posted on September 16, 2007 08:39:35 AM new
Yes, while we continue to hear the wackos RAGE against everything the 'religious right' stand for.....and about their religion and politics being 'mixed' together.....
....the religious left also prays. But you'll SELDOM, if at all, read or hear about their religious political prayers.
By Mark D. Tooley
FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, September 14, 2007
Sojourners chief Jim Wallis, the Religious Left’s foremost prophet, is asking 20,000 of his supporters to “pray” for the U.S. Congress to bring a “swift end to the war in Iraq.”
”Lord, guide those who serve in Congress in the ways of your justice and peace, so that the death and suffering in Iraq might come to an end,” reads the sample prayer from Sojourners that supporters are urged to email to their congressional representatives.
It is indeed wonderful news that the U.S. Congress has the ominously transcendent power to “end the war” in Iraq! Why haven’t they voted already??
Here is the errant theology of the Religious Left at its worst. Implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, the Religious Left removes the Almighty from His throne and instead assigns ultimate power to political decision makers, usually in the U.S. Government.
In this truncated theology, “ending” the war in Iraq requires a simple decision by the U.S. to remove its troops from Iraq.
Global Warming? The solution is simple. The U.S. must install a strict regime of limits on economic growth, after which the planet will be healed.
Worldwide poverty and hunger? If only the U.S. would set aside its greed, and redirect resources away from the military and towards international aid, then all the world’s poor will be clothed, fed, and healthy.
And most if not all wars everywhere would grind to a sudden halt if the U.S. ended all arms sales and resolved not to profit from mass death.
Today’s Religious Left is a sad parody of America’s old religious establishment, which during the 19th century and the early 20th century assigned the United States an almost messianic role in bringing freedom and prosperity to an enslaved and impoverished world. In contrast, if “prophets” like Wallis are believed, the modern world continues to suffer only BECAUSE of American intransigence.
All U.S. troops could leave Iraq next week, but the war there would certainly not “end.” Arguably, the war would degenerate further and expand. Neither did Iraq’s suffering begin with the U.S. led overthrow of Saddam Hussein, who had extinguished perhaps up to 1 million of his countrymen. Saddam’s victims would have numbered hundreds of thousands more in the absence of the U.S. and British Air Forces, which for over a decade restricted Saddam’s ability to kill Kurds and Shiites.
Saddam’s mass murders were not televised or photographed, therefore they did not arouse mass concern, certainly not by Jim Wallis or the Religious Left. Even with more visual records, victims of anti-U.S. tyrants do not typically distress the Religious Left, which similarly had fought to “end” the war in Vietnam. But removing U.S. troops did not “end” the conflict in Southeast Asia. Far more killing took place after the U.S. withdrawal, to which the Religious Left was similarly indifferent.
According to the Sojourners plea for “prayer,” General Petraeus “is reporting to Congress on the troop "surge," through which the Bush administration has escalated the war by sending an additional 20,000 American combat troops.”
Naturally, Sojourners wants to counteract this “escalation.” Prayer can “soften the hardest of hearts,” Sojourners observed, undoubtedly referring to the frozen hearts of pro-war congressmen, and not to al Qaeda terrorists or sectarian militias in Iraq. “So, as General Petraeus testifies, we're planning to match his surge with one of our own–20,000 prayers for Congress to bring an end to this war.”
In his own commentary, Jim Wallis asserted that “while the Bush administration has frequently abused the language of religion to justify this disastrous war, a growing number of Christians from across the theological and political spectrum are coming together to oppose it.” Wallis noted that a number of congressmen have even promised to read some of Sojourners “prayers” into the Congressional Record. Unlike Bush’s political “abuse” of religious language, Wallis’ “prayers” to “end” the war in Iraq, directed not at God but at members of Congress, are of course completely spiritual in nature.
According to Wallis, until his “prayers” to Congress are answered in the right way, “every week more Americans will die, along with an untold number of Iraqis.” Who is killing Americans in Iraq? And who is responsible for most of the killing of Iraqis? Wallis never mentions the other combatants in Iraq. The uninformed reader, if relying exclusively upon Wallis’ commentaries, would assume that the U.S. military is mindlessly killing Iraqi civilians, and each other, in Iraq. When the U.S. military leaves, all the killing will stop!
But Wallis grimly surmised that “there is no end to the killing in sight with President Bush's intransigence and Gen. Petraeus' promises.” Bush and Petraeus are therefore the chief architects of killing in Iraq. Wallis further warned that after Petraeus’ testimony on Capitol Hill, “it's clear that the next war is already being prepared -- a war with Iran. A state of permanent warfare is now the U.S. strategy for defeating terrorism, which will only make it worse.”
Even more grimly, Wallis intoned, “There is no honor in a war that was fought on false pretenses, that sends young Americans on hopeless missions only to die, that slaughters the innocents in even greater numbers and doesn't even bother to count the dead, and learns nothing from its mistake of relying on military solutions instead of political ones.”
But Wallis does not seem hopeful even about his own prayers. “We probably won't end this strategy of destruction and defeat until fathers (like me) and mothers decide that their sons and daughters won't participate in it anymore,” Wallis wrote. “So last night, I talked to my 9- and 4-year-old sons and told them I never want them to fight in America's misbegotten wars.”
In contrast to Wallis’ political email campaign to Congress disguised as “prayers,” a genuinely prophetic approach would more trustingly ask that God’s will be done in Iraq.
However relished by the Religious Left, a humiliating defeat for the U.S. in Iraq is not likely to serve any godly purpose for the Iraqi or American people.
Wouldn’t simply praying for peace and a decent government in Iraq be appropriate? Such prayers might be more suitably directed to God, and not to the U.S. Congress.
posted on September 16, 2007 11:16:27 AM new
What the right/neocons pray for:
Please god, please keep wars going,
they help the rich get richer,
they cause so much suffering and if it's not me that's suffering then it's a good thing.
War, if it doesn't affect me physically, is a wonderful thing.... rapes, murders, mutilations, death, we love it all and wish it to continue.
Please help grind Americans into poverty by giving huge tax breaks to the rich and shipping jobs overseas.
Please make it as hard as possible for anyone who isn't the same color as I am to grow and prosper.
Please make everyone have as little sex as I have which is none and it makes me hate people who have any kind of sex.........
LOLOLLLLLL sorry, on that last one I started laughing too hard.....
It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.
Sunday morning came – next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams – visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation – "God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest! Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!"
Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory –
An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued with his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, "Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!"
The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside – which the startled minister did – and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:
"I come from the Throne – bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. "He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import – that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of – except he pause and think.
"God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two – one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this – keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.
"You have heard your servant's prayer – the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it – that part which the pastor – and also you in your hearts – fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory – must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!
"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle – be Thou near them! With them – in spirit – we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it – for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
(After a pause.) "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! – The messenger of the Most High waits!"
It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.
posted on September 16, 2007 12:49:42 PM new
Exactly right, Mingo. He described himself as a liberal. Why should his religion or lack thereof make any difference to Linda?
"There is nothing. There is no God and no universe, there is only empty space, and in it a lost and homeless and wandering and companionless and indestructible Thought. And I am that thought. And God, and the Universe, and Time, and Life, and Death, and Joy and Sorrow and Pain only a grotesque and brutal dream, evolved from the frantic imagination of that same Thought."
posted on September 16, 2007 01:31:37 PM new
I am tolerant of all personal religious choice, Linda. Unlike you, I would never try to disparage someone's character by denigrating their religious choice or making fun of their prayers. I've known good people representative of many religious denominations including a few good muslims in my neighborhood.
Havings said that, I also know that religious organizations can become intrusive with agendas that are not in the best interest of all people.
posted on September 16, 2007 01:47:02 PM new
Helen there has NEVER been a point in WORLD history where ANY 'agenda' has been in the interest of ALL people.
Try and come back down to earth.....you've gone into your 'never has happened, never going to happen but still hoping for a liberal utopia'....
Every NATION has an agenda, each political party has an agenda, business' have agendas, people ALL have agendas.....even your, helen. Sadly even yours.
And don't EVEN try to pretend you've been tolerant of Christians. LOL Way too many threads where you've posted your anti-Christian HATEFUL comments. So I'm not buying into your pretend game of how tolerant you are. You're about as 'tolerant' of Christians as roadsmith is of Mormons....NOT AT ALL.
posted on September 18, 2007 09:12:22 PM new
Linda, did you GET what Twain was saying?! I don't think so.
His whole point is that those who pray for victory in war are really asking for all the ugly stuff that comes along with it. From our easy chairs, by our fires.
_____________________
There is more to life than increasing its speed. --Mahatma Gandhi
posted on September 19, 2007 04:19:52 PM new
First of all, roadsmith, I have NO DOUBT that Mark Twain wasn't speaking about the US being at war with terrorists. LOL That I'm aware this wasn't an issue of 'his day'.
I'm glad Americans are still FREE to pray for what they want to pray for and the liberals, like yourself, won't be telling us what's allowed and not allowed in OUR prayers.
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"While the democratic party complains about everything THIS President does to protect our Nation": "What would a Democrat president have done at that point?"
"Apparently, the answer is: Sit back and wait for the next terrorist attack."
