A grassroots Christians movement joins the fight against Christian Nationalism

[leov]

I do not believe God Creates an existence that is corrupt nor becomes corrupt. Creation is as it is, and intended to be by Creation.

I just think that a 'seed' was introduced fir things become what they are.

 

[shmogie]

It is a tuff fight against the dominance of 'Christian Manifest Destiny.' and the associated Divine right of Theodicy in government.

The separation of Church and state is not clearly defined in the Bible.

Nor is it in the Constitution.

 

[sooda]

Nor is it in the Constitution.

Christian nationalism that supports the likes of Trump is a VERY weird form of Christianity.

 

[shmogie]

Christian nationalism that supports the likes of Trump is a VERY weird form of Christianity.

What does that have to do with the Constitution ?

 

[sooda]

What does that have to do with the Constitution ?

Trump doesn't know anything about the US Constitution.

 

[shmogie]

Trump doesn't know anything about the US Constitution.

Could be.

 

[shunyadragon]

Nor is it in the Constitution.

There are many things not specifically in the the Constitution, but clarified and specifically described by the founding fathers as based on the Constitution by the founding fathers, laws, treaties.

The separation of church and state is grounded in the Ist Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

Thomas Jefferson reinforced the concept::

From: Separation of church and state in the United States - Wikipedia

The phrase "separation between church & state" is generally traced to a January 1, 1802, letter by Thomas Jefferson, addressed to the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut, and published in a Massachusetts newspaper. Jefferson wrote,

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties."[1]

Article Six of the United States Constitution also specifies that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

Jefferson's metaphor of a wall of separation has been cited repeatedly by the U.S. Supreme Court. In Reynolds v. United States (1879) the Court wrote that Jefferson's comments "may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the [First] Amendment." In Everson v. Board of Education (1947), Justice Hugo Black wrote: "In the words of Thomas Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect a wall of separation between church and state."[3]


This, of course does not end the controversy over the history of our country with mixed decisions by the courts,

 

[shunyadragon]

There are many things not specifically in the the Constitution, but clarified and specifically described by the founding fathers as based on the Constitution by the founding fathers, laws, treaties.

The separation of church and state is grounded in the Ist Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

Thomas Jefferson reinforced the concept::

From: Separation of church and state in the United States - Wikipedia

The phrase "separation between church & state" is generally traced to a January 1, 1802, letter by Thomas Jefferson, addressed to the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut, and published in a Massachusetts newspaper. Jefferson wrote,

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties."[1]

Article Six of the United States Constitution also specifies that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

Jefferson's metaphor of a wall of separation has been cited repeatedly by the U.S. Supreme Court. In Reynolds v. United States (1879) the Court wrote that Jefferson's comments "may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the [First] Amendment." In Everson v. Board of Education (1947), Justice Hugo Black wrote: "In the words of Thomas Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect a wall of separation between church and state."[3]


This, of course does not end the controversy over the history of our country with mixed decisions by the courts,

I wanted to add that he direction of the courts including the Supreme Court is the 'accomodation' of religious beliefs and avoiding laws that constrain religious beliefs, and the expression of religious beliefs.

 

[Samantha Rinne]

Also, are you aware of what astroturf is? Grassroots is stuff that everyone knows about because they got involved in it, or their friends did. It started organically.

Astroturf is when the media calls it grassroots, but it's being organized by someone. And you don't personally know anyone in favor of it.

Astroturf can in fact have alot of members, but it is created not in response to need (the right of the governed not to have their country taken away) but to impose an agenda.

 

[sooda]

Also, are you aware of what astroturf is? Grassroots is stuff that everyone knows about because they got involved in it, or their friends did. It started organically.

Astroturf is when the media calls it grassroots, but it's being organized by someone. And you don't personally know anyone in favor of it.

Astroturf can in fact have alot of members, but it is created not in response to need (the right of the governed not to have their country taken away) but to impose an agenda.

Astroturf is an outdoor carpeting manufactured to look like grass.

 

[Samantha Rinne]

Yes and this is exactly what I mean.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/astroturfing

You said Trump is a weird form of Christianity. Trump getting elected is a good example of grassroots. Here's I think what happened.

First, about 45-60% maybe of our voters around consistent about being Democratic or Republican, they are what's called swing voters. Some of these very people voted Obama the election before, but either didn't get what they wanted or got too much of it (an example was LGBT rights, I lookied at a statistic at around the time of Obama saying that the bulk of the population was in favor of gay marriage, having fair housing, and right to jobs; but despite reasonable equality being met, ir wasn't enough that most people favored that as a right, it became a mandate (enter priests that while they favor gays being married in Unitarian Churches in Massachusetts, have the impossible situation of getting forced to perform a wedding, or even more impossible forced to do one that their church or their state won't let them perform and being held responsible for it) and it wasn't enough that they had some equal rights now they had more rights than the average person (if I moved to NY, I could sue ppl if they misgendered me and collect $250k, and I could make a living using a fake gender pronoun that nobody could say)).

In the wake of Clinton's email scandals and seeing government corruption, some of the previously left people became alt-right (this is what the term actually means, it isn't just a sort "super far right" as the newspaper will try to define it, these are ppl who voted left on a consistent basis, then saw what their party was really like, and left it behind). Now some of these alt-right types had pretty shallow roots, many of them left at one point or another during Trump's presidency.

There were also legal immigrants viting for Trump. Clinton's support of illegal immigrants meant that all the work they had spent getting their papers sorted, and she was going to let ppl cut the line, so to speak. And many of these had come from bad overpopulated countries and didn't care to see these people bring problems in.

There were white men feeling threatened by how left the government had gotten so they came out in droves, but contrary to what you're gonna hear about on CNN, there were also women and especially black ppl voting Trump. Why the blacks? Well, think about it. They'd just had a black president but their problems didn't get solved.

So all these different groups of ppl, coming to support something. This is what a REAL grassroots movement looks like. An astroturf movement? It has the same class of people (all from the cities, all from certain Christian denominations, and all from churches who have a priest strongly involved in politics).

 

[ImmortalFlame]

There were white men feeling threatened by how left the government had gotten so they came out in droves, but contrary to what you're gonna hear about on CNN, there were also women and especially black ppl voting Trump. Why the blacks? Well, think about it. They'd just had a black president but their problems didn't get solved.

Statistically, this is a misrepresentation. The overwhelming majority of people who voted for Trump were white, with only 8% of black voters voting for him, and the majority of swing voters (moderates) voting for Hillary.
SOURCE: How Groups Voted in 2016 | Roper Center for Public Opinion Research

So all these different groups of ppl, coming to support something. This is what a REAL grassroots movement looks like. An astroturf movement? It has the same class of people (all from the cities, all from certain Christian denominations, and all from churches who have a priest strongly involved in politics).

By this logic, every voter base ever is a grassroots movement, because every voter base contains a certain percentage of lots of different groups in it. This is just meaningless rhetoric.

By and large, Hillary had the most diverse support base, including the majority of lower-income and minority voters.

 

[Samantha Rinne]

By taking water from their neighbors.

California does this. They raid water from Utah, Nevada, and Arizona while giving them guilt trips about being more conservative. They have basically also claimed to be environmentalists while about 6 of the 10 most polluted places in US are theirs. Why? Well first they used so much plastic that it ended up in oceans, and second when they banned plastic straws and plastic bags (yes seriously), their homeless basically just shat in the streets.

Israel, however has not only helped other countries but their irrigation is far less wasteful drip method, and they collect water from the air.

The top 12 ways Israel is feeding the world

That's just two ways of 12 that they're doing farming better than what you're claiming.

 

[sooda]

California does this. They raid water from Utah, Nevada, and Arizona while giving them guilt trips about being more conservative. They have basically also claimed to be environmentalists while about 6 of the 10 most polluted places in US are theirs. Why? Well first they used so much plastic that it ended up in oceans, and second when they banned plastic straws and plastic bags (yes seriously), their homeless basically just shat in the streets.

Israel, however has not only helped other countries but their irrigation is far less wasteful drip method, and they collect water from the air.

The top 12 ways Israel is feeding the world

That's just two ways of 12 that they're doing farming better than what you're claiming.

LOLOL.. The Arabs have used drip irrigation for thousands of years.

Maybe we should spend the billions we give Israel every year on our homeless in California.

 

[Samantha Rinne]

Statistically, this is a misrepresentation. The overwhelming majority of people who voted for Trump were white, with only 8% of black voters voting for him, and the majority of swing voters (moderates) voting for Hillary.
SOURCE: How Groups Voted in 2016 | Roper Center for Public Opinion Research


By this logic, every voter base ever is a grassroots movement, because every voter base contains a certain percentage of lots of different groups in it. This is just meaningless rhetoric.

By and large, Hillary had the most diverse support base, including the majority of lower-income and minority voters.

Statistically, most statistics are fake. They predicted a 99% chance Hillary would win. Obviously more people voted the way I think they did than the statistics show. Maybe I'm wrong about the groups.

But I do know that the "lower educated" and " mainly white" and "mainly male" picture that many statistic websites (pewresearch included) give have some errors. Such "statistics" basically have Russian meddling as the only explanation, because they can't account for it any other way.
The Five Types of Trump Voters | Democracy Fund Voter Study Group

This website doesn't reach quite the same conclusion, but it does make the case that staunch conservative types only accounted for 30% of Trump vote.

-------------------------------

Sooda, you're confusing flood irrigation with drip irrigation. Flood irrigation is a good way to raid another country's water supply, but as anyone in Arizona can tell you too much water in a desert turns the sandy soil into cement (not literally, but it hardens to the point where stuff can't grow). You've got a ready answer for everything, except perhaps why Muslim territories matches this desertification map. Face it, many of those countries focus on herding animals (mainly goats) and have terrible farming skills.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...cation_map.png/1200px-Desertification_map.png

But it doesn't have to be an us or them proposition. When you stop the finger pointing and the ready quips and realize "huh there are 12 ways Israel farms better than I, the person criticizing them, do" you actually can say the words "How can we spread these methods to the Arab world so they can also be successful? How can we improve impoverished communities in Asia and Africa? Couldn't we fund groups (like Heifer) that try to do just that?" Nahhhhhh, let's keep saying "they probly steal it" because this is a helpful mentality, and not at all telling of your own mindset.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

Statistically, most statistics are fake. They predicted a 99% chance Hillary would win. Obviously more people voted the way I think they did than the statistics show. Maybe I'm wrong about the groups.

So, if you reject statistics, on what basis do you form the conclusion that there was any significant groundswell of support for Trump from ANY group?

 

[Shad]

I think you're missing the bigger picture. Regardless of aquifers or whatever, Israel also turned a relative desert when they first came back into fertile land. And it's not the first time. Historically Judea was cinquered and often enough that there are legit Bible verses, it always turned back and forth depending on how well managed it is.

Suppose for a second that the hottest driest areas of the Middle East also had this success story. Or we could bemoan what is probably a result of current problems while overlooking the fact that since its (re)founding in 1948 it has tripled its available farmland (type in "Israel and Agriculture" )

Israel has acknowledged the issue with the Jordan River. There is a jointed plan developed by Jordan, Israel and the PA made in 2015

One of the reasons the Jordan has issues was due to making Israel green. The place was arid for a reason. It is the same mistakes made in the US SW and the Colorado river. Same issue in Damascus. The human population in the area is beyond the environment's ability to support it

 

[Sand Dancer]

I'm cheering them on.

A grassroots Christians movement joins the fight against Christian Nationalism

But that changed dramatically on July 29, with a statement of principles announcing the launch of Christians Against Christian Nationalism, spearheaded by the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, under the leadership of Executive Director Amanda Tyler. It was originally conceived as an interfaith initiative, “But we quickly learned that our partners from other faith traditions did not feel as comfortable calling out Christian nationalism as we and other Christian partners did,” Tyler told Salon via email. “Their response initially surprised me, but I quickly saw the power in and the need for us, as Christians, to clean up our house first.”


The statement called Christian nationalism, “a persistent threat to both our religious communities and our democracy,” warning that “Christian nationalism seeks to merge Christian and American identities, distorting both the Christian faith and America’s constitutional democracy;” that “It often overlaps with and provides cover for white supremacy and racial subjugation;” and asserting that “As Christians, we are bound to Christ, not by citizenship, but by faith.”

I love supporting Christ-like Christians.