Posted on 04/26/2006 7:32:31 PM PDT by Ligeia
ROANOKE, Va. - The leader of the largest branch of American Judaism urged evangelical Christians on Wednesday not to compromise church-state separation as a quick fix to the "disturbing collapse of public morality."
Prayer in the schools is not the answer to moral decline in America, Rabbi Eric Yoffie told a chapel service at the Rev. Jerry Falwell's Liberty University in Lynchburg.
Yoffie, president of the liberal Union for Reform Judaism, has publicly criticized the Christian right in the past, drawing the distinction on issues such as abortion and gay marriage, both of which evangelical Christians oppose.
"But as significant as these issues are, my hope is that they will not overwhelm us," Yoffie said in prepared remarks. "I can discuss these issues and believe what I believe without calling you a homophobic idiot, and you can do the same without calling me an uncaring baby killer."
Yoffie called for Christians and Jews to "build bridges, find shared values and join together" to fight what he called a "moral crisis" in America.
"We live in an era of rampant materialism and no-strings-attached sexual encounters," Yoffie said. "Every night television assails our children with mindless reality shows that present self-gratification as the only goal worth pursuing. Pornography ... has become a staple of our culture."
The left and the right are at fault, he said. The left has ignored public morality "in the name of personal choice," he said, while the right has been too tolerant of corporations that "reach into our homes and relentlessly market sex and violence."
(Excerpt) Read more at timesdispatch.com ...
Pretty arrogant of this jerk to lecture Evangelicals about bridge-building given his recent public rants demonizing Christian believers...
Whatever you like: paganism, homosexuality, atheism....
This man is not a Rabbi and no one cares what he has to say anyways.
"This man" meaning Eric Yoffie
Theology professors will have lots of material to work with for their apologetics courses.
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