Socialism infecting the clergy

The Literary Digest | May 9th, 1908

[ProgressingAmerica]

Its been over 100 years since some people started to realize that socialism was making inroads into churches. There's been a lot of advancement since then - including a lack of any more warning.

First published in 1908, this writing is in the public domain.

[ProgressingAmerica]

If anybody wants on/off the revolutionary progressivism ping list, send me a message

Progressives do not want to discuss their own history. I want to discuss their history.

Summary: There used to be watchdogs for this, even if only a few.

[ricmc2175]

Infecting? The clergy of all stripes have been dying of it for years. When you have never had to make anything, meet a payroll or otherwise produce, socialism comes easy to you.

[originalbuckeye]

The mainstream Methodist Church is one that I cannot attend anymore. My minister, on the Sunday after 9/11/01, declared that ‘the cause of the attack was poverty and world hunger. Can’t we just share so that everyone has enough’. I never went back.

[hinckley buzzard]

It is true that with the "progressive era" domestically and the world views of Wilson internationally, the first twenty years of the twentieth century were the most damaging to freedom in the Nation's history. More lasting harm was done between 1900 and 1920 than during the Civil War.

[hinckley buzzard]

Well put. The fact is that in recent decades the "clergy of all stripes" just hasn't attracted many really bright people. People with a lot of issues, not much critical judgment.

[RoosterRedux]

I have met some socialist pastors and have noted an incredible naivete and misunderstanding of the true nature of socialism among that crowd.

[ansel12]

Southern Baptist is our second largest denomination, and their clergy is about as conservative as it gets, with at least 80% of them voting republican.

Compare that to the atheists and non-religious individuals who are about 80% and more to the left, and then you can look at clergy of different denominations, that fall in between.

[shove_it]

useful idiot clergy ping

[Louis Foxwell]

The Episcopal church is less Christian than it is Marxist. Forty years ago the head priest of the largest Episcopal church in Baltimore proudly announced he considers himself Buddhist.

[GBA]

Someone sowed good seed in his field;
but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat,
and then went away.

[Rodamala]

I hope you stood up, and marched your family out of the church that day. Methodists used to be just Baptists that can read... but now... it seems the United Methodist Church is embracing all sorts of faggotry.

[WashingtonSource]

Socialism = death.

[Theodore R.]

You never went back, good; but many are trapped in such churches by recalcitrant family members.

[Theodore R.]

Southern Baptists in many congregations, however, have dropped the old hymns and embraced “modern” choruses. This will add to the falling away from Scripture too, as the hymns inspire everything wholesome in a church.

[Theodore R.]

The Louisiana Secretary of State has a voter portal in which once can find the party affiliation of any voter living in the state: living people only, not deceased ones. One must also need the zip code or the month and year of birth. Check out some of the Baptist pastors you know and see about their voting affiliation. I also seem to recall that for years Billy Graham was a NC Democrat, but he may not be now.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

There is an irony here in that to a great extent, socialism is a form of Judeo-Christian heresy.

It exists as a method of the oldest of sins, vanity, which has plagued mankind since its beginnings, in the form of men trying to pretend they “are like God”.

Socialism in a nutshell begins with the Book of Genesis, in which socialists put “mankind” in the place of God throughout; yet in a corrupted form, they keep the myth.

For them, the Garden of Eden becomes The State of Nature, from which mankind was ejected for embracing the knowledge of good and evil. So, one precept of socialism is that good and evil must be ‘normalized’, made equal, so they cease to exist as such. When this happens, socialists theorize, mankind can return to Eden, or The State of Nature.

This is pretty much the basis of radical environmentalism as well, that mankind must give up on civilization to return to nature, that our current state is unnatural and must be stopped.

The real hazard is that true clergy, Catholic, Orthodox, conservative Protestant, and Jewish, need to realize that socialism *is* heresy, in its deepest manifestation, because it rejects God, it shuns God, and it despises God.

But, as a twisted parody of Judeo-Christianity, it often seems on the surface to embrace the same goals as religion, so the temptation is ecumenism. But ecumenism cannot happen with evil, and religion is corrupted in the effort.

A pragmatic approach, that “It does not matter who gives bread to the poor, as long as they are fed”, ignores that religion gives the faith, and the bread, and the water; but socialism *promises* the bread and the water, but only delivers liquor, narcotics and perversion, at the demand that faith and righteousness be discarded.

So look on clergy that embrace socialism as either being ignorant of the truth, or worse, that they have embraced the axiom of socialism, and now despise God.

[ansel12]

I already have the Southern Baptist data, for instance in 2008 80% of SB pastors were committed to voting republican, 4% were going third party, and 15% were not sure how they were going to vote.

I called that ‘least 80% of them voting republican’ they appear to be every bit as republican voting as the Southern Baptist members, who also vote at least 80% republican.

[kalee]

Many Southerners are registered Democrats but vote Republican. They will even tell you they are Democrats even though they do not vote as Democrats and share none of the Party’s ideas. The reason is family. Their daddy and their grandaddies were Democrats going back generations so they remain Democrats, although often in name only.

Remember Republicans were reviled in the South from at least Lincoln onward and Roosevelt was seen as the savior of the Great Depression.

My own grandmother would say she was a proud Democrat and when asked why would launch into near worship for Roosevelt. Nothing could change her mind. He hung the moon for her and many of my grandparents’ and my parents’ generations.

[mjp]

We go a step further and say that the people should also own the means of production and distribution.

When one studies the Bible as a whole, focusing on foundational principles rather than on verses taken out of context, it is much more supportive of an economic system respecting private property and the work ethic (see especially Isaiah 65:21-22 and Jeremiah 32:43-44)."Thou shalt not steal" is the clearest declaration of the right of private property in the Old Testament.And, private ownership and stewardship of property is assumed to be the proper state of affairs throughout the Bible (Deuteronomy 8; Ruth 2; Isaiah 65:21-22; Jeremiah 32:43-44; Micah 4:1-4; Luke 12:13-15; Acts 5:1-4; Ephesians 4:28).