What these religious nuts don't understand about separation of church and state is that it's just as much about preventing government from interfering with religion as it is about preventing religion from interfering in government. The IRS rules are very very clear. If you invite political candidates to your church and promote their platform on your pulpit, you are not eligible for tax exempt status. Well, the holy shit has hit the fan in Minnesota after Michele Bachmann, preaching from the stage at Living Word Christian Center in Brook Park, MN, told the parishoners that God called upon her to run for congress. Now, if that is not bad enough, the pastor of the church told his flock that the church should be wholly involved in politics. You can watch it all here on youtube. For more on this story, see the posts at Minnesota Monitor and Dump Michele Bachmann.
Update: Here's the first 9 minutes of Michele's appearance at Living Word on youtube.
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2 comments:
Minnesota seems a liitle out of whack for all sorts of religious reasons. Religion is rationalism's curse.
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/4058
http://www.startribune.com/462/story/709262.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=408912&in_page_id=1770&in_page_id=1770
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,20544457-2,00.html?from=rss
People become locked into assuring and self-assuring conceptual frameworks and lose a more accurate assessment of reality. The worst thing is that that is accompanied by a complete lack of self-perpective, resulting in immoral acts, be it the "Christian" politician pandering to that class without seeing any apparent contradiction or hypocrisy or the Muslim who refuses rides to dog accompanied blind people or alcohol carrying customers, despite the facts that while the Koran calls dogs dirty, it allows them for protection and herding and only forbids the consumption of alcohol, but not its production, transport or sale. Religion deceives its practitioners, harms its children and society as a whole. I am glad that the Deists who wrote our Constitution saw that keeping politics and religion separate is of vital importance to a Democracy and its freedoms. On a sadder note, it may be necessary to support one class of nutjobs over another for the simple fact that a "belief-less" West may be too weak to counter Islam's Imperialistic and Totalitarian advance.
Charles
Oh, I almost forgot.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/10/will_dems_embrace_candidate_ba.html
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=24619
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=24915
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2006/10/protest_cairdai.html
Any politician might want to worry about his or her stance in supporting or accepting funds from an Islamic terrorist front, just as any candidate should worry about the Christians to whom they pander, lest one relishes despising one's constituency.
Charles
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