After-school tutoring programs, care for the elderly, shelters for the homeless, disaster relief work, and a variety of other services would all benefit from government funding.
It seems to me that when we listen to the Muslim mystics as they talk about Jesus and their love for Jesus, I must say, it’s a lot closer to New Testament Christianity than a lot of the Christians that I hear. In other words if we are looking for common ground, can we find it in mystical spirituality, even if we cannot theologically agree, Can we pray together in such a way that we connect with a God that transcends our theological differences?
I'm not denying that depression can be spiritually induced. Guilt from having wronged and hurt others can bring it on. A sense of having failed to live out the will of God can give rise to depression. Certainly the fear of death and what might follow can sap the joy out of life.
It's a new day for the Democrats when it comes to matters of faith, and the younger Evangelicals are aware of this and many of them are moving into the Democratic camp.
The first reason for the preponderant influence of those Evangelicals who define themselves as advocates of Religious Right theological and political ideologies is that they have both the financial means and technological know-how to make widespread use of modern electronic forms of communication.
What if Barack Obama established a Presidential Advisory Committee that would meet once every couple of months, bringing together the former presidents for a conference in order to seek their collective wisdom? There is a wealth of experience in former presidents that generally goes untapped.
So after the Lewinsky scandal, everything changed, and we moved from using the Bible to address the moral issues of our time, which were social, to moral issues of our time that were very personal. I have continued that relationship up until the present.
And we've got to ask ourselves some very serious questions as to whether or not certain religious leaders, in terms of raising money - I hate to bring this up - are pushing hot buttons.
Evangelical Christians, who once were a ridiculed irrelevant sectarian movement, have, over just three decades, become a powerful voting bloc that can no longer be ignored.
Because of the increase in life longevity, America can now assume that at any given time three, and perhaps four, former presidents will still be alive, even when the current president is occupying the White House.
I am relatively sure, from conversations that I had with former president Bill Clinton, that George Bush seldom called upon him for advice.
It has taken countless hours of prayer, study, conversation and emotional turmoil to bring me to the place where I am finally ready to call for the full acceptance of Christian gay couples into the Church.
We don't have to give up trying to convert each other. What we have to do is show respect to one another. And to speak to each other with a sense that even if people don't convert, they are God's people, God loves them, and we do not make the judgment of who is going to heaven and who is going to hell. I think that what we all have to do is leave judgment up to God. The Muslim community is very evangelistic, however what Muslims will not do is condemn Jews and Christians to Hell if in fact they do not accept Islam.
If being human requires freedom, then enslavement to the cares of this world is dehumanizing.
One of the problems with evangelicalism is that it has allowed itself to be married to the Republican party... Jesus is not a Republican. Nor is he a Democrat.
To prevent discussion of any other explanations of human origins is hardly what I would expect from open-minded educators.
I propose that the government should get out of the business of marrying people and, instead, only give legal status to civil unions.
I applaud the growing commitment of Evangelicals to the needs of the poor and oppressed in urban America.
Haitians do not need development programs imposed on them by expatriates. Instead, they need help in developing as self-assured persons.
From the beginning, there have been some religious leaders who greeted the funding of faith-based social services by government with ambivalence.
Evangelicals need to take a good look at what their issues are. Are they really being faithful to Jesus? Are they being faithful to the Bible?
Clinton's successor in the White House, George W. Bush, was committed to expanding government spending for faith-based initiatives.
An evangelical is somebody who, first of all, has a very high view of Scripture, believes it's an infallible message from God.
Anyone who resists the notion of women preachers is functioning as a tool of the devil.
I have serious problems with fundamentalist Christians and their creationist theories. Although I believe that scripture is divinely inspired and infallible, I have a hard time going along with the belief that the whole creation process occurred in six twenty-four hour days. My skepticism is due, in part, to the fact that the Bible says that the sun wasn’t created until the fourth day of creation (Genesis 1:16-19). I have a hard time figuring how twenty-four hour days could have been measured before that.
