Free Republic

(JND) - As I sat down to read through some scripture Thursday night, I reached for the remote to turn off the already-turned-on TV. It was then that a sit-down session between Jon Stewart and Howrad Dean on Comedy Central's The Daily Show caught my attention. Howard Dean speaking on national television...it's like watching a car crash in slow-motion. I couldn't resist. I set down my Bible, turned on the laptop, and prepared my fingers to record what sound bytes might spew from Dean's mouth. I didn't have to wait for long. "I have yet to find a reference to...

As if mouthy Howard Dean didn't have enough troubles, now comes a left-leaning evangelical, much in demand by the Democratic Party, telling the party boss to shut up about religion. "Dean doesn't understand religion very much," says Jim Wallis, who has advised many Democratic leaders. He meets with Dean this week as part of the chairman's effort to woo the churchgoing crowd. Now promoting his book God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It, Wallis says he'll tell Dean not to fake it on religion. "The worst thing people could do is be inauthentic,"...

Howard Dean, the chief screamer and chairman of the Democratic National Committee, thinks he has the formula for a Democratic revival: Jesus, guns and balanced budgets. He told Arkansas newspaper columnist John Brummett on the eve of a meeting of state chairmen in Little Rock that he wants Democrats to speak up for "values." "We need to talk about Christian values and how they're Democratic values," he said. "Jesus taught to help the least among us. He spent his life reaching out to the disenfranchised. The Democratic Party is the party of that value, not the Republican Party."

Howard Dean called the other day and started talking about Jesus. Yes, that Howard Dean. Yes, that Jesus. Dean is the doctor and former Vermont governor who now is chairman of the Democratic National Committee, having pretty much screamed himself out of the Democratic presidential nomination last year. Along the campaign path he remarked that his favorite New Testament book was Job, which, actually, is in the Old Testament. It was insinuated that Dean, like the Alan Alda character on "West Wing," wasn't all that much for church-going. The way to insinuate such a thing is to call a man...

Welcome to the Christians for Dean website. We exist to invite people of faith to consider joining the grassroots movement to elect Howard Dean president. Evangelical Christians have traditionally voted Republican based on the pro-life/abortion issue alone. This created the voting bloc known as the "religious right' and the powerful Christian Coalition lobby. With a sometimes token stance against abortion, the Republican Party co-opted us into an entire economic and foreign policy agenda that has nothing to do with biblical values and commitments. Mr. Bush has said his favorite philosopher is Jesus Christ. Yet his political priorities are often at...

<p>In an attempt to compete with President Bush's unabashed discussion of religion while in office, Democratic presidential candidates are making similar stabs at God-talk.</p> <p>So far, there's little debate as to who is winning on the faith front. While Mr. Bush discusses his faith this morning at the National Prayer Breakfast, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean is still recovering from his Jan. 2 misidentification of Job as a book in the New Testament.</p>

In the past few weeks, the issue of religion and politics has occupied center stage in the presidential campaign. When one person isn't predicting the outcome based on what he claims God personally told him, another person is insisting that, appearances notwithstanding, he is a Christian. While this makes for fascinating political theater, the important question is: How important is the religious faith of a particular candidate? In a recent New Republic article, Franklin Foer called Vermont Governor Howard Dean "one of the most secular candidates to run for president in modern history." In Foer's estimation, Dean's secularism, and not...

<p>THE OTHER day, I was reading an interview with Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean in Newsweek when I had to stop and check that it was indeed Newsweek and not, say, Christianity Today. Yes, it was indeed Newsweek. And, after a series of questions about a variety of public policy issues, Dean was asked, out of the clear blue, the following question: "Do you see Jesus Christ as the son of God and believe in him as the route to salvation and eternal life?" For the record, Dean's somewhat cagey answer probably did little to assuage doubts about his religious faith: "I certainly see him as the son of God. I think whether I'm saved or not is not gonna be up to me." The real issue, though, is why this question even came up in a political magazine. Do we now have a religious test for public office -- something that was explicitly rejected by the Founders of the United States of America?</p>

<p>Many South Carolina Democrats believe presidential hopeful Howard Dean's promise to talk about his relationship with Jesus is a calculated ploy to pander to Southerners — in particular blacks — participating in next month's South Carolina primary.</p> <p>"A lot of Democrats here are calling it his 'Road to Columbia conversion,' " said one senior state Democrat, referring to the state's capital city.</p>

An Open Letter to Howard Dean FORT WORTH, Texas (BP) — Dear Dr. Howard Dean, Please stop. Stop trying to fool American Christians into thinking you know the Bible. You are embarrassing yourself, even though I am sure you are convinced you are executing a savvy tactic by coming out of the Christian closet after all these years of acting like you are a committed secularist. If you are serious about your newly expressed Christianity, please take some time and learn a bit more about it before spouting off startling theological statements. Case in point: In a recent interview, you...

<p>Howard Dean searches for the Almighty--and we search for both of them.</p> <p>"In a shift, Howard Dean says he will mention God* more often in his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination."</p> <p>"God*, it's great to be here with you in Iowa."</p>

Biblical Scholar Howard Dean Declares People Perfect By Russ Jowski Dean didn’t actually say “people are perfect,” but Democrats rarely express their true opinions. Dean said: “From a religious point of view, if God had thought homosexuality is a sin, he would not have created gay people.” For the moment, let’s ignore (as Dean apparently did), that the Bible calls homosexuality “detestable” or an “abomination” (depending on the translation) and that it explicitly states that homosexuals will not “inherit the kingdom of God.” Dean argues that because God created homosexuals, homosexuality cannot be a sin. It directly follows that because...

MONTPELIER, Vt. — When Vermont Gov. Howard Dean signed landmark legislation in 2000 giving marriage rights to gay couples, he explained that it was the "right thing for Vermont and the United States of America" and a matter of simple fairness. He said nothing about how religious faith swayed his thinking. But in 2004, pursuing the Democratic presidential nomination and seeking to connect with voters for whom religion is an important part of their values, Dean said his faith helped him decide that he should sign the law. "The hallmark of Christianity is to reach out to people who have...

washingtonpost.com Dean's Faith-Based Folly By Colbert I. King Saturday, January 10, 2004; Page A19 Howard Dean took a pass on yesterday's Democratic presidential candidates debate, hosted by WTOP radio and George Washington University. Too bad. He missed a chance to show Democrats in the nation's capital that he cared enough to come to their first-in-the-nation presidential primary. Most of all, though, Dean lost out on a chance to be publicly declared the victor in a contest that he won even before the first Democratic votes are cast Tuesday in the District or later in the month in Iowa and New...

When they were fund-raising, the Democratic candidates for president all claimed to be Jewish. Now that they are headed for Super Tuesday down South, they've become Jesus freaks. Listening to Democrats talk about Jesus is a little like listening to them on national security: They don't seem terribly comfortable with either subject. To ease Democrats into the Jesus thing, the Democratic Leadership Council is holding briefings for Democratic candidates teaching them how to talk about religion. The participants were warned that millions of Americans worship a supreme being whose name is not Bill Clinton. As has been widely reported, the...

Religion and The Presidential Election: Candidates Talk About Their Faith and Its Impact on Their Political Life 1/9/04 1:06:00 PM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: National Desk, Political and Religion reporters Contact: John Lynner Peterson or Don Parker, 202-639-6370, both of the Interfaith Alliance; http://www.interfaithalliance.org WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 /U.S. Newswire/ -- With religion becoming a predominant theme in the 2004 presidential elections, The Interfaith Alliance (TIA) announced today the release of the first segment of their video interviews with eight of the nine 2004 Democratic candidates for President. The TIA Video Questionnaire focuses on the candidate's personal views on faith, how those...

<p>"He fought against self-righteousness of people who had everything. . . . He was a person who set an extraordinary example that has lasted 2,000 years, which is pretty inspiring when you think about it."</p> <p>This is a fair example of the way people in New England talk--and think--about Jesus, and you will hear a variation on that theme from the pulpit of any Congregational church in Vermont this Sunday.</p>

<p>Democratic front-runner Howard Dean said Wednesday that his decision as governor to sign the bill legalizing civil unions for gays in Vermont was influenced by his Christian views, as he waded deeper into the growing political, religious and cultural debate over homosexuality and the Bible's view of it.</p>

Candidate: Howard Dean Category: Intellectual Honesty Grade: F It has hard for strategically-minded Democrats not to be relieved when Howard Dean abruptly recognized his vulnerability on religion (though it was a bit worrying that he did so almost certainly in response to this article by Franklin Foer). But Dean's most recent tactic is either brazen, or astonishingly ignorant. In his clumsy effort to neutralize the religion issue, Dean has announced that his Christianity informed his decision to sign the bill legalizing civil unions. Come on! A guy who, up through yesterday, told people he didn't let religion influence any of...

God must be confused Posted: January 9, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com To listen to Howard Dean, you would have to conclude that God is confused. It's not Howard Dean who doesn't understand unambiguous statements in both the Old Testament and the New Testament on the immorality of homosexuality. It's got to be God who is confused. In his quest for the highest office in the land, the Democratic candidate said this week that his decision to sign the bill legalizing civil unions for homosexuals in Vermont was influenced by his Christian faith – a faith he recently decided to unveil...