"PATRIOTIC CHURCHES" - HOW SMUG CONSERVATIVE MYOPIA EXACERBATES RACE RECONCILIATION IN AMERICA
The Trinity Church in Chicago doesn't conform, doesn't have enough lumens to make the constellation of 1,000, one guesses, when reading accounts of how damming it is that Barack and Michelle's contributions went to copious social outreach programs that conservatives have been crying for, even to the point of asking for Federal dollars.
If finally being tripped up by their own ill-conceived Federalization of religion wasn't enough, someone seeks a double-standard in AS's written treatment of Mormons. This exercise, no doubt, in their mind will help us to unite the country, somehow. ho-hum. "Sure".
If tripping wasn't enough, stumbling is on display, too. The blowhard critics (this is what "HotAir" means...), might consider how quick-to-the-draw and fiercely they denounce Muslim Farrkahn as if he were the devil; and, then, quiet as the morning dew, skip over the likes of Hagee, et. al, who ... let me put it charitably, isn't a pillar in the interfaith dialog.
McCAIN FOUND GOD WHILE AMONG THE COMMUNISTS
What Captain Ed, in his zeal to beggar his neighbor, ignores is that John McCain found God, reportedly, while among the godless communists.
Which is to say that people can find hope, faith, inspiration in all sorts of ways. Certainly, it doesn't require the "Patriotic Churches" of the Wall Street Journal or Victor Davis Hanson, does it?
McCAIN's FAITH-BASED ... HYPOCRISY? FAIRYTALE? INCONSISTENCIES?
Even today, McCain has released a pitiable getting-to-know-me video. In it, he claims that his faith made him strong.
Well, if you look at the record, faith was pretty far from his mind as a young man, a junior who basically just followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather into the Navy ("call to duty" hardly describes his time at the Naval Academy, does it?).
Later, he recounts how his Vietnam experience transformed him.
Frankly, which came first, the experience and then the strength-from-faith, or the faith? I think we know the answer.
QUESTIONING McCAIN'S "FAITH EXPERIENCE"
So, can we now have the agents in the press quibble with John McCain the way Major "Faith Experience" Garret did so unseemly on National Television via FOX? McCain himself is fanning the flames, passing out WSJ editorials to the press, so it seems to be fair game.
Let's go over these ministries and ask McCain why he sometimes is a Baptist and why he sometimes is an Episcopalian. I'm sure we'll find something over which one or the other would feel a need to "stand up and walk out" if they heard it from the pulpit.
Let's start with the way that Baptists understand "baptism", okay?
Meanwhile, here are the rest of the ministries up for intense scrutiny, under the "fair-play" rules cross-examination:
Saturday, March 15, 2008
1,000 Points of Light
The Bushes gave $334,425 to charities according to their 1998 tax return, including $23,560 to their hometown Tarrytown Methodist Church, $150,000 to Southern Methodist University and $41,000 to other churches and church-affiliated charities. The McCains' return lists $47,382 in charitable contributions. Although he publicly has claimed to be an Episcopalian, an affiliation confirmed to Insight by campaign press spokeswoman Nancy Ives, his tax return shows no contributions to any Episcopal church. Ives says McCain attends North Phoenix Baptist Church on most weekends, but his tax records show the McCains contributed only $1,000 to that church.
