If Bobby Jindal wants to do a big Christian prayer rally, more power to him. But he might have double-checked (or even triple-checked) before hooking up with a rally where the American Family Association were main sponsors of the shindig.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/bobby-jindals-clueless-defense-his-afa-prayer-rally
His concern would not be so much because the group (and their head honcho for communications Bryan Fischer) are rabidly anti-gay or anything (though that seems to be drawing some protests from the student body at LSU, where the prayer rally is to be held), but because the AFA and Fischer are also rabidly anti-Hindu, as the clip below indicates — a religion that Jindal's own parents are still active members of.
'This is a counterfeit religion. It is an Eastern religion. It is, in essence, an occult religion. It's a counterfeit, a false alternative to Christianity. It ultimately represents the doctrine of demons, that is what you have with Hinduism ….'
(By all accounts, there's no particular indication that Jindal feels this way about his previous, or his parents' current religion. I just know I'd have some trouble with people who openly made such assertions about my parents' faith.)
The other irony the article points out is that Jindal's trying to deflect criticism of the event by suggesting that Christians have a right to gather in public prayer, while standing alongside people who have stated that Hindus (and other non-Christians) in the US are not protected by the First Amendment.
Can the AFA help him politically? Because I’m quite sure that’s all Bobby (The Exorcist) Jindal cares about. I am curious as to how his parents feel about it.
And there was me thinking that the US was a secular country. My bad 🙂
sighs see…it's people like this what cause unrest.
If a person you know already, comes to your house one day, and says "You have to invite me in." even though they have been there before. You know it is a demon who is in charge of that person.
+Dave Ingram It's folks like Fischer, and the pols willing (or eager) to sidle up to him, that are the greatest threat to religion in America, in my opinion.
+beatusqui On the other hand, most of my friends don't just barge into my house. 🙂
+Dave Hill Agreed with your response to +Dave Ingram It's something that I'm always on about within the community of people of faith that I'm around.
+Victor Powell I'm lucky enough (or discerning enough) to belong to a congregation that, while happy to discuss the Good News if it comes up in conversation, aren't out on street corners screaming at sinners or declaring anyone of a different faith devils or devil worshippers.
+Dave Hill heh yeah, Dave it always bothered me that some people couldn't apply biblical principles (especially the ones Jesus taught, which are the ones that really mattered anyway) to the practical modern world that we live in instead of trying to recreate something that can't exist. They pull a Apostle Paul whom I think was more dogmatic and aggregate than Jesus himself. Not that he didn't have good things to say, but I think you gotta take it with a grain of salt and translate it to our world. He has a militant streak about him that I think appeals to many of these types of people. IMHO.
+Victor Powell I think you've got it right — the principles of Jesus' teaching (to the extent that they can be gleaned coherently from the gospels and other NT material) have a lot of applicability to the modern day. The people who try to take it all word-for-word and assume that everything Jesus (or Paul) said applies literally and technically to every situation in the modern world are the ones who lose the basic message. They strike me as the modern Pharisees.
Perhaps this is another case of GOP contempt for fact checking biting them on the butt.
+Dave Hill They're called literalists/ warmongers, bullies 🙂
Sure, everyone has the right to gather in public prayer while standing alongside people who have stated that non-Christians in the US are not protected by the First Amendment. Just don’t call yourselves Christians, and if you do, be ready to be called a hypocrite.
+Dave Hill, I went to a Catholic school K-12 in a small town in N.Iowa. When it came to the literal in the Bible, this is what the Sisters told us “You want science? Go down the hall and take Biology, Physics, Chemistry, etc. You want Math? Algebra, Trig and Calc are the other way. You want spiritual guidance? Open the book in front of you. You should NOT take the Bible literally. That isn’t its purpose.”
Sometimes some of it needs to be read literally, depending on the circumstances.
+Brian Barth Catholics have been traditionally a lot less literalist in Bible interpretation than the more fundamentalist American Christian sects. With the centuries-long tradition of theological study by the Church and the use of other sources of authority than just the Bible, that seem inevitable.
It's also one of the reasons why so many Protestant Christians, past and present, don't feel that Catholics can be labeled as Christians, which is one of the reasons I'm usually loath to call out others as not being Christian, as oppose to pointing out where their interpretation of Christianity differs with my own.
as oppose to pointing out where their interpretation of Christianity differs with my own.' Well said. It's all in the interpretation. Monotheism is what 'they' 'Christians, Muslims, Jews, Sabeans, Zoroastrians' are in fact meant to be. Rome the poison in the nest of the 'People of the Book.'.
+beatusqui Yup!
All of this is the legacy of the Puritans and historically speaking, the English civil war where after the Restoration, the more radical and puritanical people fled to colonize North America. In the beginning, many of them wanted to establish a theocracy…which of course, we know that ultimately failed. A lot of that, the remnants of that, is still present in many of the Evangelical denominations. As a product of such thinking, it has taken me a long time and my own personal study to come to certain realizations that line up with more Roman Catholic thinking. The funny thing is my first years of schooling was a Catholic parochial school that my grandmother forced my mother to take me out off because of exactly what you said +Dave Hill
The sad thing with trying to establish a Christian biblical theocracy, the only template is the OT and the rule of the Judges, which was a major dysfunction at best.