BeachOfEden

I am not mad or even annoyed at Darby at all. I am just puzzled and confused at Fred p's over-reaction to my original comments here.

What is interesting to me is that all of you keep pointing to Darby as being the one I aimed my annoyance with..when infact all I said of him is that he merely concure WITH Fred P. Fred is the one, if you'll recall who got defensive at what he said was my stero-typing of the religious or political right. I just thought I would point that out.

But you did not answer the question. Do YOU WANT to dilalog with those on the farther right? Are YOU willing to endure the challenges that may be given to you there? It is up to you if you want to innerfaith in conversation or not. It's your free choice.

The far fundamental right and the liberal left will always stero-type the other side. We can stop this. On the Daily Show with John Stewart, once a major figure of the far right (I don;t even remember WHO) basically stated that , ALL liberals that watched The Daily show are were against Bush were, and I quote here, "A bunch of pot-smoking liberal hippies." Now, is this statement true of all liberals? Obviously not. I DO consider myself a "liberal hippie". This title does NOT insult nor offend ME. What about the part suggesting that 'ALL' liberals who oppose Bush are ALL "pot Smokers"? What do "I" think of this? I don't like it and I realize it is NOT true of 'ALL' liberals. To be prefectly honest with you, and you can read my past threads here on this very issue to verify this...I am dead set AGAINST recreational marijunja use and I will will tell this to anyone that ask, Never the less "I" don't care that some major rep of the far right labeled all us "liberals and Progressives as "Pot-Smokers." I already know this IS their mind-set . This is NOT a new revelation to me that these type feel like this about US. But this statement does not make me get my panties in a twist because I ALREADY KNOW that THEY feel this way about US and THIS IS WHY "I" do NOT wish to personally inneract with THEM. Now..if other Liberals WANT to inneract with THEM and endure these statements or try and counter act them, be my guess..but you must be prepared that YOU WILL be type-cased like this..Can you take it? Do you 'WANT' to take it? You should perpare yourself for this when you enter their relm, the relm of the right.

Yes, I know the radical religious/politcal right do NOT speak for everyone in their states..but my point is THEY, in SPEAK as if they do. That was my point. Just how such types go, "Us Christians,"...speaking as if if all Christians are on the far right with them. There are positvely bits of the old deep south/pro-civil war days HERE, In Southern CA where I live. I don;t like it..of course...It's state of mind, a culture..that started in the the deep south and mid west in the civil war days..and there are many people there still proudly waving the confederate flag...but there are also such people HERE, in Southern CA. It's not a liberal here as you think it would be...or I think that it should be. Progressive and Liberal churches are nearly an instinct species here, in my city...and that's likely why i get so "bleeped" off because the far right appears to be the both the religious and political majority here. It's like this is a beach town in Southern Califoria, for Godsakes! Not the Okie Swap! But yeap, we were verified as a RED city.

I am not trying to beat a dead horse here but I AM TRUELY baffled as to why Fred P would get SO defensive in response posting a thread on today being like the Second McCarthy era or passionaly defend, The Political or religious far right. Does it makes sense that any of us Progressive Christians should feel this need that you spoke of Des, of needing to defend our Progressive views? Should non-Progressives come on here and make requests that we not challenge neither the religious nor political right? That we can not voice our dissaprovel of Bush or the poltical right or Evangelicals withOUT being tagged intolerant? Thirdly, if a Progressive Christian voices their dissaprovel of either the poltical or religious right or both and explains that they feel the right is intolerant than does merley stating this make one intolerant? Why should any of us follow progressive feel the 'need' or be 'required' to not voice our dissatification with either the religious right or the political right? This is the Progressive forum ..Not the fundamental Christian Right forum. It's not even the Fundamental Christian Lite forum. Furthermore, how is it that any Progressive Christian should be told that they are expected to or should inneract or innerfaith with the right? If individual Progressive Christian 'wish' to inneract or innerfaith with further right Christians, that is their freedom. but as a whole, who has a right to be telling us, that Progressive Christians as collective group 'SHOULD' be innerfaithing with the fight right? Either religiously or politiically? Lastly but not least..I am really wondering what these few individuals motives are in so passionatley defending the religious and/or political right. What is their objective is telling US that WE 'SHOULD' be innerfaithing with those of the farther right..whether religious or political? this is odd to me. 'I" have no interest in going on any Fundamental Protestant or Fundamental Catholic sites and telling THEM that THEY 'SHOULD' be innerfaithing with Progressives for the sake of tolerance.

Well, I am NEITHER one...but I still think it a mystery that any Progressive Christians should gets so defensive over MCCarthy or Bush. Like as if....no one here has ever voiced their dissaprovel of Bush or the whole Red movement before. I am not voicing one party over the other..but it seems really weird to me that anyone claiming to be Progressive would get so defensives for Bush or Republicans.

"...but you contradict yourself Beach. You said just yesterday(or was it earlier today) that you don't want to dialogue with Non-Progressive Christians or Christians who support Bush ...that's not ALL inclusive is it?" I was NOT talking about the right when I said this. I have no desire to be all "Inclusive" to anyone on the right, neither spritually nor politically. Maybe that IS what you believe. Maybe YOU want to innerfaith with non-Progressive Christians, if you do, then..go ahead. But "I" don;t ever recall making any indications of this. As for Fred..I just think his defensive response to my thread about McCarthy and Bush was over-the-top and a puzzle. If merely quoting that 8 points on THIS site somehow qualifies me as being guilty of speaking in behalf of all Progressives here..then I guess I AM guilty of merely quoting the 8 points. I see no reason for any Progressive Christian to get defensive about Bush or McCarthy. Second, I don;t even know 'if' these people acting defnesive ARE Progressive..and 'if' they are then why are they getting so defensive about all this? I 'thought' THIS site and it's forum were a fundamentalist-FREE zone. If this is incorrect, I'd like to know..because this is the first for me to hear of this.

This discussion where individuals have suggested that we Progressives should innerfaith with those are the far right. Was discussed here in this thread. I brought it back to remind the viewer at home how we discussed this before and ironically, back then no Progressive here seemed to get defensive and claim that any of us progressives were guilty of stero-typing....Why have thing just lately suddenly changed since then?

Mostly, Des, is Fred P whom i do not understand where he is coming from. Darby merely concured. This is started when I wrote a thread of McCarthyism and Bush & The far right red. For some reason, that i can not understand..all of this seemed to rub Fred's fur the wrong way. I do not know why..but this happened once before when I posted that I delt this new pope was far right. Why any Progressive Christian would get defensive about speaking of Bush and the far right and the political reds and claiming unfair stero-typing as if..defneding Bush and the reds...on Fred's part...I don;t know. It sounds to me that he is defending the right and Bush and don;t know if he is on the right or the left.

What appears to have happened is that non-Progressives have entered into dialog with me and the other Progressives here. One person on here, admits that are not Progressive. I wish that there was a 'special' forum for Progressive & Fundamentalist Dialog..because I personally would like to be warned that non-Progressives are going to try and and join the conversation at hand. Had I known before hand when I started that other thread about McCarthy and Bush that non-Progressives and Bush-Supporters would here and were going to enter into this conversation i would not have encouarged the whole topic to start with. I personally I am not interested in doing an inerfaith dialog with non-Progressives or pro-Bush supporters. Other Progs here seem to enjoy it. But I don;t I feel if I wanted to do this I'd go to Beliefnet where they actually encourage Fundamental/Liberal dialogs. Darby has already siad in the past that he is not a progressive and with Fred I have no idea anymore. I think once in the past he got annoyed with me when I said i have no use for this new fundamental pope. Anyways, I, for one would really appreciate if a new forum could be added especailly FOR Progressive/Non-Progressive dialog...

I am not even actively envolved IN politics. Never the less how can ANYONE support Bush and be Progressive in ANY way?

I don;t know Fred, where you are coming from. But where I am coming from is Progressive Christians from Southern CA and the last time I checked. yeah, Bush, Republicans, The Far Fundamental Right WERE indeed all on the same page. As far as some idea there is some sort of far fundamental Lite Right...All I know is that in religious terms there is left and right and in poltical terms there's red and blue. I point towards the left I am blue....NOT orange red, not lite red..Just blue. Not purple. If there are people out there that want to play both sides and be cozy with both right red and the liberal blue..they can but I have no interest in this.

Ahhh..what the hell side on you on anyways? Why are you defending Bush? i thought you were a Progressive..but maybe I thought wrong.

Well, basically is not the basic Bush supporter's mind set this: If you are not from the mid-west or south, if you are not Evangelical Protestant, and not white and not Republican then you are an UnAmerican UnSaved UnChristian cult! They merge all this together, don;t they? "it seems that early on in american history, certain groups carved out their spot - baptists and methodists in the south, catholics in maryland and louisiana, congregationalists in new england, reformed in michigan etc., and they would often use "unchristian" means of keeping their turf." Is it not still this way?

Well, you are right that the big start of all this was before the 50's and there was the big start in the 20's but also the Age of Enlightenment which goes back even further...Could the first part span the Age of Enlightenment to the 1920's? Then the second part span from the Mccarthy era 50's to the early 70's? As a Progressive Christian I ovbiously am strongly FOR social justice..but I try and not force my leftist views with my faith or esle I would simply feel I was left answer to the xtreme right..and I don;t want to do that.

After World War II it seems the American people were left paranoid that communists might still be hidding a spies in America. Senator McCarthy in the early 1950's used this feeling of uncertainity to start his campain to go on a witch hunt and weed out any individuals even in the movie buiness which is felt might be sympthelic to communisim. Obviously, all this occured way before I was born..but reading about this history and reconizing that ironically the rise and merging of the Fundamental far right Protestants with the Evangelical right right Protestants into one force called simply Fundamental Christianity or The Religious Right..I wonder if the Mccarthy era inspired also the rise of the religious Right and their Anti-Cult hysteria. We know of the religious right that they are known to merged their political beliefs with their religious, and as such if they bought into McCarthy's political hysteria...could this might have also at the same time inspired the religious right's Anti-Cult hysteria? My Perents who came from this time period and were married in 1949 often spoke of how back in these days they thought all non-Protestants such as JW and Mormons were Communists and UnAmerican cults. What do you think? Do you think there is a solid connection between these two?

Yes, it very much feels like we are living in the second McCarthy Era. It is as if the 60's Civil Rights movement never happened and when went directly from 1950's to now.

I created one a few years backed based on overcoming my own fundamental JW background: 1. We admitted we were powerless over our addiction to the JW Organization— and it's man-made rules that our lives had become unmanageable. 2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity and that this Higher Power was Jehovah/God and NOT the imperect body of men called "The Organization." 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God. 4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. 5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of past wrongs. 6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. 7. Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings. 8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed in our misguilded loyality to "The Organization", and became willing to make amends to them all. 9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. 10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. 11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out. 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to follow XJWs, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Thanks Des! These were VERY helpful! I saved them all! Des, do you also know where I could find great esseys that explains the detials of the McCarthy ara of 50's hysterics? Much appreciated!

Auuhhh!! I get so tired of hearing ignorant far right Fundamental Protestants make statements claiming that our founding fathers or our nation was built on Evangelical far right Christianity or to be more prrecise..Fundamental Protestantism. All of you here are really smart about this stuff. One founding father was a deist and another was a Unitarian. Care to share interesting facts on all this? Thanks. When i get a collection of great replies maybe I will make an essey on this and place on MySpace! Thanks! BeacoOfEden

"The new eposide is fanatasic! " I think it is too! I can't wait untill in comes on DVD! But..can you expand on this... "Redemption becomes much easier, in my opinion, by coming to realise that the temptation of evil is the big lie." Thanks;)

I think, though not sure..that most Evangelicals believe in the rapture too...they just don;t push hell as much as the fundamentalists and that most of the Evangelicals do not believe hell is an eternal fire pit but rather eternal seperattion from God.

The Fundamentalist-Evangelical Split Both believed in the Bible, but one group wanted to separate from modern culture while the other wanted to engage it. By Wendy Murray Zoba Excerpted from Beliefnet's new book, "The Beliefnet Guide to Evangelical Christianity." In the early 1940s, a distinct split grew between evangelicals and fundamentalists over how to apply the “fundamentals” of faith to the modern world. In 1941 Rev. Carl McIntire founded the American Council of Christian Churches, an extreme group that favored separatism from hostile cultural forces. Some went so far as to refuse contact with anyone who did interact with the culture. Not all “fundamentalists” (that is, those who believed in the fundamentals) felt this way, however. One branch of Bible believers—evangelicals—wanted to engage the culture, while the other branch—fundamentalists—moved away from it, sometimes belligerently. Kenneth Kantzer, a keen observer of the changing picture, said that for many evangelicals who had considered themselves “fundamentalists,” the term became “an embarrassment instead of a badge of honor.” At the time evangelicals did not see themselves as rebelling against fundamentalism. Rather, they saw themselves as sincere believers who longed for a “Bible-believing” pastor with an education—one who could approach contemporary issues with intellect and eloquence. Scholars like Kantzer, Harold Ockenga, Carl F. H. Henry did not, of necessity, reject every idea set forth by modernists simply because they were “modern.” They did not fear cultural involvement or conflicting viewpoints; they were deeply committed to social action and justice. A number of institutions and organizations became rallying points under the flag of evangelicalism. In 1942, Harold Ockenga spearheaded the formation of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) as a platform for conservative Christians who wanted to be culturally engaged. Carl F. H. Henry wrote The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (1947), which offered a strong critique of fundamentalist separatism, charging a betrayal of their own heritage. The same year saw the formation of one of evangelicalism’s hallmark seminaries, Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. Two years later Billy Graham gained national headlines at his Los Angeles tent meetings when newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst told his editors to "puff Graham," catapulting him onto the national stage. This made “crusade evangelism” front-page news. In 1950 Billy Graham and Harold Ockenga both spoke in the Rose Bowl, addressing the largest audience ever at any religious gathering in the Pacific Southwest. By 1956 Graham had launched Christianity Today, a new magazine “of evangelical conviction.” All of this signaled a new day. Evangelicals took on what Carl Henry called “the costly burden of creating evangelical scholarship in a world that’s in rebellion.” He meant that as the effects of the Enlightenment permeated the culture, God seemed to have become irrelevant. Evangelicals assumed the responsibility of making God relevant again, and in a way that was accessible to the culture at large. The Inerrancy of the Bible The word inerrancy is derived from the Latin, meaning “not wandering.” Its usage in this context implies: “not wandering from the truth.” For evangelicals, inerrancy means that when Scripture says something, it is telling the truth and not “wandering” into falsehood. Does this mean that evangelicals believe that God dictated the Bible word for word, thus making each word unflawed? Many would say no. But if you asked if they embraced the traditional tenets of faith of the Protestant Reformation—the authority of the Scripture, the virgin birth and divinity of Christ, Jesus’ atonement for sin, the bodily resurrection, and the second coming of Christ—evangelicals would say yes, unequivocally….

2005 The Detroit News 'Star Wars' has strong presence in religion Series inspires reflection as the story lines are compared to those in the Bible, some say. By Karen Vance / Cincinnati Enquirer Films such as "Star Wars: Return of the Jedi" are becoming a more popular part of discussion on religion's relationship with culture. "Star Wars" was the first movie Russell Smith ever saw in a theater. Twenty-eight years later, as a Presbyterian pastor, Smith was an easy sell when asked whether his Cincinnati church would host a Bible study entitled "Gospel According to Star Wars." "This is our language. We grew up with this," says Smith, 33, pastor at Covenant-First Presbyterian Church for four years. "With this study, we're saying there are hints of truth, beauty and goodness in the story that can bring us back to the biblical story." It doesn't hurt that the May 19 opening of the final installment of the "Star Wars" series coincides with the 12-week study, which focuses on the original trilogy, Episodes IV (1977), V (1980) and VI (1983). "It's a story we all know, and a vast majority of people who know it love it," says Jeffrey Perkins, 34, author of the Bible study and a member of the church since 1999. "Star Wars" is hardly alone as a film looked to for spiritual enlightenment. "We are now movie watchers as never before," says Bill Blizek, founding editor of the Journal of Religion and Film. "And movies are filled with religion -- sometimes it is done well, and sometimes it is not done well." The most written-about mainstream film in terms of hidden religious meaning in recent years, he says, is "The Matrix." For Perkins, the overall arc of the six-movie "Star Wars" series is inherently Christian. "The whole story is the redemption of Darth Vader. He falls to temptation and is redeemed by the son in Episode VI," Perkins says. A recent study was a discussion of Luke Skywalker and Han Solo's decision to try to rescue Princess Leia from the detention area of the Death Star in Episode IV and how that relates to the obstacles Christians face and are willing to overcome to follow Jesus and put values into action. The study has evolved into some heavy thinking, says Andy Adams, 27, who teaches the course. In the first session, for example, class members discussed the urgency and need to share their faith with others. The class discussed how every action R2-D2 takes in the first 30 minutes is motivated by his need to share his message from Princess Leia to Obi-Wan Kenobi, including going into the desert on his own. Adams likens that to Matthew 28:19: "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." "This is a Bible study that's simply using 'Star Wars' as a vehicle," Adams says. That's not a new way to teach Christianity, says John Brolley, director of the legacy program in religious studies at the University of Cincinnati. "It's the modern-day version of something that is described over and over in the (New Testament's) Acts of Apostles as what (St.) Paul did. He provided a blueprint for evangelization," Brolley says. "(Paul) accessed the concepts and the images from the dominant culture to teach the Gospel. If 'Star Wars' was in those days, (St.) Paul would have invoked C-3PO and R2-D2." Brolley says Paul would visit communities in the ancient world, and begin by talking about themes they were comfortable with. Then he would segue into talking about Christ. "Popular culture is something that many religions, Christianity in particular, either sets itself up against or tries to incorporate," Brolley says. "Churches try to make the principles of religion that may be too abstract or too dull to the average person more accessible." Incorporating pop culture as a way to teach a faith is a skill urban churches have become especially good at because they often deal with people exposed to the arts and culture, he says. "The Gospel According to Star Wars" isn't the first connection Covenant-First has made between the secular and the sacred. In the past, the church has done "The Gospel According to Shakespeare".