My hope for the future of the American Conservative Christian Church

patriot66 said:
They do not specifically target civilians, and the fact is that especially Terrorists hide their weapons in Hospitals, schools and mosques make it very hard on the military who take great strides not to kill innocents.
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Yeah, its a nice little lie we tell ourselves to make us feel better about war!
 
Sardonic said:
Yes, they are, but the target, and the outcome in the military's opinion outweigh the loss of innocent lives. It is denying the facts that innocents are targeted along with the guilty because the end results in the minds of the military outweigh those innocent lives lost. It is a fact of war that those like you try to candy coat, but there is no way around it. The military men know the hard facts of bombing. The innocent will die with the guilty.
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You're still doing a lot of complaining; but anyone has yet to see your solution.
 
patriot66 said:
Nonsense they pray to Mary, and confess to Priests. The pray in vain repetition as the heathen do, to be forgiven for their sins. Salvation is based on what the Church says, and not on simple belief in Jesus as payment for their sins, and repentance. They Gamble to make money for the church, and drink like fish
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Thanks you Fred Phelps Jr, lol
 
patriot66 said:
Nonsense they pray to Mary, and confess to Priests. The pray in vain repetition as the heathen do, to be forgiven for their sins. Salvation is based on what the Church says, and not on simple belief in Jesus as payment for their sins, and repentance. They Gamble to make money for the church, and drink like fish
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Lol, you think you know my faith better than I do? WADR patriot your comments are pretty ignorant. It sounds like the stuff from anti-Catholic websites or books. Catholics don't only pray in repetition and certainly not as a "get out of jail free" card to be forgiven for their sins. (But since you bring it up, what is it with the fundamentalist belief that "I'm not perfect, just forgiven." That mindset screams arrogance to me.) And gambling, please, fundamentalists don't gamble? Seems to me that shyster televangelists gamble non-stop on how much money they can bilk from their gullible followers. As for drinking like fish, I can only roll my eyes because there's nothing in the teachings that supports overindulgence or alcoholism. Sad to say you've covered all the bases with your anti-Catholic delusions, plus you just confirm the prejudices that people like me assign to fundamentalists.
 
About the whole Confession, thingy: There's this Gospel account written by a fellow named John. In it, Christ breathes on the Apostles and tells them that "those whose sins you forgive - they are forgiven; and those whose sins you hold bound - they are held bound." Anyway, John and the other Apostles in the room all took Jesus seriously, and decided there was some merit to it. Low and behold, 2000 years later we have the Sacrament of Reconciliation/Pennance/Confession.
 
christiefan915 said:
You wrote "My sermon yesterday morning would have been I welcomed in 90% of the "conservative" Christian religious places in this country as I talked about self proclaimed Christians who do not act like Christians and by doing so tarnish the name we are to uphold" and I'm wondering why very conservative congregations can be so hateful about Catholics.
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All I can say to this that I do not know. I have to battle this from time to time with some of my closest friends. They want to really talk down to/about them. For some reason some religious folks view Catholics as easy targets for criticism. While I definitely disagree with some of the doctrine of the Catholic Church, I try to be even keeled in my discussions with and about them. I remember one time saying something in jest that offended you and when I found out I immediately apologized. While I may disagree with some stuff I try not to be nasty or condescending. Unfortunately some folks are just mean.

Edit: I just saw your response to SF. I can only remember the one time I mentioned. Not denying anything as I've been here a long time, but I assure you any off the cuff remarks I might have made are in jest. My ire and condemnation, such as it is, is towards the Fred Phelps' of the religious world.
 
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patriot66 said:
That is crap, Fred Phelps was a self proclaimed baptist preacher, who preached hate. I am Baptist and am not anything like what you posted. By the way when Jesus asks you and you answer that way what do you think will happen. There are no confusing philosophies af Christendom, there is only God's word and your adherence to it.
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Now where in my post did I direct any of my comments towards you? I said I hate the conservative Christian philosophy, as I find it highly counter-productive towards the message of Jesus. Christians act like I'm supposed to be spiritually moved if I read the Bible when they don't realize that their deity, is an incorporeal being who I cannot see and so, all I have are my senses and if I perceive church members to behave in a manner which I disagree, I, like many people who are observers of religion will base their ideas upon that faith by the actions of its members.
 
Superfreak said:
While there are certainly some that call themselves Christian that are indeed fitting of the above description, I think you will find they are the very vocal minority.



That is hardly a 'conservative' church. That is a bunch of radical nuts.



There are radicals from left to right that do the same. They are a small minority... albeit very vocal in some cases.



Keep in mind that Leaning is probably one of the most tolerant/forgiving/even handed people on this board. While I share some of your views on radical 'Christians', I would urge you to reconsider your views towards Leaning and the church he preaches at.



Would you want to be judged based on extremists within any groups/segments of society that you are a par of? Think about, if you will, how you feel when a black person gets pulled over for 'driving while black'. Hating an entire faith due to bad encounters with some of that faiths extremists?

just my two cents.
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Here we go the mentioning of race......

There is a different between hating an entire faith and hating particular philosophies. Christianity has various schisms and so I'm basically allocating my fury to a particular schism of Christianity. Frankly, I think Christianity is a bogus faith manipulated heavily since the council of Nicea but that is my personal faith. Now if you want my opinion on American Christians well, American Christians in the U.S in general are typical judgmental. I remember when 9/11 happened many Christians with no foundation of Islam took to fire and brimstone preachers who, without any real knowledge of Arabic, nor Hadiths nor Islamic jurisprudence assumed Islam was a pagan faith. christians didn't realize that Arabic, being a Semitic language and that Allah was another name for God. Then you have Christians stating that "Allah" was just a moon god, when in the Holy Qur'an in the very first chapter Allah is said to be "Lord of All that exists."

Countless Christians refuse to accept Muslims even though Jesus is mentioned more in the Qur'an than in the Bible, and even mentioned more than Muhammad himself. When mentioning the name of Jesus Muslims must say "upon him be peace." I have yet to meet any Christian upon uttering the name of Jesus say "upon him be peace" yet Muslims are always under constant ridicule by American Christians. Muslims try to win the hearts and minds of Christians and try to prove that their faith is not like that of the terrorist yet its never good enough. I've even seen some of my own personal Muslim friends ridiculed because, as you tell me, Christians upon watching television, think all Muslims are like the terrorist. So yes from experience even though I'll refrain from saying all Christians in my experience a great majority of Christians are very much intolerant and conservative Christian philosophies are even worse.
 
christiefan915 said:
I can see you're passionate about this topic and understand why because I've been through it myself with people who hate Catholics. I don't actually hate fundamentalists but I can get very angry about what some of them do and teach, and that means conservative Catholics too. I dislike the moral superiority some of them assume and the belief that they alone have a hotline to the Almighty. And I detest the lack of charity, the preachiness and intolerance of others' beliefs that's a hallmark of rabid fundies. A famous example of the type would be Kirk Cameron.
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Like I said in my other thread I'm very must past the threshold of people being judgmental or accusations because far too many people get away with this stuff. This is what ultimately turned me away from the American version of "God."
 
Joseph Plunkett said:
About the whole Confession, thingy: There's this Gospel account written by a fellow named John. In it, Christ breathes on the Apostles and tells them that "those whose sins you forgive - they are forgiven; and those whose sins you hold bound - they are held bound." Anyway, John and the other Apostles in the room all took Jesus seriously, and decided there was some merit to it. Low and behold, 2000 years later we have the Sacrament of Reconciliation/Pennance/Confession.
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1 Timothy 2:5
For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;
I have no need to confess my sins to anyone but God. Pennance? explain that one to me would ya not sure why if I go straight to God that I need a priest to grant me absolution.
 
leaningright said:
All I can say to this that I do not know. I have to battle this from time to time with some of my closest friends. They want to really talk down to/about them. For some reason some religious folks view Catholics as easy targets for criticism. While I definitely disagree with some of the doctrine of the Catholic Church, I try to be even keeled in my discussions with and about them. I remember one time saying something in jest that offended you and when I found out I immediately apologized. While I may disagree with some stuff I try not to be nasty or condescending. Unfortunately some folks are just mean.

Edit: I just saw your response to SF. I can only remember the one time I mentioned. Not denying anything as I've been here a long time, but I assure you any off the cuff remarks I might have made are in jest. My ire and condemnation, such as it is, is towards the Fred Phelps' of the religious world.
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I know you apologized and I appreciated that and thanked you. I find Catholic bashing just as troubling as Islam bashing because I think both come from a position of ignorance (not directing this at you in particular). Take patriot66's post for example, he's convinced Catholics emphasize Mary more than Jesus and that is totally wrong. And that's just one of his misconceptions. It also raises the question, why wouldn't the Mother of God be honored? I don't think fundamentalists deny that she carried Jesus in her womb for nine months, isn't that worthy of being honored? Read post #64 for some of my other comments.

Rightly or wrongly it seems that some fundamentalists have a visceral hatred of Catholicism that they can't explain. To liberals like me conservative Catholicism is actually closer to fundamentalist beliefs than to my personal beliefs because con Catholics seem to have a single-minded focus on a few topics, mainly abortion, and ignore the larger teachings such as social justice or respect for all life (the "womb to tomb" argument).

Full disclosure, I've been doing a lot of questioning my own beliefs lately and have become more critical of religion in general and Catholicism in particular because IRL as well as cyberspace I don't see that a religious belief automatically makes people more accepting of their fellow man. In fact some people use religious belief as an excuse to be less tolerant.
 
The message that the world is in steady decline and that there is nothing that can be done, because it is the result of the evil of mankind, and the message that the decline is Gods will and his punishment is soul destroying and simply untrue.


So, Leaning and others... Is mankind in decline? If so, is it due to an angry God?

Are we living in the last days of mankind? Is Armageddon upon us?
 
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