Hypocrisy

All posts tagged Hypocrisy

Billy Graham – Religious Hypocrite

Posted by thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard on October 19, 2012
Posted in: Hypocrisy, Politics. Tagged: , . Leave a comment

A few weeks ago I went after Black Ministers for their hypocrisy in encouraging their church members not to vote in the Presidential election.  Today it’s Billy Graham’s turn on the hot seat.  In case you don’t know, Billy is without question the biggest evangelist that America has ever produced.  I never shared his beliefs but until this week he at least had my respect.  That respect is now completely gone and I have to call the man out as being a huge hypocrite.  Here is why….

Billy, along with most other evangelical Christians, has consistently labeled Mormonism as a cult.  Let me put it more bluntly…he thought all Mormons were going to Hell.  Until this week, Billy’s website had an article clearly categorizing Mormonism as a cult.

(Let me make it clear, I don’t have a dog in that fight.  I firmly believe that one of our key right in America is freedom of religion FOR EVERYONE regardless of who or how you worship.  Christians, Mormons, Muslims, etc. all share that exact same freedom.  I also believe that means FREEDOM FROM religion!)

Now….back to Billy.  This week Billy jumped into the 2012 Presidential Election fray, met with Mitt Romney, and endorsed him for president.  At the same time his website article about Mormonism being a cult mysteriously disappeared from his website.  To put it a little more bluntly (using evangelical christian terms), Billy has cast his lot with the devil (based on his categorization of Mormonism with as a cult and the fact that he is backing a Mormon for president) and is trying to cover it up by removing HIS words about Mormonism from his website.  What else do you call that but Hypocrisy with a capital H.  To put it into Mitt Romney language, Billy has shown that he is an etch-a-sketch evangelist.  Shame on you!

The details from an article on CNN are provided below if you are interested.

Billy Graham site removes

Mormon ‘cult’ reference

after Romney meeting

By Eric Marrapodi, CNN Belief Blog Co-Editor

(CNN) – Shortly after Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney enjoyed cookies and soft drinks with the Rev.  Billy Graham and his son Franklin Graham on Thursday at the elder Graham’s mountaintop retreat, a reference to Mormonism as a cult was scrubbed from the website of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

In a section of the website called Billy Graham’s My Answer there had been the question “What is a cult?”

Answer: “A cult is any group which teaches doctrines or beliefs that deviate from the biblical message of the Christian faith.”

“Some of these groups are Jehovah’s Witnesess, Mormons, the Unification Church, Unitarians, Spritualists, Scientologists, and others,” the site continued.

No longer. On Tuesday, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association confirmed that page has recently been removed from the site.

“Our primary focus at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association has always been promoting the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” Ken Barun, chief of staff for the association, told CNN in a statement. “We removed the information from the website because we do not wish to participate in a theological debate about something that has become politicized during this campaign.”

Romney is a lifelong member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, members of which are known as Mormons.

The information about cults can be found on cached sections of the website onArchive.org from June 5, 2010.

The theological question of where Mormons fit on the religious spectrum has drawn more attention because of Romney’s candidacy. Mormons consider themselves to be strong Christians. Many traditional Christian denominations disagree, though rank-and-file members have their own views on the matter.

The removal of the post from the Graham group’s website was first noted by the New Civil Rights Movement website and then later by the Asheville Citizen-Times, which reported that the information on cults was accessed as recently as Thursday afternoon.

Last week’s meeting between Romney and Graham was their first.

After the 30 minute sit-down in Montreat, North Carolina, just outside Asheville, Romney campaign spokesman Rick Gorka told reporters that Billy Graham led a prayer for the Romneys, saying “I’ll do all I can to help you. And you can quote me on that.”

The evangelist who has been called America’s pastor and has prayed with every American president since Harry Truman said in a statement following the meeting that “It was a privilege to pray with Gov. Romney — for his family and our country.”

Graham met with President Barack Obama in 2010 and with Sen. John McCain when he was the presumptive Republican presidential nominee in 2008.

“I will turn 94 the day after the upcoming election, and I believe America is at a crossroads,” Graham’s statement continued. “I hope millions of Americans will join me in praying for our nation and to vote for candidates who will support the biblical definition of marriage, protect the sanctity of life and defend our religious freedoms.”

When asked about Graham’s beliefs about Mormonism, Graham spokesman A. Larry Ross said in a statement that “Through an inclusive evangelistic ministry spanning more than 60 years, Mr. Graham was called to preach the transformative message of the Gospel to the whole world, regardless of one’s religious background, affiliation or none. As such, he never proselytized, targeted or labeled specific people, groups, faiths or denominations.

“Neither did Mr. Graham attempt to divide his audience before he had opportunity to preach to them. He has a genuine love for all people, and faithfully proclaimed the love of God to everyone, providing opportunity for them to respond by making a faith commitment.

“Mr. Graham’s calling is not to pass judgment, but to proclaim the biblical truth that Jesus is the only way to heaven, allowing every individual and group to fall along that plumb line,” the statement went on.

“He further stressed that salvation is the work of Almighty God, and that only He knows what is in each human heart,” the statement said.

The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, lists the LDS Church as a theological cult.  The Catholic Church also does not recognize Mormon baptisms as being theologically compatible with its own.

The LDS Church has long bristled at being called a cult.  Mormons note the many similarities and overlap between their teachings and that of other churches but point to their belief in other scriptures like the Book of Mormon as the reason they split with other churches.

In the 2012 campaign Romney has been generally quiet about his church, though his role as a lay church leader was prominently featured in the Republican National Convention, and his campaign has allowed members of the press pool accompanying Romney to film him attending services.

Hypocrisy and Cowardice

Posted by thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard on September 26, 2012
Posted in: Politics. Tagged: , . Leave a comment

I have been preparing a post about black pastors telling their congregations not to vote because of President Obama’s support for gay rights and same sex marriage.  As I was getting ready to write that post tonight, I found a post on Huffington Post that tells the story better than I ever could because it was written by a black woman, Irene Monroe.  Here is her post…

Will Obama’s Support of Marriage

EqualityKeep Some Blacks Home on

Election Day?

African Americans have worked hard to get the vote and to get a man of African descent in the White House. In 2008 we came out in unprecedented numbers, with Obama taking 95 percent of the black vote, thanks to the help of his biggest support base: American-American ministers and their parishioners. But in this 2012 presidential election Obama’s biggest support base will have dropped precipitously. And it will be because of both the Democratic Party’s and Obama’s pronouncement on marriage equality.

Before the opening of the Democratic National Convention, the Democratic Party released its 2012 platform. Its theme: “Moving America Forward.” One of the major party planks in the platform is its full-throated support of marriage equality: “We support the right of all families to have equal respect, responsibilities, and protections under the law. We support marriage equality and support the movement to secure equal treatment under law for same-sex couples.” Many Obama supporters embrace the platform’s theme of “Moving America Forward” but feel that the party’s support of same-sex marriage is risky, if not outright political suicide, in such a tight and contentions race for the White House.

(“We also support the freedom of churches and religious entities to decide how to administer marriage as a religious sacrament without government interference,” the platform states.)

With one of Obama’s largest and most loyal voting blocs being African Americans, who are largely Democrats but also largely conservative Christians, the big worry is not that African Americans would overwhelmingly cast their ballots for Mitt Romney, but that they might not come out to the polls in large numbers in November.

“This is the first time in Black church history that I am aware of, that Black pastors have encouraged their parishioners not to vote, ” Rev. Jamal-Harrison Bryant of Baltimore told The Washington Informer. Bryant has formed the Empowerment Network, a national coalition of about 30 denominations working to register African-American parishioners. Bryant, too, opposes same-sex marriage and stated that Obama’s endorsement of marriage equality is “at the heart” of the problem for black Christians.

Although approximately 95 percent of the African-American populace cast their ballots for Obama in 2008, only 26 percent were in favor of same-sex marriage, according to the Pew Research Center. Just before Obama publicly announced his support for marriage equality in May, according to Pew results in April, 49 percent of African Americans opposed same-sex marriage, while only 39 percent were in favor of it. And since Obama’s announcement the numbers of those in opposition to same-sex marriage have not declined significantly among the black church populace. As a matter of fact, some African-American ministers have come out more forcefully against Obama.

For example, the Rev. William Owens, president and founder of the Memphis-based Coalition of African Americans Pastors, is one of them. He carries influence and clout among black clerics in the area, and he feels that the president has gone too far in extending his hand toward securing civil rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBTQ) Americans. Owens told the Associated Press in late July that he “would lead a national effort to rally black Americans to rethink their overwhelming support of the president over the same-sex issue and ‘save the family.'”

Owens is outraged and feels that the president is taking the African-American vote for granted. Although I would like to dismiss Owens as just another homophobic minister and an outlier in what I believe will be a huge turnout of black voters for Obama, sadly, Owens has parlayed his outrage into a small but growing movement. He claims he has over 3,742 African-Americans ministers and their churches on board with his anti-Obama vote campaign.

“The time has come for a broad-based assault against the powers that be that want to change our culture to one of men marrying men and women marrying women,” Owens told CNN after he launched his anti-Obama vote campaign event at the National Press Club. “I am ashamed that the first black president chose this road, a disgraceful road.”

Why are African Americans, especially conservative Christians, still stuck on this issue? One reason is that church doctrine throughout African-American denominations hasn’t changed on the topic of homosexuality, keeping the church tethered to an outdated notion of human sexuality and a wrongheaded notion of what constitutes civil rights. Another reason is that many African-American ministers still believe the institution of marriage, at least within the black family, is under assault, and that LGBTQ people further exacerbate the problem. For these ministers, some of whom support LGBTQ civil rights broadly but draw the line at same-sex marriage, espousing their opposition to same-sex marriage is a prophylactic measure to combat the epidemic of fatherlessness in black families. In scapegoating the LGBTQ community, these clerics are ignoring the social ills behind black fatherlessness, such as the systematic disenfranchisement of both African-American men and women, high unemployment, high incarceration, and poor education, to name a few.

Meanwhile, many African-American ministers have come out in support of Obama’s stance on marriage equality. For these African-American ministers, the liability of Obama losing his 2012 reelection bid seems far greater than being publicly castigated for not being in lockstep with their homophobic brethren. But their efforts to get their conservative parishioners to the ballot box must far exceed the efforts of those in opposition to same-sex marriage.

If the first African-American president loses his reelection bid because of certain black pastors’ homophobic views on marriage equality, that would be tragic, and history would not look kindly on their actions. Obama is the president of the United States, not the pastor of the United States. He’s the president of all the people, not some of the people. As African Americans, who have battled for centuries against racial discrimination, we have always relied on our president and his administration to fight for and uphold our civil rights, because too many pastors across the country and throughout centuries wouldn’t “move America forward.”

Since Irene was nice enough to write the majority of this post for me let me summarize the key point in my own words:

  • Black pastors are telling their congregations not to exercise their voting rights that many people gave their lives to secure because they don’t recognize that other people have civil rights as well as black people.
  • Let me say it yet another way…black pastors are telling their congregations not to vote, which will increase the Republican’s chances of winning the election, and they are doing this knowing full well that these same Republicans will just accelerate their on-going efforts to suppress the votes of all minority voters in the future.

You are have to be fucking kidding me!   Let me put a very fine point on this….any black pastor that is part of this effort is a hypocrite and a coward.   What they are saying is that was OK for people to fight and die to get them equal rights but, having gotten those rights, they are not willing to step forward to help other minorities get similar rights.  Shame on you!