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Martin Luther's
An Open Letter to the Christian
Nobility of the German Nation
Concerning the Reform of the
Christian Estate--
When Christianity Is UnAmerican
By Terri Murray
There is a growing chasm between
the values
of America's founders and the values of the
theocratic Christian right.
The Christian right claim that
their version of
authoritarianism is a more authentic interpretation
of American values than the Enlightenment values
so cherished by our nation's forebears. But their
values are irreconcilable with those of America's
past. Here's how, in an incredibly lucid analysis.
NEW: Militant Atheists
Are Wrong
A flurry of literary attacks
on God
may also be closing the book on imagination.
By Lee Siegel
Voltaire famously quipped that if God didn't exist,
he would have to be invented. American publishers
would enthusiastically agree because God, it turns
out, is a consistent moneymaker -- especially,
these days, for those who
want to attack him.
Chris Hedges: "I
Don’t Believe in Atheists"
By Chris Hedges
This is one of the most inspiring
statements we have
read on what religion and God mean to those of us
who are believers. Chris Hedges statement that
"God is better understood as a verb rather than a noun,"
is completely in accordance with biblical
literature. Consider the fact that in the Bible, the name
of God is stated as Jehovah--which is the incommunicable
name of God; and then as Jehovah Rapha (I am the Lord
who healeth thee); Jehovah Jireh (I am the Lord who
provides for thee); Jehovah Nissi (I am thy banner) and
Jehovah Shalom (I am peace). Save
this essay.
Sam Harris Strikes Back
The following is Sam Harris’
response to Chris Hedges’
essay, “I Don’t Believe in Atheists.” Last week
the two
Truthdig contributors battled one another over the
issues of religion and politics during a live debate
in Los Angeles. While they both agree on the
dangers posed by religious fundamentalism in
America, their views on religion in general differ
greatly, as you will
soon read.
The Holy Blitz Rolls On
The
Christian right is a "deeply anti-
democratic movement" that gains force
by exploiting Americans' fears, argues
Chris Hedges. Salon talks with the former
New York Times reporter about his fearless
new book, "American Fascists." By
Michelle Goldberg
Gingrich v The Separation of
Church and State
Newt Gingrich is launching a
new and ambitious
committee aimed at re-making American society
in the neoconservative image. But just below the
surface lurks an assault on the doctrine of separation
of church and state that has been dear to his
heart
for decades.
How Ted Haggard Was
Fired and Why
By Laurie Goodstein
November 19, 2006
The four ministers who assembled here
two weeks ago to decide the fate of the
Rev. Ted Haggard were facing a painful
choice. A male prostitute had accused Mr.
Haggard, one of the nation’s most prominent
evangelical ministers, of engaging in a three-
year affair with him and of using drugs.
Then, in a private emergency meeting, Mr.
Haggard promptly confessed to the ministers
— his handpicked board of overseers —
that he had engaged in
sexual immorality.
Jesus Is Not a Republican
By RANDALL BALMER
The evangelical subculture, which
prizes
conformity above all else, doesn't suffer rebels
gladly, and it is especially intolerant of anyone
with the temerity to challenge the shibboleths
of the religious right. I understand that. Despite
their putative claims to the faith, the leaders of the
religious right are vicious toward anyone who refuses
to kowtow to their version of orthodoxy, and their
machinery of vilification strikes with ruthless,
dispassionate efficiency.
Do God and Money Mix?
CNBC examines the growing
business
of evangelical Christianity
By Tyler Mathisen
Evangelicalism is one of the
fastest-growing
religious movements in the United States,
and now this ardent form of Christianity is
starting to flex its economic
muscles.
Disowning Conservative
Politics,
Evangelical Pastor Rattles Flock
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
July 30, 2006
Like most pastors who lead thriving evangelical
megachurches, the Rev. Gregory A. Boyd was
asked frequently to give his blessing — and the
church’s — to conservative political candidates
and causes.
The Growing Threat of
Right-Wing Christians
By Onnesha Roychoudhuri,
AlterNet.
Posted July 19, 2006.
"I don't want to be alarmist,
but this is actually
quite alarming," Michelle Goldberg said. She was
referring to the subject of her new book, "Kingdom
Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism," which
chronicles the steady rise of the neocons of
Christianity. Whether she's attending a Ten
Commandments conference or joining Tony Perkins'
conference calls to listen in on what D.C. agenda
will be passed on to congregations, Goldberg's
reporting offers insight into a movement that has
reshaped the nation's political and cultural landscape.
Goldberg did not go undercover, nor wear any
disguise. Rather, she simply showed up, listened
and learned. And what she has learned is
definitely
alarming.
In
the Beginning God Created
an Open Society
(Guess Who’s Trying
to Close It)
By Katherine Yurica
July 21, 2006
In Genesis, the God of the Bible
created
an open society. We know this because
God had the power to exclude the Serpent
from the Garden of Eden, but God chose to
allow the Serpent to stay along with his
contrary voice and vision. It was a gamble
God was willing to make. He simply rejected
coercive power over his creation. In the end,
it cost God everything he loved—including his
only begotten
son.
Ann Coulter's New Book:
Godless: The Church of Liberalism
"If a martian landed in
America and set out
to determine the nation's official state religion,
he would have to conclude it is liberalism,
while Christianity and Judaism are
prohibited by law."
Coulter Plagiarism In New Book
By Philip Recchia
July 2, 2006 -- Conservative
scribe Ann Coulter
cribbed liberally in her latest book, "Godless,"
according to a plagiarism
expert.
Bill Moyers Interviews Union
Theological Seminary's Joseph Hough
by Bill Moyers
Bill Moyers talks to Joseph C. Hough on the intersection
of politics and religion, and why he thinks it is the
duty of Christians, Jews and Muslims to join to fight
growing economic inequality, why he’s critical of how
some political pundits are using Christianity to justify
their actions, and why he suspects that the time for
a non-destructive, civil
disobedience may be near.
Why Secularists Get
the Bible
and the Religious Left Wrong
A Response
to Barry Seidman's article:
"A Critique of the New Religious Left"
By Katherine Yurica
Barry Seidman, citing Hector
Avalos in his book:
Fighting Words: The Origin of Religious Violence,
makes the argument that the Abrahamic religious
texts can never be reconciled with democracy
because when read in a certain light, those texts
are violent to the core and ultimately spawn hatred,
war and violence. From such scriptures neither love
nor democracy can emerge. I disagree—Avalos and
Seidman
have got it all wrong!
A Critique of the New Religious Left
May 30, 2006
By Barry Seidman
But however much praise Wallis
and his followers
deserve for joining the good fight against Christo-fascists
like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Tim LaHaye and
President Bush, the coupling of religion and politics
is as dangerous for the left as it is for the right, because
absolutism, authoritative supernaturalism and the actual
tenets of the Abrahamic religious texts can never be
reconciled with
democracy and freedom.
What Would Jesus
Do With Politics?
By GARRY WILLS
Chicago
THERE is no such thing as a "Christian
politics." If it is a politics, it cannot be
Christian. Jesus told Pilate: "My reign is
not of this present order. If my reign were
of this present order, my supporters would
have fought against my being turned over
to the Jews. But my reign is not here" (John 18:36).
Jesus brought no political message or program.
This is a truth that needs emphasis at a time
when some Democrats, fearing that the
Republicans have advanced over them by the
use of religion, want to respond with a claim
that Jesus
is really on their side.
Apocalyptic President
Even some Republicans are
now
horrified by the influence Bush
has given to the evangelical right
Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday March 23, 2006
In his latest PR offensive President
Bush came
to Cleveland, Ohio, on Monday to answer the
paramount question on Iraq that he said was
on people's minds: "They wonder what I see
that they don't." After mentioning "terror" 54
times and "victory" five, dismissing "civil war"
twice and asserting that he is "optimistic", he
called on a citizen in the audience, who homed
in on the invisible meaning of recent events
in the light of two books, American Theocracy,
by Kevin Phillips, and the book of Revelation.
Phillips, the questioner explained, "makes the point
that members of your administration have reached
out to prophetic Christians who see the war in
Iraq and the rise of terrorism as signs of the
apocalypse. Do you believe this? And
if not,
why not?"
Pat Robertson's Attack on Islam
Pat Robertson Remarks 'Throw
Gasoline
On Fire' Of Inter-Religious Tensions, says
AU's Lynn Barry.
Americans United for Separation of Church and
State today criticized TV preacher Pat Robertson
for a virulent attack on Islam. On the live version
of his "700 Club" program today, Robertson
charged that Islam is not a religion of peace, that
Muslims are demonic and satanic and that they
are trying to take
over the world.
Crossing the Line
Bush Orders the Establishment
of Religious Initiatives at
Homeland Security
Born Again?
Looking to regain its base,
the Democratic
Party is restating its liberal program in
religion-friendly terms | Lynn Vincent
In Georgia, state Sen.
Kasim Reed in
January introduced a bill authorizing school
districts to teach courses derived from The Bible
and Its Influence, a textbook released last year by
the Bible Literacy Project. All that would be
business as usual for the GOP. But these Bible-
thumping, faith-stumping pols are all Democrats—
and part of their party's emerging effort to reconnect
with religious
voters.
Wayward Christian Soldiers
By CHARLES MARSH
Charlottesville, Va.
IN the past several years, American
evangelicals,
and I am one of them, have amassed greater
political power than at any time in our history.
But at what cost to our witness and the integrity
of our message?
Abortion Rights in Latin
America
For proof that criminalizing
abortion doesn't
reduce abortion rates and only endangers
the lives of women, consider
Latin America.
Prophecy Today - The Unholy Trinity
The Beast, the Dragon and
the False Prophet
by Carol Wolman
The Unholy Trinity
The prophetic books of Daniel
and Revelation
foresee the end-times, our times, when human
population growth reaches its limit, and social
predators rise to the top, and organize to prey
upon the planet. They are like vultures, stripping
whatever they can, hastening
the demise of life.
Bush-Supporting Evangelicals:
Abuse Victims?
By Rob Kall
Research has shown that religious
fundamentalists are more likely to come
from families where sexual abuse has
occurred. We know about the widespread
abuse by Catholic priests... Dr. James Dobson,
...discuss a crisis among Pastors of non-Catholic
churches. They reported that 21% of Evangelical/
Protestant pastors had had inappropriate sexual
contact with members of their congregations.
Sixty percent (60%) of Evangelical pastors, most
of whom are married, have a problem with
pornography.
Can Democracy Be Christian?
An
Interview With Katherine Yurica
Questions
by Terri Murray
Posted October 10, 2005
It depends on how we define “democracy.”
If we
limit it to mean: rule of the majority, then I see
an inherent conflict between democracy and
the great principles of the Judeo-Christian tradition,
because there is such a thing as the
“tyranny
of the majority.”
Conservative Episcopalians Warn
Church That It Must Change Course
or Face Split
By NEELA BANERJEE
PITTSBURGH, Nov. 11 - Conservative leaders of the
Episcopal Church U.S.A. and their Anglican counterparts
from overseas intensified their warnings Friday about
the possibility of a schism in the Anglican Communion
if the Episcopal Church did not renounce the consecration
of gay bishops and the blessing of
same-sex unions.
When Cleaner Air Is a Biblical
Obligation
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
With increasing vigor, evangelical groups that are
part of the base of conservative support for leading
Republicans are campaigning for laws that would
reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which scientists
have linked with global warming. Are evangelicals
waking up at last?
In the Name of Politics
By JOHN C. DANFORTH
St. Louis — BY a series of recent initiatives,
Republicans have transformed our party into
the political arm of conservative Christians. The
elements of this transformation have included
advocacy of a constitutional amendment to ban
gay marriage, opposition to stem cell research
involving both frozen embryos and human cells in
petri dishes, and the extraordinary effort to keep
Terri Schiavo hooked up
to a feeding tube.
People of Faith Opposing
People of Faith
By John C. Danforth
It is important for those of
us who are sometimes
called moderates to make the case that we, too,
have strongly held Christian convictions, that we
speak from the depths of our beliefs, and that our
approach to politics is at least as faithful as that of
those who are more conservative. Our difference
concerns the extent to which government should,
or even can, translate religious beliefs into the laws
of the state.
The Greatest TV Ad Ever
Made:
Whosoever Will May
Come
Yurica Report Editor's
Note: the United
Church of Christ has produced and run
one of the most effective ads ever created
in our opinion, demonstrating what the true
witness of Jesus Christ and Christianity is.
We invite our readers to see this ad.
Click on this picture: 
and wait for the
video to load. We guarantee it's worth the wait!
And by the way, we are not members of this church!
Leading Cardinal Redefines
Church's View on Evolution
By CORNELIA DEAN and
LAURIE GOODSTEIN
An influential cardinal in the Roman Catholic
Church, which has long been regarded as an ally
of the theory of evolution, is now suggesting that
belief in evolution as accepted by science today
may be incompatible with Catholic faith.
Evangelicals Are a
Growing Force in the
Military
Chaplain Corps
By Laurie Goodstein,
New York Times
It was the opening ceremony of a four-day Spiritual
Fitness Conference at a Hilton hotel [in Colorado
Springs] last month organized and paid for by the
Air Force for many of its United States-based chaplains
and their families, at a cost of $300,000.
See The Yurica Report:--the story
you read first--
"Infiltrating the U.S. Military" by Katherine Yurica,
October 12, 2004
Politicized Scholars
Put
Evolution on the Defensive
By JODI WILGOREN
When President Bush plunged into the
debate over the teaching of evolution, saying, "both
sides ought to be properly taught," he seemed to
be reading from the playbook of the Discovery Institute,
the conservative think tank that is at the helm of this
newly volatile frontier in the nation's culture wars.
What Are Moral Values?
by Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers
Mayflower Church, Oklahoma City
Ranked 4 Stars
Tonight, I join ranks of those who are angry,
because I have watched as the faith I love has
been taken over by those who claim to speak
for Jesus, but whose actions are anything but
Christian. We've heard a lot lately about so-called
"moral values" as having swung the election
to President Bush. Well, I'm a great believer in
moral values, but we need to have a discussion,
all over this country, about exactly what constitutes
a moral value -- I mean what are
we talking about?
Call to Renewal
Let's Get Jesus Back!
Speech at Pentecost 2004
by Bill Moyers
I reminded her that there are more
than two dozen varieties of Baptist
in this country. Pat Robertson
is a Baptist. So is Bill Clinton. Al
Gore is a Baptist. So is Trent Lott.
Jesse Jackson is a Baptist. So is
Jesse Helms. Richard Gephardt is
a Baptist. So is Newt Gingrich. Small
wonder Baptists have been compared
to jalapeno peppers: one or two makes for
a tasty dish, but a whole bunch of them
together in one place brings tears to
your eyes.
Putting Christ Back
into Christianity
A Clinical Psychologist Warns
America's Christians
by Dr. Theresa
Whitehurst
December 21, 2004
Many Christians today see Jesus
as their ticket to
heaven, and little more. When it comes to political
philosophy, they much prefer the wrathful, violent
images of God that are found in selected verses
from other parts of the Bible....If "conservative"
Christian
leaders really believed that Christians must give top
priority to Jesus' teachings, they wouldn't dare urge us
to endorse contradictory attitudes and behaviors. But they
do, and it's time we called them on it. There comes a
time, particularly when pre-emptive wars are waged in
Jesus' name, when silence is betrayal.
Has God Changed the
Rules?
A psychiatrist takes
the pulse of
America's Christians.
by Carol Wolman, M.D.
How can we understand this schizophrenia, this
refusal to see the contradiction between Biblical
teachings and "faith-based" actions of the US
government? Many Christians do see it; why are
they not denouncing the false Christians from the
rooftops, and reclaiming Jesus
and the Bible?
What the Fundamentalists
Won’t
Tell You About the
Bible
And if they know the truth
why they won’t tell
their congregations!
By Katherine Yurica
July 31, 2005
Since the nineteenth century,
opportunistic
fundamentalists have tried to take some current
events and trace them to ancient biblical prophecy
to make
a name for themselves.
The Ship of State Is
Sinking,
Who is on the Lord’s
Side?
A discussion on what kind
and size
of buckets to use to bail out the boat.
Katherine Yurica responds to Jim Wallis'
and Susan Jacoby's articles
The Yurica Report
had just begun to post two
articles from the American Prospect, one written
by Jim Wallis, the publisher of the evangelical
Sojourner’s and the other from Susan Jacoby,
called “an aggressive secularist” by her publisher,
when the questions began about whether a real
conflict exists between progressives with faith
and those without. A must read essay.
The Religious Left Fights
Back
By Van Jones, AlterNet
Lerner wants to help forge a new alliance of "religious,
secular and spiritual, but not religious, progressives."
This alliance will someday expose and challenge the
cancer of American consumerism. And it will oppose
the religious Right's abuse of scripture to promote war,
intolerance and ugly
corporate agendas.
Bloodguilty Churches
Why Bush’s
Agenda Is Immoral
and an Abomination to God
By Katherine Yurica
Ranked 4 Stars
This
is a stunning major analysis of
Mr. Bush's agenda.
Updated January
25, 2005
Did you know the Bible prohibits:
deregulation;
vote rigging; privatization of Social Security; tax
cuts for the wealthy; invading Iraq; oppressing the
Hispanics who cross our borders; cutting Medicaid
services; cutting Medicare services; hurting the
environment; failing to answer all the questions from
the 9/11 families; Tort Reform; torture; lying to congress;
bribes; tampering with the justice system; appointing
prejudiced nominees to the bench; tipping the scales
of justice to favor big corporations? Read Bloodguilty
Churches. Don't miss
this hard hitting new report.
Bloodguilty Churches is now
available in paperback. Click
here to
see the book.
Evangelical Pastor Preaches
the Gospel of
Free Market Capitalism
and Bloody Preemptive
Strikes by Jeff Sharlet
[Yurica Report Editor's
Note: Read Jeffrey Sharlet's Soldiers
of Christ, Inside America's most powerful megachurch. Sharlet
writes: "In addition to New Life, Pastor Ted presides
over the
National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), whose 45,000
churches and 30 million believers make up the nation’s most
powerful religious lobbying group, and also over a smaller
network of his own creation, the Association of Life-Giving
Churches, 300 or so congregations modeled on New Life’s
“free market” approach to the divine...New Lifers,
Pastor
Ted writes with evident pride, 'like the benefits, risks, and
maybe above all, the excitement of a free-market society.'
It's now available on line at Harper's. Don't miss this
piece!
Click on this image to go there: 
]
United Church of Christ
Backs Same-Sex Marriage
By Shaila Dewan
The United Church of Christ became
the first
mainline Christian denomination to support
same-sex marriage officially when its general
synod passed a resolution on Monday affirming
"equal marriage rights for couples regardless of
gender."
The resolution was adopted in
the face of efforts
to amend the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage.
It was both a theological statement and a protest
against discrimination, said the Rev. John H. Thomas,
the president and general minister of the denomination,
which has 6,000 congregations and 1.3 million members.
The Heterosexual Revolution
By Stephanie Coontz
Traditional marriage, with its
5,000-year history, has
already been upended. Gays and lesbians, however,
didn't spearhead that revolution: heterosexuals did.
Heterosexuals were the upstarts who turned marriage
into a voluntary love relationship rather than a mandatory
economic and political institution. Heterosexuals were the
ones who made procreation voluntary, so that some
couples could choose childlessness, and who adopted
assisted reproduction so that even couples who could
not conceive could become parents.
Narcissism Goes to Church:
Encountering Evangelical
Worship
By Monte Wilson
Modern American Christianity
is filled with the spirit
of narcissism. We are in love with ourselves and evaluate
churches, ministers and truth-claims based upon how
they make us feel about ourselves...If the proffered truth
supports my self-esteem, it is, thereby, verified.