But Barak Knows this man, goes the charge. He baptized his children and goes to his church. John Mccain never did any of this with his right wing christian wacko friends who sing "Gawd cant bless America" or 9/11 happened because of gays and moral decay in this country. Men who pray that events in Israel and the Middle East will FINALLY be the End Of Times they have waiting for every decade and end of century and every time violence escalates in the ME.

But he takes their money and their political support and endorsements--as have all GOP candidates.


Is there actually any difference?

Is their any hypocrisy in decrying Obama's relationship to his church and pastor while not making any moves at all to sever ties to their own extremist religious and political connections?

First, specifically who are you refering to as to decrying Obama?

Now, if there are actual examples of your premise, then I say the differences between the two are enough to make even a blind man see. Obama has been an active participant in a radical, racist, anti-American congregation. Although he has tried to distance himself from its pastor, he has not disavowed anything that the 'church' stands for. That makes him a wee bit more involved than you try to make it appear.

HtL your statement and the one below by another poster are so much alike.


Are these talking points or original thinking?

Oh, firsties, how about Charles Krauthammer?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...5032401690.html

Republican America, since Reagan, has embraced a active participant in a radical, racist, anti-American congregation- Pat Buchanan and Jerry Falwwell, Ralph Reed, and Pat Robertson.

Without it- Regan would have never came to power. We would not have had "freedom fries", "teletubies is gay" and all that nonsense.

No, it is very, very racist double standard that the some are employing here- the Southern Baptist church boasts 16 million members- and is one of the most virulent, hate filled organizations on earth, and in fact, they are extremely misogynist as well ( hey , how many women on this board feel that they need to submit to thier man lately? )

There is very little difference in beliefs between conservative white christian theology, and black theology. Catholic church, whore of babylon, Mormonism is a cult, and we are all going to hell for not believing what the southern baptists believe.

If I took a camera into just about, oh, any white christian church in America, where the majority of the congregation call themselves 'conservative"- you will hear much worse stuff than ANYTHING Wright said.

Oh, and oh yeah, the Christian Coalition was completly RACIST.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_coalition

In March, 2001, the Christian Coalition of America was sued by its African-American employees, alleging racial discrimination by Roberta Combs, U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. See Washington Post, "10 Blacks Allege Bias at Christian Coalition," March 31, 2001. The District Court issued an injunction against the Christian Coalition and the case was later settled quietly with money paid to the African-American plaintiffs.
About this time, Roberta Combs canceled a direct-mail fund-raising campaign run by fund-raiser Bill Sidebottom of Interact Response Communications aimed at fighting child pornography after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. The cancelation of the campaign in the middle of its run led to nearly a dozen lawsuits by creditors and the bankruptcy of its fund-raising company. Without a fund-raising company supporting it, the Christian Coalition went into sharp decline financially.


Also:

Activity in 2000 and 2004 presidential elections
In both the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections, voter mobilization efforts of conservative Christians tended to be focused internally within the machinery of the Republican Party, as opposed to lobby groups and voter mobilization organizations such as the Christian Coalition. In a related example of this more "in-house" approach to mobilizing votes from the conservative Christian community, Reed served as Southeast Regional chairman for the Bush-Cheney campaign during the 2004 election.

Okay, you have a racist, extremist organization actually helping to RUN the Republican party- and you get upset at one dude's paster?

Very nice bit of hypocritical association assertations there my man.

Oh yeah, and Falwell was a hard core segregationist for YEARS- and, along with Bob Jones University- did not allow inter-racial dating as late as the late 80s, and Bob Jones University (whom Falwell supported and "communed" with) was forced to allow inter-racial dating by the federal goverment.

So yeah, the Republican party has a RECENT history of pandering to racist white church organizations, so what is YOUR stance in regards to the racist religious groups still given a home in the republican party?

Falwell grew up in a strongly segregationist setting and supported racial segregation. In 1965, he gave a sermon at his Thomas Road Baptist Church criticizing Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil rights movement, which he sometimes referred to as the "Civil Wrongs Movement". On his Evangelist program The Old-Time Gospel Hour in the mid 1960s, he regularly featured segregationist politicians like Lester Maddox and George Wallace.[11] He said this about Martin Luther King: "I do question the sincerity and non-violent intentions of some civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mr. James Farmer, and others, who are known to have left wing associations

BTW- I grew up in this organization, that is why I find the criticism SO hypocritical in regards to Rev Wright and Obama.

So tell me- where is the outrage over Falwell's history in the republican party? The Civil wrongs movement?



BTW- I sat at several sermons of Jerry Falwell's in my lifetime- all of them when he was guest speaker at Anchorage Baptist Temple- and I heard him say many, many worse things than I saw on Wrights video.

If you want condemnation of Wright, I want condemnation of the entire Southern Baptist organization first.

I would be very, very outraged if Rev Wright got the same "play" in the party of the dems as Falwell did in the Republican camp- for instance:
Education
Falwell repeatedly denounced certain teachings in public schools and secular education in general, calling them breeding grounds for atheism, secularism, and humanism, which he claimed to be in contradiction with Christian morality. He advocated that the United States change its public education system by implementing a school voucher system which would allow parents to send their children to either public or private schools. Jerry Falwell wrote in America Can Be Saved that "I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them."[15]

Falwell supported President George W. Bush's Faith Based Initiative, but had strong reservations concerning where the funding would go and the restrictions placed on churches. "My problem is where it might go under his successors... I would not want to put any of the Jerry Falwell Ministries in a position where we might be subservient to a future Bill Clinton, God forbid... It also concerns me that once the pork barrel is filled, suddenly the Church of Scientology, the Jehovah Witnesses [sic], the various and many denominations and religious groups — and I don’t say those words in a pejorative way — begin applying for money — and I don’t see how any can be turned down because of their radical and unpopular views. I don’t know where that would take us."[16]


[edit] Apartheid
In the 1980s Jerry Falwell was critical of sanctions against the apartheid regime of South Africa. He stated that while he was opposed to apartheid, he feared that sanctions would result in a worse situation, with either a more oppressive white minority government or a Soviet-backed revolution. He drew the ire of many when he called Nobel Peace Prize winner and Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu a phony "as far as representing the black people of South Africa."[17] He later apologized for that remark and claimed that he had misspoken.[18] He also urged his followers to buy up gold Krugerrands and push U.S. "reinvestment" in South Africa.[19]


Falwell, Robertson, Ralph Reed, Buchanan- those are truly horrible human beings that belong on the dung heap of history, stinking and rotten and forgotten.

But I still have yet to hear the republican party go so far as Obama has done and repudiate publically and often the views of those scumbags of the Christian right.