Last in a series. Now mind you, I am not trying to
persecute Christians, many of them believe everyone is right now, but I am
pursuing with journalistic vigor and from personal background something that I
feel grabs people much more passionately than economics and most policy in the
political arena. If you thought
environmentalists were conducting a near jihad against corporations and vice
versa, this is more powerful in its ability to compel solidarity, like Keith
was suggesting about the close blood kinship of leaders in Saddam's regime.
Of course, religious moral values should be
a foundation of a civil society, a building block. I'm just opposed to living in a
theocracy. My image of the wall
between church and state is not like the one being constructed in Israel
today, huge concrete blocks topped by barbed wire, but more like Jefferson's
brick serpentine wall, strong, functional and enhancing the landscape.
From a news portal called
www.christianheadlines.com
I noticed a story at www.agapepress.com about
a FLA attorney preparing Xns for cultural wars, and this is what
appeared:
Christian
Attorney: Conference Equips Believers for Culture
War
By
Allie Martin, October 24, 2003
FORT LAUDERDALE, FL
(AgapePress) - A Florida attorney who specializes in defending the civil
liberties of Christians says a two-day conference taking place in that state
will help believers defend their constitutional rights.
For the next two
days, thousands of Christians from around the country will attend
the "Reclaiming America for
Christ"
conference at Coral
Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale. They will hear from a host of
speakers involved in Christian activism on areas such as the pro-life
movement, civil rights for believers, and the true homosexual
agenda. ?????
...The Christian
attorney is convinced the conference can make a big difference for those
willing to get involved in the culture war. "I think it equips folks to go back
home because it gives them information about what's happening in their area,"
he says. "Even though many of the people are well aware of what's happening in
America, they may not be fully aware of all the landscape. But more
importantly, they become additionally aware of what they can do to impact
their communities."
The
conference wraps up on Saturday evening. Among the featured speakers are Dr.
D. James Kennedy, Dr. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention,
and
Alabama
Chief Justice Roy Moore. http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/10/242003e.asp
If you are interested in checking on a good
site and broadcast, try Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, an ecumenical
site. It's where I started
yesterday, exploring in cyberspace, searching for the link to the broadcast's
story about the Florida medical intervention. A Loyola Marymount Univ. ethicist made
this simple but clear
statement:
ABERNETHY: So in such a case, what are
the ethical issues, the major ones?
Dr. WALTER: "The major ones would be
the value of human life. Some people want to grant an absolute value to life
so that there is an absolute obligation to preserve that life. I think a number of people in society consider life
a very fundamental value, but recognize that it is a relative good and,
therefore, we have not absolute obligations to preserve
it. "
By
the way, here's an editorial from the Ft Worth Star Tribune, blasting Jeb
Bush's intervention in the Florida case, which also sees this as political
pandering. And we are just
getting warmed up.
Medical Meddling: FLorida's Right to
Die Fiasco.
As
a practicing Catholic, no one doubts Gov. Bush's personal religious beliefs,
but this is not expected to withstand judicial review, so the effort by the
Florida GOP is vote insurance.
Who's being manipulated the most?
The pro-life absolutists or the family in this case? What are the affects after the
headlines disappear?
At R & E N, I also learned about a
secret biological testing program during the Cold War on drafted Seventh Day
Adventists, who are pacifists, called Whitecoats; and how Muslims coordinate
the beginning each year of Ramadan.
See http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/. - KWC
