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bratboy wrote:

resedit wrote:

Oh - there are whacko's, there always have been and there always will be.
I want it demonstrated that Bush listens to a hateful whacko.

Please, someone demonstrate his hate. Otherwise, it's FUD.

What, linking to one biased site without providing any specific evidence isn't good enough for Res?



Could have fooled me.

The one I posted to had specific references.
Dates and people and stuff. Verifiable in other words.

And Bush listens to this guy (Pastor Ted) every week, who heads up one of the most hateful Christian organizations around. Bush is a cancer for our country.

<<I just wonder how long it will take people to figure it out.>>


I was advised on another board that there's 3 yrs left. So, there you are. Oh joy! Oh rapture!

resedit wrote:

Oh - there are whacko's, there always have been and there always will be.
I want it demonstrated that Bush listens to a hateful whacko.

Please, someone demonstrate his hate. Otherwise, it's FUD.

From avkills link.

Pastor Ted, who talks to President George W. Bush or his advisers every Monday, is a handsome forty-eight-year-old Indianan, most comfortable in denim. He likes to say that his only disagreement with the President is automotive; Bush drives a Ford pickup, whereas Pastor Ted loves his Chevy. In addition to New Life, Pastor Ted presides over the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), whose 45,000 churches and 30 million believers make up the nation’s most powerful religious lobbying group, and also over a smaller network of his own creation, the Association of Life-Giving Churches, 300 or so congregations modeled on New Life’s “free market” approach to the divine.

Okay, so we have the listening part. Now, is Pastor Ted a "hateful wacko?"

Well:

No pastor in America holds more sway over the political direction of evangelicalism than does Pastor Ted, and no church more than New Life. It is by no means the largest megachurch, nor is Ted the best-known man of God: Saddleback Church, in southern California, counts 80,000 on its rolls, and its pastor, Rick Warren, has sold 20 million copies of his book The Purpose-Driven Life. But Warren’s success has come at the price of passion; his doctrine, though conservative, is bland and his politics too obscured by his self-help message to be potent. Although other churches boast more eminent memberships than Pastor Ted’s—near D.C., for example, McLean Bible Church and The Falls Church (an Episcopal church that is, like many “mainline” churches today, now evangelical in all but name) minister to the powerful—such churches are not, like New Life, crucibles for the ideas that inspire the movement, ideas that are forged in the middle of the country and make their way to Washington only over time. Evangelicalism is as much an intellectual as an emotional movement; and what Pastor Ted has built in Colorado Springs is not just a battalion of spiritual warriors but a factory for ideas to arm them.

My pastor can beat up your pastor!

He was always on the lookout for spies. At the time, Colorado Springs was a small city split between the Air Force and the New Age, and the latter, Pastor Ted believed, worked for the devil. Pastor Ted soon began upsetting the devil’s plans. He staked out gay bars, inviting men to come to his church; his whole congregation pitched itself into invisible battles with demonic forces, sometimes in front of public buildings. One day, while he was working in his garage, a woman who said she’d been sent by a witches’ coven tried to stab Pastor Ted with a five-inch knife she pulled from a leg sheath; Pastor Ted wrestled the blade out of her hand. He let that story get around. He called the evil forces that dominated Colorado Springs—and every other metropolitan area in the country—“Control.”

Sometimes, he says, Control would call him late on Saturday night, threatening to kill him. “Any more impertinence out of you, Ted Haggard,” he claims Control once told him, “and there will be unrelenting pandemonium in this city.” No kidding! Pastor Ted hadn’t come to Colorado Springs for his health; he had come to wage “spiritual war.”

Apparently, he has to wage war on the people that are "out to get him."

He moved the church to a strip mall. There was a bar, a liquor store, New Life Church, a massage parlor. His congregation spilled out and blocked the other businesses. He set up chairs in the alley. He strung up a banner: SIEGE THIS CITY FOR ME, signed JESUS. He assigned everyone in the church names from the phone book they were to pray for. He sent teams to pray in front of the homes of supposed witches—in one month, ten out of fifteen of his targets put their houses on the market. His congregation “prayer-walked” nearly every street of the city.

Harassment & trespassing in the name of God. Yippee.

fwiw, wicans and "druid," although they're a generally dumb lot who believe a load of bullsmurf - most northwestern & british pagan practices have been lost to history - are also generally nonviolent hippie types. Never met one, not a one, who would try to hurt another person, and as often as not they volunteer at animal shelters.

“The first . . . was like a lion, the second was like an ox, the third had a face like a man, the fourth was like a flying angel.” Look! said Pastor Hayford, his voice sonorous and dignified. “All wonderful, all angels.” The angels were merely different from one another. Just, he said, as we have different “ethnicities.” And just as we have, in politics, a “hierarchy.” And just as we have, in business, “different responsibilities,” employer and employees. Angels, ethnicities, hierarchy, employers and employees—each category must follow a natural order.

Oooh, racism. Fun.

A force—Pastor Ted liked that. He smiled and offered other examples. His favorite was the Ukraine, where, he claimed, a sister church to New Life had led the protests that helped sweep the pro-Western candidate into power. Kiev is, in fact, home to Europe’s largest evangelical church, and over the last dozen years the Ukrainian evangelical population has grown more than tenfold, from 250,000 to 3 million. According to Ted, it was this army of Christian capitalists that took to the streets. “They’re pro-free markets, they’re pro-private property,” he said. “That’s what evangelical stands for.”

So, capitalism is christian? Hmmm... didn't jesus and his disciples give away everything they owned and live like a commune? Coulda sworn...

New Lifers, Pastor Ted writes with evident pride, “like the benefits, risks, and maybe above all, the excitement of a free-market society.” They like the stimulation of a new brand. “Have you ever switched your toothpaste brand, just for the fun of it?” Pastor Ted asks. Admit it, he insists. All the way home, you felt a “secret little thrill,” as excited questions ran through your mind: “Will it make my teeth whiter? My breath fresher?” This is the sensation Ted wants pastors to bring to the Christian experience. He believes it is time “to harness the forces of free-market capitalism in our ministry.” Once a pastor does that, his flock can start organizing itself according to each member’s abilities and tastes.

Christianity = toothpaste. Gotcha.

Pastor Ted’s insight was in adapting this system for the affluence of the United States. South Korea, he notes, is on the “front lines” in the war against communism, “so they needed a strong chain-of-command system.” But not so Americans. “Free-market globalization” has made us so free, he realized, that an American cell-group system could be mature enough to function just like a market. One of Pastor Ted’s favorite books is Thomas Friedman’s The Lexus and the Olive Tree, which is now required reading for the hundreds of pastors under Ted’s spiritual authority across the country. From Friedman, Pastor Ted says he learned that everything, including spirituality, can be understood as a commodity. And unregulated trade, he concluded, was the key to achieving worldly freedom.

Is anything about this guy striking you as kind of, oh, I don't know, fundementally wrong, yet?

And that is why he believes spiritual war requires a virile, worldly counterpart. “I teach a strong ideology of the use of power,” he says, “of military might, as a public service.” He is for preemptive war, because he believes the Bible’s exhortations against sin set for us a preemptive paradigm, and he is for ferocious war, because “the Bible’s bloody. There’s a lot about blood.”

Aha!

She reached across the table and touched my hand. “I have to tell you, the spiritual battle is very real.” We are surrounded by demons, she explained, reciting the lessons she had learned in her small-group studies at New Life. The demons are cold, they need bodies, they long to come inside. People let them in in two different ways. One is to be sinned against. “Molested,” suggested Linda. The other is to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. You could walk by sin—a murder, a homosexual act—and a demon will leap onto your bones. Cities, therefore, are especially dangerous.

This is one of his followers. What she's describing sounds strangely like scientology.

If you peruse the church's website, there's more moderately spooky, militaristic language. Every year they have a youth group meeting, but it's Holy - not "fun" like those 'other' youth groups. 3500 young people attended "Desperation 2005."

More fun quotes from their newsletter. (PDF image files, so I'm retyping, please excuse the typos.)

We prayed for Christian leaders to emerge from UCCS that would invade Hololywood, Washington DC, Colorado Springs, and the ends of the earth. It was so fun!

There's that "waging war" smurf again.

One pedestrian looked a bit befuddled to see trendy college students boisterously screaming at a club, smirking when he heard us asking God to make twenty-something miserable in lust and drunkenness, so that they would check out purity and soberness.

God, please make these people miserable. Happy thoughts!

Jack Hayford reminds us that the victorious Church is to use the keys of the kingdon to stop hell's worst and insist on heaven's best.

Victorious!

Seriously, though, that sounds like they want to use the promise of salvation as a political tool...

That's quite enough of that.

He's a nut job.

dvpierce wrote:

resedit wrote:

Oh - there are whacko's, there always have been and there always will be.
I want it demonstrated that Bush listens to a hateful whacko.

Please, someone demonstrate his hate. Otherwise, it's FUD.

From avkills link.

Pastor Ted, who talks to President George W. Bush or his advisers every Monday, is a handsome forty-eight-year-old Indianan, most comfortable in denim. He likes to say that his only disagreement with the President is automotive; Bush drives a Ford pickup, whereas Pastor Ted loves his Chevy. In addition to New Life, Pastor Ted presides over the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), whose 45,000 churches and 30 million believers make up the nation’s most powerful religious lobbying group, and also over a smaller network of his own creation, the Association of Life-Giving Churches, 300 or so congregations modeled on New Life’s “free market” approach to the divine.

Okay, so we have the listening part. Now, is Pastor Ted a "hateful wacko?"

Well:

No pastor in America holds more sway over the political direction of evangelicalism than does Pastor Ted, and no church more than New Life. It is by no means the largest megachurch, nor is Ted the best-known man of God: Saddleback Church, in southern California, counts 80,000 on its rolls, and its pastor, Rick Warren, has sold 20 million copies of his book The Purpose-Driven Life. But Warren’s success has come at the price of passion; his doctrine, though conservative, is bland and his politics too obscured by his self-help message to be potent. Although other churches boast more eminent memberships than Pastor Ted’s—near D.C., for example, McLean Bible Church and The Falls Church (an Episcopal church that is, like many “mainline” churches today, now evangelical in all but name) minister to the powerful—such churches are not, like New Life, crucibles for the ideas that inspire the movement, ideas that are forged in the middle of the country and make their way to Washington only over time. Evangelicalism is as much an intellectual as an emotional movement; and what Pastor Ted has built in Colorado Springs is not just a battalion of spiritual warriors but a factory for ideas to arm them.

My pastor can beat up your pastor!

He was always on the lookout for spies. At the time, Colorado Springs was a small city split between the Air Force and the New Age, and the latter, Pastor Ted believed, worked for the devil. Pastor Ted soon began upsetting the devil’s plans. He staked out gay bars, inviting men to come to his church; his whole congregation pitched itself into invisible battles with demonic forces, sometimes in front of public buildings. One day, while he was working in his garage, a woman who said she’d been sent by a witches’ coven tried to stab Pastor Ted with a five-inch knife she pulled from a leg sheath; Pastor Ted wrestled the blade out of her hand. He let that story get around. He called the evil forces that dominated Colorado Springs—and every other metropolitan area in the country—“Control.”

Sometimes, he says, Control would call him late on Saturday night, threatening to kill him. “Any more impertinence out of you, Ted Haggard,” he claims Control once told him, “and there will be unrelenting pandemonium in this city.” No kidding! Pastor Ted hadn’t come to Colorado Springs for his health; he had come to wage “spiritual war.”

Apparently, he has to wage war on the people that are "out to get him."

He moved the church to a strip mall. There was a bar, a liquor store, New Life Church, a massage parlor. His congregation spilled out and blocked the other businesses. He set up chairs in the alley. He strung up a banner: SIEGE THIS CITY FOR ME, signed JESUS. He assigned everyone in the church names from the phone book they were to pray for. He sent teams to pray in front of the homes of supposed witches—in one month, ten out of fifteen of his targets put their houses on the market. His congregation “prayer-walked” nearly every street of the city.

Harassment & trespassing in the name of God. Yippee.

fwiw, wicans and "druid," although they're a generally dumb lot who believe a load of bullsmurf - most northwestern & british pagan practices have been lost to history - are also generally nonviolent hippie types. Never met one, not a one, who would try to hurt another person, and as often as not they volunteer at animal shelters.

“The first . . . was like a lion, the second was like an ox, the third had a face like a man, the fourth was like a flying angel.” Look! said Pastor Hayford, his voice sonorous and dignified. “All wonderful, all angels.” The angels were merely different from one another. Just, he said, as we have different “ethnicities.” And just as we have, in politics, a “hierarchy.” And just as we have, in business, “different responsibilities,” employer and employees. Angels, ethnicities, hierarchy, employers and employees—each category must follow a natural order.

Oooh, racism. Fun.

A force—Pastor Ted liked that. He smiled and offered other examples. His favorite was the Ukraine, where, he claimed, a sister church to New Life had led the protests that helped sweep the pro-Western candidate into power. Kiev is, in fact, home to Europe’s largest evangelical church, and over the last dozen years the Ukrainian evangelical population has grown more than tenfold, from 250,000 to 3 million. According to Ted, it was this army of Christian capitalists that took to the streets. “They’re pro-free markets, they’re pro-private property,” he said. “That’s what evangelical stands for.”

So, capitalism is christian? Hmmm... didn't jesus and his disciples give away everything they owned and live like a commune? Coulda sworn...

New Lifers, Pastor Ted writes with evident pride, “like the benefits, risks, and maybe above all, the excitement of a free-market society.” They like the stimulation of a new brand. “Have you ever switched your toothpaste brand, just for the fun of it?” Pastor Ted asks. Admit it, he insists. All the way home, you felt a “secret little thrill,” as excited questions ran through your mind: “Will it make my teeth whiter? My breath fresher?” This is the sensation Ted wants pastors to bring to the Christian experience. He believes it is time “to harness the forces of free-market capitalism in our ministry.” Once a pastor does that, his flock can start organizing itself according to each member’s abilities and tastes.

Christianity = toothpaste. Gotcha.

Pastor Ted’s insight was in adapting this system for the affluence of the United States. South Korea, he notes, is on the “front lines” in the war against communism, “so they needed a strong chain-of-command system.” But not so Americans. “Free-market globalization” has made us so free, he realized, that an American cell-group system could be mature enough to function just like a market. One of Pastor Ted’s favorite books is Thomas Friedman’s The Lexus and the Olive Tree, which is now required reading for the hundreds of pastors under Ted’s spiritual authority across the country. From Friedman, Pastor Ted says he learned that everything, including spirituality, can be understood as a commodity. And unregulated trade, he concluded, was the key to achieving worldly freedom.

Is anything about this guy striking you as kind of, oh, I don't know, fundementally wrong, yet?

And that is why he believes spiritual war requires a virile, worldly counterpart. “I teach a strong ideology of the use of power,” he says, “of military might, as a public service.” He is for preemptive war, because he believes the Bible’s exhortations against sin set for us a preemptive paradigm, and he is for ferocious war, because “the Bible’s bloody. There’s a lot about blood.”

Aha!

She reached across the table and touched my hand. “I have to tell you, the spiritual battle is very real.” We are surrounded by demons, she explained, reciting the lessons she had learned in her small-group studies at New Life. The demons are cold, they need bodies, they long to come inside. People let them in in two different ways. One is to be sinned against. “Molested,” suggested Linda. The other is to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. You could walk by sin—a murder, a homosexual act—and a demon will leap onto your bones. Cities, therefore, are especially dangerous.

This is one of his followers. What she's describing sounds strangely like scientology.

If you peruse the church's website, there's more moderately spooky, militaristic language. Every year they have a youth group meeting, but it's Holy - not "fun" like those 'other' youth groups. 3500 young people attended "Desperation 2005."

More fun quotes from their newsletter. (PDF image files, so I'm retyping, please excuse the typos.)

We prayed for Christian leaders to emerge from UCCS that would invade Hololywood, Washington DC, Colorado Springs, and the ends of the earth. It was so fun!

There's that "waging war" smurf again.

One pedestrian looked a bit befuddled to see trendy college students boisterously screaming at a club, smirking when he heard us asking God to make twenty-something miserable in lust and drunkenness, so that they would check out purity and soberness.

God, please make these people miserable. Happy thoughts!

Jack Hayford reminds us that the victorious Church is to use the keys of the kingdon to stop hell's worst and insist on heaven's best.

Victorious!

Seriously, though, that sounds like they want to use the promise of salvation as a political tool...

That's quite enough of that.

He's a nut job.

Okay, dv gets an extra man and a free game.

Sounds like one of those televangelists that people keep sending money to.

ShnickyShnack wrote:

Sounds like one of those televangelists that people keep sending money to.

Well, I didn't see anything about buying your way into heaven, surprisingly. But the whole "prayerwalking" thing seems like a great way to get people in trouble.

Yeah - he seems weird from the Wiki - however, I don't see how he is "hateful".

For the record, the "holy rolers" such as you find on the 700 club have never been my type, that may be why I hadn't heard of him - I'm more baptist/C&MA type - not holy roler, just not my style of worship.

But where is the hate?
Pastor Ted may be a bit misguided, but hate?

resedit wrote:

If you want real dirt on Bush from a christian religious perspective - you may be barking up the wrong tree, so I'll throw you a bone to where I have concern.

Google "bohemian grove"
(if I spelled it wrong, google should fix it for you)

I don't know what the hell goes on there, but from everything I've heard - it is sick and twisted.
I don't know to what extent Bush participates.

Bohemian Grove? Is that the naked rich people dancing in the woods or something? Near San Fran?

I think Nixon had a funny quote about that. Said it was "faggy" or something.

Aha! Listen for yourself.

Transcript (amazing that this freak was president):

NIXON: You know what happened to the Romans? The last six Roman emperors were fags. Neither in a public way. You know what happened to the popes? They were layin' the nuns; that's been goin' on for years, centuries. But the Catholic Church went to hell three or four centuries ago. It was homosexual, and it had to be cleaned out. That's what's happened to Britain. It happened earlier to France.

Let's look at the strong societies. The Russians. Goddamn, they root 'em out. They don't let 'em around at all. I don't know what they do with them. Look at this country. You think the Russians allow dope? Homosexuality, dope, immorality, are the enemies of strong societies. That's why the Communists and left-wingers are clinging to one another. They're trying to destroy us. I know Moynihan will disagree with this, [Attorney General John] Mitchell will, and Garment will. But, goddamn, we have to stand up to this.

EHRLICHMAN: It's fatal liberality.

NIXON: Huh?

EHRLICHMAN: It's fatal liberality. And with its use on television, it has such leverage.

NIXON: You know what's happened [in northern California]?

EHRLICHMAN: San Francisco has just gone clear over.

NIXON: But it's not just the ratty part of town. The upper class in San Francisco is that way. The Bohemian Grove, which I attend from time to time--it is the most faggy goddamned thing you could ever imagine, with that San Francisco crowd. I can't shake hands with anybody from San Francisco.

Decorators. They got to do something. But we don't have to glorify it. You know one of the reasons fashions have made women look so terrible is because the goddamned designers hate women. Designers taking it out on the women. Now they're trying to get some more sexy things coming on again.

EHRLICHMAN: Hot pants.

NIXON: Jesus Christ.

Last edited by ShnickyShnack (2005-09-12 3:39 am)

resedit wrote:

If you want real dirt on Bush from a christian religious perspective - you may be barking up the wrong tree, so I'll throw you a bone to where I have concern.

Google "bohemian grove"
(if I spelled it wrong, google should fix it for you)

I don't know what the hell goes on there, but from everything I've heard - it is sick and twisted.
I don't know to what extent Bush participates.

You didn't read my post, did you?

Angels, ethnicities, hierarchy, employers and employees—each category must follow a natural order.

He's racist.

He is for preemptive war, because he believes the Bible’s exhortations against sin set for us a preemptive paradigm, and he is for ferocious war, because “the Bible’s bloody. There’s a lot about blood.”

Cruel

everything, including spirituality, can be understood as a commodity.

cynical and manipulative.

Seems evil to me.

e·vil Pronunciation Key  (vl)
adj. e·vil·er, e·vil·est

   1. Morally bad or wrong; wicked: an evil tyrant.
   2. Causing ruin, injury, or pain; harmful: the evil effects of a poor diet.
   3. Characterized by or indicating future misfortune; ominous: evil omens.
   4. Bad or blameworthy by report; infamous: an evil reputation.
   5. Characterized by anger or spite; malicious: an evil temper.

Yup, four outta five. 1, 2, 3, & 5.

Thanks for digging that stuff out of my links dv, I know it was some long smurf to read, so maybe people did not feel like reading the whole thing. Anyway, I think that any politician who lets religion guide them in decisions that have nothing to do with religion is not good.

I still can't believe this smurf is happening right in my own backyard.  Of course I travel quite a bit for my job, so I am pretty much out of the loop on the things going on here in Colorado.

That Bohemian Grove is crazy stuff. People have way too much time on their hands to dream this stupid ass smurf up.

-mark

resedit wrote:

If you want real dirt on Bush from a christian religious perspective - you may be barking up the wrong tree, so I'll throw you a bone to where I have concern.

Google "bohemian grove"
(if I spelled it wrong, google should fix it for you)

I don't know what the hell goes on there, but from everything I've heard - it is sick and twisted.
I don't know to what extent Bush participates.

Throw me a bone?

Good god, it's like arguing with Pawz.

I have a problem with Bush because he's too much like you.

You have a problem with Bush because he's not enough like you.

Stop deflecting.

Really? I thought Res was talking about some kind of ceremonial pastry.

user wrote:

Really? I thought Res was talking about some kind of ceremonial pastry.

The Holy Rolling Pin of Antioch? I must have missed that Monty Python skit.