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| Open Theism Discussion Board > Public Forums > Tearing down walls > Operation Supreme Court Freedom | Forum Quick Jump
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BBBCanada
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 2763
| Posted 7/16/2003 11:42 AM (GMT -6) |   | OK. Surprised you good 'ol Americans didn't bring this up. As Al on "Happy Days" use to say, "Yea, yea, yea, yea, yea, yea, yea, yea...leave it to a Canadian. This is NOT about Sodomy laws. So don't confuse the issue. What do you think of this? Should we pray for the Supreme court? If so, how? If Pat's goal happens, what do you think God had to do with it if anything? In principle, I don't have a problem with what Pat is asking.
Dear Fellow American,
Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, wrote:
"You seem to think that the Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter of constitutional interpretation,
a very dangerous doctrine indeed and one that would place us under the tyranny of an oligarchy."
How wise Jefferson was. Yet even Jefferson could not have foreseen what the Supreme Court has done to the Constitution of the United States since 1962. Just think what five unelected judges have done to our nation’s moral framework.
In 1962, they ruled prayer out of the public schools.
In 1963, they ruled the Bible out of public schools.
In 1973, they applied a "right of privacy" not found in the Constitution as the basis for opening the door to the slaughter of more than 43,000,000 innocent unborn children.
Subsequent federal courts have ruled the Ten Commandments were illegal in schools, that statues of Jesus were illegal in public parks, that prayers on a map in North Carolina were illegal, and that it was illegal for little elementary school children to give thanks over their milk and cookies at snack time.
Now, the Supreme Court has declared a constitutional right to consensual sodomy and, by the language in its decision, has opened the door to homosexual marriages, bigamy, legalized prostitution, and even incest.
The framers of our Constitution never intended anything like this to take place in our land. Yet we seem to be helpless to do anything about it. Why? Because we are under the tyranny of a nonelected oligarchy. Just think, five unelected men and women who serve for life can change the moral fabric of our nation and take away the protections which our elected legislators have wisely put in place.
But there is a higher tribunal than the United States Supreme Court. There is the Judge of all the earth. We must earnestly come before Him now and cry out for redress of our grievances. He loves America as much as we do, and He does not wish to destroy it. But no culture has ever endured which has turned openly to homosexuality. And no society has ever been spared the wrath of God which has been guilty of slaughtering tens of millions of the innocent.
In short, by its distorted reading of the religion clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and its "discovery" of emanations from the 14th Amendment called "penumbras," the Supreme Court is bringing upon this nation the wrath of God when the precious liberties that we love so much may be taken away from all of us.
Would you join with me and many others in crying out to our Lord to change the Court? If we fast and pray and earnestly seek God’s face, then He will hear our prayer and give us relief.
One justice is 83 years old, another has cancer, and another has a heart condition. Would it not be possible for God to put it in the minds of these three judges that the time has come to retire? With their retirement and the appointment of conservative judges, a massive change in federal jurisprudence can take place.
We can have a court that no longer legislates from the bench the wishes of The New York Times and The Washington Post, but which will earnestly seek to interpret the Constitution as it is written and to give meaning to the centuries of moral standards which have undergirded this wonderful country called the United States of America.
Please join us in prayer to support a massive prayer offensive that we are going to call Operation Supreme Court Freedom.
"With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible" (Matthew 19:26).
God bless you.
Yours in Christ,
Pat Robertson
Brandon
Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me.--Isa 49:15-16
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Tigress
Registered Member
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1252
| Posted 7/16/2003 12:06 PM (GMT -6) | | Do you really think God would punish the U.S. for these things? I'm asking in all seriousness because I don't really know if that's how God operates. We're not the nation of Israel like God Himself formed out of Abraham and Sarah's offspring. Yes, many of our nation's founders were Deists and maybe some were even Christian. They employed some and even many of the standards of the Judeo/Chrisian faiths. But, if we were never really founded as a nation with Jesus Christ as the true Head of it, just like ancient Israel was founded, would God punish us like He did with Israel when they strayed from the stipulations in their covenant with Him?
I guess this article you've posted suggests that God would treat us like many of the pagan nations He judged in the past like Sodom and Gomorrah. But, is that the norm? I wonder if those were certain specific instances that God used to teach Israel.
I tend to think that rather than God judging the U.S., our nations own sins will destroy us, without God having to take any action at all. That could be construed as God actively judging us, but I believe these are two separate things.
What do you think?
Tigress
The Angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him, and He delivers them.
-Psalm 34:7 | | Back to Top | | |
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ReasonableDoubt
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 655
| Posted 7/16/2003 12:09 PM (GMT -6) | | It's not true that kids can't pray in schools. It's also not true that they cannot read Bibles. The Supreme court has ruled that the school administration can not endorse prayer- but students themselves are free to do so as long as it's not disruptive- also, Christian student organizations have as much right as any other student groups to use classrooms after or before school. You should read the handout that the U.S. Dept of Education puts out that clarifies all these issues. Some lower courts have ruled incorrectly, and the Supreme Court overruled them. The handout explains it very clearly, and all public schools are supposed to have them available.
"Everyone who believes in God at all believes that He knows what you and I are going to do tomorrow." - C. S. Lewis | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 7/16/2003 12:21 PM (GMT -6) | | A friend of mine posted the following he received from a non-Christian friend who comes from a strong Catholic background.
Here is the link to Robertson's letter. While cloaking his intentions in
conservative jurisprudence language, it is quite clear to me that he is
not calling for forgiveness, redemption or conversion of these judges, but rather their "forced retirement" either because of inflicted plagues upon them by Jehovah or for their death at the hands of Jehovah.
I think the saddest thing of all is that this is the impression many
people have of Christianity, since Rev. Robertson has so much media access and power.
<http://www.cbn.com/special/supremecourt/pledgetopray.asp>
My friend Matt wrote:
I have this obsession with people not citing sources. This supposed
quote from Jefferson that Robertson uses is pretty hard to track down.
I checked the Jefferson papers here at LC--over 27,000 items on-line;
the largest collection of Jefferson papers in the world--and could not
find any evidence TJ ever wrote this. I found nothing in any of the
on-line collections of quotation reference books over at Bartleby.com.
Even a Google search using exact phrases from the quote reveals only a
few pages, and all of them are reprints of Robertson's letter. If any
of you know where Robertson found this quote, I'd be interested to know.
It may seem like a small matter, but it goes to the heart of the issue:
how the politicized church uses and misuses not only the Bible, but the
words of secular gods such as Jefferson. The man quotes Jefferson, the
founder of the separation of church and state doctrine which our country
generally follows, and then he goes on to manhandle Jefferson's legacy
by disapprovingly citing incident after incident in which the Supreme
Court has upheld that separation. By his use of the quote, Robertson
intimates to the ignorant that Jefferson meant that God was the
"ultimate arbiter of constitutional interpretation," when most likely
Jefferson was referring to the other branches of Government, one of
which (the Legislative) even has the power to amend the constitution.
Now I'm sure that Robertson knows that the Supreme Court is not the sole
arbiter of constitutional interpretation, since he is most likely a
supporter of that ridiculous proposed amendment to constitutionalize
heterosexual marriage as the only kind of marriage recognized by the
state. The whole letter is highly misleading, and sometimes downright
silly. The statement that "subsequent federal courts" ruled that "it
was illegal for little elementary school children to give thanks over
their milk and cookies at snack time" is just so outrageous. Most
people won't even notice that Robertson has shifted his attack from the
Supreme Court to Federal Courts in general. More than that, the
statement suggests that individual cutey-pie Kindergartners are being
prevented from saying a prayer over their snacks, when in fact, what may
be at issue is the teacher leading a class in prayer (as my teachers did
at my public elementary school before we lined up to go to lunch every
afternoon).
Robertson is off the reservation, as usual. These people just don't
realize the consequences of the kinds of changes they want to see
implemented in our schools and society. We just destroyed one religious
oligarchy in Afghanistan ... we don't need to create one here at home.
I wrote:
I think it is essential that the homosexuality/marriage issue gets
politically defused before it balloons up into the next abortion issue,
permitting economic conservatives to continue to buy social/religious
conservative votes cheaply and pursue their economic conservative
legislative agendas relatively unchecked.
dlw
Matt wrote:
Unfortunately, I think the issue of gay marriage already is the next Roe
v. Wade. Whether or not this constitutional amendment to define
marriage as a heterosexual union gets off the ground (I doubt it will go
very far), at some point a gay couple are going to challenge the states'
right to restrict them from enjoying all the benefits of marriage. That
legal challenge is going to be like chum in the shark tank for people
like Falwell and Robertson. Nothing mobilizes Bubba more quickly than
homophobia.
Personally, I don't want homosexual unions recognized as legal
marriages, but I can't tell if that feeling is a result of my own
prejudice, or if it is based on a solid intellectual rationale. I don't
want to try to find logical justifications for prejudices I already
harbor--that's what most people do--but at some point I am going to have
to tackle this matter and decide what I think is right. It's on the
political horizon; I'd say within the next year we will be revisiting
this issue. Gays think of their movement as the next great Civil Rights
Movement. They are likely to take the recent Supreme Court ruling as a
sign that they have the initiative and the momentum to accomplish all of
their owns quickly.
DLW: My position is to give gay-couples a sizeable fraction of the benefits/legal rights married straight-couples get so long as their commitment is long-term but not marriage.
I think strategically giving gay-couples a good deal more rights and legal recognition is a good idea, but keeping the two distinct. It is important to kill the political oxygen to the gay-rights community since they use some generally dangerously non-Christian lines of reasoning commonly. It also is the art of politics to compromise and just because something is legal doesn't mean that it is moral.
dlw
I-uh-scream-uh,
You-uh-scream-uh,
We-all-uh-sceam-uh for
Ice-uh-cream-uh!!!
Roberto Bernigni in
Down by Law.
ahehmAmericanzituhsen! This,varrrrrybaadfuryur
Cuntry! Varrrrrrrybaadfuryur
Cuntry!
Roberto Benigni in
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Blood Washed Heretic
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2003
Total Posts : 167
| Posted 7/16/2003 12:27 PM (GMT -6) | | This is just another example of the dangerous partisan politics that many American Christians have substituted for Christ's call to transform our world. How in blazes can praying for God to manipulate the makeup of the US Supreme Court be construed as more important than feeding the poor and healing the sick?
Pat Robertson has a political agenda to push, and I don't think he has the best interests of Christ and His Kingdom in mind when he pushes his arch-conservative propaganda under the disguise of Christian ministry. He even has the audacity to use Thomas Jefferson as support. Jefferson was a confirmed deist, probably fell into outright agnosticism, and was blatantly liberal for his day. But, when his words are taken out of context, they can apparently support the Religious Right, as is the case with all the Founding Fathers.
Sad that such lukewarmness will go unpunished for now. But Pat and the others like him will understand their error someday. Not that I'm at all condemning them, that's not my call. I refuse to call their relationship with Christ into question, only the fruits they've borne so far.
“Heaven will solve our problems, but not, I think, by showing us subtle reconciliations between all our apparently contradictory notions. The notions will all be knocked from under our feet. We shall see that there never was any problem.” - C. S. Lewis | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 7/17/2003 8:31 AM (GMT -6) | | Preach the truth Blood-Washed!
The agenda may be to make sure that social/religious conservative reliably vote Republican in the up-coming election so as to ensure that Bush gets re-elected(In a country split 50-50, every vote counts!).
dlw
I-uh-scream-uh,
You-uh-scream-uh,
We-all-uh-sceam-uh for
Ice-uh-cream-uh!!!
Roberto Bernigni in
Down by Law.
ahehmAmericanzituhsen! This,varrrrrybaadfuryur
Cuntry! Varrrrrrrybaadfuryur
Cuntry!
Roberto Benigni in
Johnny Stecchenino. | | Back to Top | | |
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