U.S. should stay out of bloody Mideast religious wars

Hear, hear!  Before we insert ourselves in a sectarian conflict of Sunni vs. Shia in Syria, Iraq and beyonjd, Hoffman asks us to consider what bloody horrors we "reasonable, rational" Europeans inflicted on ourselves during our sectarian wars [emphasis mine]:

The agreements reached in Westphalia followed 130 years of strife, including the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, when Protestant Queen Elizabeth I of England beat back Catholic King Philip II of Spain’s rampage across Europe to put down heresy. Other rulers fomented mob violence with incidents such as the 1572 St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre in France, when the Catholic king targeted well-born Protestants. The king’s assassins murdered nobles in their beds while commoners knifed and strangled Protestant neighbors in the streets.

One-quarter of Europe’s population was killed during the devastating Thirty Years' War (1618-48), another bloody phase of the Reformation. Brutal punishments included burning at the stake and pouring excrement down the throats of captives, a torture known as the “Swedish drink.” War spread famine and bubonic plague across Europe. Like now, greed complicated religious conflict, as combatants wrestled over lands and gold.

Exhausted, Protestants and Catholics finally agreed to negotiate. Gathering in separate towns, they sent messengers back and forth to avoid seeing one another’s despised faces. After five years of argument, the Peace of Westphalia concluded the tragic wars of religion. Separation of church and state took hold.

Avoid a classic blunder: Stay out of religious wars in the Middle East

By Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman

September 16, 2014 | Reuters

URL: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS9679781720140916

The South's final defeat

First they lost the Civil War, then they lost the battle against civil rights, and now comes this, the white South's last defeat: demographics.

[I]t is difficult, if not impossible, for many white Southerners to disentangle regional culture (Southern) from race (white) and ethnicity (British Protestant). The historical memory of white Southerners is not of ethnic coexistence and melting-pot pluralism but of ethnic homogeneity and racial privilege. Small wonder that going from the status of local Herrenvolk to local minority in only a generation or two is causing much of the white South to freak out.

The demographic demise of the white South is going to be traumatic for the nation as a whole. [...] 

[T]he old-stock Yankees in the Northeast and Midwest did not accept their diminished status in their own regions without decades of hysteria and aggression and political gerrymandering. The third and final defeat of the white South, its demographic defeat, is likely to be equally prolonged and turbulent. Fasten your seat belts.

If only for white Southerners intolerable whining, it will be traumatic for all of us.

The white South’s last defeat

By Michael Lind

February 5, 2013 | Salon

URL: http://www.salon.com/2013/02/05/the_white_souths_last_defeat/

In 2012, vote for the Christian?

Just one of Mormons' weird beliefs; look it up

Maybe I'm being a bit rascally by posting this, but certain Bible-thumpers and confession-doubters deserve to hear it. After all, if they're going to doubt the confessed Christianity of our President, then they need to know that Mitt Romney is not a Christian.  

That's not an insult, that's a fact. Even Franklin Graham said so. Christianity is a club of sorts, and you have to believe certain things to be a member.  Mormons don't.  So they're not in the club.  They are their own religious sect.  (Or, "the fourth Abrahamic religion," if you want to be really generous.)  That doesn't make them bad people.  Just like Muslims, Jews, Hindus, agnostics and atheists are not necessarily bad.  They're simply not Christians.  On this point, Protestants and the Catholic Church agree.

So, our conservative Christian friends need to decide if they want a confessed Christian in the White House, or a confessed non-Christian.  (Or, gee whiz, maybe they'll come to the realization that one's religion, or lack thereof, doesn't matter?!...)  

Is Mormonism Christian?

By Matt Slick

Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry

[ ... ] 

Conclusion

Why is Mormonism a non-Christian religion? It is not Christian because it denies that there is only one God, denies the true Gospel, adds works to salvation, denies that Jesus is the uncreated creator, distorts the biblical teaching of the atonement, and undermines the authority and reliability of the Bible.

CARM does not deny that Mormons are good people, that they worship "a" god, that they share common words with Christians, that they help their people, and that they do many good things.  But that isn't what makes someone Christian.  Jesus said in Matthew 7:21-23, " Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name? And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!" (NKJV). Becoming a Christian does not mean belonging to a church, doing good things, or simply believing in God. Being a Christian means that you have trusted in the true God for salvation, in the True Jesus -- not the brother of the devil, not the god of Mormonism, not the gospel of Mormonism.  Mormonism is false and cannot save anyone.