Theocrat Watch III

The National Council of Democrats Churches wants to be sure you know that they do not endorse candidates, nor do they endorse political parties. But just in case you were wavering in deciding which candidates it is acceptable for Christians to vote for this November, please take note of the following principles that the NCC says your vote needs to be guided by:

1. War is contrary to the will of God. While the use of violent force may, at times, be a necessity of last resort, Christ pronounces his blessing on the peacemakers. We look for political leaders who will make peace with justice a top priority and who will actively seek nonviolent solutions to conflict.

Christ did bless the peacemakers. Interestingly enough, He never numbered the Roman government among them, nor did He indicate that modern secular republics were supposed to be governed according to the Beatitudes.

2. God calls us to live in communities shaped by peace and cooperation. We reject policies that abandon large segments of our inner city and rural populations to hopelessness. We look for political leaders who will re-build our communities and bring an end to the cycles of violence and killing.

I think this means they are in favor of tougher law enforcement, but I could easily be wrong. Truth is, I’m not sure what this is supposed to mean in anything resembling practical terms. I’m also not sure why we are looking to politicians to “re-build our communities” rather than undertaking that ourselves.

3. God created us for each other, and thus our security depends on the well being of our global neighbors. We look for political leaders for whom a foreign policy based on cooperation and global justice is an urgent concern.

This sounds good. Given the utter failure of the United Nations to provide a forum for “cooperation and global justice,” this may be a call to get out of that corrupt, hopelessly anti-Semitic and anti-freedom organization. But again, I could be wrong about that.

4. God calls us to be advocates for those who are most vulnerable in our society. We look for political leaders who yearn for economic justice and who will seek to reduce the growing disparity between rich and poor.

Translation: God is a socialist. If you think this judgment on this principle harsh, ask yourself this: why the fixation on “the growing disparity between rich and poor”? Isn’t the real point to work with the poor (not just “advocate” for them) to lift them out of poverty? Who cares how many grupniks Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have, if there are fewer poor people?

5. Each human being is created in the image of God and is of infinite worth. We look for political leaders who actively promote racial justice and equal opportunity for everyone.

Amen and amen. Equal opportunity for each person, mind you, not group quotas. But with that caveat, right on. And the truth is that, with that caveat, I don’t think there’s a politician in either party who would object.

6. The earth belongs to God and is intrinsically good. We look for political leaders who recognize the earth’s goodness, champion environmental justice, and uphold our responsibility to be stewards of God’s creation.

Translation: the government should tax the daylights out of us so that Al Gore can continue to have a carbon footprint that dwarfs that of several Pacific Island nations.

7. Christians have a biblical mandate to welcome strangers. We look for political leaders who will pursue fair immigration policies and speak out against xenophobia.

This means that anyone who has qualms about the United States erasing its southern border hates Hispanics. “Fair immigration policies”are those that allow anyone to come here at any time, for any reason, and regardless of whether they have followed established legal procedures for doing so.

8. Those who follow Christ are called to heal the sick. We look for political leaders who will support adequate, affordable and accessible health care for all.

If it is true that “those who follow Christ are called to heal the sick,” why are we talking about the government paying for everyone’s health care (the actual meaning of the second sentence). Why don’t we just heal the sick and cut out the middle man? They don’t actually mean we should heal the sick, of course; they are actually advocating an enormous new government program, which is the obvious answer to the problems of the health care system in the United States, since the government does such a good job at so many other things from airline security to eliminating the influence of money on political campaigns.

9. Because of the transforming power of God’s grace, all humans are called to be in right relationship with each other. We look for political leaders who seek a restorative, not retributive, approach to the criminal justice system and the individuals within it.

Why? Why is restorative rather than retributive justice a preferable approach for a secular republic to take with the lawbreakers in its midst? Would it be too much trouble to even begin to make an argument here?

10. Providing enriched learning environments for all of God’s children is a moral imperative. We look for political leaders who advocate for equal educational opportunity and abundant funding for children’s services.

Because as we all know, throwing money at the public education system has proven time and again to ensure that our children get the education they deserve.

Now, you can argue pretty much any of these points one by one (and as you saw, I pretty much agreed with number 5–I also see at least some merit in several of the others, at least if they are stripped of their utopianism, naivete, and unbounded confidence in the ability of government to do what it sets out to do). But when you put them together, what you get is the platform of the Democratic Party, couched in the theocratic language of the religious left, which is absolutely against the imposition of any religion’s moral agenda on the state, except theirs.

Your Tax Dollars At Work

I don’t normally get into stuff like this, but something about it just pushed my buttons. It appears that a member of the United States Senate is preparing to throw himself into the fight for truth, justice, and the American Way, by taking on one of the great scandals of our time:

With the Super Bowl fast approaching, a senior Republican senator says he wants the NFL to explain why it destroyed evidence of the New England Patriots cheating scandal.

“I am very concerned about the underlying facts on the taping, the reasons for the judgment on the limited penalties and, most of all, on the inexplicable destruction of the tapes,” said Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., in a Thursday letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.

Specter, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the matter could put the league’s antitrust exemption at risk.

“Their antitrust exemption has been on my mind for a long time,” he said in a Capitol Hill news conference.

That’s right, sports fans. The ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, a man who has passed judgment on the fitness of nominees to the United States Supreme Court, is calling the NFL on the carpet for not keeping under lock and key at a secure location (known, no doubt, only by Specter and Pete Rozelle of blessed memory) the infamous “Spygate”tapes–I mean, who knows what harm these could cause to national security if they fell into the hands of the Chinese, or the Jamaican bobsled team? He is also upset with the punishment leveled on the Patriots and their coach, who at the very least should have been stripped of the right to sell New England clam chowder at homes games and to use a Nerf ball when they were on offense this season. This is the national issue that is apparently consuming the attention of the senior Senator from Pennsylvania.

PS–I don’t care who wins Sunday. As George Will once famously wrote, football embodies two of the worst qualities of American life. It consists of spasms of violence punctuated by committee meetings.

Kind of like the United States Senate.

(Via Hot Air and Jammie Wearing Fool.)

Another One in Sacramento Votes for Dismissal

Another congregation in the Sacramento Presbytery (PCUSA) has taken the plunge, according to the Layman Online:

A third church is asking Sacramento Presbytery to let it leave the Presbyterian Church (USA) with its property for the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

Sierra Presbyterian Church in Nevada City, Calif., held a congregational vote Jan. 27 on requesting dismissal from the PCUSA with its property. Three hundred and forty-two of the church’s 508 members, or 68 percent of the church membership, were in attendance and cast ballots, said the church’s senior pastor, the Rev. Scott Dixon.

Of those, 332 members or 97.2 percent voted for seeking dismissal and 10 members or 2.8 percent voted against the request, Dixon said.

There’s no word on whether events in Minneapolis last Saturday has any effect on the vote, though obviously the church must have been considering this for quite a while. I wonder whether any mind might have changed from negative or neutral to positive as a result of the Twin Cities decision, though.

The Sierra Church congregation’s reaction to the vote – even from those who couldn’t be there to vote Jan. 27 – has been positive and encouraging, Dixon said.

“From of the standpoint of Sierra Pres, it was good news,” he said. “It was a definitive thing from God, and now we’re looking forward to moving forward in the process and to a successful conclusion – and, hopefully, in a very Godly and gratifying way. That’s pretty much all there is at this point. We’ve got a lot of work to do ahead of us.”

That they do. Sacramento Presbytery (with the exception of one church which has contested settlements the presbytery has made with two large churches) has demonstrated a willingness to be fair, civil, and open to negotiation. I’ll be praying that such is the case with Sierra as well, and that the leadership of the aforementioned church will keep its nose out.