re: #219 Rev_Arthur_Icantbreatheing

The Air Force issues would be fixed, I think, if you moved the Academy.

Obvious choice would be Fort Collins or Pueblo.

Fort Collins because it is a college city that prides itself of education.

Pueblo, because that city still needs economic help, and could be built cheaply.

re: #217 No Country For Old Haters

I would say though that the Calvinist Way of thinking is probably the Dominant Strain of the thinking in American Protestant Christianity. The Mainline Churches have dwindled in favor of Evangelical Churches. Having been part of them in the past, I can attest to the fact they are relatively insular communities, where little thought is done, and you don’t have to interact with minorities, though I also noticed a token couple in prominent positions. This is not an accident.

The contemporary Christian right became increasingly vocal and organized in reaction to a series of United States Supreme Court decisions, most notably Bob Jones University v. Simon and Bob Jones University v. United States. It has also engaged in battles over pornography, obscenity, abortion, state sanctioned prayer in public schools, textbook contents (concerning creationism), homosexuality, and sexual education. It was long believed that the Supreme Court’s decision to make abortion a Constitution-protected right in the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling was the driving force behind the New Christian Right Movement’s rise in the 1970s.[25] Despite the large grassroots campaigns that were organized by the movement to protest the Roe decision, comments made by senior figures, including the movement’s chief architect Paul Weyrich, have suggested that the New Christian Right Movement’s rise was not centered around the issue of abortion, but rather Bob Jones University’s refusal to comply with the Supreme Court’s 1971 Green v. Connally ruling that permitted the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to collect penalty taxes from private religious schools that violated federal laws.[25] Biblical scholar and Religious Right critic Randall Balmer alleged that discussions he had with various New Christian Right Movement activists in the years following Roe v. Wade showed that there was widespread reluctance within the movement to push for new laws which would outlaw all forms of abortion.[25]

Demonstrators at the 2004 March for Life in Washington D.C.
In Thy Kingdom Come, Balmer recounted comments that Weyrich made at a conference sponsored by a Religious Right organization, that they both attended in Washington in 1990:[25]

In the course of one of the sessions, Weyrich tried to make a point to his Religious Right brethren (no women attended the conference, as I recall). Let’s remember, he said animatedly, that the Religious Right did not come together in response to the Roe decision. No, Weyrich insisted, what got us going as a political movement was the attempt on the part of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to rescind the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University because of its racially discriminatory policies.

Bob Jones University, a private, non-denominational Protestant university located in Greenville, South Carolina, had policies that refused black students enrollment until 1971,[25] admitted only married blacks from 1971 to 1975,[25] and prohibited interracial dating and marriage between 1975 and 2000.[25] In the 1974 Bob Jones University v. Simon case, the US Supreme Court further enforced the Green decision and ruled that the IRS could penalize the University for enforcing segregation policies. The following year, the IRS sought to penalize Bob Jones University for refusing to allow interracial dating.[25] During this time, Weyrich organized a campaign to defend the University and alleged that various social issues that were deemed immoral by various religious conservatives justified the need to end federal intervention in religious schools.[25] As Balmer recalled:[25]

During the following break in the conference proceedings, I cornered Weyrich to make sure I had heard him correctly. He was adamant that, yes, the 1975 action by the IRS against Bob Jones University was responsible for the genesis of the Religious Right in the late 1970s. What about abortion? After mobilizing to defend Bob Jones University and its racially discriminatory policies, Weyrich said, these evangelical leaders held a conference call to discuss strategy. He recalled that someone suggested that they had the makings of a broader political movement—something that Weyrich had been pushing for all along—and asked what other issues they might address. Several callers made suggestions, and then, according to Weyrich, a voice on the end of one of the lines said, “How about abortion?” And that is how abortion was cobbled into the political agenda of the Religious Right.

I would argue that this is the crux of the problem in American Christianity right now. The suburbanites have left mainstream churches which wish for their congregations to go and serve and help out their fellow man, in exchange for the lazy and easy way, where focus is more towards bible studies and judging others. There were very, very few opportunities for volunteer work at the churches I went to in both OKC and COS.

Heck, my Imam is getting frustrated, because a lot of churches in the area are now having these sunday sermons telling the “truth” of Islam, which is the usual pack of lies about how we are all extremists.

I personally think they are doing this because, they know that the twisted, perverted form of Protestant Christianity that now dominates the Christian scene in the US (the small remaining mainline churches, and the Catholics notwithstanding), are morally bankrupt and having nothing to offer. They have become the Pharisees that Jesus/Isa (PBUH) worked so hard against.