UPDATE Oct. 8,2009 2:39 PM on Rifqa Bary (Fatima) case:she thinks she's Esther returned to spread God's Truth. Poor deluded kid. She might grow out of this if Lou Engle of The Call & Atlas Shrugs & others would stop mentally abusing her. See: Sunday, September 27, 2009
Transcript of Rifqa Bary Testimony 09-24-09 Mirele's Miscellany Blog.com
Sept. 17, 2009
Fathima Rifqa Bary at Mirele's Miscellany.blogspot .com/
I've been meaning to write about the Fathima Rifqa Bary case for the past month, but the case brings up a lot of emotions in me. That's because I did pretty much the same thing to my parents back in 1977. Thing is, I didn't run away to another state, I became a member of an obscure, very strict, Pentecostal sect. I also became a right royal pain in the ass to my family.
...I know of only one group whose members make a practice of standing outside of abortion clinics with duct tape across their mouths, and that would be Lou Engle's TheCall, which is currently joined at the hip with the International House of Prayer located in Kansas City, Missouri.
...And if you think that I'm crazy, let's look a bit at the writings of her mentor, the guy who baptized her into Christianity, Brian Michael Williams, aged 23:
Williams prays with people by "laying my hands on the [computer] monitor and prophesying," Williams wrote. He calls Planned Parenthood's founder a racist Nazi, does not believe in evolution, speaks in tongues and criticizes mainstream Christians as following a "demonic doctrine" for being spiritually lethargic and failing to evangelize.
Williams baptized Rifqa in a creek near her home in June, he said, and helped her run away — unwittingly, he insists — by driving her to the Greyhound bus station in downtown Columbus.
To Rifqa's father, Williams is a Christian extremist who turned Rifqa against her family and put lies in her head.
First a word from the late Rev. Jerry Falwell unrepentant about his 9/11 remarks yet he got away with it and Bill Ayers gets crucified in the media.
God's Warriors preview with Jerry Falwell
Above quote from:The European Dream Of Progress And Enlightenment Lewis, Hackett 1992
"To understand the natural world and humankind's place in it solely on the basis of reason and without turning to religious belief was the goal of the wide-ranging intellectual movement called the Enlightenment. The movement claimed the allegiance of a majority of thinkers during the 17th and 18th centuries, a period that Thomas Paine called the Age of Reason. At its heart it became a conflict between religion and the inquiring mind that wanted to know and understand through reason based on evidence and proof."
" A Baptist would rise at midnight to plead for absolute religious liberty," he declared " for his Catholic neighbor,(From : Thy Kingdom Come by Randall Balmer pp. 52-53)
and for his Jewish neighbor, and for everybody else."
In order to justify their radical tack to the right, Baptists drew on an ideology called Reconstructionism as a way of rationalizing the abandonment of Baptist principles Reconstructionism, also called "theonomy" or "dominion theology," is a social ethic popular among the leaders of the religious right that advocates restructuring civil society according to the laws contained in the Hebrew Bible. Devised in the early 1960s by Rousas John Rushdoony, Reconstructionism seeks to rewrite civil and criminal codes to conform to Mosaic and Levitical laws in the Old Testament...Above Quote by Randall Balmer from Thy Kingdom Come
With the rise of the Religious Right and borrowing from Reconstructionist writings a radical shift to the right took place amongst a large number of Evangelicals:
Gary North, who was Rushdoony's estranged son-in-law and who remains one of the movement's most militant spokesmen, has insisted that "the perfect love of God necessarily involves the perfect hatred of God's enemies." Rushdoony himself openly resented the fact that "in the name of toleration, the believer is asked to associate on a common level of total acceptance with the atheist, the pervert,the criminal, and the adherents of other religions."
Religious Right leaders such as Scarborough; Pat Robertson; Jerry Falwell: founder of Moral Majority: Richard Land, head of the Southern baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission; and Randall Terry, the radical anti-abortionist and founder of Operation Rescue-all of whom claim to be Baptists-have been especially infatuated with Rushdoony's ideas. They have seized on such statements as "regenerate man works to re-establish the law order of God among men, to establish church,state,and society in terms of the word of God, and to manifest the kingdom of God in every meaning."
Ralph Reed's Christian Coalition 1989
Direct Mailings Stealth politics
Grass Roots Positive Christian Agenda Joe Fuiten(pastor of Mega Church
The Secular agenda is foreign to American values
Pat Roberson Rick Scarborough
Gods Warriors Christians SIX
The Religious Right Agenda To Fundamentally Transform America
"God's Warriors": The Right's "Supreme Vision"
To Take Back The Courts-Liberty University Law School
Liberty Council
CNN's Christiane Amanpour visited Liberty University where she learned that, though greatly pleased with the confirmation of Justices Roberts and Alito, they are training the "next generation of pit bulls" to "keep fighting at the Supreme Court until we have a new day. We never ever, ever give up."
Anyway the Religious Right and the political right in America are upset with the Obama administration because they believe Obama wants to fundamentally transform America in ways they don't agree with. It is questionable whether or not Obama really intends such a "fundamental transformation" of America's government or society. These anti-Democratic Uberconservatives also accuse liberals, progressive, community activists of bringing about radical change by a process of incrementelism.
There is something disingenuous about this charge of incrementalism and using stealth tactics since if one pays attention to what the Religious Right wants to achieve and have been working for over the last 30 years or so in fact amounts to a " fundamental transformation" of contemporary America by means of incrementalism ie one school board, one county, one town one issue at a time ie trying to outlaw all abortions, banning books , banning scientific facts which they believe are in conflict with their religious beliefs etc..
The leaders and supporters and "Fellow Travelers" of the Religious Right would disagree arguing that they want to restore America to what it was before these radical changes which have taken place in the past 50 years.These changes they believe are in direct opposition to what they consider to be traditional values.
They therefore characterize these changes from the advancements made by the Civil Rights Movements and by Feminists and other liberal causes such as tolerance, diversity, pluralism or an education system unhampered by religious indoctrination or an over-zealous uncritical super-patriotism etc. as unAmerican and anti-Christian. But their memory and their view of American history is faulty. Though it is sometimes difficult to discern if they just don't know any better or are just knowingly recreating history to fit their romanticized & their conspiratorial views of American history and to fit the agenda they are striving to achieve. Again we come back to this notion of "The Noble Lie" that is do they believe that the ends justify the means so lying to create a Theocracy or to create God's Kingdom on earth or as a way to hasten the Apocalypse or the Second Coming etc.
Southern Baptist Convention historically supported the separation of Church and State but this had drastically changed by the year 2000. Traditionally the Baptists idea of religious freedom was that each Christian is free from the interference of the government. Former president Jimmy Carter as a Baptist and as a born again Christian left the convention in 2000 because the Convention adopted a creed which all had to agree with and then a new doctrine was added in which women were no longer to play a major role in the Church .
Later SBC would also add a doctrine arguing emphatically that the only way to salvation was through Jesus and everybody else was damned and that there was no reason therefore to be tolerant or respectful of other Non-Christian religions since these were the instruments the Devil/Satan used to seduce humankind away from Jesus.
God's Warriors-Christians (3-10)
Just recently read Randall Balmer's book on the Religious Right entitled Thy Kingdom Come:How The Religious Right Distorts The Faith And Threatens America (2006) and was thoroughly impressed that he is able to cover a great deal of ground on a difficult and complex subject . His book is one of the best I have read on the subject.Part of what helped him with the topic is that Balmer is an historian on American Religion but is also a liberal evangelical who's voices we rarely get to hear over the din of the Radical Religious Right. So I recommend this book which is a fairly easy read. For one thing he doesn't get bogged down in theological, doctrinal issues and debates which are often difficult and confusing for the non-specialist.
As Randall Balmer argues in his book Baptists historically supported the separation of Church and State.The Baptists also did not adhere to a strict doctrine Biblical literal inerrancy or that no part of the Bible contradicted any other part. The Bible further was interpreted based upon the teachings of Jesus so that not all that was contained in the Old Testament was to have the force of law. This was part of Jesus' new covenant with humankind. And as Baptist each believer depended to some extent on what his conscience told him to be true. In the social and political realm Baptists had been active promoting racial equality and had fought against racial segregation and for equal rights of women and for minorities and tolerance towards those of other religions .
Such ideas of tolerance or understanding or respect for the rights of others today; including equal rights for women, homosexuals, minorities or those of different faiths or of no faith, according to The Religious Right is characterized as blasphemy & apostasy & heresy. The leaders of the Religious Right seem to have forgotten the lessons that came out of the Reformation and the Enlightenment era which followed which was that there should be religious freedom for all not just Catholics or Lutherans or Calvinists because the ongoing infighting as they say:that way leads to madness and never ending oppression and blood shed.But this transition occurred during the age of Enlightenment /Age of Reason which is a period these conservatives see as pernicious in that it led to the evils of Modernity.
Instead the Religious Right have painted for themselves some overly romanticized sentimentalized view of the early years of the Protestant Reformation as Protestants fought Catholics and then with the schisms in the Protestant movement one denomination fought against another. But it is also that the early colonists we are told came to America seeking religious freedom which in some parts of the colonies was achieved while in other parts a particular religious groups decided to enforce their religious beliefs on others.
By the time of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution it was agreed by the majority of the Founding Fathers that there should be at least in principle religious freedom and freedom of conscience . The Religious Right rejects any such reading of American history and so insist that America must become in their view a Christian Nation.
But which Christian denomination is the government to adhere to Protestantism, Catholicism, Mormonism, Lutheran, Calvinist, Presbyterian, Baptist, Pentecostal or are all to be accepted while disenfranchising those of no faith and those of non-Christian religions which the Evangelical Fundamentalist characterize as being the insidious work of the Devil.
Shall all these apostates , heretics and infidels be thrown to the lions or simply slaughtered as the Early Christian Church of the Romans did to all those who were referred to as Pagans. The Roman Christians slaughtered in God's name hundreds of thousands of non-Christians; destroyed their Temples and altars and their Holy writings. The fact is as I have mentioned before the Roman Christians put to death far more Pagans than they had Christians when the Pagan Romans ruled. During those first three centuries; and this upsets Christians because it diminishes their early role; the Romans for the most part didn't care one way or another about these Christians whom they considered just another annoying Jewish cult like the Zealots and others.
The one major attack on Christians was by Nero who for convenience blamed the Christians of the City of Rome. Outside the city of Rome there does not seem to be historical evidence of an ongoing mass slaughter of Christians as depicted in various Hollywood movies or quasi-fictional novels about the era.But all religions great or small create their own mythological revisionist history. So Christians have invented a whole host of dubious martyrs and Saints many of whom their very existence is in doubt. Many of them appear to be more mythological than real.
Randall Balmer in his book points out how during the 18th and 19th century American Evangelicals were often at the forefront of various humanitarian causes such the abolition of slavery ending child labor or improving the rights of women and later in the 1950-1960 the Civil Rights Movement but now and over the last thirty years they have become reactionary and intolerant fighting to deny rights to other American of whom they don't approve and they have taken on at times a racist tone and seem hell-bent on making America into some form of theocracy.
As Randall Balmer illustrates what Baptists once stood for :
...One of the most influential leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention George Washington Truett who in 1920 proclaimed that" the natural and fundamental and indefeasible right of every human being to worship God or not, according to the dictates of his conscience, and, as long as he does not infringe upon the rights of others ,he is to be held accountable alone for all religious beliefs and practices." This principle extends beyond mere toleration of others and their beliefs to absolute liberty of conscience:"Toleration is a concession , while liberty is a right...Religion ,Truett insisted, should be voluntary. "It is the consistent and insistent contention of our Baptist people, always and everywhere, that religion must be forever voluntary and uncoerced, and that it is not the prerogative of any power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, to compel men to conform to any religious creed or form of worship..." According to Truett, Baptists recognized that enjoying religious liberty for themselves entailed defending it for others .
" A Baptist would rise at midnight to plead for absolute religious liberty," he declared " for his Catholic neighbor,
and for his Jewish neighbor, and for everybody else."
(Thy Kingdom Come pp.52-53)
and so he asks:
Where have all the real Baptists gone?...throughout American history, at least until recently, Baptists have been fierce guardians of the First Amendment and the separation of church and state. Several related developments in the 1970s combined to undermine that noble tradition: the rise of the Religious Right...and the rise in popularity of an ideology called Reconstructionism. The effects of the first were felt almost immediately. The Religious Right proved decisive in the presidential election of 1980 and was a major force four years later.
If the effects of the Religious Right were dramatic and easily discern, the seizure of the Southern Baptists by conservatives ,however was more gradual, its effects evolutionary rather than revolutionary. In plotting their action in the late 1970s, the architects of the take over of the Southern Baptist Convention recognized that the president of the convention had broad appointive powers over denominational agencies and even to the trustees boards of colleges and seminaries affiliated with the convention.
Beginning with the election of Adrian Rogers...in 1979, conservatives have elected other conservatives to the presidency in an unbroken lineup to the present. Each president has used his appointive powers to turn back what conservatives regard as the drift toward liberalism within the Southern Baptist Convention. .
In order to justify their radical tack to the right, Baptists drew on an ideology called Reconstructionism as a way of rationalizing the abandonment of Baptist principles Reconstructionism, also called "theonomy" or "dominion theology," is a social ethic popular among the leaders of the religious right that advocates restructuring civil society according to the laws contained in the Hebrew Bible. Devised in the early 1960s by Rousas John Rushdoony, Reconstructionism seeks to rewrite civil and criminal codes to conform to Mosaic and Levitical laws in the Old Testament.
Reconstructionists believe that capital punishment , for instance, should be imposed for everything from sodomy to incorrigibility in children. Rushdoony, who was active in the arch conservitive John Birch Society, published the "bible' of Reconstructionism in 173, a nine-hundred-page volume entitled The Institutes of Biblical Law, and his writings are laced with racism and anti-Semitism.
Reconstructionists especially detest the notion of toleration.
Gary North, who was Rushdoony's estranged son-in-law and who remains one of the movement's most militant spokesmen, has insisted that "the perfect love of God necessarily involves the perfect hatred of God's enemies." Rushdoony himself openly resented the fact that "in the name of toleration, the believer is asked to associate on a common level of total acceptance with the atheist, the pervert,the criminal, and the adherents of other religions."
Religious Right leaders such as Sarborough; Pat Robertson; Jerry Falwell: founder of Moral Majority: Richard Land, head of the Southern baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission; and Randall Terry, the radical anti-abortionist and founder of Operation Rescue-all of whom claim to be Baptists-have been especially infatuated with Rushdoony's ideas. They have seized on such staements as "regenerate man works to re-establish the law order of God among men, to establish church,state,and society in terms of the word of God, and to manifest the kingdom of God in every meaning."
Reconstructionists, in short, don't want to reconfigure the line of separation between church and state. They want to obliterate it altogether . "Democracy is the great love of failures and cowards of life," Rushdoony wrote. "the state has a dutyto serve God, to be a Christian, to be a part of God's kingdom, or else it shall be judged by Him."
Thy Kingdom Come Randall Balmer pub. 2006
PP. 64-65
And here are some bits of info from the website of: Southern Baptist Convention
About Us - Meet Southern Baptists
Since its organization in 1845 in Augusta, Georgia, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has grown to over 16 million members who worship in more than 42,000 churches in the United States. Southern Baptists sponsor about 5,000 home missionaries serving the United States, Canada, Guam and the Caribbean, as well as sponsoring more than 5,000 foreign missionaries in 153 nations of the world.
The term "Southern Baptist Convention" refers to both the denomination and its annual meeting. Working through 1,200 local associations and 41 state conventions and fellowships, Southern Baptists share a common bond of basic Biblical beliefs and a commitment to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the entire world.
Southern Baptists have prepared a statement of generally held convictions called The Baptist Faith and Message. It serves as a guide to understanding who they are. Copies are available at Southern Baptist churches.
(From the Chairman of the Committee on the Baptist Faith and Message
And here are some of the troubling revised creeds and doctrines which I gleaned from the website and to which I've given a running commentaryto show how SBC has moved towards Reconstructionism:
* SBC: the Bible is the literal inerrant word of God without error or contradiction
The Bible because it is in fact the Divine words of God cannot be in error or contradict itself.
*Gender is a gift from God.
* Women are to obey their husbands
*marriage is a gift from God meant for one man and one woman til death- so no divorce or only in exceptional circumstances -so everyone who has been divorced is a sinner and an apostate and cannot enter the gates of Heaven
Of course this is also a reference to homosexuals getting married or polygamy
*the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.
Women cannot become Pastors or Religious leaders
and:
*
"addressing the issues of abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia,nd all manner of deviant and pagan sexuality."
This is bizarre this phrase is repeated a number of times when talking about the evil Secularist and about Family & about sin and about sexuality.
And does anybody know what in the Wide world of sports is Pagan Sexuality menaing anything other than the Missionary position or having sex with Pagan Gods-is this really one of those unintentional Freudian slips or does it have to do with a period in the early church in Rome when Christianity was the state religion but other Religions ie the Pagans were allowed to carry on with their beliefs and rituals. what these Evangelicals
modernity is rife with secularism, relativism & denial of absolute truth leading to confusion moral decay- that old chestnut "the Secular Humanist"/Liberal /socialist /Illumanati, Masons
*
A pervasive secularism has infected our society and its corrosive effects are evident throughout the life of our nation.. supposedly they are not racist -but if they believe there are important differences between the races they could insist on no intermarriage and possibly a form of segregation ie equal but separate?
.Jesus Christ as the only Savior and salvation is in His name alone. Baptists ...reject inclusivism and pluralism in salvation...Salvation comes only to those who come to personal faith in Jesus Christ as Savior..
The Scriptures. We have made the total truthfulness and trustworthiness of the Bible even more explicit, and we point to Jesus Christ as the focus of divine revelation. . We must not claim a knowledge of Christ that is independent of Scripture or in any way in opposition to Scripture. Likewise, Scripture cannot be set against Scripture.
*5. Baptists must also make clear our affirmation of the blessing of racial and ethnic diversity, and acknowledge that all races possess full dignity by the creative intention of God
)
*[XV. The Christian and the Social Order
All Christians are under obligation to seek to make the will of Christ supreme in our own lives and in human society. Means and methods used for the improvement of society and the establishment of righteousness among men can be truly and permanently helpful only when they are rooted in the regeneration of the individual by the saving grace of God in Jesus Christ.
In the spirit of Christ, Christians should oppose racism, every form of greed, selfishness, and vice, and all forms of sexual immorality, including adultery, homosexuality, and pornography. We should work to provide for the orphaned, the needy, the abused, the aged, the helpless, and the sick. We should speak on behalf of the unborn and contend for the sanctity of all human life from conception to natural death.
Every Christian should seek to bring industry, government, and society as a whole under the sway of the principles of righteousness, truth, and brotherly love. In order to promote these ends Christians should be ready to work with all men of good will in any good cause, always being careful to act in the spirit of love without compromising their loyalty to Christ and His truth ]
Once again condemning homosexuality or bisexuality or pre-marital sex so much for a God of love and compassion
Then we get an attack on a woman's reproductive Rights -
Abortion must be made illegal -will they execute the doctor or other medical staff and the woman- how will they differentiate between miscarriages and abortion
If even a fertilized egg is sacred will they have a police officer shadowing a pregnant women from the moment of gestation to the birth -see Randall Balmer' discussion
This passage also points to an agenda in which Christians take over one institution after another to make sure the institution is abiding by God's law.
*XII. Education
The freedom of a teacher in a Christian school, college, or seminary is limited by the pre-eminence of Jesus Christ, by the authoritative nature of the Scriptures, and by the distinct purpose for which the school exists.
As for the secular non-religious public school system these Evangelicals want nothing to do with it . Beyond that they want more intense religious instruction which is their right at home or a private school
but they also want to keep any material out of the classroom that contradicts in any way the Bible -so it is creationism and very little Darwin.
So no ideas or art or literature or philosophy or history could be taught if it goes against the Bible or whatever revisionist version of history a particular evangelical group has.
*
The Scriptures
The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is God's revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy.
It reveals the principles by which God judges us, and therefore is, and will remain to the end of the world the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried. All Scripture is a testimony to Christ, who is Himself the focus of divine revelation.
*The Christian & the Social Order
All Christians are under obligation to seek to make the will of Christ supreme in our own lives and in human society... in the spirit of Christ, Christians should oppose racism, every form of greed, selfishness, and vice, and all forms of sexual immorality, including adultery, homosexuality, and pornography. We should work to provide for the orphaned, the needy, the abused, the aged, the helpless, and the sick. We should speak on behalf of the unborn and contend for the sanctity of all human life from conception to natural death...
again we get an oblique reference to a take over of local government or state govt or federal government to ensure all members of society are obeying God's Law whether they are believers or not-ie laws against blaspheming, preaching apostasy & heretical views in public.
all books, movies, tv , magazines anything on the net which they disapprove of will be eliminated gone down the memory hole- it reminds me of the story of the evangelicals who insisted on banning a book because it was blaspheming etc. the book was Fahrenheit 451 -a book about book banning -they didn't get the irony.
Liberals and Secularists are the foreign ill-legal aliens.
and so it goes,
GORD
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