Zitat des Tages von Tony Campolo:
I'm a minister, and I serve as a minister in addition to being a university professor.
The reason why I buy into the Democratic Party more than the Republican Party is because there are over 2,000 verses of Scripture that deal with responding to the needs of the poor.
The real problem that I think those of us who are evangelicals and Democrats have to face up to is that the political right controls the religious media.
I contend that it's impossible to read the Sermon on the Mount and not come out against capital punishment.
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.
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.
There is no doubt that religion had already waned under the onslaught of the Enlightenment, but it was Freud who provided the radically new understanding of human nature that made any religious explanation of the whats and whys of our personhood seem naive.
I don't doubt that God can bring good out of tragedies, but the Bible is clear that God is not the author of evil!
But I think it's up to a local congregation to determine whether or not a marriage should be blessed of God. And it shouldn't be up to the government.
I contend the state ought to do its thing and provide legal rights for all couples who want to be joined together for life. The church should bless unions that it sees fit to bless, and they should be called marriages.
Christianity isn't the only group that has fundamentalists.
Of the 22 industrialized nations of the world, we're dead last in per capita giving to poor people.
What is especially important is addressing the question of how religion can be enforced through political means and what can be done to create a political environment that, on the one hand, acknowledges the role of religion in society, while on the other hand does not impose one religion on the populace at the expense of all others.
Flipping the dial through available radio stations there will blare out to any listener an array of broadcasts, 24/7, propagating Religious Right politics, along with what they deem to be 'old-time gospel preaching.' This is especially true of what comes over the airwaves in Bible Belt southern states.
While a case can be made for intelligent design, I can't figure out why some Christians are so thrilled about that possibility. First of all, it doesn't prove there's a God. If anything, intelligent design lends support to some form of pantheism that defines God as immanent within nature.
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.
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.
I teach at Eastern University, which is highly committed to doing work among the poor and the oppressed peoples of the world. We have a special commitment to the city.
I've got some repenting to do.
When you were born, you cried and everybody else was happy. The only question that matters is this - when you die, will you be happy when everybody else is crying?
I don't think that John Kerry is the Messiah or the Democratic Party is the answer, but I don't like the evangelical community blessing the Republican Party as some kind of God-ordained instrument for solving the world's problems.
I think the time has come for the United States to do even-handed justice.
Religion, for better or for worse, has been politicized in blatant ways that have seldom been equaled in American elections.
That's what they do in Europe. You go down to the city hall and you become legally connected. You have a civil union there. Then, if you're religious, you go down to the church, and the church blesses the union. That gets the problem solved.
When you listen to Christian radio stations - and there are thousands of them now in the United States - and when you listen to Christian television networks - and there are thousands of Christian television shows across the country - they are all politically right.
I contend that Bush would be a lot more moderate if there weren't some fundamentalists breathing down his neck every time he wants to establish the state of Israel, every time he wants to do justice for the Palestinian people.
Most Evangelicals claim to be politically non-partisan, and say they only identify with the Republican Party because the Republicans are committed to 'family values.'
If America is too arrogant, too prideful to repent, it's not the kind of country that God wants it to be.
I think the real place where most evangelicals have trouble with the Democratic Party is on the issue of abortion.
A strong case can be made for religious leaders to speak out on political issues.
Haitians do not need development programs imposed on them by expatriates. Instead, they need help in developing as self-assured persons.
If four years of university can increase your effectiveness of what you can do for others in the name of Christ, it is the best investment that you can make. But if the education is simply to get a job to make a lot of money, you have to raise the question of why you're doing it.
I think there are other issues that the Democrats could use to rally evangelicals. There are a lot of us, for instance, who believe that the Bible calls us to be environmentally responsible.
When you talk about evangelicals, don't forget that a significant proportion of the evangelical community is African American. And most African Americans - well over 90 percent, thoroughly evangelical, thoroughly biblical - will probably vote Democratic.
It is hard to say what the future holds, but this is probable - it won't be just like the past.
The traditional spokespersons for the Evangelicals, such as Chuck Colson and James Dobson, have become alarmed about this drift away from the 'Family Values' issues that they believe should be the overwhelming concerns of Evangelicals. They have expressed their displeasure in letters of protest circulated through the religious media.
