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US religious Right concedes defeat (Has Dobson Thrown In The Towel? Not Quite (FULL AUDIO LINK))
Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | April 11, 2009 | Alex Spillius

Posted on 04/10/2009 11:32:24 PM PDT by Schnucki

Edited on 04/12/2009 11:03:20 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]

America's religious Right has conceded that the election of US President Barack Obama has sealed its defeat in the cultural war with permissiveness and secularism.

Leading evangelicals have admitted that their association with George W. Bush has not only hurt the cause of social conservatives but contributed to the failure of the key objectives of their 30-year struggle.

James Dobson, 72, who resigned recently as head of Focus on the Family - one of the largest Christian groups in the country - and once denounced the Harry Potter books as witchcraft, acknowledged the dramatic reverse for the religious Right in a farewell speech to staff.

“We tried to defend the unborn child, the dignity of the family, but it was a holding action,” he said.

“We are awash in evil and the battle is still to be waged. We are right now in the most discouraging period of that long conflict. Humanly speaking, we can say we have lost all those battles.”

Despite changing the political agenda for a generation, and helping push the Republicans to the Right, evangelicals have won only minor victories in limiting the availability of abortion. Meanwhile the number of states permitting civil partnerships between homosexuals is rising, and the campaign to restore prayer to schools after 40 years - a decision that helped create the Moral Majority - has got nowhere.

Though the struggle will go on, the confession of Mr Dobson, who started his ministry from scratch in 1977, came amid growing concern that church attendance in the United States is heading the way of Britain, where no more than ten per cent worship every week.

Unease is rising that a nation founded - in the view of evangelicals - purely as a Christian country will soon, like northern Europe, become “post-Christian”.

Recent surveys

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Has Dobson Thrown In The Towel? Not Quite (FULL AUDIO)


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News
KEYWORDS: agenda; bho44; christians; christianvote; culturewars; dobson; evangelicals; fotf; obama; prolife; rinofeedingfrenzy; rinopileon
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To: nathanbedford

You know, I have a problem with the labeling of christians who actively lead their churches as “evangelicals”.

We are not traveling revival tents selling snake oil. But the left media brands believers and moral leadership as some kind of derogatory fringe movement.

Without leadership motivating the troops, no cause will succeed. Even the leftists need their radical left wing motivators pointing the accusatory finger at conservative Christians. We stand in their way of immoral interpretations of the laws. To the left, finger pointing is a violation of their comfort zone and must be met with extreme resistance.

So it also should be for the Conservatives. No battle will ever be won without some black eyes and sucker punches.
Walking away and turning the other cheek solves nothing.


61 posted on 04/11/2009 6:11:09 AM PDT by o_zarkman44 (Obama is the ultimate LIE!)
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To: Leisler

I’ll take a Mormon leader over a Muslim Socialist any day.


62 posted on 04/11/2009 6:12:26 AM PDT by AD from SpringBay (We deserve the government we allow.)
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To: wintertime

Amen wintertime! The gospel was never meant to be degraded to the point of being a label for a political party.


63 posted on 04/11/2009 6:17:00 AM PDT by AD from SpringBay (We deserve the government we allow.)
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To: Leisler

I’ve been reading your posts for awhile. It seems to me that your vision of an “acceptable” candidate would appeal to perhaps 5 percent of the Republican Party.

Don’t take it personally. Just an observation.


64 posted on 04/11/2009 6:18:36 AM PDT by behzinlea
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To: xzins

I agree totally. The church is letting us down far more than those we elect. When Christians begin to understand what it is they are supposed to believe and do, a revolution will occur.


65 posted on 04/11/2009 6:23:04 AM PDT by ShandaLear (I LOVE RUSH!)
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To: Big Giant Head

Please read post #60


66 posted on 04/11/2009 6:23:37 AM PDT by wintertime
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To: bert

“Romney was governor of Taxachuttes. He is there unworthy. If the folks up there liked him, he is bad,”

Didn’t they have a Liberal legislature?


67 posted on 04/11/2009 6:30:35 AM PDT by RoadTest (I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. - John 14:6)
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To: RoadTest

The folks who elected Romney also elected the legislature


68 posted on 04/11/2009 6:37:07 AM PDT by bert (K.E. N.P. +12 . John Galt hell !...... where is Francisco dÂ’Anconia)
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To: AD from SpringBay
If Christian children had been properly educated:

1) No Marxist professor in any college classroom would stand a chance! The classes, instead, would be filled to the brim with youth well prepared to defend their Christian faith and values, and our nation's founding principles. These professors would wither before righteousness.

2) We would not have had 43 million abortions.

3) We would not have a Marxist president.

4) Instead of our cultural institutions being filled with atheistic, Marxist, secular humanists pumping out filth, we would instead have the arts and media fully populated with adults ( young and old) who value goodness.

We have lost the culture, and the political arena as well, because:

*Christians FAILED and continue to FAIL to FULLY educate their children in a Christian worldview.

*Christians instead ship them off to government indoctrination camps day after day.

*Parents are at fault as individuals.

*Ministers are fully to blame for failing to be good shepherds to the congregation's children.

*The large Christian political organizations have failed because they have, and ARE, MISSING THE MARK!!!! They are shooting right over the heads of the very government schools that have Christian children by the neck! These schools need to be permanently SHUT DOWN!

Yes, I am shouting!

69 posted on 04/11/2009 6:38:24 AM PDT by wintertime
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To: o_zarkman44
Nowhere is the truth of your reply better demonstrated than in the treatment of Sarah Palin by the leftist national media. Their reaction was so vitriolic, so visceral, so deranged that a clinician would have a field day analyzing it. But you just have. The left compulsively hated Sarah Palin because of who she was. She had committed an unpardonable sin, she had knowingly carried to full-term a Down's syndrome baby!

She "pointed her finger" at them without uttering a single reproach. The transparent righteousness of the woman made her a living indictment of their hypocrisy. They knew instinctively that she must be destroyed or they would be seen for what they were.

Herman Melville also saw this when he wrote Billy Budd.


70 posted on 04/11/2009 6:41:04 AM PDT by nathanbedford ("Attack, repeat attack!" Bull Halsey)
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To: bert

“The folks who elected Romney also elected the legislature”

What do you deduce from that?


71 posted on 04/11/2009 6:43:44 AM PDT by RoadTest (I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. - John 14:6)
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To: RoadTest

Romney is not a conservative worth his salt


72 posted on 04/11/2009 6:48:56 AM PDT by bert (K.E. N.P. +12 . John Galt hell !...... where is Francisco dÂ’Anconia)
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To: Markos33
And yes, violence may be in order. Pray that it's not.

The violence of evil may be met with the violence of righteousness, justice, love, and grace.

The key to the proper use of violence in history is integrity, which uses authority without the abuse of authority. Once you have authority and abuse it, you have tyranny.

73 posted on 04/11/2009 6:54:40 AM PDT by Cvengr (Adversity in life and death is inevitable. Thru faith in Christ, stress is optional.)
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To: skipper18
“From the ashes will rise a new Ronald Reagan..”

Which has nothing to do with the Christian Right.


Actually, it does.

Reagan was a Christian and he had no bones about showing it. He was also a Conservative (a right-winger if you will.) Conservative Christians and Christian organisations were at their peak under Reagan and flourished during both of his terms.

There's little doubt another politician in the Reagan mold would bring about a resurgence of Christian influence just as it did under RR.
74 posted on 04/11/2009 6:56:47 AM PDT by reagan_fanatic (We've gone from Jefferson to the Jeffersons)
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To: ABQHispConservative

bingo, in a place like California, they can’t even get prop 8 passed!

Now the zero is cannon fodder, providing endless ammunition for the GOP, can you hear the speeches now: “When I’m president, I will not bow to foreign kings and get punked by somali pirates in little rubber boats!”


75 posted on 04/11/2009 7:37:48 AM PDT by tpanther (The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing---Edmund Burke)
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To: Schnucki
>> Mr Dobson, who started his ministry from scratch in 1977 <<

Dobson started a ministry? That's news to me. What's his ministery called and what post was he ordained to? What church does he minister to? What church appointed him to his ministerial authority?

Last time I checked, he was a lay person with a doctorate in child development from the University of Southern California in 1967, a licensed psychologist in California, who earns a living from being a radio talk show host and author. And the former CEO of Focus on the Family, a non-profit social soncservative organization that promotes traditional values.

76 posted on 04/11/2009 7:41:26 AM PDT by BillyBoy (Impeach Obama? Yes We Can!)
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To: Schnucki
1 Samuel 17:47
And all this assembly shall know that the LORD saveth not with sword and spear: for the battle is the LORD's, and he will give you into our hands.
77 posted on 04/11/2009 7:47:45 AM PDT by Theophilus (The people who were going to buy your home got aborted 30 years ago.)
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To: Schnucki

The Rider on the White Horse
11I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war. 12His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. 13He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. 14The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. 15Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. “He will rule them with an iron scepter.”[a] He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. 16On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written:
KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.

17And I saw an angel standing in the sun, who cried in a loud voice to all the birds flying in midair, “Come, gather together for the great supper of God, 18so that you may eat the flesh of kings, generals, and mighty men, of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, small and great.”

19Then I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to make war against the rider on the horse and his army. 20But the beast was captured, and with him the false prophet who had performed the miraculous signs on his behalf. With these signs he had deluded those who had received the mark of the beast and worshiped his image. The two of them were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur. 21The rest of them were killed with the sword that came out of the mouth of the rider on the horse, and all the birds gorged themselves on their flesh.


78 posted on 04/11/2009 7:48:25 AM PDT by Rodm
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To: Schnucki

Wishful thinking on the part of leftists. Apparently, abortion isn’t a religious right issue anymore to these people because younger people tend to be more pro-life than older ones and restrictions on abortion continue moving along rapidly at the state level, with ultrasound legislation being the latest success story.


79 posted on 04/11/2009 7:49:17 AM PDT by Ol' Sparky (Liberal Republicans are the greater of two evils)
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To: Schnucki

Do not listen to this DISINFORMATION JUNKIE. The “religious right” is not quitting. The old soldiers may retire, but they’ve trained a bevy of replacements. We’re “armed” with the truth and will continue to fight during this period of common grace.


80 posted on 04/11/2009 7:50:42 AM PDT by nonsporting
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