Bro. Don Tansey of the blog Movable Jewel has already said it better than I could. He said it politely. I'm more prone to ranting when it comes to this subject.I stand with him and other bloggers this weekend in putting Christian fundamentalists on notice: We're not gonna take it!
Keep your hypocritical, overzealous, ultra-conservative, paranoid religious hands off the U.S. Constitution, the judiciary, federal, state and local governments, our schools, our kids, our bedrooms, our lodge rooms, and every other aspect of our lives you would like to control. Your twisted theological views do not represent the views of the majority of Christians or Americans, and your actions certainly aren't what Jesus would do.
The United States of America is not a theocracy. It will never be one.
Keep your church separated — stand way back! — from our state.
- Jesus is not a Republican. Or a Democrat. Or even an American.
- The Bible ain't science. Don't try forcing teachers to teach creationism in public schools. Take your own kids to that silly dinosaur park Kent Hovind created to teach that dinosaurs roamed the earth a couple of thousand years ago, but leave my kids out of it.
- Decisions about health and the use of medicines, alcohol and plants, abortion, and how to end your own life are personal decisions, not decisions to be made by your groups.
- All people are God's children... "red and yellow, black and white," as the Sunday School song goes. "Love one another," as Jesus said. "All you need is love," sang the Beatles. Stop being racists, sexists and homophobic. You're not any more special than the rest of us.
- God didn't tell George W. Bush to invade Iraq, and He damn sure doesn't support the war.
- God doesn't "hate fags," no matter how many signs you wave at soldiers' funerals.
- All families should be respected, no matter what form they take. It's none of your business who someone marries, or what someone does behind closed doors.
- Art is art. If you don't like it, don't watch it, read it, or look at it. Quit trying to keep the rest of us from watching it, reading it or going to museums to see it. (I thought the Chocolate Jesus was a minor masterpiece.)
I have one suggestion for the fundamentalist Christians who want to rule America using eye-for-an-eye, hateful, vindictive, archaic Old Testament rules and practices and Paulian propaganda: Rip every page out of your Bible and burn them, except for one verse.
1 John 4:8 — Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
Related websites: Blog Against Theocracy, First Freedom First, Journeys with Jood, Center for Inquiry, American Humanist Association, and many more.
Theocracy | Church and State | Religious Intolerance | Freemasonry | Fundamentalist | Christian | Fundamentalist |Burning Taper | BurningTaper.com
This is a great post. I fully agree with you 100% (see I told you I'm open minded).
ReplyDeleteTime to take a stand
WS:
ReplyDeleteExcellent! You made wonderful points.
I think it important to stress, that the object of this is to speak out against theocratic government, not religion in general and Christianity in particular.
I wouldn't for a moment stop a politician from praying in his office as he sees fit. I would prevent him from opening a legislative session with a sectarian prayer.
I also would not prohibit a politician from allowing his faith (or lack of it), from influencing his political decsions as long as he or she did not foist their beliefs on others in so doing.
Cheers!
TM
So Mote It Be!
ReplyDeleteNow, WS, if you can convince the small-minded evangelical pseudo-Masons who populate lodges in our region of these concepts, your job is done. Unfortunately, it ain't gonna happen anytime soon.
ReplyDeleteFraternally yours,
The Libertarian
Amen!
ReplyDeleteWhat an effective post! Bravo. And, yes, I thought the Chocolate Jesus was pretty incredible too.
ReplyDeleteI believe one of the best aspects of the blogswarm this weekend is that it is connecting bloggers who might not otherwise have found each other to a shared voice. The extremely vocal fundamentalists out there seem to have silenced people who believe in Peace, Love, and Tolerance. And through the "Internets" we are finding our common, powerful, voice for tolerance.
Thank you for referencing me, that was an honor.
I agree as well except for your generalized theology that Calvinist's = Theocracy. Please remember that many of our early brothers, who formed our union, held a Calvinist Theology as they were Presbyterian. One of the few church governments that rules by the people without a sovereign leader. Presbyterian Churches are governed by Elders elected by the congregation who form "The Session". These Elders belong to a District Presbytery there finding accountability among peers. Then each Presbytery meets once a year for General Assembly to temper and resolve conflict. It is a system of church government that runs parallel to the US Congress.
ReplyDeleteI understand the misunderstanding since Oliver Cromwell claimed Calvinism and ruled poorly but your labeling of Theocracy as Calvinist is no more righteous than Evangelicals labeling the definition of a family.
In the Bond of Peace.
According to Wikipedia, John Calvin held theocratic tendencies. He was instrumental in having people burned as witches, and in 1553, he had Servetus arrested in church while Calvin was preaching, and wrote the heresy charges himself. The article says that Calvin's "many detractors picture him... as a man who craved power above all else, who could not abide any dissent, and who is unworthy of the respect that is commonly given to him."
ReplyDeleteI think he'd fit right in today with those who promote a theocracy in America.
— W.S.
Freemasonry is an enemy of Christianity in terms of the First commandment of God – "I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt not have strange gods before me" – surely the most radical and simplest way of situating this opposition is to say just this. The Masonic "God" is an idol. What the Masons really worship is Man – or the Spirit who has deceived man from the beginning: the masked Spirit of Evil..
ReplyDeleteFreemasonry is an enemy of Christianity by its gravely evil misuse of oaths. The famous (or, rather, infamous) oaths that run through the entire ritual of Masonic initiation are more than mere promises based on personal honor. They formally invoke the Deity, and have for their object a man's total commitment to a cause under the direst sanctions. Such oaths an inescapable grave evil. Either the oaths mean what they say or they do not. If they mean what they say, then God is being called to invert by His witness loyalties already sanctioned by Him. If the oaths are merely fictitious, then God is being called to witness to a joke.
The vaunted Masonic secrets, are scarcely that secret any longer. There is in fact a frequent Masonic plea to the effect that there are no secrets in Masonry – that all is open to a truly open mind. On this point we may take the Mason at his word: he is speaking more truly than he knows!
The case for Freemasonry being un-Christian is open and clear. By its very nature as formulated in its philosophical statements and as lived in its historical experience, Masonry violates the First and Second Commandments of God. It worships NOT the One True God (Jesus) Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – but a false god, symbolically transcendent but really immanent: the "god" called "Reason." And it invokes without adequate cause the Name of the One True God. After such a case as this, to cite the secrecies of initiation and the further secrecies of machination called "conspiracy" is not only anti-climactic, it is beside the point.
Christians should see the Masons more clearly for what they essentially are. They are the heirs (unwitting or otherwise is irrelevant) of a religion which purports to be the one religion of the one "God" – and therefore the enemy, intrinsically and implacably so, of Christianity. Freemasonry in its modern mode is "modernity" in the deepest (philosophical and religious) sense of that term. It is, in a word, "Counterfeit Christianity." For its "God" is the "Counterfeit God": the one who would be as God, the one who is the prince of this world, the one who is the Father of Lies (satan).
Hilarious! Where do these people come from? I'm, of course, referring to poster above.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know Masons "worshiped" anything. Masonry is NOT a religion, you poor misguided soul. Masonry is a philosophy of life. Period. Oaths in any setting should be sacred, from the courtroom, to the marriage altar to the Lodge. What is a man without a reputation based on his word?
I've got it! He's an evangelical!
Proof: Let's think of prominent evangelicals who have betrayed their word: Charles Stanley, Terry Haggard, Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, ad infinitem, ad absurdem, ad nauseam.
Fraternally yours,
The Libertarian
IS MASONRY A RELIGION?
ReplyDelete(Essay excerpts; source noted below.)
The major issue in determining whether Masonry is a religion is to look at its demands on the candidate. Masonry requires the candidate to believe in God, obey Him, worship Him, seek His guidance, and so forth, which qualifies it as a religion. And, as I have already documented, Masonry claims its members will earn admittance to heaven based on personal character and good works. This also classifies the Lodge as a religion. In fact, any standard dictionary or encyclopedia definition of religion proves beyond doubt that Masonry is a religion. Dr. Shildes Johnson is only one of many scholars of comparative religion who have concluded: "A comparison of the moral, allegorical, and symbolic teachings of Freemasonry with these definitions of a religion reveals that the lodge is a theistic, non-Christian, man-centered, and universal religion."
All this is why numerous leading Masonic authorities have publicly confessed that Masonry is, in fact, a religion. For example:
Albert G. Mackey: "The religion of Masonry is cosmopolitan, universal...."
Henry Wilson Coil: "Religion is espoused by the Masonic Ritual and required of the candidate"; and, "Freemasonry is undoubtedly religion"; and, "Many Freemasons make this flight [to heaven] with no other guarantee of a safe landing than their belief in the religion of Freemasonry."
Albert Pike: "Masonry...is the universal, eternal, immutable religion...."
Joseph Fort Newton: "Everything in Masonry has reference to God, implies God, speaks of God, points and leads to God. Not a degree, not a symbol, not an obligation, not a lecture, not a charge but finds its meaning and derives its beauty from God the Great Architect, in whose temple all Masons are workmen."
Excerpts, "THE MASONIC LODGE AND THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE," John Weldon, Christian Research Institute So you are saying you know more about why Masonry should not consider itself a religion than Albert Mackey, Joseph Fort Newton, Albert Pike, and Henry Wilson Coil, right? They all KNEW what it was - a religion. But you say you know more than they, right?
Would you like me to cite the original source documents for each of these definitions?
You say you are a Master Mason in your local lodge, yet you know most assuredly that the institution is not a religion -- despite the evidence that these four Masonic authors wrote extensively about, and devoted their lives to, delineating the various religious aspects.
Are you sure you want to insist that you know more about the innate nature of the institution than these four and others?
Kindly let us know on which side of the fence you decide to roost. I like many others here are merely trying to help open your eyes to the layers of deceit and subterfuge that Masonry builds around all its members -- save those in the highest degrees (33rd) who really know what is going on. And guess what? They are obligated to tell you nothing. They can't and remain true to Masonry. So especially those who choose to remain in Blue Lodge have no idea what really happens and is taught in the higher degrees. Full stop.
You yourself refuse to accept logical arguments and choose to "think for yourself," as you say.
But by refusing to accept logic, who is proving himself closed-minded in this discussion? Who refuses to consider the overwhelming evidence - that Freemasonry is indeed a religion -- without any support of his position rejecting same?
The four gentlemen I quoted are sine qua non four of the top ten or so of the most famous Freemason authorities of all time, yet you dismiss them out of hand because you are set in your beliefs. These four - Pike, Mackey, Coil, and Fort Newton - are REVERED in the Scottish and York Rites especially because of their "mastery" of the true secrets of the craft. You can find plenty of information about any one of them on the Internet. I would be happy to give you several website references so you could judge for yourself, but somehow you leave the impression, like so many other closed-minded Masons, that you are oblivious to written proof by these famous Masons and others --admitting and even boasting that it is a religious institution.
Your local lodge library should have copies of each of their important contributions to Freemasonry. If not, your lodge librarian is being delinquent in his duties to have such basic materials for all Masons in your lodge.
Pike and Mackey in particular vested their entire adult lives in writing hopefully persuasive books touting Freemasonry as the religion above all other sectarian religions.
In an earlier post, I recommended not only the essay, The Masonic Lodge and the Christian Conscience, but also the sermon, Freemasonry and Christianity, by the late Alva McClain. McClain uses Mackey's definitive work on Freemasonry to prove the point we have all been making with you. Just read the sermon, that's all.
And we could have a discussion then where you could argue any point therein; yet I reserve the same opportunity to rebut and support my position as best I choose.
But you seem far too closed-minded and seem to dismiss what we are helping you to see: the validity and overwhelming support for our thesis that Masonry is indeed a religion based on another god separate from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. How many Protestant denominations, and the Roman Catholic Church and Orthodox Christianity in all branches, have stated formal positions and written long explanations of why Masonry is a religious institution that is paganistic and is devoted to serving false gods? You tell me.
If you decide that Masonry is a better religion for you than Christianity, that is fine. If men so choose, that is fine. The Bible says you will be asked for an account of why you rejected Jesus. Make your case before God as you are elevated to what your institution calls, "the celestial lodge above." Me, I shudder at having to tell God I did not believe in Jesus but chose instead to believe in the teachings of Masonry and the supremacy of something called Jahbulon.
But you cannot have it both ways, as all these formal statements make plain. But for Christians who have been duped at first, but who have a conscience about what they have been told to believe - and look a bit deeper into the theology behind Masonry - then they have a choice to make. Like the late D.L. Moody said, if they choose to stay in Masonry, fine and good, but at least get out of the churches. They are being hypocrites thinking they can serve the false god of Masonry and at the same time profess allegiance to Jesus.
In Ephesians 4:15, the Apostle Paul commands us to speak the truth in love, which is what Jesus did His entire time on earth, especially to those who had sin in their lives or were rooted in their legalistic pursuit of Judaism. And that is what we are doing in pointing out the two-faced nature of Masonry. Here's a question for you to earn extra credit or to show you might want to learn more about your institution. What did Manley Hall say, even before becoming a Mason, was the heart of Freemasonry? Verbatim if you don't mind. Show us your intellectual honesty in answering this.
This is the best masons you got Widow? Nothing more then masonic trailer trash brothers.
To Anonymous Poster:
ReplyDeleteI don't know, nor do I care, what Manly Palmer Hall said was at the heart of Freemasonry.
Because, and follow closely now, no one Brother speaks for the entire Fraternity.
True, a number of Christian denominations have issued screeds against the Masonry. That only proves that members of those sects fear free thought and self determination. They fear the loss of control.
As I have posted elsewhere, and will continue to post, is that if G-d doesn't like Freemasons, he certainly rid himself of us at his convenience. That he has chosen not too, speaks volumes.
How come none of these anti-Masons ever quote one of our Masonic blogs as "official" doctrine, but they do quote dead brothers from 50 or 150 years ago as if their word is Masonic gospel?
ReplyDelete— W.S.
Dear Bro. Widow's son,
ReplyDeletethe reason why "ex-Masons-for-Jesus"-type people like "Anonymous" (nice name... is that what you call "witnessing", Brother in Christ "Anonymous"?) don't cite anything else but the same tiny little snippets of text quoted out of their context again and again and again, taken from those five or six books they have actually never read, is: they have never understood what "Freemasonry" is all about. Worst of all: they seem not to have understood what their own religion, Christianity in all its diversity, is all about. And they go on ranting and stoning verbally (and sometimes actually) and doing as the Pharisees did, that is daily thanking God Almighty that He made them better than all the rest.
How dare you, who doesn't know me, to decide that I have not accepted Jesus Christ as my Saviour? Have you, Brother in Christ "Anonymous", insight into my conscience? Do you claim the authority to judge me? Do you really intend to anticipate God's verdict on me on Judgement Day? You know me better than God does, don't you?
At first, I found the rants of the self-proclaimed defenders of the true Christian faith very amusing, especially their clumsy attempts to give their gabble the air of logic and scholarly accuracy, not seeing how much they get stuck deeper and deeper in their circular argument, and claiming faculty of judgement over something they cannot possibly know: "Freemasonry" in all its diversity. As a former instructor at an American university, I could not help but laugh about the way of "quoting" which, if found in a student's research paper, would have made me fail him/her instantly. Now, after reading for a couple of more days, I am sickened by the entirely un-Christian self-righteousness of these Evangelical Taliban.
Dear "Anonymous", I am a mason in Germany, and believe it or not, none of the dead people you named can claim any authority regarding "Freemasonry" whatsoever. At best, their writings are viewed by most Freemasons I know as entirely personal statements. In fact, nearly all of my brothers here in my lodge in Germany have never even heard of... what's their name again?... ah: "Albert Mackey, Joseph Fort Newton, Albert Pike, and Henry Wilson Coil, right". I myself had only read the name of Albert Pike before, and that was because I started reading "The Burning Taper" a couple of days ago. That's it. You don't want Christianity being judged by non-Christians based on the writings of Pat Robertson, Bishop Lefebvre or Pope Pius XII alone, do you? For the sake of not losing all your intellectual credibility: Stop judging something you are not an expert of (even then, you should remain very cautious). Stop trying (and failing) to be smarter than everybody else. In short: Stop making a fool of yourself. And, among fellow Christians, accept this brotherly advice: Humility is a virtue very becoming to a follower of Jesus Christ.
Best wishes, many prayers and greetings from Germany,
Bro. Ludwig
Thanks for your comments, Bro. Ludwig. Glad to have you reading the Burning Taper.
ReplyDeleteYou make an excellent point when you say that the fundamentalist anti-Mason wouldn't want non-Christians judging them based on a papal decree or the writings of Pat Robertson, yet they hammer away at Masonry quoting the Pike, Mackey, Newton and Coil quartet.
Anti-Masons operate from a position of fear. Fear that what they do believe — their version of Christianity — isn't quite right, but it's "better than" something else, namely Freemasonry. So they set out on a mission to prove their beliefs have validity.
The true professionals of hatred among them, like John Ankerberg, have enough fear in their hearts to attack every system of belief that doesn't meet his n arrow definitions of the "One True Religion."
Then there is Josh the Baptist, aka the Rev. Josh Buice from Kentucky, who hit our radar screen last year with his Mason-bashing blog, a small-time ministerial student who is so afraid he's wrong that he attacks not only the standard list of things okay to hate — Freemasons, Jews, Mormons, and Jehovah's Witnesses — he goes for the jugular of his own kind, other Christian ministers. Read his sickness here, where he names the names of "false prophets."
— W.S.
Well, I didn't realize that the fundie evangelicals could actually write coherent sentences. I suppose a few, like the crazy ranter above, actually can put a few sentences together. Nevertheless, the substance is lacking. As others have pointed out, no one Mason speaks for the Fraternity. This great nation and the world count among their most prominent citzens those Freemasons who dared to change things for the better. Why not quote some of them? Say, for example, Geo. Washington?
ReplyDeleteI'll tell you why only the few crackpot Masons are quoted (namely, Pike), because they serve as convenient talking points for the indolent critics who don't want to commit to the intellectual rigors of scholarly research.
Not a single fundie evangelical has ever made or ever will make a substantial contribution to the world that has nothing to do with their filthy, despicable, damnable religion. They view their pronouncements and warnings as "contributions". They view their self-proclaimed closeness to their creator as evidence of their supremacy. The circular arguments are indeed vicious circles from which they cannot escape.
Enough said.
Fraternally yours,
The Libertarian
Well, I didn't realize that the fundie evangelicals could actually write coherent sentences. I suppose a few, like the crazy ranter above, actually can put a few sentences together. Nevertheless, the substance is lacking. As others have pointed out, no one Mason speaks for the Fraternity. This great nation and the world count among their most prominent citzens those Freemasons who dared to change things for the better. Why not quote some of them? Say, for example, Geo. Washington?
ReplyDeleteI'll tell you why only the few crackpot Masons are quoted (namely, Pike), because they serve as convenient talking points for the indolent critics who don't want to commit to the intellectual rigors of scholarly research.
Not a single fundie evangelical has ever made or ever will make a substantial contribution to the world that has nothing to do with their filthy, despicable, damnable religion. They view their pronouncements and warnings as "contributions". They view their self-proclaimed closeness to their creator as evidence of their supremacy. The circular arguments are indeed vicious circles from which they cannot escape.
Enough said.
Fraternally yours,
The Libertarian