Mitt may have gotten an endorsement from the head of Bob Jones University, and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council is spinning about the alleged growing support for the former Massachusetts governor, but when it comes down to it, they aren't convincing the hardcore bible beaters. From the Dallas News:
A prominent Dallas minister told his congregation that if they wanted to elect a Christian to the White House, Republican Mitt Romney wasn't qualified.Hmm. I think there's still a bit of a problem out there in fundie land.Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, encouraged his congregation to elect a Christian. 'Mitt Romney is a Mormon, and don't let anybody tell you otherwise,' he said…"Even though he talks about Jesus as his Lord and savior, he is not a Christian. Mormonism is not Christianity. Mormonism is a cult."
Some in the large crowd began to applaud as Dr. Jeffress continued with his remarks.
"What really distresses me is some of my ministerial friends and even leaders in our convention are saying, 'Oh, well, he talks about Jesus, we talk about Jesus. What's the big deal?' " he said. "It is a big deal if anybody names another way to be saved except through Jesus Christ."
…"I have conservative friends who are saying, well, he believes in Jesus, we believe in Jesus, let's just hold hands and sing kumbaya," he said. "It doesn't work that way. If a person is supporting Romney, that's fine. But don't confuse him with being a Christian."
…"It's a little hypocritical for the last eight years to be talking about how important it is for us to elect a Christian president and then turn around and endorse a non-Christian," he said.
Hat tip, Right Wing Watch
35 Responses to “Dallas pastor: Mitt’s not qualified to be prez because he’s not a Christian”
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wouldn’t it be awesome if we could have a reality-based Presidential election, where candidates weren’t out there trying to out-do each other in their acceptance of the “reality” of fairy tales and worrying about whose mythology will come out on top?
A boy can dream.
Jeff, how ’bout them Sox now?
Divine revelation is only acceptable to the sola scriptura types if it happened before 100 AD. That an angel could have appeared with golden plates to a upstate New York farm boy in the 19th century is right out of the question. Plus the idea that men will become gods of their own universes some day is a tad unscriptural.
This ain’t no planet of
soundwomen!This ain’t no fuckin’ around!
But Mormons believe in some kind of magic underwear. Which is a FAR cry from believing a virgin gave birth.
Wow. They are hypocrites. I’m SHOCKED. (Disclaimer: I may not actually be shocked.)
I’m NO mitt supporter by any means, but when the devil did it become OK for religion to be part of the political dialogue? I thought religion was just a personal choice, not something we put out there to be mocked.
Why do people hate “Kumbaya” so much?
OK, so it can get annoying, but the way people spit the phrase “sing ‘Kumbaya’” … I don’t get it.
I don’t know whether to cheer, laugh, or cry.
Cheer, because of course anything that keeps the “religious right” (which is neither) disorganized and at each other’s throats seems good. Geez, if they can’t see that LDS–the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints–is a vital part of any ruling coalition of reactionary religions in this country, they ought to spend some time out West. And how are they gonna work with the Catholics? Excuse me, the Papist followers of Simon Magus and the Great Whore of Babylon…
Laugh–see above observations.
Or cry. At the end of the day, the mean-spiritedness of these fundies still appalls me. It makes perfect sense of course that an approach to spirituality that is all about fear and self-righteousness would turn into intramural dogfighting, but it’s still vicious and ugly. And since their schemes of national and world domination are anti-democratic, it might not matter that they haven’t a prayer of a majority coalition if they go on knifing each other like this–some set of sects might still be handed dominion (I’m not in the least worried about these bozos “seizing dominion” on their own, but I am worried about our Ownership Society(tm) handing them an attack-dog and prison-warden role) and then carry out persecution against the others.
Well, right now I’m mainly laughing.
From Angels in America
JOE: Mormonism is not a cult!
LOUIS: Any religion that’s less than two thousand years old is a cult! And I know some people who think that’s being too generous.
Saccharine overdose, for most people, I guess.
But considering that the sentiment of the song is in the very best Christian tradition (we had it at Catholic Folk Masses back in the ’70s) I wonder if the distaste among these fundies boils down to the fact that it’s an African Christian song.
I just saw Jesus Camp; I haven’t yet re-watched more than half with the director’s commentary but I have watched the outtakes; I’m reminded of the time Rachel went across a street in Washington DC to prostelytize some black people; the camera didn’t get what she said to them or they said to her, but when she came back to join Levi she said “I think they were Muslim.”
They didn’t look Muslim (not that many US Muslims, especially not the African-American ones, always do)–they looked like your typical black Christians to me…
To be fair, there were some black kids at Jesus Camp. But the movie didn’t show them saying anything…
A minister tells his congregation whom to vote for in a political race and his organization still has tax-exempt status? Let’s hear it for the separation of Church and State!
“Why do people hate “Kumbaya” so much?”
‘Cause it represents the one aspect of the bible’s description of man’s relationship with god that many people (especially fundies) cannot stand: love and friendship…
As long as you’re talking about an intolerant, hateful, vindictive god - they’re all on board.
A god who loves and cares for us as individuals? Arrrrgggghhh!
Sick, really…
//Geez, if they can’t see that LDS–the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints–is a vital part of any ruling coalition of reactionary religions in this country, they ought to spend some time out West.//
Perhaps they care more about religious “purity” than they do about politics? Evangelical fundamentalism, as a theological movement and not a political catchphrase, generally places more emphasis on personal sanctification through Christ(the whole “accepting Jesus and sinning no more” bit) than overt political involvement. Many Catholics and other conservative Christians also stress religious identification and participation over identification with a paticular political party. There are plenty of exceptions of course but, being a devout member of a reactionary religious group does not equal identification with the Repuglicans. Although I’m not sure if you can even call this pastor a fundamentalist, just seems like a random Baptist pastor confusing religion and politics. Actually, if he’s so concerned with politics, I don’t think he could be classified as a true fundamentalist.
//A minister tells his congregation whom to vote for in a political race and his organization still has tax-exempt status? Let’s hear it for the separation of Church and State!//
I agree with you. I’m not sure, however, if the pastor was really saying that people should not support Romney. On one hand, he’s saying things like, “If a person is supporting Romney, that’s fine. But don’t confuse him with being a Christian.” So, it sounds like he’s using Romney to explain theological differences between “Christians” and Latter Day Saints. On the other hand, he does say that “itt’s a little hypocritical for the last eight years to be talking about how important it is for us to elect a Christian president and then turn around and endorse a non-Christian.” He could be telling people not support Romney (which is the most likely scenario) or he could be calling them out on their hypocrisy (hope springs eternal right?) Is it that clear cut?
In that case, he shouldn’t have been governor of Massachusetts either. The MA constitution specifies that the governor must be a Christian.
There is a set of criteria as to what constitutes Christianity. Many years ago my father and I were discussing sects, cults, and heresies with a couple of Anglican clergy and they came up with a set of basic “articles of faith” which were required in order to considered Christian. Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Scientists, and a couple of other sects didn’t make the grade. Unfortunately, I can’t remember exactly what the criteria were.
Mormonism is NOT Christian. It is just NOT. Now, it is in fact not important whether someone is a Christian or not, but for someone to say that not being Christian is a disqualifying factor, and than fail to disqualify Romney on that basis, indicates that “Christianity” to them means something other than Christianity (probably right-wing authoritarianism).
Essential beliefs of Christianity are set forth in the Nicene Creed, which states, in part, that “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,” and that Christ is “begotten not made, of one Being with the Father”. If you don’t believe that, you are not Christian.
Mormons believe that Christ is a separate, created being, not “of one Being with the Father”.
ergo, Mormons are NOT CHRISTIANS.
Now, none of this matters at all to me, but it SHOULD matter to people that prattle on and on and on about the importance of “faith,” and how important it is to have people as “faith” in government, and that “faith,” particularly Christian “faith” is essential for the president. If you accept Romney as a Christian, you don’t really care about faith or Christianity, what you are using Christianity for is group identification. What you are saying is that “only people like me are qualified to be president,” and Romney is “someone like me,” therefore he’s qualified. They don’t care about the “Christian” part, they care about the “like me” part.
Hate to say it, but he’s absolutely right, I applaud that preacher of standing up for what he believes.
The bigger issue with regard to him having been governor is that he didn’t even live in the fucking state!
Oh for the love of Pete…
Look, that disagreement doesn’t make a non-Nicean creed “non-Christian,” it just means they aren’t in the particular tradition dictated by Emperor Constantine’s fiat at the Council of Nicea, as the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions are. And of course some later schisms from either of these branches (initially separated by nothing but politics and a mutual agreement to quarrel over an incredibly pettifogging difference over the relationship of the Holy Spirit to the other two Persons of the Trinity; later by 1000 years of accumulated differential evolutions and lots of political bad blood) quarreled with this, that, and the other element of this Creed–it doesn’t make them non-Christians. They’re Christian if they give a unique and special place to Jesus of Nazareth in their creed. There were all sorts of other, non-Nicean Christians cluttering up the landscape in the past 2000 years. You want to claim that the Arians (creed of the Goths who ruled Europe for a couple centuries after the fall of Rome) or the Nestorians (whose missionaries established minority congregations as far away as Mongolia) or the Monophysites who were the dominant denomination in freaking Palestine as well as Egypt when Mohammed died weren’t Christian?
You go right ahead then. That’s the kind of thinking that persuaded the people of the SE corner of the Byzantine Empire (aka the Roman Empire) to welcome the Muslims as less onerious and less bigoted than the Emperor.
But they had this funny notion they were perfectly good Christians, Constantine or no Constantine.
Now if your particular faith tradition tells you that they’re all errant heretics because you just know for an infallible fact that every word of the Nicean Creed is true, go right ahead and assume they’re all consigned to hellfire for their mistakes.
Just don’t come whining about how bigoted other people are and how they don’t respect your beliefs.
It’s stuff like this that makes me downright proud to be a non-Christian these days.
Someone’s persecuting, Lord, Kumbaya…
Hey M Torino
If you base that all things Christianity, with regards to the physical nature of God, are derived from the Nicean creed, then are we to ignore everything that came before it?
- A bunch of guys who didn’t believe in revelation (i.e. the apostels are dead therefore no more revelation) decide on the fundamental composition of God is suspect.
Let’s rephrase that as God would.
“You decide who believes and follows my Son based on a group of men that I neither specifically endorsed or spoke to??”
I think Christianity has some fundamental problems that they need to work out. First might be to stop deciding who are the country club Christians and who are the Christians on the other side of the tracks. This seems contradictory to their very premise of beliefs.
Hugh, you should be familiar with the American Constitution which explicitly states:
what??
Luckily Massachusetts Governor is not a federal office.
‘Cause it represents the one aspect of the bible’s description of man’s relationship with god that many people (especially fundies) cannot stand: love and friendship…
Nah - it’s pointing out that this is the Christian image of man’s relationship with people which is the problem.
Dark Avenger - the Massachusetts Constitution provisions regarding religious tests/fellowship are specific to Massachusetts *state* law. This is wholly separate from the provisions regarding (lack) of religious tests/fellowship at the federal level, as listed in the US Constitution. For example, while Catholics could vote in federal elections, they couldn’t vote in Massachusetts state elections until 1833, the year when the religious test was repealed.
Mitt’s church, the Church of Jesus Christ (LDS) has been often misunderstood by Evangelical preachers in the past . . Some accused the Church of not believing in Christ and, therefore, not being a Christian religion . .
http://MormonsAreChristian.blogspot.com/ helps to clarify such misconceptions by examining early (First Century) Christianity’s theology relating to baptism, the Godhead, the deity of Jesus Christ and His Atonement. Mitt’s church believes in the Jesus of the New Testament, who prayed to his Father in Heaven in the Garden of Gethsemane, not the Jesus portrayed in the creeds of the 4th Century.
The Church of Jesus Christ (LDS) adheres to Early Christian (New Testament) theology more closely than other Christian denominations. . Perhaps the reason Evangelical preachers promoted this mis-representation was to protect their flock (and their livlihood). It is encouraging to note that Evangelical preachers appear now to have a moral and competent president as a priority..
in Mormonism it is acceptable to grift non-Mormons. this is a tenet of the religion. That’s not Christian in any way.
Mormons not in positions of temple authority, however, do show many signs of Christian-based culture, which can confuse people who mistake culture for religious belief (a mistake made with Buddhism, for that matter).
Mitt Romney is very creepy and scary aside from all of this, however. But since Hilary’s the one who’s to be El/La Presidente, this entire posting and discussion are basically rhetorical.
I really don’t think anyone gets to define Christianity so that it’s all good in their eyes, and anything that seems bad is therefore non-Christian.
Well, I suppose if I believed some particular Christian sect possessed the objective truth then I’d agree that that sect–and no other–is “truly Christian.”
I guess this gets right to the nub, or very close to it anyway, why I ceased to consider myself “Christian.” It seems that in the eyes of Christians themselves, Christianity is about exclusion, Us versus Them. It is inherent in the basic doctrines of most Christian sects that people can possess the Truth, and getting it just right is vital for the salvation of their immortal souls, and from there the reasoning that it is often better to kill people who disagree rather than just leave them alone follows pretty inexorably.
The other strand of my issues with Christianity relates to its stance on human sexuality, and I think these two issues come together in considering Christianity as an expression of dominator culture. The two–bigotry about sex, and bigotry about “unbelievers” and “heretics” etc–are both related to the religion’s functional support of a certain kind of social order.
As I’ve said before, I know of and even personally know a number of Christians who don’t seem much troubled by these issues. But the kinds of comments we are getting demonstrates that for quite a few Christians, it’s still all about that tribalism of power, and not having some transcended faith-based reason to believe that nevertheless Christianity is somehow especially true and right, I have to conclude that people just approach spiritual matters by paths that seem good to them, and that the sheer weight of 2000 years of cultural development of a particular cultural frame is reason enough for people who don’t buy into the dominator dimension of Christianity to go on calling themselves Christians. It may even be that these enlightened souls are the real Christians and Jesus came to liberate us from dominator society. If I believed in Jesus that would make perfect sense to me. But if so, His message sure did get garbled and co-opted pretty badly, didn’t it.
Anyway from where I see things now, it seems that all religious traditions are equally good and equally bad; it has to do with the intentions and morality of their practitioners what good or harm their followers do.
And from that perspective, with no answers at the back of some book in Heaven and no divine Referee, a Christian is anyone who gives Jesus a special and unique place in their theology. They don’t have to be nice people, they don’t have to have Jesus doing things others think are good. There could be Christian Satanists (in fact Starhawk distinguishes Satanists from Pagans by calling the former a “Christian heresy,” with perfect logic and sense); the “Christian Identity” racists and Hitler’s pet national German reconstruction of Protestantism would also be Christian–if and only if they held Jesus to be in some sense at least more important than Hitler himself (which seems unlikely to me; been a while since I studied that so I forget the details.) But even idiots who hold that Jesus was some kind of Super-Aryan would be Christians if they say so. They’d just be really nasty Christians.
And however nasty a standard they set, somewhere in any of the more orthodox denominations, sometime in history, there would be riff-raff just as nasty.
The Gospels I remember learning in my Catholic youth make it real clear that no amount of self-labeling, rituals, and public shows of piety are any guarantee of one’s inner spiritual state.
Though I suppose a number of sects might differ on those points….
An analogy:
Is Lyndon LaRouche a Democrat? He has run for office as a Democrat, he opposed the impeachment of Bill Clinton and the Iraq war, he’s endorsed John Conyers’ United States National Health Insurance Act (Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act), and opposed telecom deregulation. So he’s a Democrat, right?
Nope. Even though he has claimed to be a Democrat, he holds enough opinions that run counter to our core beliefs (global warming as hoax, opposition to the UN) and that are just plain weird (Queen of England as head of an international drug cartel) that most rational people realize that he’s not a Democrat, he just claims it for his own convenience, and without being faithful to our core beliefs he can’t be considered a real Democrat.
As a Christian, my take on the LDS fits my take on LaRouche (as a Democrat) pretty well. I’m not saying Mormons are bad people. I’m saying they aren’t Christians, as Christianity has been defined for the last two millennia.
I don’t consider myself a christian these days, either. But I was raised catholic (which some protestant denominations also don’t consider christian) and basically I was taught that christianity meant followers of Christ. In other words, christians are people who believe in god and follow the teaching of Jesus, whether they believed in his divinity, the holy spirit, or whatever. But that’s just me and the way I learned it (officially, in ccd even), and I’m sure that lots would disagree.
Plus, when I refer to “Christians” in general, I usually mean the crazy, fundie type, not the general “follower of Christ” type.
You know, I’m Mormon and I consider myself a follower of Christ. I think Mitt Romney has done a great disservice to Mormons, though, because he makes it appear that Mormons are uberconservative, patriarchal, and uncaring about the poor. I’ll admit in the mountain-west US (my home), most Mormons are conservative (most everybody is conservative), but Mormons live all over the world and many (including myself) are more favorable to liberal ideas and issues.
Oh yeah, just to make clear, “grifting” isn’t part of our religion. I’ve never even heard of it as part of the weirdo polygamist fundie splinter groups that call themselves Mormon (they might be doing it, though–they tend to think that anyone who disagrees with them deserves what they get).
Julia Sweeney explains a bit about Mormonism in the last part of this sketch at TEDtalks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtIyx687ytk
I hope the major lesson for all reasonable and good-willed people of whatever convictions on spiritual matters is that a secular society in which the faiths of individuals should be held irrelevant in public matters so long as those individuals don’t seek to impose their private views on others is a very good thing for everyone.
This kind of infighting is a major reason why the founding generations of our nation embraced the concept, with more or less enthusiasm to be sure. They had plenty experience with different colonial/state governments having different “established churches” as well as citizens within these states getting at loggerheads with whichever established church they were saddled with.
“This kind of infighting is a major reason why the founding generations of our nation embraced the concept, with more or less enthusiasm to be sure. They had plenty experience with different colonial/state governments having different “established churches” as well as citizens within these states getting at loggerheads with whichever established church they were saddled with.”
The rise of blatant public religious bigotry is yet more evidence of the decline of intelligent thought in America. (along with many other things occurring over the last several decades…)
If we are so blind to the history of religious bigotry that some of can forget (or ignore) one of the single more important founding principles of this country, is there any hope for us?
Do we need (AGAIN!) years of civil war and bloodshed to remind us of one of the most basic truths of human existence?…
Ex-Mormon here. Mormons are Christians. Their religion believes everything the other Protestants do, but they added some extra stories about how Jeebus flew to the Americas to do a little bit of savin’. They believe that being baptized and forgiven of one’s sins, repentance and penance, and all that such stuff. Those who say they’re not are simply ignorant.
//believe that being baptized and forgiven of one’s sins, repentance and penance, and all that such stuff. Those who say they’re not are simply ignorant.//
Speaking as a former Mormon, I agree with you that LDS certainly do believe that. There are certain Christians sects that should then accepts LDS as Christians. The problem is that most of the world’s Christians don’t define Christianity as a “personal relationship with Jesus” (that’s an American evangelical thing) but, as a narrowly understood belief about the Trinitarian nature of God. That means that Mormons would not be considered Christians by most of the world’s Christians but, should certainly be considered such by more American Protestants.
Don’t mean to offend but this fact needed to be pointed out.
The problem is that most of the world’s Christians don’t define Christianity as a “personal relationship with Jesus” (that’s an American evangelical thing) but, as a narrowly understood belief about the Trinitarian nature of God.
I don’t agree with this at all. This is how the hierarchies of certain Christian sects, along with some very devout believers (a very small percentage of all who label themselves Christians) define it.
It is worth remembering that most believers don’t believe in half the stuff that the hierarchy of whatever Church they worship in (if they worship in any Church at all) believes in. Most believers have no opinion one way or the other on the nature of the Trinity; that is an argument among theologians which ordinary believers don’t give a crap about.
What unites Christians is that they believe that Jesus is a deity and not simply a human being, a prophet, a messenger, etc. Beyond that, their beliefs are all over the place, if they even have them.
And the desire to kick Mormons out of Christianity is nothing more than bigotry. I say this as an agnostic with no horse in this race, but the thing that REALLY bugs evangelicals about Mormons is that they are so successful, building a Church of 13 million members in just a couple of centuries. They are a threat.