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America's Jews and Christians Are Failing the Test of Their Lives
Townhall.com ^ | June 23, 2020 | Dennis Prager

Posted on 06/23/2020 4:17:56 AM PDT by Kaslin

If you are a Jew or Christian in America, the seriousness of your Judaism or Christianity is now being tested.

People look back in time and wonder how religious people, especially religious leaders -- specifically, the clergy -- could have failed in times of moral crisis. The failure of most rabbis, priests and pastors to speak out today -- when the risk to personal safety is so much less than it was in communist and fascist countries -- should provide the answer: Religion doesn't have all that much impact on most religious people. During comfortable times, it provides two essentials to a happy and fulfilled life -- community and meaning -- but when tested, it often fails like an umbrella that fails to expand just as it starts to rain.

America is being taken over by violent mobs; a vast amount of destruction and stealing has taken place (with little police intervention and the apathy of our political leaders). Why aren't all clergy delivering thundering sermons about the Seventh Commandment, "Thou shalt not steal"? Does it now come with an asterisk?

A central part of a major American city has been seized and occupied by people who hate America and its values, including its Judeo-Christian values. Heard any clergy (aside from some evangelical Christians) speaking out against it?

And most ominous by far, for the first time in American history, free speech -- the mother of all freedoms -- is being widely suppressed, not by the government but by the press, the universities, the high schools, the elementary schools, all the giant internet media, Hollywood and virtually every major business in America. Christians and Jews place repentance at the center of their theologies, yet there is no place for repentance if you did or said one insensitive thing -- real or alleged -- even if it was 20 or more years ago. Yet all we get from American religious leaders on this matter is ... silence.

The freest, least racist, most opportunity-providing country in history -- "the last best hope of earth," in Abraham Lincoln's words -- is smeared as "systemically racist"; all white people are declared "racist"; and the statues of the greatest Americans, including George Washington and even Abraham Lincoln, are toppled and/or defaced. And all we get from most American religious leaders is either agreement or silence.

It leads this religious American to ask the question the anti-religious ask: Of what use is religion?

Take the claim that being "colorblind" is racist.

If you are a religious Jew or Christian -- let alone a rabbi, priest or minister -- do you believe that? Do you believe that the human ideal is not to be colorblind? Do you believe that the ideal is to see every person, first and foremost, as a member of a race? Is that what you learned at seminary? Is that what you have taught from your pulpit all of your life?

I doubt it. I assume that, until as recently as a year or even six months ago, you have always believed and preached that we are, in Martin Luther King Jr.'s words, to measure people not by "the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

Isn't it fundamental to all Bible-based religions that we are all created in God's image, that God has no race and that Adam and Eve, from whom we all descend, had no race? If you are a Christian, do you see Christians of other races first as fellow Christians or first as members of their race? If you are a Jew, do you see Jews of other races as anything other than fellow Jews? Does God?

So, why the silence? Why aren't all rabbis, priests and pastors telling their congregations and telling America -- in tweets, on Facebook, in letters to the editor, on television and radio, in opinion pieces -- that there is one race, the human race, and that the only antidote to racism is to deny that race determines our worth, not to affirm its significance?

Does an ideology that affirms the significance of race have an honorable pedigree? Has it ever led to anything good? Isn't that exactly what Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan advocated?

So, how are we to explain this tragic failure of religious Jews and Christians -- and their clergy -- to speak up against looting (aka stealing) and for freedom, for America, for Western civilization and for being colorblind?

The answer to this question also goes to the core of what it means to be religious. At the center of our two religions is the notion of fear of God: "Fear God, and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man" (Ecclesiastes 12:13). But what is now apparent is that most Jews and Christians fear the left, fear The New York Times, fear being shunned by "friends" on Facebook and mobbed on Twitter more than they fear God.

That's what this moment comes down to. Jews and Christians who fail this test will not only lose their freedom, lose the great American hope for mankind and lose the West; they will have also lost their souls.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: christianity; christians; jews; judaism
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These are really bad times. We must pray and fight so we can overcome them.
1 posted on 06/23/2020 4:17:56 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

The new code words to be one of the crowd is to “believe the lies”


2 posted on 06/23/2020 4:23:37 AM PDT by no-to-illegals ( Liberals, leftists, Rinos, moslems, illegals, lamestream media. All want Americva to fail and die)
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To: Kaslin

p


3 posted on 06/23/2020 4:27:18 AM PDT by wintertime ( Behind every government school teacher stand armed police.( Real bullets in those guns on the hip!))
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To: Kaslin

I stopped going to church when it became apparent that ALL clergy were Hillary voters. They spouted Democrat lies in the pulpit. They pushed Democrat talking points non stop. The almost never even mentioned abortion in any way. The are blind, brainless milqtoasts whose bible is used to support the Democrat party.


4 posted on 06/23/2020 4:28:04 AM PDT by TalBlack
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To: Kaslin

POLITICS!!


5 posted on 06/23/2020 4:29:48 AM PDT by Ann Archy (Abortion....... The HUMAN Sacrifice to the god of Convenience.)
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To: Kaslin

Sadly, “Never Again!” is morphing into “Ooops, It’s happening again. Let’s pretend it’s not!”

The American Kristalnacht is now part of our own History It’s a direct descendant of Obama’s American Jihad.

Too many damn Hippies, that’s what’s going on.

The Revolution will be televised.


6 posted on 06/23/2020 4:31:14 AM PDT by Quentin Quarantino
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To: Kaslin

I’ve said for 20+ years that apathy, effectively doing nothing, is a big problem in Western countries today. That’s why the DS and the corruption got so bad. Posting on social media isn’t enough, people must vote for law and order, and find out who doesn’t support the US constitution, especially find out which police don’t support the US constitution, and name them. Name their city, state, and name, do not put down their address or any other info.


7 posted on 06/23/2020 4:32:48 AM PDT by ChuckR163 (http://qmap.pub, http://qanon.pub)
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To: TalBlack

The words “Trust but Verify” are looked upon with disdain. Christ was eventually crusified for questioning the church of his time. We should all prepare for our cross .... imho. Btw your words are true imho


8 posted on 06/23/2020 4:35:05 AM PDT by no-to-illegals ( Liberals, leftists, Rinos, moslems, illegals, lamestream media. All want Americva to fail and die)
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To: Kaslin

Because there is to be a great falling away...

Only the truly faithful will exist. The church bells all are broken.


9 posted on 06/23/2020 4:38:33 AM PDT by EBH (May God Save Our Freedom from our enemies within)
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To: TalBlack

about 7 years ago at mass they announced a financial settlement re abuse, I got up and walked out and have not set foot in church again other than visiting the buildings themselves in Europe and Jerusalem.


10 posted on 06/23/2020 4:39:44 AM PDT by Jolla
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To: TalBlack

It’s not just clergy.

Most of most congregations, who pay that clergy, are progs. They will fire them. Their certifying organizations will blacklist them.

So, they decide it’s better to shut up. After all, what’s so terrible, right? Like with everyone else who is silent, they need their job.


11 posted on 06/23/2020 4:39:55 AM PDT by reformedliberal (Make yourself less available)
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To: no-to-illegals

Lies like the
Wuhan Flu!


12 posted on 06/23/2020 4:40:33 AM PDT by Big Red Badger (He Hath Not Given Us A Spirit Of Fear)
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To: Kaslin
Does an ideology that affirms the significance of race have an honorable pedigree? Has it ever led to anything good? Isn't that exactly what Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan advocated?

The money quote and a damn' good one.

13 posted on 06/23/2020 4:41:51 AM PDT by usconservative (When The Ballot Box No Longer Counts, The Ammunition Box Does. (What's In Your Ammo Box?))
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To: TalBlack
My pastor is not a Hillary voter.

My Brother's pastor is not a Hillary voter.

Both are evangelical Christians.

14 posted on 06/23/2020 4:41:57 AM PDT by marktwain (President Trump and his supporters are the Resistance. His opponents are the Reactionaries.)
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To: TalBlack

My story is similar. Add in payouts for all the pedophiles.


15 posted on 06/23/2020 4:45:34 AM PDT by EEGator
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To: Kaslin

The socialist left has infiltrated and dominated seminaries just as they have universities and government. It all began in the 60’s.


16 posted on 06/23/2020 4:46:14 AM PDT by elpadre
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To: Kaslin

So many clergy everywhere seem so reluctant to quote and understand their scriptures that it’s clear that they are the ones that Christ himself identified as the ‘sheep in wolves clothing’ infiltrators that are not part of God’s true church.....

Matthew 7:15 “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.”

God’s true and faithful servants understand this....

Romans 8:31 “What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?”


17 posted on 06/23/2020 4:47:39 AM PDT by hecticskeptic
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To: TalBlack

Exactly the same happened to me


18 posted on 06/23/2020 4:47:48 AM PDT by Recovering Ex-hippie (n)
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To: usconservative

Does an ideology that affirms the significance of race have an honorable pedigree? Has it ever led to anything good? Isn’t that exactly what Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan advocated?


You caught it too.

add the “ism” to anything and it becomes an ideology.

Rac-—ism.

Communism
socialism
fascism


19 posted on 06/23/2020 4:47:50 AM PDT by PeterPrinciple (Thinking Caps are no longer being issued but there must be a warehouse full of them somewhere.)
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To: no-to-illegals

2 Thessalonians 2:9-11
King James Version

9 Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,

10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.

11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie

The chaos and lies that engulf us are NO surprise.

JOHN 3:19

And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

The tearing down of our society - Law and Order, Heritage, and attempted overthrow of America is EVIL.

Nothing more and Nothing less.


20 posted on 06/23/2020 4:48:34 AM PDT by LeonardFMason (Lou Dobbs)
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