Oh, NOW it's bad to have the government watching you

The blogosphere is all abuzz with the Department of Homeland Security's report on Extreme Rightwing Groups.  I found it a little confusing their reaction, considering that the DHS was begun under the Bush administration in the wake of the Terrorist attacks.  

Glenn Greenwall over at Salon.com sums up this hypocrisy nicely.

The DHS also made reports on Leftwing groups during the Bush years, but that was okay.

The FBI apparently watched animal rights groups, environmentalists, and poverty relief during the years of the Bush administration

When Facists groups are being watched that is NOT okay.  

I can't figure out if this being hypocritical, or just being upset that someone lost a Presidential Election.

Calvinism as a discussion among friends

My last post motivated me to look up the discussion between Mohler and Patterson about Calvinism.  Here is a link to the 2006 SBC annual meeting about them publicly disagreeing over the subject.

This disagreement illustrates my whole disagreement with the idea of an inerrant Bible.  I believe the Bible, but to say that it is inerrant is really more to say my interpretation of the Bible is inerrant.

Both Mohler and Patterson believe in an inerrant Bible, yet they both disagree on a pretty considerable theological point.  If the inerrant Bible is true then obviously one of these gentlemen is very wrong.  Yet some how they are able to remain friends.  

When other people in the past disagreed with Patterson or Mohler they lost their jobs.  Why is this different?  What makes this difference okay?

There seems to be some bending over backwards to make the disagreement just something between friends.

In the link above Mohler and Patterson don't want to divide the SBC over Calvinism.  What is different now?  For decades the whole purpose was to divide those out of the SBC that they disagreed with.  

But apparently disagreement is now okay.  Among friends that is.

Time Magazine-The New Calvinism

I was surprised to see John Calvin's name mentioned in Time Magazine.  Apparently Calvin is making a big comeback, according to Time anyway.

Calvin is listed as one idea of ten that are really going to change the world.  Although I have a hard time understanding how the ideas of someone soon to be 500 years old is supposed to count as a new idea.  I would say that he might be coming back into fashion.  But new, nope not a chance.

Al Mohler is mentioned as one of the biggest, or least influencial Calvinists of the moment.  

In seminary I was interested in Mohler's Calvinism, because Paige Patterson did not agree with classic Clavinism.  In fact I remember reading about how they respectfully disagreed with each other over Calvinism.

Which would just jog my brain into thinking about the inerrant Bible they both support and advocate.  If it is so inerrant, how can two such Bible believing men have such different ideas about the Bible.  Yet, still insist that it is inerrant.  Whatever inerrant means...

Their disagreement reminded me of the relative nature of the term inerrant.  Those two gentlemen could disagree over the nature of Calvinism, and still be civil with each other and call each other Christian.  But other types of disagreements over the Bible could have you dismissed from denominational work.

Their sort of disagreement is as old as the Bible.

And Calvinism is nothing new.

Speaking of old, here are some old posts from this blog:

Seeing Women Become Ordained

Gotta give Credit to Robertson

I have give credit when it is due.

Pat Robertson, someone I disagree with a lot of the time, actually denounces Rush Limbaugh's "Hope he Fails" statement.

Click here for the link.

I often view Robertson as someone of the "God only supports him if he Republican."  So I must admit to being surprised at this statement.

Good for him in disagreeing with Rush and supporting the President.  Robertson of course disagrees with Obama on certain policies, but he admits that when the Presidents succeeds the whole country succeeds.

For once, good for Pat.

Thank you Mr. Coleman

There is still all these months later the extraordinarily tight and undecided race in Minnesota.  Incumbant Norm Coleman seems now to be the underdog in the recount.  So what is a Republican to do in such a situation.

Tell us that God wants him to be Senator.

I always get confused when things like this happen.  If God really wants Coleman to serve, would there not be a landside?  Or at the very least a much more decisive election?  

How medicore is God if He can't even get a Republican elected?

No matter the side, I am always wary of invoking God in the name of Politics. 

Of course Coleman invoked the Almighty to defend his Senate seat, but more importantly it demeans God.  God has the potential of being a loser when it comes to deciding elections.  I don't like that idea at all.  

Now if Coleman does win the recount he could easily state it was because God made it so.  How would he represent the state in the Senate after that happens?  

Coleman did back off some and made this comment:

Coleman did later temper those rather immodest remarks by adding that he “is not indispensable” and that others can serve as well.  

I'm glad he admits to that.

No matter who is elected, God is still God.

The Last Four Years

I started writing here a little over four years ago because I was against a second Bush term.  I also started writing because I was tired of being told that being a Christian meant voting Republican and that Bush had a halo over his head.

There has been a lot of course written about the Bush presidency.  I'm not going to add on the pile here.

Except for the fact that I am still concerned about the intermingling of religion and politics.  Now a lot of people will argue that mixing politics and religion is part of a democracy.  My primary concern is not about democracy, but about religion and religious beliefs.  When the two are so purposely intermixed, as they have been ever since Bush signed into law the Faith Based agency, religious beliefs will get watered down if not down right changed.

Ultimately religion belief lose their purpose when tied to politics.  Bush himself recently mentioned that he didn't believe that the Bible was the literal word of God.  Some Christians were understandably very upset about that revelation.  But ultimately religion is used to serve the purpose of political power.  David Kou in is book Tempting Faith blew the whistle on how the White House thought of Evangelicals, and it wasn't good.  The Conservative Christian vote was used solely as a means to a political win.

That could still happen in an Obama administration.  Sure it would be a different flavor of Christianity on the spectrum, but the result could still be the same.  Faith used to fund political wins.

I voted for Obama, Obama won, but the disagreeable debate will go on

Yes, I voted for Obama.  Let's move on.

Now that we've moved from watching the pundits talk about the upcoming election, to talking heads talking about what this means for America, I think for some people America change radically last night, and for others it didn't change so much.

I've read many comments on Facebook, blogs, and comments on CNN.  The idea that this country is going to come together all of a sudden seems somewhat silly to me.

Obama won in big numbers, but that does not remove the venom, hatred, and racism that was through about on the fringes of the campaign has been taken away.  

The idea that Obama is a Muslim, and therefore really a Bin-Laden agent isn't going to go away.  

The idea that he is a Socialist isn't going to go away.  

McCain's thoughtful and respectful concession speech isn't going to take for a lot people. A lot of people will disagree with President Obama, but others will be just be flat out disagreeable, and those are two different things.

As talk turns to the historic event of an African-American being elected president, there seems to be little discussion at the moment of why not only was he elected, but elected with such a large number.

So many talking heads last night talked about the rewriting of the American political map.

I don't think we are there yet.

In order for the political map to truly be rewritten, Obama needs to have a very successful first term.  He needs to accomplish the things that he has set out to do.  And then when he runs again in 2012 we will get an election based on Obama's performance.

This election was based on Bush's performance.

Obama's win was based on Bush's failures.

I'm okay with that.  This Obama win was the vindication for those of us crying out against the policies of the Bush presidency.  

But the thought, that those ideas that were the basis for the Bush presidency have all of a sudden died and disappeared off the face of the Earth, is just plain wrong.

And therein lies one of the historic weaknesses of Moderate, Centrist thinking, that one victory means complete victory.  That everyone is now on board.

The Bush presidency was carried by the Religious Right, a Religious Right that believes in marrying Political Power in order make their religious views really the only views, hasn't gone away and it won't.

Yes, Obama won.

But the disagreeable debate will go on.

Venom spews at McCain stop and McCain shows the true leader and "Maverick" he could have been

I'm not sure how to interpret this people really really being disrespectful at a McCain stop.

The anger and fear is quite disturbing.

But as much as I disagree with McCain I must tip my hat to him in stoping the crowd and telling them to be respectful.

I can't help but think that if this was the McCain that was regularly shown then he wouldn't be losing.  Instead he has sold his intergretity to people who run his campaign.  Which is why Palin is on the ticket and not Romney or Lieberman.  After seeing this I honestly felt sorry for him, he is quite clearly a noble man, but that has not been on display for quite awhile.  

Not only have his supporters lost a nobleman, so has the Country, and nobody wins when that happens.

Scarbrough on the Colbert Report: It was Katrina not the War that killed the Republicans

I have to respect a former Republican representative that understands the facts of why the Bush Administration totally messed up.

Surplus to debt comes to mind.

And for him it was the Katrina response that ended the Bush administration, and I would actually agree with that.  Leaving a whole American city was just unforgivable.

But can McCain still win?

Yes, with magic.

See the clip below.

Questions I would like to ask Palin

Judging from what I've seen, and in an effort to find out just how LOW the bar has been set, here are a few questions I would like to ask Sarah Palin.

1. How many Senators are there in the Senate?
2. How many Houses are there in the Congress?
3. What does the Vice President do in Congress?
4. How many votes does it take to override a veto?
5. How many people sit currently on the Supreme Court?
6. How many branchs of the Federal Government are there?
   

What questions would you add?