Fox News: 'Efforts to Replace Allegiance to God with Allegieance to Government'. Oh.. also, the reason the home book study were cancelled.

by whereami 30 Replies latest jw friends

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  shamus100

  I just hear chickens clucking...

  Nikolas, ***k you're sexy...
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  BizzyBee

  FOX News is laying the foundaton (and has been for quite some time) for creating fear of religious persecution among their idiot audience. This plot should be intimately familiar to JWs - create an enemy, create fear of persecution by that enemy, establish a sense of self-righteousness, and finally, interpret benign occurrences as "persecution." By then, some people can be led by the nose in spite of a mountain of facts.
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  agonus

  I know what you mean Serenity, but it's a tough call for public servants to make on what's appropriate and what isn't. It really can't be denied that America was founded on theistic (albeit not explicitly Judeo-Christian) principles, and, whatever beef I may have with my country, I'm not one for rewriting the Constitution. I think it's as ludicrous to expect sculptures of the Decalogue to be uprooted from a place where an atheist's gaze might casually fall upon it as it is to expect evolution to be excised from science textbooks on behalf of the handful of dubbie/fundie parents that have opted not to homeschool their kids.
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  freydo

  The roaches have changed the Divine Names. Changed the Sabbath and said the Law(not sin) was nailed to the cross.

  Now they(along with that Arab in the White House) want to get rid of any paper trails so they can have your children.

  It's been going on since day one. "You surely will not die......."

  
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  nolongerwaiting

  Wow, that last comment was crazy enough I didn't even have to check the name on the left. What does the TSA have to do with the pledge of allegiance?

  Fox has been doing their best to create the "persecuted Christian complex". Apparently, a couple billboards is an all out war. I'd hate for someone to count up all the religious billboards everywhere.

  The U.S. constitution doesn't mention Jesus either, and it's pretty much the second bible for most of Fox's audience (even if they haven't read it). The guest in the video appears to be a complete idiot. He's written a whole book on this made-up war, but he has so few facts that he has to start looping them during a 3 minute interview?

  Now, if there really are cities which limit religious gatherings in people's homes without a permit (and I hope that isn't true), then I think that does sound like a possible reason for the cancelation of the bookstudy. It seems we always figure out the real reason for things in retrospect. (Like the tax implications of charging for the literature.) I'll admit that low attendance and loss of sufficient manpower seem like simpler reasons.
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  Nickolas

  I agree that "worship" should be primarily a private rather than public affair but I'm not sure that ALL references to God, Jesus, religion, spirituality etc. should be removed from public view, especially in art or music. That sounds like a dangerous form of censorship to me.

  Absolutely bang on, agonus.

  I know what you mean Serenity, but it's a tough call for public servants to make on what's appropriate and what isn't. It really can't be denied that America was founded on theistic (albeit not explicitly Judeo-Christian) principles

  Whoa now, agonus. You may be mistaken there. What has changed in over 200 years is the perception of the Americans running your country, not the mindsets of the people who founded America and ran it initially. The USA was founded on secular principles. That is why it is so successful as a free country and the only world superpower (for now). Consider this conversation about religion in the armed forces as a subset of the larger conversation about the founding of America.

  James Madison, the author of the First Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting any law respecting an establishment of religion, was also an author of Article VI, which states unambiguously that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust." His later Detached Memoranda make it very plain that he opposed the government appointment of chaplains in the first place, either in the armed forces or at the opening ceremonies of Congress. "The establishment of the chaplainship to Congress is a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional principles." As to clerical presence in the armed forces, Madison wrote, "The object of this establishment is seducing; the motive to it is laudable. But is it not safer to adhere to a right principle, and trust to its consequences, than confide in the reasoning however specious in favor of a wrong one ? Look thro' the armies and navies of the world, and say whether in the appointment of their ministers of religion, the spiritual interest of the flocks or the temporal interest of the Shepherd be most in view?" Anyone citing Madison today would very likely be thought either subversive or insane, and yet without him and Thomas Jefferson, coauthors of the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, the United States would have gone on as it was—with Jews prohibited from holding office in some states, Catholics in others, and Protestants in Maryland: the latter a state where "profane words concerning the Holy Trinity" were punishable by torture, branding, and, at the third offense, "death without benefit of clergy." Georgia might have persisted in maintaining that its official state faith was "Protestantism"—whichever one of Luther's many hybrids that might have turned out to be. from God is not Great, by Christopher Hitchens,
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  Berengaria

  What a load of nonesense. The guy starts out the entire fantasy with a lie that is simple to verify.

  Obama, June 28, 2006 (prepared remarks): Given the increasing diversity of America's population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.
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  Cadellin

  In response to Leo, the last SAD (fall 2010) had a demonstration where a family was discussing challenges the kids were facing to their integrity in school. The youngest, about 7, was worried because Valentine's Day was now Friendship Day and she needed to know how to explain why she wouldn't participate!! Too bad they didn't spend any time on explaining that one--the demo moved on to something else!! Friendship Day!! What evils are next???
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  Nickolas

  Nikolas, ***k you're sexy...

  You look a little like one of my kids, shamus. Where was your mother in, say, 1971?
• 

  VM44

  So what is "the reason the home book study were cancelled"?

  My guess that the real reason was either,

  1) There is a shortage of qualified brothers to conduct the study, or

  2) The Watchtower did not want the liability of holding official meetings in private homes.

  I think 2) is the main reason, they did not want the legal exposure to possible lawsuits if something happened before, during, or after the book study.

  A third possibility,

  3) Local zoning laws preventing organized, regular religious gatherings in residential areas.

  But this has only been enforced a few times in isolated instances.

  I think we can rule out that the reason was to save the brothers from spending more due to "the high cost of gas"!