The new approach effectively removes faith-based organizations from any involvement in providing contraceptive coverage or even telling employees how to find such coverage. It also maintains Obama’s pledge to ensure that almost all women with health insurance will not have to pay for it.
“These religious institutions will not have to offer it [contraception coverage] to their employees and do not have to pay for it,” said a senior administration official about an hour before the president was to make the official announcement, which was expected at 12:15 pm.
Initial indications were that, against all odds, the administration may have found a solution that satisfies both sides in a debate that seemed destined to dog the president throughout the campaign season and to wind up alienating either women or Catholic voters – both key demographics in his bid for reelection.
Religious leaders like Sr. Carol Keehan, head the Catholic Health Association – the umbrella group for more than 600 Catholic hospitals and a key player in the health care debate – said Friday she is “very pleased with the White House announcement that a resolution has been reached that protects the religious liberty and conscience rights of Catholic institutions.”
Keehan was a key supporter of the president’s health care reform law — going against the wishes of the U.S. hierarchy — but she voiced strong criticism of the initial contraception regulations.
At the same time, Friday’s decision was also welcomed by Cecile Richards, head of Planned Parenthood, who had been working hard with pro-choice Democrats to keep the administration from providing any relief from the mandate to religious institutions.
“We believe the compliance mechanism does not compromise a woman’s ability to access these critical birth control benefits,” Richards said.
The solution proposed by the White House is surprising in that it is fairly straightforward and appears to effectively address most religious concerns, or at least blunt the harshest criticisms that Obama was trampling on religious freedom by forcing some faith-based organizations to subsidize something that runs counter to their beliefs.
The furor over the contraception mandate appeared to catch the White House off guard since Health & Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced the final regulations on Jan. 20, and did not broaden the exemption for religious groups as had been widely expected.
The administration struggled to frame the regulations as a way to ensure that women with health insurance would receive free birth control coverage – a position that is broadly popular among Americans, and especially women.
But religious leaders, chiefly the Catholic bishops and conservative evangelicals, were successful in framing the issue as one of religious freedom, not birth control, and they argued that the federal government was violating their conscience with the mandate.
These conservatives were also backed by numerous Catholic liberals and other supporters of the administration who felt that Obama had “thrown them under the bus,” as some put it, by not granting the broader religious exemption as they also wanted. In recent days it became clear that the administration had to do something, and quickly, and the solution announced Friday seemed to win back many of his allies.
“The unity of Catholic organizations in addressing this concern was a sign of its importance,” said Keehan.
But whether that unity will extend to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops was unclear.
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Given that birth control use is almost universal – even among Catholics – many wonder why the Obama administration could wind up retreating on its pledge.
Here are five reasons that may help explain the political dynamic the president is facing:
1. It’s about religious freedom, not birth control: U.S. Catholic bishops, who led the battle against the Health and Human Services Department mandate, know that they long ago lost their own flock on the contraception issue — 98 percent of Catholics use birth control, according to surveys. So they have carefully reframed the issue as a fight for religious freedom – an effort to keep the government from forcing the Catholic Church and other religious groups to subsidize something that goes against their teachings. That makes it a violation of conscience, a sacred principle that transcends any specific tenet of faith.
That argument also lends itself to the kind of heated rhetoric that plays well in today’s supercharged political atmosphere. For example, bishops and their allies are accusing the president of “anti-Catholicism” and worse: “The Obama administration has just told the Catholics of the United States, ‘To hell with you!’ ” Pittsburgh Bishop David Zubik said after the HHS regulations were announced.
The bishops don’t have as much credibility with the laity as they used to, thanks to the clergy sex abuse scandal, among other things. But Catholics are still a potent tribe, and if outsiders are seen as attacking the church, Catholics can get defensive – and they can get even.
2. Obama has lost even the support of his liberal Catholic allies: Case in point: the HHS mandate has been opposed by liberal and centrist Catholics who have supported the administration on a range of other issues — including the Catholic Health Association and the NETWORK social justice lobby — and even went to bat to help pass health care reform despite threats from the bishops.
The president “utterly botched” the religious exemptions issue, wrote Washington Post columnist and liberal Catholic E.J. Dionne, and “Obama threw his progressive Catholic allies under the bus.”
“J’accuse!” Michael Sean Winters, a columnist for the liberal National Catholic Reporter, wrote in a florid column that channeled Émile Zola’s famous 1898 letter accusing the French government of anti-Semitism in the Dreyfus affair. “The issue of conscience protections is so foundational, I do not see how I ever could, in good conscience, vote for this man again.”
3. It’s not just Catholics: Even though evangelicals and other conservative Protestants generally don’t have religious objections to contraception, they do have a big problem with “big government” and with perceived infringements on religious freedom. Evangelicals – both their leaders and their troops – have never been big Barack Obama supporters anyway, so they were happy to provide any electoral and rhetorical muscle the Catholic hierarchy could not muster.
“We do not exaggerate when we say that this is the greatest threat to religious freedom in our lifetime,” evangelical leaders Timothy George and Chuck Colson wrote in an open letter to their fellow believers on Wednesday (Feb. 8). George and Colson compared the administration mandates to policies enacted in Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler.
4. It gives Republicans a potent campaign wedge issue: Mitt Romney wasted no time in accusing Obama of launching an “assault on religion” by way of the contraception mandate, and he declared that his first act as president would be to overturn the HHS regulations. “Remarkably, under this president’s administration, there is an assault on religion, an assault on the conviction and the religious beliefs of members of our society,” Romney said.
Romney’s rivals, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, were not to be outdone, and ramped up their rhetoric against Obama – while also noting that Romney had accepted similar policies while he was governor of Massachusetts.
In short, this is a political fight that the White House neither wants nor needs in an already tough re-election campaign.
5. Obama needs the Catholic vote: In particular, he needs the support of white Catholics, which is the core of this large swing vote (nearly one-quarter of the electorate). They are concentrated in crucial battleground states like Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and while Obama won the overall Catholic vote 54 percent to 46 percent in 2008, he lost the white Catholic vote, 47 percent to 53 percent.
“To the extent Catholic voters think of this as a religious liberty issue, it does have the potential to pull Catholic voters toward Republicans or away from Democrats,” John Green, an expert on religious voting patterns and director of the University of Akron’s Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics, told Bloomberg Businessweek.
A poll on the contraception mandate released Tuesday by the Public Religion Research Institute showed Catholics overall tended to support free contraceptive coverage, but white Catholics were evenly split on the issue. The Obama campaign can’t afford to sacrifice any of those votes, or risk watching the issue grow as a political liability when the election season heats up.
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Cardinal William J. Levada, a former archbishop of San Francisco who now heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with jurisdiction over abuse cases, stopped short, however, of requiring bishops to report abuse cases to prosecutors or police.
Speaking to a Vatican-sponsored conference on the church’s response to the scandal at Rome’s Gregorian University, Levada admitted that the church’s relations with civil authorities “may be different from one nation to another,” but stressed that this must not affect the basic principle of cooperation.
He also urged bishops to be “more proactive” in their response to the crisis, rather than wait for the scandal to erupt in the media.
Last May, the Vatican gave all bishops conferences around the world one year to draft voluntary “guidelines” on preventing abuse, caring for victims, disciplining abusive priests, and reporting suspected abuse to local police.
An estimated 4,000 cases of sexual abuse by clergy have been reported to Levada’s Vatican department during the last 10 years, he said.
Levada also highlighted the importance of listening to victims’ grievances, accompanying them “on the often long path of healing,” and encouraging them to follow the example of Pope Benedict XVI in meeting with victims.
In a message sent to the conference participants, Benedict wrote that victims healing must be of “paramount concern” for the church. The Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests dismissed the conference as “window dressing” that will not result in real reform.
]]>Several Baptist leaders said Luter becomes the prohibitive favorite for the post, to be filled in a potentially historic election at the Southern Baptists’ annual meeting here in June.
SBC Today, a Baptist-focused news website, carried the announcement on Wednesday (Feb. 1). Youth pastor Fred “Chip” Luter III separately confirmed Luter’s announcement to his church on Sunday.
Luter appears to be the first candidate to declare for the post, which will become vacant this summer when the Rev. Bryant Wright of Marietta, Ga., finishes his second one-year term.
Many began openly promoting Luter for the top job last summer, moments after he was elected the convention’s first African-American first vice president.
“If he runs, he’ll get elected overwhelmingly. He may be unopposed,” said Daniel Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C.
No other candidates have announced so far. Akin said other potential candidates were judging their chances on whether Luter decided to run.
“I’d be very surprised if there were any other substantial candidates,” said Russell Moore of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.
The Southern Baptist president has no authority over the denomination’s 51,000 autonomous churches and missions, but the president exerts influence by appointing the most important committees in Baptist organizational life. The denomination’s turn toward theological conservatism in the 1980s was triggered by the election of a succession of conservative presidents.
Akin, Moore and others say they are eager to elect Luter, both for his leadership gifts and to demonstrate Southern Baptist acceptance of the changing face of their work.
Luter is widely known around the convention, having preached in hundreds of pulpits.
Moreover, supporters said he is widely admired as a pastor in his own right. Luter built Franklin Avenue Baptist Church into a major success, then led his congregation in rebuilding after it was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.
Akin said several Baptist congregations around the country tried to recruit Luter as a pastor or co-pastor, believing he might be available after Katrina. “He was like Peyton Manning as a free agent.”
Akin said Luter’s stature grew in his decision to remain in New Orleans. “You have to have unbelievable respect for a man who made that kind of commitment,” Akin said. “My God, look at what he did.”
Growth in traditional white congregations in the 16-million-member Southern Baptist Convention has plateaued. In recent years the denomination has actively sought to reach out to nonwhites, typically Hispanics, African-Americans and Asians.
In 1990, 95 percent of Southern Baptist congregations were white; now the figure is 80 percent, said Scott McConnell of LifeWay Research, a church-related institute.
“Some critic said of us that the Southern Baptist Convention is as white as a tractor pull,” Moore said. “If that remains the case, the Southern Baptist Convention has no future. I think Fred Luter’s election will be pioneering; I pray it will not be an anomaly.”
Meeting in Phoenix last summer, Baptists adopted a plan requiring its organizations to nourish minority leadership for the future.
That’s a turnabout for a convention that was formed in 1845 by Southern slaveholding Baptists who broke away from anti-slavery Baptists in the North.
For much of the 20th century, Southern Baptist pastors and rank-and-file church members across the South supported white supremacy and resisted the civil rights movement.
But in 1995, the convention formally apo
logized for its past and committed itself to racial reconciliation.
“We need to live up to what we said in 1995,” said David Dockery, president of Union University in Jackson, Tenn. “This would be a positive step, but only a first one.”
Luter’s church was a once a predominantly white Southern Baptist congregation dying on the vine after its neighborhood became increasingly black in the 1970s.
Luter, a black street-corner preacher with no previous pastoral experience, took over in 1986. The church kept its Southern Baptist affiliation while Luter built it into the predominantly black powerhouse it is today.
(Bruce Nolan writes for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans.)
“Living by the principle that we are our brother’s keeper. Caring for the poor and those in need,” Obama said before an audience of about 3,000 at the Washington Hilton. These values, he said, “they’re the ones that have defined my own faith journey.”
Specifically, Obama said, they translate to policies that support research to fight disease and support foreign aid. His faith, he continued, inspires him “to give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy.”
- At the National Prayer Breakfast today, President Obama said that his Christianity calls him to do the right thing by the poor. His comments were in response to recent statements made by presidential hopeful Mitt Romney. Romney was castigated for saying recently that he intends to focus on middle class Americans if he wins the presidency.
Romney has come under fire for telling CNN on Wednesday that “I’m not concerned about the very poor,” but is instead focused on the middle class. He later said his remarks were taken out of context, and promised to fix any holes in the safety net protecting the impoverished.
Romney, who made a fortune as the CEO of Bain Capital, is seeking to counter critics who portray him as a “vulture capitalist.” Recently he released his tax returns, which showed his income at nearly $21 million last year and that he paid a lower tax rate than most Americans.
The 60th annual prayer breakfast is a bipartisan event sponsored by members of Congress who meet weekly for prayer when Congress is in session.
Flanked by first lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, Obama talked about his largely secular upbringing, and “finding Christ when I wasn’t even looking for him so many years ago.”
Obama did not mention recent tensions between the White House and Catholic and evangelical leaders over new rules that will mandate nearly all religious institutions to offer coverage for contraception to their employees.
Late Wednesday, Celia Munoz, the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council and a former staffer for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, sought to clarify what she called “confusion” over the contraception mandate.
“The Obama administration is committed to both respecting religious beliefs and increasing access to important preventive services,” she wrote in a White House blog post. “And as we move forward, our strong partnerships with religious organizations will continue.”
Obama shared the dais with Christian author and humorist Eric Metaxas, who asked the audience to forsake “phony” religiosity and to recognize the humanity in their political foes.
“If you can see Jesus in your enemy, then you know you are seeing through God’s eyes and not your own,” Metaxas said.
]]>Once crowded with Christians, Cairo’s Coptic quarter where she lives with her husband, Mounir, and two children is now home to fewer than 50 Christian families.
“We know many Christians have left,” said Mounir Ramsis, speaking not only about this quarter but about all of Egypt. “But we love this country and will stay until death.”
The Arab Spring uprisings that toppled secular dictatorships have unleashed long-suppressed freedoms that have allowed Islamic parties to gain a share of political power they have been denied for decades. Their rise is creating near-panic among ancient Christian communities that dot the Muslim world and predate Islam by centuries.
Christians in the Middle East, such as those who practice Coptic Christianity like the person pictured, are wary of the revolutions taking place in the region because of increased intolerance to their beliefs.
In Libya, Christians are uneasy as the powerful head of the Tripoli Military Council, Abdul Hakim Belhaj, who once led an Islamic militia with links to al-Qaida, has said he plans to run for office in elections scheduled for April.
In Afghanistan, no new building permits have been issued for churches, and the last church open to the public was demolished over the summer. In Iraq, the Christian community has decreased by two-thirds since 2003 amid bombings of churches and assassinations of priests.
And Christians in Syria, where Muslims have risen up against President Bashar Assad, have been subjected to murder, rape and kidnappings in Damascus and rebellious towns, according to Christian rights groups, including Open Doors, which helps Christians facing persecution.
Many had hoped for better in an Arab movement that proponents said was about replacing tyrannies with democracies.
“The outlook is grim,” said John Eibner, CEO of the California-based human rights group Christian Solidarity International.
“If the current trajectory continues, it’s reasonable to think that within a generation these (Christian) communities will not look like functioning communities,” Eibner said. “They’ll look more like the once-flourishing Jewish communities” across the Arab world that are all but gone.
Nowhere is the irony more profound than in Egypt, where an estimated 8 million Christians live with more than 70 million Muslims.
Christians demonstrated alongside Muslims early last year to oust Hosni Mubarak. Before Mubarak’s overthrow, Christians had suffered from years of church burnings and murders at the hands of radical Muslims who want an Islamic state free of religious minorities. After the ouster, the military regime that has been running the country has refused to make any arrests in attacks on Christians.
Mina Bouls, 25, a Copt who fled to Philadelphia, recalls cowering with his mother in 1997 as a mob stoned the family home and chanted anti-Christian slogans. But the difference then was that Mubarak ordered the military to protect Christian communities and jailed extremists, Bouls said.
In October, Copts organized a protest in downtown Cairo over the authorities’ failure to investigate attacks, including the bombing of a church in Alexandria on New Year’s Day 2011 that killed 20 people. The military attacked the demonstrators and 17 Christians were run down and killed by military vehicles, according to Human Rights Watch.
Bouls wants to bring his family to the U.S. because he says he is petrified by the new society forming in Egypt. The first free elections in decades held in the past two months handed power not to moderates but to members of the Muslim Brotherhood and radical Salafi candidates, who combined took nearly 70 percent of seats.
“If people try to rule the country with the Quran, with Shariah law, that means they look to us as second-class people,” Bouls said.
Christianity has existed in Egypt since the second century. The Muslim Brotherhood, a political movement that seeks a nation run according to Quranic law, has said Egypt would respect the rights of religious minorities.
The Salafis, Muslim fundamentalists who want a complete application of Shariah law that generally denies equal rights to women and religious minorities, also say Copts are safe in Egypt.
“Even if there are Salafi leaders who proclaim Copts to be heretics, this does not mean that (the Copts) must be subjected to any religious or (legal) sanctions,” said Emad Abdel-Ghafour, head of the al-Nour party that won 25 percent so far in parliamentary elections.
Abanob Magdi lives near Egypt’s largest pyramid and says he is not optimistic about what lies ahead.
“I saw on TV the other day a Salafi saying that if they get in power, beaches will be divided for men and women and women will have to be veiled,” Magdi said as he walked through Coptic Cairo with friends.
Christians account for 4 percent of the people of the Middle East and North Africa. Despite being the birthplace of Christianity, the region now has the fewest number of Christians (13 million) and the smallest share of its population that is Christian of any other major geographic region, according to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
The future of minorities in the emerging democracies of the Middle East “is a huge issue most vividly seen in Egypt and the Copts,” said California Rep. Howard Berman, ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “It’s on our agenda as we figure out how to help these countries,” and their treatment of Christians and other minorities is a “red line” that will affect future aid.
(Oren Dorell and Sarah Lynch write for USA Today.)
]]>But perhaps the worst smear they could lob at an opponent would be to call him a “compassionate conservative.”
There’s no place for compassion in this race, which has featured debate audiences cheering the death penalty and booing the Golden Rule. Candidates have jostled to take the hardest line in opposing government-funded programs to help the poor, with Newt Gingrich calling Barack Obama a “food stamp president” and Rick Perry blasting “this big-government binge (that) began under the administration of George W. Bush.”
Just three years after Bush left the White House, compassionate conservatives are an endangered species. In the new Tea Party era, they’ve all but disappeared from Congress, and their philosophy is reviled within the GOP as big-government conservatism.
Is this just a case of the Republican Party wanting to distance itself from the Bush years — or is compassionate conservatism gone for good?
Bush was not the first person to use the phrase “compassionate conservative,” but his adoption of the label in the 2000 campaign made it instantly famous. Bush and his advisers sought to soften the GOP’s image, which had taken a beating during the years of Gingrich’s speakership and the Clinton impeachment. Bush’s faith-based initiative was the signature policy to grow out of his compassionate conservative philosophy.
In 2008, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee also ran for the GOP nomination as a compassionate conservative, refusing to apologize for supporting state tuition breaks for the children of illegal immigrants: “You don’t punish a child because a parent committed a crime.” Huckabee was fond of saying that he was a conservative, just not angry about it.
Like the Ecuadorian horned tree frog, a handful of compassionate conservatives can still be found, if you know where to look. Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., who was involved with faith-based initiatives before Bush ever heard about them, is one. And former Bush aide Michael Gerson continues to preach the gospel from his perch as a Washington Post columnist.
After the Iowa caucuses, both Gerson and New York Times columnist David Brooks hailed former Sen. Rick Santorum as the second coming of compassionate conservatism. And it’s true that in his victory speech in Iowa, Santorum sounded very much like a populist, arguing that Republicans need to offer more than tax cuts and balanced budgets to Americans who are struggling.
But when it comes to specifics, there aren’t many government policies — particularly domestic programs — that Santorum supports to help alleviate poverty. He cheered most of the harsh cuts in hunger and housing programs that House Republicans proposed this summer. Santorum, a devout Catholic, has said that he believes the U.S. Catholic bishops are wrong to back immigration reform, and he has confessed he is unfamiliar with the phrase “a preferential option for the poor,” which is an essential component of Catholic social teaching.
There is a meanness to the way many Republicans talk about the poor these days that was not en vogue during the Bush years. Unlike Huckabee, they are angry conservatives.
Gingrich spits out the words “food stamps” and implies they are gold coins showered on undeserving recipients. When debate moderator Juan Williams asked Gingrich whether his comments are “intended to belittle the poor and racial minorities,” he was roundly booed by the conservative audience in South Carolina.
The conservative Heritage Foundation released a report last September arguing that those living under the poverty line in the U.S. aren’t really poor because they have refrigerators and microwaves.
What happened to compassion? One answer is that it turned out to be expensive. Providing housing and food assistance, giving grants to charities that help low-income Americans, supporting job training programs — these all cost money. The federal deficit ballooned during the Bush administration, and though much of that came from funding the Iraq War and an expensive Medicare prescription drug benefit, Bush’s domestic faith-based programs and tripling of U.S. aid to Africa have been tagged with the blame.
In addition, the Tea Party movement has embraced what political writer Jill Lawrence calls “Darwinian conservatism.” You could also call it “Ayn Rand conservatism,” after the libertarian philosopher whose work many congressional Republicans praise. In 2010, Republican Senate candidates attacked programs such as Social Security, student loans and unemployment benefits, saying they made Americans lazy.
The debates in this election cycle have also encouraged the turn away from compassionate conservatism. Led by Gingrich, the candidates have played to audiences hungry for red meat. These party faithful lustily cheer attacks and boasts, and they boo any statement that carries a whiff of moderation.
Just before the South Carolina primary, a progressive Christian group called the American Values Network released an animated video, “Tea Party Jesus,” to mock the disconnect between popular conservative rhetoric and Gospel teachings. In a “Sermon on the Mall,” a cartoon Jesus stands flanked by GOP politicians and pundits as he declares, “Blessed are the mean in spirit … blessed are the pure in ideology.” It didn’t take long for a Tea Party site to promote the video instead of taking offense.
Tea Party activists might not have gotten the joke, but if the Republican Party rejects completely the idea of compassion for struggling Americans, it will be no laughing matter.
(Amy Sullivan is a writer and former senior editor at Time magazine who covers politics, religion and culture.)
]]>Though that sounds like something Archie Bunker would’ve said back in the day, it’s actually the kind of stuff Gingrich people are accusing Republican presidential candidate hopefuls Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich of saying on the campaign trail.
Gingrich was criticized for repeatedly calling President Barack Obama a “food stamp president” and for saying that he’d be happy to teach young black people in economically depressed areas how to have a work ethic, so that they wouldn’t have to grow up to be pimps or prostitutes.
Santorum was criticized for saying that he didn’t want “to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.”
Republican presidential hopefuls Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have been criticized for saying things that could be perceived as racist on the campaign trail.
Based on what they said, it’s understandable why people are accusing the two of racism and more than 40 leaders in the Catholic Church have told the two to chill out with the race baiting.
Either they are trying to appeal to a racist element in their party or they are ignorant of the facts.
Either way, as seasoned politicians these guys should know better. They should know that when they open their mouths, they shouldn’t be espousing empty rhetoric that relies heavily ill-founded stereotypes.
If Gingrich and Santorum did the research they would know that according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, one-third of the 223 million white people in the United States receive food stamps.
If you look at the raw data alone, more white people (about 74 million) receive food stamps than the total black population (38.9 million) of the United States.
I imagine that if they had been armed with this knowledge, they probably wouldn’t have let such racial diatribe come out of their mouths, and had they told the truth they would have ended up alienating their voter base.
As Christians, these guys should know better as well.
The heart of God is pretty clear throughout the Bible on discrimination (See James 2, Galatians 3:28, John 7:24, Romans 10:12) – it’s abhorrent to Him because all people were made in His image (Genesis) and He hates partiality (Leviticus 19:15, Malachi 2, Deuteronomy 16:19, Proverbs 24:23) . In the Bible, partiality is the term most often used for “bias.”
Because we are prone to bias, we have to constantly watch what we say.
In Matthew 15, the scribes and Pharisees confronted Jesus about his practice of eating and drinking with the ritually unclean–sinners.
To explain his position on the issue, Jesus called those around him to come near.
He said, He said to them, “Hear and understand: 11 Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man; but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.”
The Pharisees were enraged when they heard Jesus take on the matter and they left abruptly.
After the exchange, Jesus explained what he meant to his disciples: ”17 Do you not yet understand that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and is eliminated? 18 But those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile a man. 19 For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.”
I don’t know who is going to get the Republican nomination, but if either of these guys do, one of the questions I’ll be asking myself at the polls is, can I really trust a candidate who unabashedly repeats inaccurate information in an attempt to bolster himself, while never really trying to actually address or understand the needs of one group of people he seeks to govern?
Though Gingrich and Santorum claim they care about “right to life issues,” and the cause of Christ, it’s obvious that they aren’t really trying to love their brothers and sisters in Christ, and the fact that are publicly proclaiming racist stereotypes shows that they are biased. These are serious spiritual deficiencies of which they need to take care.
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I bet you politely but, authoritatively, close your door when the smiling Mormons come knocking. And, you’re probably deft at deflecting a hot Mormon trying to put those combo flirting-proselytizing moves on you. I’m also sure you’re not wearing those sacred Mormon undies on the sly, or reading their Book of Mormon in the closet.
However, in reality, you may be cozier with Mormonism than you’d want to disclose in your social and religious circles. Although, some of us may be so Mormon-esque, we might just as well wear an “I heart Joseph Smith but, Moroni makes me quiver all over” tee shirt to church.
I don’t want to dis Mormons here. Okay, maybe I do, just a bit; but, it’s not because they started it. An inescapable fact in the US is that Mormon bashing season is in full bloom. Not that sniping at Mormons ever goes out of style – but, with one of the rings of our political circus belonging to religion, it now has become a really big, stone hurling show.
It’s laughable how conservative Christianity and their bloodthirsty nemesis, the dinosaur media, unite in ganging up on candidates with R (for Republican) after their names and who also wear the required M (for Mormon) armband. Conversely, liberal Mormon politicians get a free pass from the media. Christians with conservative leanings may call the media hypocritical for this but; most of these Christo-cons only have a taste for eating their own, so they don’t bother biting at liberal Mormons.
God, in His comedic sovereignty, may not be laughing. However, He has instituted the funny hypocrite rule. The one that states something like: we should remove the circus tent pole from our own eye before throwing stone pies at others, or we may not see the lion about to pounce from the cage.
What is wrong with Mormons is what is wrong with the rest of us.
One of the main reasons Christians are unhinged by Mormon theology is they feel Mormons don’t get Jesus; they don’t have the proper relationship with Him and they believe many falsehoods about who He is.
The Latter Day Saints (LDS) officially list 13 fundamentals of Mormonism; as I was reading through them, I was hit hard by the paradox of one of their points being identical to what several of their most outspoken, mainstream, detractors erroneously believe about salvation.
The LDS website’s list of fundamentals states:
Article 3: “We believe that through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel.”
If that statement doesn’t make you almost soil your undies, I fear you may already have one leg in the sacred undergarment and you’re not far from reaching for the Moroni tee. Maybe, your pastor has been teaching you straight from the Mormon dope after his secret graduation from Brigham Young?
Perhaps most Christians could readily identify the blunder in LDS Article 3. The error is stating humanity may be saved by our obedience. However, I’m always surprised by Christians, across the denominational spectrum, who fall victim to the same stank wedgie of teaching on the somethings we must do to seal the salvation deal.
Some Christians insist we must keep this law, not that law to be saved – while others assert it’s keeping all laws that does the trick. Some claim belonging to only the right denomination is the ticket, while others say no, it’s believing and being baptized in only the correct manner. Others declare repentance is the key to heaven, while others add that bearing the fruit of repentance is what unlocks the pearly gates. Some state that non-tithers haven’t purchased the right ticket, while others insist the full fare to Paradise is producing enough good works. Exhaustingly, some Christians believe that to be saved you must do all the above while enduring to the end.
I’ve heard all these requirements for salvation – inadvertently – asserted at my own church. Again, what is wrong with Mormons is what is wrong with the rest of us.
When we add something to Jesus, as a requirement for salvation, we’ve undercut the completeness of His sacrifice and discounted the supremacy of His righteousness. We are saved because Jesus paid the full price for our sins – His righteousness justifies us to God. Whatever we do, we cannot add anything to what Jesus has already done.
Mormons don’t hold a monopoly on not getting Jesus. So, is it Christian to relish a good game of Kick the Mormon while we’re hands off all others sporting a grace-deficient theology? All are in need of being, and can be, evangelized.
There are scholars within the LDS who are critically examining their doctrines. However, their detractors, who are fawning for the media spotlight to gain influence in religious and political arenas, are not helping them toward the truth.
Rather than, scolding their idiosyncrasies that we think are way out in the Moroni-sphere, Christians could be clearly pointing them to the Jesus, who does it all. We could continue to engage in name-calling and endlessly bash on how bogus the Book of Mormon is but, it’s the knowing of the fullness of Jesus that would blast down all their truth barriers. Preaching the sufficiency of Jesus is always more powerful than criticizing.
Mormons, and all Christian pushers of salvation by works, need to replace their “almost savior”, their “maybe in the future, if I’m good enough savior” with The Victorious Savior. Unleash the full power of the Grace message on your friends, enemies, and Mormons too.
Whether your skivvies are holy or just holey, we all put them on one leg at a time. Mainstream Christians have commonalities with Mormons – sometimes too much in common. Don’t be a Mormon or Mormon-like; a Christian is one who knows Jesus does it all!
]]>By the time she left for another job in 1999, she was vested in the hospital’s federally insured pension program — confident her earned pension of $20,000 or more a year would be there for her when she eventually retired.
That confidence was shattered last November when Fritz and 4,700 others vested in St. Peter’s pension system received letters from the hospital saying it had changed its pension plan.
Because of its religious affiliation, St. Peter’s was able to switch to a “church plan,” effectively exempting it from the safeguards of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), the 1974 federal law that governs pension plans.
One of the ERISA safeguards is the requirement that companies pay insurance premiums on employee pensions — essentially insuring that the money will be there.
St. Peter’s has verbally promised it would continue to pay for insurance, but without federal safeguards or written guarantees, employees are nervous that
without pension insurance, if St. Peter’s goes under, their pensions will likely disappear with it.
“I don’t think they have any intention of protecting us,” said Fritz, 63, who now works at another hospital. “I’m very afraid for all of us.”
Tens of thousands of current and former employees at scores of religiously affiliated institutions across the country face the same fear, as nonprofits increasingly seek refuge in “church” pension plans to escape onerous financial obligations, according to Eric Loi, an attorney at the Washington-based Pension Rights Center.
When companies with traditional plans fail, he said, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. provides nearly all payments to which retirees are entitled, but there is a maximum monthly ceiling. While there are limits on the monthly payments to retirees, the corporation pays 85 to 90 percent of all benefits due to retirees, Loi said.
St. Peter’s employees and retirees are not the first to feel blindsided by a sudden change in pension plans. According to Loi, a switch in 2004 at the now closed Hospital Center in Orange, N.J., sparked litigation that led to changes at the Internal Revenue Service.
For more than 20 years, the Hospital Center paid insurance for its pension plan. But in 1998, when it was taken over by Cathedral Health Service, the pension plan was switched to a “church plan,” Loi said.
At the time, federal regulations did not require institutions to inform employees of a switch; the change was not made known until it came out at a 2003 staff meeting about the hospital’s dire financial problems, Loi and others said.
Mary Rich, a former vice president of patient services at the hospital, vividly remembers a nurse at the meeting asking if the pension was protected.
“There was a lot of shuffling of feet and saying, ‘We’ll have to get back to you,’ and mention of a church plan,” said Rich, who now works in the health care field in southern New Jersey.
When the hospital closed in 2004, employees discovered the pension was both underfunded and uninsured, Loi said. In 2007, the Pension Rights Center helped former Hospital Center employees file suit against, among others, the hospital, the Archdiocese of Newark, and the IRS for allowing the hospital pension to become a church plan.
Loi estimates there is only enough money in the fund to pay former employees for three to five years.
In response, the IRS initiated a nationwide moratorium on nonprofit and religiously affiliated institutions declaring their pension programs to be “church plans.”
But that moratorium was lifted in September when the IRS declared a nonprofit company or agency simply needed to notify all pension plan participants that it was seeking a church plan designation, Loi said.
St. Peter’s current and former employees received their notification last November.
St. Peter’s spokesman, Phil Hartman, said there is no reason for employees to be concerned. He said the hospital’s pension system is a church plan and all safeguards are in place, and the hospital is following nearly every ERISA regulation, including providing insurance.
“We continue to follow those guidelines,” he said. “We are looking for ways to insure above and beyond the protections of (the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.)”
Employees at other agencies across the country received notices late last year as well, informing them of pension system changes. Workers at some of these agencies are fighting the switch. In fact, said Loi, Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington, D.C., withdrew its plan after protests from its employees.
Last year, a Minnesota judge tossed out most of a lawsuit filed by retirees of a Lutheran publishing house, Augsburg Fortress, after it terminated its pension plan on Dec. 31, 2009 when it ran out of money.
The judge ruled that Augsburg Fortress’ plan was a “church plan” and not subject to ERISA guidelines on minimum funding; retirees sued to get the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to honor the pension promises.
Augsburg Fortress pensioners are now trying to reclaim the $40 million they say they are owed under state breach-of-contract laws.
(Tom Haydon writes for The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J. Amy Nutt and Seth Augenstein of The Star-Ledger, and G. Jeffrey MacDonald of Religion News Service, contributed to this story.)
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