in any tangible way simply because “under God” is in the Pledge and “God” is on our currency. Accordingly, their outrage and belligerence is just a product of the innate spirituality fighting to get out in some form. They just happen to respond to that human yearning by suppressing it and channeling it into a pro-active allegiance with those who do not believe in God. And consistent with their instincts, they commit themselves to proselytizing about the non-existence of God and the idiocy of those who do believe. Atheists–the type you describe–are among the most annoyingly “religious” people you’ll ever meet (or, see on the news being interviewed about the lawsuits they are filing to get rid of a cross or take down the Ten Commandments somewhere).

Seriously, why are you so gleefully attacking atheists?

I didn’t mind atheism when it was “I don’t believe in God,” but in the last few years, it’s become “I obnoxiously hate and ridicule people who do believe in God.” When you attack people’s deeply held beliefs, they react. There would be no evangelical movement in the USA today were it not for the last forty-five years of aggressive secularism enforced by radical leftists and the radical courts.

Furthermore, I find the theoretical basis of Atheism illogical. Partly because Descartes was right. There either is something greater than this temporal life, or there isn’t. Even if there isn’t, one still loses nothing by developing oneself spiritually. But mostly because atheism is built on the premise that the entire space-time continuum burst out of an infinitely dense, infinitely small (less than the size of an atom) area that somehow existed in the absence of time or space. And against odds comparative to those of winning the Powerball every week for a thousand years, the Big Bang resulted in a very narrow range of physical laws that permit matter to exist. And piled on those odds, there’s the odds of random chemicals created in this chaos that somehow began spontaneously replicating themselves. And out of this stew of chemicals somehow arose a vast diversity of life, a set of senses capable of processing the physical universe, and a consciousness capable of analyzing it.

Compared to the odds of all those random events resulting in human life, the idea that an angel could have shown some guy where some ancient plates were buried in a hillside isn’t that much of a stretch.

Ultimately, I think atheism requires more blind faith than religion. But the advantage with religion is that it provides hope that a human being is more than just flesh. As someone once put it, you don’t *have* a soul, you *are* a soul. And that is a far more ennobling way to look at people than the atheist perspective.

“I don’t think it’s possible there is a God,” Pullman opines. “I’m trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief.” “My books are about killing God” and “I am all for the death of God.”

Philip Pullman, author of The Golden Compass

Tell me that’s not an assault on Christianity.

Would we allow it if we replaced God with Mohammed?

HUH???? I was never able to figure that one out.

Seriously, why are you so gleefully attacking atheists?

A better question is why do athiests gleefully attack Christians, everything they believe in and everything this country was built on? As you pointed out, we have the right to believe and worship as we wish in this country.

However, there’s a thriving business to push the religion of atheism on everybody else. Can’t back it up, but it’s my guess that the atheists are the ones who work the hardest to push their religion onto others.

Further, IMHO, if Antony Flew says there is a God, then Dawkins and Hitchens ain’t got nuthin’.

#116

I am not surprised that gays are not being discharged during this war.

I remember hearing back in 2001 or 02 that there was a freeze on discharging soldiers, gay or otherwise, ordered by Bush. Can’t seem to find a reference to it though.

But things were different during the Korean War. No one cared if we won except the soldiers who was freezing and dieing on the barren ridges and General McArthur – and you know what happened to him. The gays were not dicharged – they were court martialed. I covered this very well in my book.

The CBS story also says:

“Stahl spoke with several gay former military members who say they were also out openly in their units, known to be gay by as many as a hundred other service members…These gay former service members say they did not re-enlist because they oppose the don’t ask, don’t tell policy, which they say shows the military’s leadership is out of step with American society and its allies.”

What? I have immense respect for any soldier that serves honorably in the military, but I just don’t understand what is going on here. They served openly and were known to be gay by their colleagues and superiors, but they decided not to re-enlist because of a policy that the military was refusing to enforce against them? How is this consistent with the fact that they enlisted with full knowledge of the DADT policy in the first place? Are they planning to re-enlist in the future if the policy is lifted?

What does make perfect sense is that the military establishment is consistently presented as the bad guy, no matter what it does. If the military drums out qualified gay soldiers for violating the DADT policy, then it is a bigoted, draconian dinosaur. If gay soldiers do their jobs while serving openly and are NOT discharged, then the soldiers decide not to re-enlist because of the mere existence of the unenforced policy.

Isn’t this just more proof that liberals consider the social issue to be more significant than the military/operational ones?

It’s about keeping professional “activists” from having to find real jobs.

B-b-but we’re supposed to believe that the racist, sexist, bigot homophobes in the Army toss out gays by the thousands. What’s this about?

(Nevermind, of course, those who come out to their COs themselves).