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Post by matt on Nov 3, 2012 3:32:03 GMT 10
This is a video from the PBS NewsHour about churches endorsing candidates in the upcoming U.S. election:
Do churches have a right to endorse candidates?
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Post by Deleted on Nov 3, 2012 7:09:56 GMT 10
Churches (and ALL religions) are totally and absolutely irrelevant in the 21st century where there is absolutely no need for imaginary gods to be used as a crutch instead of humans standing on their own two feet, so the poll which is part of this thread is a total and absolute nonsense.
As is Matty-boy.
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Post by pim on Nov 3, 2012 8:27:03 GMT 10
Matt's polls are silly, I agree, but so is your boring mantra that churches are irrelevant. If I look around me here in Australia I see lots of hospitals and schools that are run by churches - and well-appointed hospitals and schools at that! The churches don't just conduct religious services for dwindling congregations, they play a huge part in running social services as well. And not just schools and hospitals, churches also run aged care facilities, retirement homes ... and I'm probably leaving out a whole lot of other stuff such as op shops, welfare agencies, charities ... If you just look at agencies like St Vincent de Paul, the Salvation Army, Anglicare and look at the scope of what they do. Some homeless person late at night on the footpath in some sort of drug-induced stupor ... a van stops, someone gets out and takes him to a shelter. It's possibly Vinnies or the Salvos. And you say the churches are irrelevant??? My friend, if you want to look at "irrelevance", I'd suggest you get a mirror. As for Matt's poll question, I don't like the agenda behind it so I'm not going to participate in it. I think Matt's real agenda is to come up with black clergy who are calling for a vote for Romney because of Obama's personal opinion on gay marriage. What I think Matt is trying to do here is to confect a scenario which portrays Obama as losing his base of support in the black community. If Matt thinks there's a surge of black voters who are going to vote for Romney and give him the Presidency, then Matt is clutching at straws. But as for the question of churches endorsing or expressing a view on electoral politics ... sure! Why not? It is a free country after all. Cast your mind back to the election campaign of 2008 in which Obama thrashed the Republicans to win the Presidency. Remember that black pastor who said "God damn America!" and the blowback on Obama over that? I remember people at the time said that the guy was unpatriotic and pointed to the fact that Obama had been a member of his congregation. But nobody said at the time that he had no right, as a pastor, to express a political opinion. And I doubt very much that KTJ would have called HIM irrelevant ...  |
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Post by spindrift on Nov 3, 2012 8:50:30 GMT 10
Godbotherer's are a fairly large demographic and entitled to their opinions on what effects their charities, schools, hospitals and aid programs, all which is big business:....therefore they will place those above any one else on a political ticket that will protect their interest first, whether that politician is a warmongering freemarketeer is irrelevant to these people....money and profit first.
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Post by pim on Nov 3, 2012 14:22:33 GMT 10
Interesting concluding sentence, Buzz. No, seriously! By your If so then they are in decline like Rome was are we to take it that the history of the rise and fall of empires and great powers is about how moral they were? And as went Rome, Persia, Egypt etc so will go the US?
There's an almost cosmic dimension to this isn't there. Empires rise with a burst of moral energy - in fact you could call it "the mandate of heaven", oh bugger it let's just call it "karma" and leave it at that! - and they last until their heavenly mandate, or "grace" or "karma" has exhausted itself. Then they fall.
It's a beguiling notion and indeed has informed much historiography down through the ages. The most famous exponent of the "moral capital" school of historiography was Edward Gibbon with his masterpiece The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Don't get me wrong! I admire Gibbon's work and I note that the Englishman who more than anyone was the driving force behind the foundation of South Australia - where I live - was named Edward Gibbon Wakefield after the famous historian. Gibbon's work is a masterpiece of detail and lucid English prose and nobody could really claim to have even a nodding acquaintance with ancient history without at least having heard of Gibbon's Decline and Fall. I once paid homage to the great man at the house where he wrote his history, on the shores of the Lake of Geneva in Lausanne.
But my point, Buzz, is that the Gibbon perspective, that of the "moral capital" view of the rise and fall of great empires, has been superseded by economic historians. Blame Marx. But that doesn't mean that all economic historians are Marxists! But just as Marx has affected the study of economics, so too has he affecte approaches to history and that informs all historians in the modern period.
America won't fall because of some sort of moral deficit. Rome already had a moral deficit in spades with the early Emperors, the Julio-Claudians, culminating in Caligula who was downright certifiable and a homicidal maniac (and suspected cannibal). who was Roman Emperor from AD 37 - 41. If I know my Roman history, Rome went on and achieved heights undreamt of. Historians agree that Rome peaked as an Empire under the Emperors Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius who died (I think) in AD 180. Even then classical Rome had another 230 years left in it before it fell to the Goths under Alaric in 410 AD.
Like the dinosaurs (a most unjustly misrepresented collection of species whose "icon" status as the Species that Failed is utterly undeserved), ancient Rome was a most successful culture and polity which lasted - as the "classical" Rome of antiquity, both as a Republic and as an Empire - for more than a thousand years. America should be so lucky! And in fact America may well be so lucky. For just as under a monster of an Emperor like Caligula Rome renewed itself and we see with the benefit of historical hindsight that in spite of Caligula and Nero that Rome's best days lay ahead, so too could it be easily speculated of America.
You're the one who compares America to Rome. You opened that door in your #5. So OK let's walk through it. This is speculative of course but what could be happening is that America has become so enormous that it is becoming dysfunctional as a republic. Which means that if you compare the US with ancient Rome that puts it roughly where Rome was under Marius, Sulla and Pompey. These were "strong men" who kept the republican show on the road but in so doing gave what had been the eminently respectable Latin term "Dictator" its modern meaning - which was very different from what "dictator" had meant with Cincinnatus. The ancient equivalent of the Soviet Union to the ancient Romans was Carthage and the pressures of fighting three wars with the Carthaginians basically stuffed Rome as a Republic. History well may judge that that was the effect of two world wars plus the Cold War on the US. But we don't know that yet. You could also argue that the equivalent for Rome of Osama bin Laden was Mithridates who timed his acts of slaughter, mayhem and outrages on Romans in what is now Turkey to co-incide with the slave revolts and wars within Italy of Spartacus. The laws that the Romans passed to deal with these security threats posed both by Spartacus and Mithridates were eerily prophetic of the Patriot Act more than 2000 years later in another hemisphere. It took another Roman "monster", Sulla, who was mean enough and ruthless enough to deal with Mithridates outside Italy and to act like Stalin within Italy. One wonders if in fact whether, like Rome, America is becoming too big for its republic. Rome dealt with that issue by producing a Caesar who turned it into an Empire. What comes next for America if it outgrows its republic is anyone's guess.
But America is far from finished!
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Post by matt on Nov 3, 2012 14:27:21 GMT 10
My intention was not to create an impression that African Americans will be voting for Romney en masse.
If it was a video on white preachers, I would have posted it as well.
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Post by pim on Nov 3, 2012 14:54:06 GMT 10
OK, you're clearly of the Gibbon school. Quaint. Kinda nice & old fashioned. Economic historians disagree with you. Corruption never stopped any culture from expanding and from being expansionist. Heard of Hobsbawm?
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Post by Deleted on Nov 3, 2012 15:16:58 GMT 10
Would the fact that say various Atheist and Skeptic groups endorsed a particular candidate raise the same questions we witness here about churches endorsing candidates ?
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Post by Deleted on Nov 3, 2012 15:20:31 GMT 10
Churches (and ALL religions) are totally and absolutely irrelevant in the 21st century where there is absolutely no need for imaginary gods to be used as a crutch instead of humans standing on their own two feet, so the poll which is part of this thread is a total and absolute nonsense. As is Matty-boy. Was a particularly nonsensical comment given that atheists as a proportion of the human race are becoming smaller and smaller. Contrary to Kiwi's baseless assertions there is tremendous growth in faith in China, Africa and South America. So while it is true that in the West secularism is witnessing some growth in worldwide terms it is diminishing in proportion to the human experience. As for standing on our own two feet we dont need drugs or alchohol to do that unlike those who did eg LSD. |
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Post by pim on Nov 3, 2012 15:39:36 GMT 10
The Romans started off moral and ended up corrupt The US is finished and they show all the signs of a civilisation in decline. Do you know them? The Romans were no more "moral" than any other Italian city state ... and no more "immoral" either. Even if you accept the mythology that explains their origins as historical fact (hell, fundy christians reckon the book of genesis is fact so accepting greco/roman mythology as fact is no worse!) then it's full of tales of mendacity and moral turpitude. Doncha just love that phrase? "Moral turpitude" ... Aeneas was a total cad and oath breaker of the Bronze Age to the Queen of Carthage, Dido, who'd fallen in love with him and wanted him to stay with her (Aeneas was a refugee, boat person and asylum seeker from the ruins of Troy) but in spite of all his promises to Dido, Aeneas sailed away to found the Latin culture in that part of Italy whih was to be called Latium and in which Rome was to be founded many centuries later. The founders of Rome, the brothers Romulus and Remus (let's gloss over the "suckled by a she-wolf" bit, although that does raise moral questions about what the hell were their parents up to!) ended up in a fraternal spat that went horribly too far when Romulus killed Remus. And wasn't there a shortage of females in very early Rome which the Roman blokes solved with what is known today as the "Rape of the Sabine Women"? Quite a story that one! Don't tell it to your kids! And what else is there? The whole Etruscan/Roman thing - the Etruscans being the predominant power in northern Italy who'd been there for longer than Rome had existed and the kings of early Rome tended to be Etruscan! Nothing wrong with that! We Australians accept Pommy monarchs as our head of state so who are we to judge! So I dunno about this story of the Romans chasing out the last Roman King who was an Etruscan called Tarquinius Superbus. We only get to hear the Roman version of course and I suspect it's more than a bit sanitised. And what about this Republic of theirs that they founded after they'd got rid of the kings? Class-ridden ... patricians and plebeians with only patricians getting into the Senate. There were the Gracchi of course - two brothers with the surname Gracchus - who were famous "tribunes" of the plebs. But I understand they came to a very sticky end. By which time Rome finds itself shaping up to Carthage and the republic went downhill to imperial monarchy after that. So I dunno, Buzz! When you look at the constitutional history of Rome first as a monarchy, then as a republic, and finally as an empire ... there's mendacity and corruption all the way through! As for its power in the ancient world, it didn't become a global superpower in a moral upsurge, but by serendipity. In its struggle to free itself from the Etruscans, Rome became predominant in central Italy. So it had gone from being a player - a city state among other Latin-speaking city states - in Latium to being a player in the Italian peninsula and that meant it found itself dealing with the Greeks of southern Italy. When ultimately through warfare (yeah Rome was expansionist and aggressive but it also responded to cicumstances at the time) it defeated the Italian Greeks it found itself supreme in Italy. So it came up against the Carthaginians who had interests in Sicily and Sardinia. It took three wars and it destroyed Carthage. And in so doing it became a Mediterranean power and supreme in the western Mediterranean with interests to defend in north Africa and Spain. And this in turn brought it up against the other Mediterranean powers which were the Hellenistic Greeks of the eastern med. You can guess what happened. Not many powers become imperial through a deliberate plan. You find yourself in conflict with a rival who has become an adversary and then an enemy. You defeat this enemy and, naturally, add his assets to your own. Consequently you find that you're now playing in a bigger league with new interests to defend - and new rivals. And so it goes. This isn't about "morality" or "corruption"! Buzz, you're sounding like a moralising Christian, mate!! |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 3, 2012 20:44:14 GMT 10
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Post by matt on Nov 3, 2012 22:47:45 GMT 10
I get sick of how people complain that it is unfair that only one State gets to decide. Actually, lots of States have to vote in favour of one candidate or the other.
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Post by Salem on Nov 4, 2012 20:13:49 GMT 10
Talking about irrelevance, does anyone really read Pim's self-important long posts of rubbish?  Boring spam. |
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Post by slartibartfast on Nov 4, 2012 21:15:50 GMT 10
Well, he’s smarter than you, so he’d be over your head.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 4, 2012 21:50:01 GMT 10
Well, he’s smarter than you, so he’d be over your head. I dispute that - but he's certainly smarter than you. |
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Post by pim on Nov 5, 2012 7:47:43 GMT 10
LOL - eloquently put, Buzz, in the noblest bombastic traditions  |
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Post by pim on Nov 5, 2012 8:39:28 GMT 10
You opened the door to comparisons between ancient Rome and the modern United States with your "moral capital" view of history so eloquently expounded in the 1800s by Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The "moral capital" view of historiography was superseded in the 20th century by economic historians. You mention the Roman Empire. Look at the Roman economy. Just as today we live in a fossil fuel economy the Romans lived in a slave economy. Slavery was at the heart of their energy policy. Just as today modern technology runs on the burning of fossil fuels, the Roman economy ran on the power of human muscles, the muscle power of slaves. The Roman legions were the key to this economic model: they conquered new territory, dispossessed and enslaved the locals, and threw the land open to be settled by veterans of the legions. When Caesar conquered Gaul it's estimated the Gallic population was 4-5 million. A million Gauls died in the 10 years of the Gallic Wars. Caesar enslaved another million. The business model was that the legions conquered new territories and ensured a regular supply of fresh slaves. In that way the legions were the equivalent in the Roman economy of the big oil companies today. Rome declined and fell because she ran out of places to expand to. The vRomans ran into the Atlantic Ocean in the west, the Sahara in the south, the cold, damp, fogs and primeval forests of Europe north of the Alps, and the Zoroastrian culture of the east which proved to be too tough a nut for the Romans to crack. Basically Rome reached its limits. No new territories to conquer, no fresh slaves, the business model of the legions collapsed and so did the Roman economy. Nothing to do with morality or corruption. But on the topic of corruption, you said ... The Romans started off moral and ended up corrupt and then a few posts later you said ... If the "rape" quote is correct, then the "moral" quote can't be right ... Can it?? |
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Post by slartibartfast on Nov 5, 2012 9:22:25 GMT 10
Would the fact that say various Atheist and Skeptic groups endorsed a particular candidate raise the same questions we witness here about churches endorsing candidates ? Well, they would be endorsing on POLICY rather than religious belief! |
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Post by pim on Nov 5, 2012 13:05:30 GMT 10
I think Skippy is trying to create an argument where there isn't one. Is anyone on the board really seriously trying to suggest that churches - or any religious outfit for that matter - do not have a perfect right to endorse a political candidate?
The First Amendment is the clause in the US Constitution that guarantees the US as a secular state. The framers of the Australian Constitution admired the First Amendment so much that in the debates in the 1890s over the provisions of the Constitution, the response to the suggestion that we ape the British in having an Established Church like they still do was to incorporate the US First Amendment into the Australian Constitution as Section 116, thereby making sure that a federated Australia would never have an official British-style "Established" religion.
But having constitutional guarantees of the separation of Church and State doesn't mean that churches aren't able to be a player within the context of secular Australian politics. They are perfectly entitled to express a view on the issues of the day, to support candidates and even to stand as candidates themselves. In the early 1960s when I was a student at Taree High School in NSW the federal member at the time was a Country Party guy, and his name was The Rev. Phillip Lucock MP. I think he was a Methodist minister. Nobody challenged his right to be a Member of Parliament on the grounds that he was a minister of religion, and if you look at the Constitution you won't find any clause that prohibits members of the clergy from being members of parliament.
And that's just as true in the US as it is here.
So we all agree! And anyone who disagrees and tries to argue that the moment you wear a dog collar you shouldn't be allowed to be involved in politics clearly doesn't understand democracy or the constitution.
So what's the problem - and what's the point of the thread?
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Post by Deleted on Nov 5, 2012 14:12:52 GMT 10
Would the fact that say various Atheist and Skeptic groups endorsed a particular candidate raise the same questions we witness here about churches endorsing candidates ? Well, they would be endorsing on POLICY rather than religious belief! Would they? So where does their POLICY originate? Policy reflects values. Atheist values, Christian values, whatever values. It all begins in a belief system. |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 5, 2012 14:13:31 GMT 10
As usual Pim resorts to strawman tactics.
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Post by slartibartfast on Nov 5, 2012 14:53:39 GMT 10
Atheists have the best values.
They don't believe in fairytales.
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Post by pim on Nov 5, 2012 14:59:40 GMT 10
Skippy must have an inexhaustible supply of messengers for people to shoot, and he believes that others inhabit a universe in which life is based not on DNA but on straw, so that we have these straw men who do our debating for us ... But who's debating? I repeat: nobody is seriously suggesting that the principle of the separation of church and state, enshrined both in the US and the Australian constitutions, preclude churches from participating in the secular political process. So I ask again - what's the problem and what's the point of the thread? |
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Post by spindrift on Nov 5, 2012 15:00:56 GMT 10
Laissez-faire freemarketeers proclaiming religion have no values...
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Post by pim on Nov 5, 2012 15:23:12 GMT 10
Oh yes they do!  I just happen to reject and oppose those values ...  |
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Boring spam.
