Denver’s “Great Awakening”
Vol: 83 Issue: 27 Wednesday, August 27, 2008
“Introspective, inspirational, by turns pointed or biblical, and always tailored to the political moment, Obama’s speeches have been a defining feature of his historic ascent. . .”
No, that isn’t an excerpt from a Democratic campaign commercial. Nor is it an adoring anecdote relayed by Mrs. Obama. It’s a quote from an alleged journalist from a fawning front-page story in this morning’s USAToday.
That wasn’t even the most fawning quote in the piece, but to reproduce them all, I’d have to cut and paste the whole article, (which could easily have borne the title, “The Messiah Has Come.”)
After John Kerry went down in flames in ’04, the Democrats decided to change tactics and become the Party of Religion.
Hillary hired Burns Strider, a Congressional staffer (and evangelical Baptist from Mississippi) to assemble a faith steering group from major denominations and send out a weekly wrap-up newsletter, “Faith, Family and Values.”
Nancy Pelosi started bringing up God soon after ascending to the post of Speaker, urging her Democratic colleagues to wear their faith on their sleeve.
For genuine Christians, watching the Democrats fumble the issue is a spectator sport. When Democrats bring up God, one gets the sense that they use Him as a ‘filler’ invoking His Name when they find themselves at a loss for something sensible to say:
“Science is a gift of God to all of us,” said Pelosi during a debate last year over increased embryo-research funding, “and science has taken us to a place that is biblical in its power to cure.”
(I don’t know what that means, either. But Pelosi managed to invoke God and the Bible in the context of creating human embryos for the express purpose of killing them. )
Noted TIME Magazine (“How the Democrats Got Religion” July 12, 2007);
“What we’re seeing,” says strategist Mike McCurry, “is a Great Awakening in the Democratic Party.”
The revival comes at a time when the entire religious-political landscape is changing shape. A new generation of evangelical leaders is rejecting old labels; now an alliance of religious activists that runs from the crunchy left across to the National Association of Evangelicals has called for action to address global warming, citing the biblical imperative of caring for creation.”
The DNC opened this year with an ‘interfaith’ service aimed at highlighting their newfound relationship with God. They had a nun, Helen Trajan (author of “Dead Man Walking”) to rail against the death penalty as ‘unbiblical. ‘ (Genesis 9:12 says; “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed. . .” )
One hallmark of Democratic ‘faith efforts’ at the convention is ‘diversity’, say convention organizers.
So, in addition to the Scripturally-challenged Catholic nun, the DNC featured a rabbi, an imam, some Muslim women in burkas, and several ‘evangelicals’.
(All of whom evidently shared the conviction that God opposes the death penalty, supports abortion on demand, and is something of a Cosmic Schizophrenic unable to decide if He is a Muslim, a Jew, a Christian, or an atheist.)
The DNC announced there will be four faith caucus meetings, blessings to open and close each night, and panels and parties run by Democratic-leaning religious advocacy groups that didn t even exist in 2004.
They’ve a little something for everybody, but they say their aim is to attract Christian ‘values voters’ and they just don’t understand why it doesn’t seem to be working.
“Despite all the effort, there is little evidence religious votes are shifting. A Pew poll released last week showed the political preferences of religious voters, including highly sought Catholics and white evangelicals, have scarcely budged since 2004,” wrote a mystified AP reporter.
(I know. Hard to believe, isn’t it?)
Assessment:
Why would the Democrats have so much trouble attracting “faith-based voters”? The old saying, “Know your enemy” has a corollary truth; “Know your ally.”
If the Democrats want to co-opt God into their political platform, it might help if they got to know Him a bit first.
Barack Obama’s God is a black supremacist who favors the Nation of Islam. Helen Trajan’s God is opposed to capital punishment for murderers. Nancy Pelosi’s God is perfectly ok with stem cell research.
Joe Biden’s God favors aborting His creation up to the moment of delivery on the premise that God accidentally made an unnecessary human being.
The God of the Democrats is part Jewish, part Islamic, part Christian and part atheist. He is an inclusionary, big tent God who has no particular identity of His own, believes in evolution, thinks the Creation story is a myth, and He doesn’t like having His Name mentioned in public.
He has no rules except love everybody unconditionally (except the unborn), and avoid mentioning Jesus as the only way to salvation.
(Because [in his capacity as Allah] the rule is to kill everybody who doesn’t think Mohammed is the only way. Of course, if they are both the only way, then there is no way at all. Which is the position they are the most comfortable with, since that’s what they really believe anyway.)
The Democrat’s God thinks that marriage is inconsequential. All that stuff about man being created for woman, and woman for man is irrelevant. Same with all that stuff about ‘abomination’ — He didn’t really mean it.
According to an AP story on MSNBC’s website (two evangelical organizations if ever there were any) “Democrats want Christians to know that don’t have to be Republicans to stay true to their faith,” so they’ve launched http://www.faithfuldemocrats.com.
It’s a fascinating site filled with insights that had never occurred to me. For example,
“The language of Scripture calls people to turn away from selfish desire and focus instead on serving God and their neighbors. That s why the Christian faith has been a driving force in the movements for abolition, workers rights, women s rights, and civil rights. And it s why millions of Americans root their identity as Democrats in their faith as Christians.”
The DNC’s religious history lesson begins by breaking the 8th Commandment; “Thou shalt not steal.”
Take the abolition movement. It was the Democratic Party that proposed the “Chicago Platform” in 1864 when they offered to end the Civil War in exchange for a permanent institution of slavery.
They could credibly offer to end the Civil War because it was the Democrats who were the party of institutionalized slavery.
The Republican Party was formed in 1856 expressly to bring about the abolition of slavery. Abe Lincoln was a Republican.
Worker’s rights? The institution of collective bargaining was first proposed by Karl Marx, not Jesus Christ.
Women’s rights? The Democrats opposed giving women the right to vote. Colorado, where the DNC is holding its convention, gave women the right to vote following a Republican-backed 1893 referendum.
Susan B. Anthony, the patron saint of the woman’s suffrage movement, was a lifelong abolitionist AND a life-long Republican. The only “women’s right” the Democratic Party can claim as its own is the women’s right to kill her own baby.
Civil rights? Anybody remember what happened to Trent Lott when he praised Strom Thurmond? Thurmond was a former segregationist member of the Democratic Party — then known as “Dixiecrats.”
The Democratic Party was THE party of racial segregation. So much so that simply praising Thurmond’s 1948 Dixiecrat candidacy got Lott booted from his post as Senate Majority Leader.
Lyndon Johnson predicted his support of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would cost the Democrats their lock on the Southern vote. He was right. And the South has been a Republican stronghold ever since.
For most of the twentieth century, the Democrats have stood in opposition to any government involvement of any kind in religion.
They oppose school prayer, they oppose the public display of religious symbols, they oppose any public declaration of faith — but suddenly, the Democrats are the party of Christianity?
“This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof . . .”
The Democrats have decided to officially embrace a form of godliness, but one without any power of its own. In their religion, God doesn’t make the rules — in fact, the less say He has in them, the better.
The God of the Democrats is faceless, nameless, of indeterminate pedigree and origin, and has no particular doctrine, or theology and evidently, no particular expectation of human beings.
He is the God of Perilous Times, appearing in Denver through Sunday.
Omegaletter 