Mitt Romney's Driving Killed Leola Anderson. His Cover-Up Tale is Proved Dishonest 17JUL12

FOUND this on Daily Kos, very interesting expose from 2012 on the real story of mitt romney's accident in France in 1968. More on the lies, deception and greed that are the real mitt romney at mitt romney & bain capital http://bucknacktssordidtawdryblog.blogspot.com/p/mitt-romney-bain-capital-updated-5okt12.html

This is a complicated diary. If you read it, please expect to take some extra time. There's a ton of evidence: the accident, identifying and finding the other driver, analyzing slanders, a forgery, and then dealing with a cover-up scheme that is reminiscent of the 1970s Watergate scandal.
The story begins in 1968 with Mitt Romney causing a head-on collision at Beaulac, France. He failed to accommodate obstructed vision and drove head-on into a Left Turn lane.
Mrs. Leola Anderson was killed and several others were injured. The next morning Mitt Romney lied to a reporter about who was responsible. A cover-up conspiracy ensued that unfolded with three distinct phases. Mitt Romney has been depicted over the years as a blameless victim in the accident while he and his supporters shift blame to a Catholic priest.
Big time professional media have been spoofed. The authorized biography by Michael Kranish and Scott Helman titled "The Real Romney" is polluted with intentional disinformation. Serialization of this book in the Boston Globe became a propaganda tool, freeing up Mr. Romney to run for President of the United States.
We have evidence in hand of Internet burglary and phony web pages. Several of these actions involve felonies. Romney's supporters resemble nothing more than Richard Nixon's CREEP, apart from the money laundering, and their Watergate burglars.
In any case, first off, here is the actual driver of the other car: Bishop Jean Vilnet in the Bazas, France hospital:

Romney's slanders depict this man, Bishop Vilnet, as a "drunk priest." Fraudulent representations have depicted him as "Albert Marie." Romney and his crew have stated repeatedly that this Catholic priest was speeding on a "mountain road" at "120 kph" and "swerving" out of his lane to hit Romney and kill Mrs. Anderson.
In fact, the bishop was driving two women home after Sunday Mass.
Romney's story has continued for decades among Mormon missionaries in France as hateful anti-Catholic propaganda.

Mitt Romney believes that he can lie with impunity. He sees himself as "One Mighty and Strong," the hero of Joseph Smith's "White Horse Prophecy," and destined to lie and bully his way to the presidency. As you will be able to see from the evidence, presented below le chignon d'orange, there is not a stitch of truth to what Romney says.

Immediately after the 1968 accident, Mitt Romney recruited a small group of other missionaries to help him put the blame over on the other driver. He was under severe pressure as his father, George Romney, was running for president. Also, the woman who was killed, Leola Anderson, was his boss's wife. Here is a picture of the two of them from 1968:

As you can see, there is little resemblance between this Mr. H. Duane Anderson and Bishop Vilnet. No one would confuse the two men.
Yet when a set of photographs surfaced from Andre Salarnier in Bordeaux, depicting the accident victims and the cars, Romney's current Team Lying crew made sure that Mchael Kranish was led to believe that the Vilnet pic was Duane Anderson. That is how the Vilnet pic is labeled at the boston.com site.
Mr. Salarnier spoke with Bishop Vilnet in the Bazas hospital. Both men recalled that meeting in 2012. And neither man knew that Mitt Romney had set about blaming the bishop for his own bad driving.
(There are also pics of Mitt Romney is his hospital bed. One of the several details of Romney's tale is that he was "in a coma for two days" and then in his biography for "a three day coma" and on his campaign web site "a concussion." But the pics do not depict an Intensive Care Unit or any other medical apparatus that would indicate that Romney was a coma patient or had suffered a serious head injury. Mrs. Leola Anderson's obituary states clearly that he suffered "a minor head injury." We know that Mitt Romney was visited by the American Ambassador, Sargent Shriver, at request from Mitt's father, George Romney. We do not have pics of that meeting.)
Lying and Joseph Smith's "White Horse Prophecy"
Joseph Smith considered the White Horse of his prophecy -- borrowed over from the Book of Revelation, Chapter 6 -- to be an allegorical figure. Yet he gives it power and an existence in the human world. He gives it a magical power, as a spell or a charm.
"White Horse," as re-conjured by Prophet Smith, is a magical protection for lies.
-- Smith identifies lying severally and throughout his works and sermons to be the most powerful weapon for gaining earthly political power.
-- In  practice, Smith's "White Horse" functions as a protection for public lies -- specifically, lies that are constructed to achieve advancement outside of the Church.
-- Smith also calls on his followers to become the followers of this Rider. To become an embodiment of the White Horse.
What should be of concern for Christians, literal-belief Christians all the more, is seeing a politician come along who believes these things. Who sees Smith's misreading of The Revelation as his personal destiny:

Verse 2:  And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.

This man will change any position. He lies with no moral distress. He will say almost anything. He is emulating the Christian Anti-Christ, the one who gets 42 months to lay waste to the earth, and he does not know it. Mitt Romney has never read the Christian Bible.
Catholic.com
A few days back a summary of Occupy Security MMOG's research on the Romney's 1968 accident was made available at the catholic.com web site. The scheme protected Mitt Romney by deploying a dishonest, thoroughly anti-Catholic slandered of Catholic clergy and claiming that the Roman Catholic Church had protected this priest from prosecution.
The posting at catholic.com worked like a "honey pot" in database and web site systems, attracting criminal "bees" to show what they were up to at the web site.
Yes, criminal. As illegal in their acts as Nixon's CREEP thugs and the Segretti dirty Tricks crews and the Watergate burglars.
First off, the "bees" got in and all trace of the posting was deleted from catholic.com. Even the "vilnet" tag was deleted.
Then, shortly after, a fake web page appeared at a Shanghai web server and it's hit-count was bumped up to give the fake page a high Google-search display priority. The interesting part of the content on this page is a rebuttal section from "Dale_M Forum Elder" that focuses on supporting elements of the Team Lying dysinformation stream:

"Forum Elder" is not a Catholic title. That has been added to the web site.
This section of text never appeared at catholic.com. The page forges a misrepresentation of catholic.com content.
So... what we have is Internet burglary at the catholic.com web site, followed by forgery that copies the logos and look-and-feel of catholic.com.
Welcome to the Watergate mentality.
Romney's lie about the car wreck in France are protected by criminal conspiracy. We're forty-four years out from the accident and it's still desperate craziness. All this is done by paid Dirty Tricksters, similar to the Watergate burglars, paid to support the Mittster's slander conspiracy. The crimes bridge wide mail frauds, France, England in their press, the United States, and China.
Occupy Security was able to ask around and find out where the cars collided. Mrs. Anderson is remembered despite that no one knew her. She had come to rural France from so very far away. Bishop Jean Vilnet became rather famous, for a quiet priest, serving as president of the French Council of Bishops. He did many good things. The crash site is in the middle of the three lanes of N524 Le Grande Route, right in front of the Beaulac post office:

Here is a surface image with the new (post-1968) traffic separators:

Imagine the truck back 100 meters, blocking the 21-year old Mr. Romney's vision. With the southbound Left Turn lane wide open, he steered for what he thought was his own lane.
Caution in any measure would have saved Mrs. Anderson's life.
There were no concrete traffic separators in 1968 so slowing down just a little bit would have allowed Mr. Romney to pull back to the right and avoid the Mercedes. He ignored white painted lines and went ahead.
The collision, itself, was not a high-speed car-smashing catastrophe. If she had had a seat belt available for use, Mrs. Anderson would have survived. Unfortunately, she was the sixth person in that five-passenger capacity Citroen DS.

There is not all that much damage to these cars. The Citroen DS would have been going approximately 60 kph. The Mercedes less than 30 kph, maybe even stopped.
We have photos of these Citroen DSes after highway speed crashes. There is not much left.
If the Mercedes had been going "120 kph" or anything close to it, we would not be discussing Mr. Romney in 2012.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
The earlier posting has images for the WHOIS registration data for catholic.com and the web page with the fakery.
Romney Dirty Tricks unit google-spoofs catholic.com. CREEP revived !
Several comments recommended rewriting for clarification. That diary spends time and space on the spoofing evidence. Obviously the catholic.com web site in El Cajon, CA is not a spoofing operation in Shanghai, China.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Similarly, we do not have to accept criminal acts. Internet burglary is a felony and setting up fake web pages gets out to illegal campaigning if there is a connection to Romney or to his campaign staff.
Deal with Democrats and you're dealing with politicians. Deal with Republicans and it's crooks.
Let's try a simple Thought Experiment using a mark-up for a Mitt Romney tax return:

Look at the "Label" section. It has an address. Mitt and Ann Romney's address.
Under penalty of perjury they declare the following:
-- Their address on the date for which this Form 1040 is filed.
You can move during a year. You can move several times. But for the date of the Form 1040, you can only use one state.
That restricts use of local tax exemptions. And you are only allowed to have one state driver's license at a time.
-- But Mitt and Ann Romney took $54,000 a year in local tax exemptions in Utah and similar advantages in Massachusetts. He said recently that the Utah house was in Ann's name -- which fails completely if she listed Massachusetts on her Form 1040.
-- But Mitt voted in Massachusetts. Which fails as a violation of election law if he declared Utah on his Form 1040.
-- But Mitt ran for Governor of Massachusetts in 2002. Which fails the Massachusetts Constitution residence requirement if he filed in Utah in 1999 or 2000 or 2001 on his Form 1040. (Plus his several perjuries in that case before the Massachusetts Ballot Law Commission.)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Mitt Romney killed Leola Anderson. Not Bishop Jean Vilnet. Not the imaginary and much reported "Albert Marie."
Mitt Romney has supported his lie for decades. Possibly the tale has been useful as a motivation for missionaries in wine-drinking Catholic France. He was retelling the tale as recently as 2007 in multiple interviews and in 2009 with attenuation of the wilder claims.
That complex lie is the single longest-running project of Mitt Romney's life. He cannot stop it.
Along with hiding his tax returns, keeping Catholics from thinking too much about Leola Anderson and Bishop Vilnet is a tough problem.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Rachel Maddow has picked up on Mitt Romney and Ann Romney's problems with their legal addresses for the period 1999 through 2002. Several diaries appeared here at dailykos. She and her crew at MSNBC have more and higher qulaity research resources than the Poor OccSec (mostly retiree) MMOG hands who dug out what these address declarations imply legally. Also, several more web pages have disappeared from their original servers, magically to reappear elsewhere out of legal range of U.S. DoJ and with large hit-counts to up their statuses with the search engines. Republicans are professional criminals, mostly, at the top.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The Revelation of St. John the Divine, Chapter 6 is Joseph Smith's departure point for his "White Horse Prophecy."
You can read The Revelation in a half-hour max. It's poetry.
There is the inevitable The Book of Revelation App.
And the paperback: http://www.amazon.com/...
Smith goes wack-job and makes the Anti-Christ into his conquering hero. Officially and uniquely for Smith's words, LDS rejects "White Horse Prophecy" from its doctrine. Snippets do appear in "Doctrine and Covenants."
Mitt Romney was nicknamed "One Mighty and Strong" at BYU after coming back from France. He had survive the automobile accident. He was rich. His father had made as strong run for the presidency. He was also one helluva liar.
If you want to see where this White Horse Prophecy operates as cult  magic, you can research it in connection with television personality Glenn Beck. We're not going to do that for you. It's too crazy.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/17/1110907/-Mitt-Romney-s-Driving-Killed-Leola-Anderson-His-Cover-Up-Tale-is-Proved-Dishonest

Sins of the son: Sad treatment for Billy Graham & Franklin Graham's New Obama-Muslim Conspiracy Theory (with video) 8NOV12 & 21MAR11

I believe Ms Quinn is correct, and that franklin graham not only used his father's good name to influence the election he is probably the one who ordered the change on the BGEA website reversing the description of mormonism as a cult. I do not believe Billy Graham would have done either, and I do wonder if he even knows either took place. I still have the highest regard and respect for Billy Graham, I believe he is a true man of God. Be sure to read more about franklin graham's support of right wing politics and conspiracy theories, and watch the video of his newsmax interview in the Mother Jones article following this from the Washington Post.....

By Sally Quinn

On Sunday, two days before the election, a full page advocacy ad in The Washington Post featured a huge picture of the Rev. Billy Graham, along with a signed statement by the world-famous evangelist advising readers to  ”VOTE BIBLICAL VALUES TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6.”
Of all the sad things that have happened during this year’s seemingly endless, divisive and vitriolic campaign, this ad was the saddest.
It read: “The legacy we leave behind for our children, grandchildren, and this great nation is crucial. As I approach my 94^th birthday, [which was Nov. 7] I realize this election could be my last. I believe it is vitally important that we cast our ballots for candidates who base their decisions on biblical principles and support the nation of Israel. I urge you to vote for those who protect the sanctity of life and support the biblical definition of marriage between a man and a woman. Vote for biblical values this Nov. 6 and pray with me that America will remain one nation under God. “
Billy Graham has been admired as the pastor to presidents and has prided himself on never endorsing any one politician. He is a man of God and ministers  to everyone, becoming more and more accepting and pluralistic as he has has aged.
So how did it happen that he virtually endorsed Mitt Romney the weekend before the election?
On Oct. 11, Billy Graham and his son,  the Rev.Franklin Graham, who is head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association,  met with Romney. The photo op and the meeting were seen as a virtual endorsement of Romney at that time.
What was so surprising was that the Billy Graham Evangelical Association Web site at that time considered Mormonism  a “cult.” Graham had once described cult members as those who “reject what Christians have believed for 2,000 years, and substitute instead their own beliefs for the clear teachings of the Bible.”  Shortly after the meeting, that listing disappeared.  According to Ken Barun, the Association’s chief of staff, “we removed the (cult) information from the website because we do not wish to participate in a theological debate about something that has become politicized during this campaign.”
So calling Mormonism a cult is a “theological debate that has become politicized” while the debate over abortion and same sex marriage is not?
I ask this because just last spring the association bought 14 full-page ads in North Carolina newspapers from Billy Graham for North Carolina Amendment 1, recognizing  marriage between a man and a woman as the only legal domestic union. Franklin Graham has made his position on that issue very clear. “It grieves me, “ he said, “that our president would now affirm same sex marriage, though I believe it grieves God even more.”
Franklin  also said in Decision Magazine, “there is no place for compromise or straight forward moral issues such as abortion and same sex marriage.  God has given us clear biblical direction that we must follow and obey. “
Billy Graham has not escaped controversy. He had a very bad moment in 2002 when tapes of conversations from 1973 with Richard Nixon became public. In the tapes, Nixon railed against Jews and Graham responded  that Jews befriended him  but “they don’t know how I really feel about what they are doing to this country.” The rest of the conversation was decidedly anti-Semitic. When the tapes came to light, Graham said he didn’t remember the conversation but apologized profusely.
 Graham also was  rejected by some  fundamentalist Christians as a legitimate evangelical voice when he gave this interview in 1997. “I’ve met people in various parts of the world in tribal situations,” he said. They had never seen a Bible or heard about a Bible, had never heard of Jesus “but they’ve believed in their hearts that there is a God….” In fact , he was accused of being a heretic by many of these fundamentalists for suggesting that Jesus is not the only way to salvation and for his willingness to work with liberals and Catholics.
But Franklin Graham is no Billy Graham. Where Billy Graham has always been a voice for inclusion, even of religions other than his own, Franklin has not. In fact, in April 2010 the Pentagon rescinded an invitation for Franklin to attend their National Day of Prayer service because, after Sept. 11 he had referred to Islam as a “very evil and wicked religion” and said that Muslims are “enslaved” by their own religion.
Franklin has always leaned toward being more political than his father. He owns a house in Alaska and befriended Sarah Palin. He invited Palin to come visit his father in North Carolina. Shortly afterward, his father issued a statement saying that “Sarah and her family will always be welcome in the Graham family home.”
Today, at 94, Billy Graham is feeble, has hearing, vision and other health problems, and uses walkers and wheelchairs. He spends most of his day watching television. He has never been as active in the Association as has Franklin. He is a revered figure around the world, particularly because he has stayed above the fray, never using his religion for political purposes or personal gain. 
I do not believe that Billy Graham would have instigated the ad essentially endorsing Romney. I wouldn’t be surprised if Billy Graham didn’t even know about it.  I think that he is being exploited by his son to further Franklin’s political objectives. I also believe that it is a travesty because it is not the legacy he would have left behind, had it not been for Franklin using his father’s name and taking advantage of his father’s popularity.
Billy Graham was and is a great man. 
Franklin should stop this exploitation now.
On the outcome of the election, the Rev. Gary Hall, the new dean of the National Cathedral, had this to say: “This year’s election has proven to be as divisive as any in recent history, which is all the more reason that we must move through the challenge of political partisanship and come together as Americans.”
I believe that’s what the real Billy Graham would have said.
More on On Faith:
Anne Graham Lotz: Does God hear our cries?
Lisa Miller: A time to compromise    
Compassion in chief: Why Obama won
Figuring Faith: Examining the election results
What lies ahead for the Mormons?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/sins-of-the-son-sad-treatment-for-billy-graham/2012/11/08/a31f5de2-29f4-11e2-96b6-8e6a7524553f_print.html 

Franklin Graham's New Obama-Muslim Conspiracy Theory

Billy Graham's son says the president has allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to infiltrate the US government.

—By David Corn

| Mon Mar. 21, 2011 11:01 PM PDT

Zuma/Robin Nelson

Yes, there's a new Obama-Muslim conspiracy theory on the right: The evangelical son of one of America's most famous evangelists says that President Barack Obama has allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to become part of the US government and influence administration decisions.
In an interview last week with Newsmax.com, a conservative website (that pushes the Obama-was-born-in-Kenya conspiracy theory), [see clarification at the end of the article] Franklin Graham, an evangelist like his father, Billy Graham, claimed that the fundamentalist Islamic political group has burrowed into the Obama administration and is shaping US foreign policy. Sounding a bit like Glenn Beck, Graham explained:

The Muslim Brotherhood is very strong and active in our country. It's infiltrated every level of our government. Right now we have many of these people that are advising the US military and State Department on how to respond in the Middle East, and it's like asking a fox, like a farmer asking a fox, "How do I protect my henhouse from foxes?" We've brought in Muslims to tell us how to make policy toward Muslim countries. And many of these people we've brought in, I'm afraid, are under the Muslim Brotherhood.

Infiltrated every level of our government—that's quite a claim. Yet Graham did not name a single Muslim Brotherhood infiltrator or cite a specific Obama administration decision that has been manipulated by these crafty behind-the-scenes Islamists. (The quotes in the Newsmax article reporting Graham's remarks differ slightly from what he actually said during his interview with Newsmax, according to the video of the interview, which is posted below.) CLICK to link to the Mother Jones article at the bottom of post to view the video.
Though Graham did not back up his charge that Obama has opened the US government to the Muslim Brotherhood, he did say that he believes the president is more concerned with helping Muslims than Christians—both in the United States and abroad. When the Newsmax interviewer asked Graham if Obama has been doing enough to support Christianity and Christians at home and overseas, Graham replied, "No...If anything, it's the opposite." He added, "The Muslims are protected more in this country than Christians."
Graham did not cite specifics on this point, either. A spokesman said Graham was unable to comment on his remarks to Newsmax since he was en route to Africa.

While Graham did not question Obama's Christian faith during this interview, his comments tracked with the extremist right-wing claim that the president is a secret Muslim. And Graham has raised the matter of an Obama Islamic connection in the past. Last August, he told CNN that because Obama's father had been a Muslim, Obama had a perception "problem." The president's father, who was not involved in Obama's rearing, was born a Muslim, but as an adult he was an atheist. Obama was not raised as a Muslim.
It's no surprise that Franklin Graham is worried about Muslims sneaking into the US government. He has declared Islam "a very evil and wicked religion." Last year, he was disinvited from a National Prayer Breakfast event at the Pentagon after his Islam-bashing became an issue. (Sarah Palin quickly rushed to Graham's rhetorical rescue, pronouncing his excommunication from this ecumenical breakfast a travesty.)
For his part, Graham was not at all apologetic about his attacks on Islam. Instead, he called the revoking of his invitation "a slap at all evangelical Christians." He blamed the White House for orchestrating the move: "I don't know if it's exactly from President Obama. But I'm certain that some of the men around him are very much opposed to what we stand for and what we believe." Graham added, "I just don't understand why the president would be giving Islam a pass." Could it be precisely because the Muslim Brotherhood had infiltrated Obama's circles? Graham didn't say so back then. Perhaps that was before he had discovered this plot.
CLARIFICATION: After this story appeared, Newsmax sent a note taking issue with the article's characterization that it "pushes the Obama-was-born-in-Kenya conspiracy theory." The conservative site says,

Newsmax does not 'push' that Obama was born in Kenya. What Newsmax has written about in the past is that Obama was born in the U.S., but should reveal his birth certificate in order to put the matter to rest. Here is an example: http://www.newsmax.com/Ruddy/Obama-birth-certificate/2009/12/12/id/341849. And in this case, Newsmax columnist Ron Kessler makes it clear that Obama was born in the U.S.: http://www.newsmax.com/RonaldKessler/obama-birth/2008/12/08/id/326987.

Indeed, the site has not championed the Kenya conspiracy; we apologize for the error. But it has generally aligned itself with birthers who suggest there is some sort of conspiracy afoot involving Obama's birth documentation. During the 2008 election, the site ran a piece asking, "Where Was Obama Born?" In 2009, anti-Islam activist Pam Geller wrote a Newsmax article that noted there "might be something more sinister at work here," regarding the president's birth certificate. But the site has not gone Kenya.

David Corn

Washington Bureau Chief

David Corn is Mother Jones' Washington bureau chief. For more of his stories, click here. He's also on Twitter and Facebook. RSS | Twitter

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  http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/franklin-graham-obama-muslim-brotherhood-conspiracy-theory 

Religious Consistency and Hypocrisy: Election 2012 & od's Politics Blog Tony Campolo and Shane Claiborne: A Conversation About Politics 1NOV&29OKT12

JIM WALLIS is spot on in this commentary on religion and politics and the 2012 US elections. This from Sojourners, followed by a fascinating excerpt from Red Letter Christians by Tony Campolo and Shane Claiborne...

Most people in America, whether they are religious or not, prefer consistency in the faith community to hypocrisy. One of the reasons the fastest growing demographic in religious affiliation surveys is now “none of the above” is that too many people see more religious hypocrisy than consistency.
Religion is not, at its core, politically partisan. But too often religion becomes a political tool; we see that on both sides of the aisle. That does not mean people of faith shouldn’t have strong convictions or feelings about political issues or shouldn’t vote one way or another; or that there is a moral equivalency between the political parties and it doesn’t matter which way we vote. Elections are important, and people of faith should be voting as citizens and by their most basic values.
But let’s be clear: On Nov. 6, neither a Republican nor Democratic victory will bring in the kingdom of God. 
Elections can sometimes, however, set a framework for what can or can’t be done for the things we believe in. And there are important differences between the candidates at every level up and down the ballots we will cast next week. But people of faith — and their leaders — should be more prophetic than partisan during election seasons. And the moral issues we care about should be more important to us than the candidates or the parties they represent.
In this election, I’ve heard a lot of talk about “biblical principles” or the importance of voting according to a “Christian worldview.” Unfortunately, those words are normally followed by talking points that sound a lot more like a party platform than words you could imagine Jesus speaking. The Sermon on the Mount, when read next to campaign speeches, reads as almost a direct refutation of everything politics values in our world today. Matthew 25 sounds like an example of what NOT to say if you want to run for elected office.
With more than 2,000 verses in the Bible about poverty — and with freeing the poor and oppressed as central components of the gospel's “good news" — shouldn’t we consider how the election will affect the poor and oppressed? Or ask how we should treat the millions of undocumented immigrants among us, who clearly fit the biblical category of “the stranger?” In both cases, how we treat “the least of these,” Jesus says in the 25^th chapter of Matthew, is how we treat him. Doesn’t our voting have something to do with that? Many of us Christians are “pro-life,” but aren’t the nearly 20,000 children around the world who die every day of utterly preventable hunger and disease just as much a “sanctity-of-life” issue as the approximately 3,000 abortions that occurred in our country today?
A very prominent conservative Catholic lamented to me last week how his side mostly cares about children before they are born and the liberals care more about kids afterward. Where is the consistency here? And does the Bible only talk about sex and marriage, or also about social justice?
Then there is the care of God’s creation, or the resolution of the world’s inevitable conflicts without the horrible failures and human costs of our endless wars. Aren’t Christians supposed to be peacemakers? We were reminded this week of the stark reality that while God created the physical world to be good, it is also dangerous. And our failure to be good stewards of that which God made is resulting in the increasing severity of storms and devastating changes in other weather patterns.
Don’t all those issues involve biblical values too?
It has been sad to see some prominent conservative evangelical leaders say that the biblical principles  in this election really only concern abortion and gay marriage, and all other issues are negotiable. Such election-year pronouncements sound more like an attempt to baptize a political party than to think critically from a moral tradition.
Our votes in elections are always about making imperfect choices, and no one’s eternal salvation is on the line by the decisions they make in the voting booth.
I have been clear from the start of the Republican primary campaign that Mitt Romney’s Mormonism should not be a factor in this election. A candidate’s theology and religious doctrines should not be an issue. But his or her moral compass should be, and so should how their religious and moral convictions affect their policy decisions. The Mormonism of Republican Mitt Romney and Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid should not disqualify them for public office. To many, their faithful adherence to their religious tradition is a positive.
But neither the National Council of Churches nor the National Association of Evangelicals, the World Council of Churches nor the World Evangelical Alliance have ever been willing to accept the Mormon Church into the traditional body of Christian churches. So why did some conservative religious leaders suddenly seem to change their own position on Mormonism once Romney won the Republican nomination, and scrubbed articles from their websites that described Mormonism as an unbiblical “cult?” Would they have made those theological shifts about another person's religion if that person was a Democrat? Are our concerns really about religion and biblical values, or do they just reflect our ideological political preferences?
Christians can and will be voting in different ways in this election in response to different prudential judgments about how to best express their biblical values. But please, let us stop suggesting that "biblical values" only involve certain issues or can only be interpreted in one partisan way or another.
This is not a one-way street. Those who are politically progressive need to ask themselves: have I been consistent with the values that I profess? On war — specifically the use of drones? Poverty? The environment? Do I make excuses for my candidate on the issues I care about just because I voted for him or her?
It’s important to have a dose of humility and recognize that we all have the capacity to be inconsistent. But let’s not use that as an excuse to remain that way. Let people see our religious consistency on the issues, not our political hypocrisy at election time, by assigning ultimate biblical values to our different political choices.
Jim Wallis is the author of Rediscovering Values: A Guide for Economic and Moral Recovery, and CEO of Sojourners. His forthcoming book, On God's Side: What Religion Forgets and Politics Hasn’t Learned about Serving the Common Good, is set to release in early 2013. Follow Jim on Twitter @JimWallis.

Tony Campolo and Shane Claiborne: A Conversation About Politics

by Tony Campolo, Shane Claiborne

Shane Claiborne and Tony Campolo. Photo courtesy of the authors.

TONY CAMPOLO: Shane, I have a question to ask that may make you squirm a little bit. From hearing you talk and reading your books, you often seem to suggest that Christians not participate in the political process, and that political activism is somewhat futile. Have I understood your position correctly?
SHANE CLAIBORNE: The question for me is not are we political, but how are we political? We need to be politically engaged, but peculiar in how we engage. Jesus and the early Christians had a marvelous political imagination. They turned all the presumptions and ideas of power and blessing upside down.

To be nonpartisan doesn’t mean we’re nonpolitical. —Shane Claiborne

The early Christians felt a deep collision with the empire in which they lived, and with politics as usual. They carelessly crossed party lines and built subversive friendships. And we should do that too. To be nonpartisan doesn’t mean we’re nonpolitical. We should refuse to get sucked into political camps and insist on pulling the best out of all of them. That’s what Jesus did—challenge the worst of each camp and pull out the best of each. That’s why we see Essenes, Zealots, Herodians, Pharisees, and Sadducees all following Jesus and even joining his movement. But they had to become new creations. They had to let go of some things. Jesus challenged the tax-collecting system of Rome and the sword of the Zealots.
So to answer the question, I engage with local politics because it affects people I love. And I engage in national politics because it affects people I love.
Governments can do lots of things, but there are a lot of things they cannot do. A government can pass good laws, but no law can change a human heart. Only God can do that. A government can provide good housing, but folks can have a house without having a home. We can keep people breathing with good health care, but they still may not really be alive. The work of community, love, reconciliation, restoration is the work we cannot leave up to politicians. This is the work we are all called to do. We can’t wait on politicians to change the world. We can’t wait on governments to legislate love. And we don’t let policies define how we treat people; how we treat people shapes our policies.
TONY CAMPOLO: So you are not calling for noninvolvement in politics. Instead, you are warning Christians not to put their trust totally in political powers. You are calling them to exercise an ongoing involvement with the political process, to constantly speak truth to power in those places where power seems to be asserting itself in ways that are contrary to the will of God.
SHANE CLAIBORNE: Our goal is to seek first the kingdom of God. What would it look like if Jesus were in charge of my block, of our city, of our country, our world? That’s what we get to imagine when we dream dreams of the kingdom on earth. And we get some pretty good glimpses of what that looks like from the Gospels: the poor are blessed and the rich are sent away empty, the mighty are cast from their thrones, the lowly are lifted, the peacemakers and the meek are blessed, and the proud-hearted are scattered (Luke 1:51–53).
And we’ll work with anyone who wants to work with us as we try to get to the kingdom—whether that looks like reducing poverty or eliminating abortions, doing something meaningful for the environment, changing bad laws, or trying to make sure the most vulnerable are cared for.
But we do have a peculiar way in which we hope. When I see posters with Barack Obama’s name with the word hope under it, I cringe. We are setting ourselves up for disappointment if our hope is built on anything less than Jesus.
 So when it comes to voting, I look at it not as a place to put our hope but a battle with the principalities and powers of this world. Voting is damage control. We try to decrease the amount of damage being done by those powers. And for the Christian, voting is not something we do every four years. We vote every day. We vote by how we spend money and what causes we support. We vote by how much gas we use and what products we buy. We align ourselves with things all the time. We pledge allegiance every day with our lives. The question is, Do those things line up with the upside-down kingdom of our God—where the poor, the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers are declared “blessed”?
TONY CAMPOLO: We have talked about taxes, about funding the empire, and how people often quote to me the verse that gives Jesus’ thoughts on whether we should pay. In that passage of Scripture, you recall, Jesus requested a coin and then asked, “Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?” When the answer given was that it was “Caesar’s,” he said, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s” (Mark 12:13–17). Tell me how you interpret that in the context of the kingdom of God.
SHANE CLAIBORNE: There are two occasions when the authorities interrogated Jesus regarding taxes. On one occasion, he borrowed a coin. (The fact that he did not have one is significant.) He asked the interrogators whose image was on that coin, and then said, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s” (Matthew 22:21). On the other occasion, he instructed Peter to go catch a fish, telling him the fish would have a four-drachma coin in its mouth for the tax collectors (Matthew 17:27). (Try that on Tax Day!)

We are setting ourselves up for disappointment if our hope is built on anything less than Jesus. —Shane Claiborne

Both of these stories are usually interpreted as proof that Christians must simply submit to the authorities and give Caesar whatever he asks of us (notably with little regard of whether Caesar is a dictator or elected, evil or benevolent). But it seems Jesus has got something more clever up his sleeve.
In both instances, Jesus is asked a straightforward, yes-or-no question: “Do you pay taxes?” In both cases, his response subverts the question, going deeper to challenge its basic assumptions. He doesn’t dodge the questions; he transcends them. He forces his listeners, taxpayers and tax collectors, to ponder. To what, exactly, does Caesar have a right? What has Caesar’s image, and what has God’s image? What is Caesar’s, and what is God’s?
I am particularly fond of the fish stunt. It is as though Jesus is winking at Caesar, saying, “Oh, Caesar can have his coins . . . I made the fish.” Caesar can have his silly metals; after all he can keep making more of them even if they aren’t worth a dime. But coins have no life in them. Human life is branded with the image of God, and Caesar does not own that. In a nation where such a high percentage of taxes go to military and hence ultimately to death-dealing pursuits, this teaching should give every tax-paying Christian long and troubled pause. Once we’ve given to God what is God’s, there isn’t a lot left over for Caesar.
TONY CAMPOLO: Jesus seems to be saying that though Caesar’s image is on the coin, you have to decide whether it belongs to Caesar or whether it belongs to God. Jesus is asking, “Are you going to use your money the way Caesar wants it to be used, or do you want it to be used the way God wants it to be used?” He’s throwing the decision back on those religious leaders who are trying to trap him with their questions. Each of them will have to decide whether the money in question ultimately belongs to Caesar or should it be used the way God wants it to be used. When there is conflict between what God requires and the demands of the government, each of us has an important decision to make concerning taxes.
We have talked a little bit about taxes and military spending. Now here is a related question that I am asked regularly: “Where in the Bible can you find any justification for the government taxing us and then using our money to help poor people?” My questioners go on to say, “I agree with you that Jesus calls upon us to respond to the needs of the poor, but isn’t this the task of the church? It doesn’t tell me in the Bible that it’s the task of the government to take care of poor people.” Of course, they don’t mention the fact that the church isn’t doing it. What’s more, they don’t acknowledge that the needs of the poor are so massive that the church doesn’t have the financial resources to meet those needs.
While I can see how the government has, at times, wasted taxpayers’ money and I can admit that too often its programs are ineffective, I also can see the good that government does. My task as a citizen is to get the government to do more good and less inefficient and wasteful work. There is no question in my mind that God is bigger than the church and that the church will be used in God’s endeavors, but not only the church. In God’s work in the world, all principalities, all powers, all dominions, and all thrones will be used (Ephesians 1:19–23).

In God’s work in the world, all principalities, all powers, all dominions, and all thrones will be used. —Tony Campolo

If you go to the book of Colossians, you will find that all the principalities and powers were created by God and for God’s purposes in the world (Colossians 1:16–17). It is the task of government, which is one of those principalities and powers, to do the will of God every bit as much as it is the task of the institutional church to do the will of God. Insofar as the church fails to do the will of God, I am called upon to help it discover and to do the will of God; and I am called upon to help the government to do the same. Not only am I supposed to challenge the government to do God’s will but I am to do the same for other powers. Included in these principalities and powers are corporate structures such as labor unions, General Motors, Ford, IBM, Apple, and Walmart. I have to ask all these suprahuman entities if they are functioning in accord with the will of God, because they are imposing themselves on people and influencing their everyday lives.
If a government that is able to deliver massive numbers of people in Africa from poverty fails to do so, then Christians should challenge that government to do the will of God, especially when the government of our own country has taken 40 percent of the world’s resources in order to make possible our affluent, middle-class lifestyle, despite the fact that we make up only 5 percent of the world’s population.
Consider the AIDS crisis in Africa, which President George W. Bush addressed with a commitment of $19 billion. Our people should lend support to such an effort. This is not a Democratic thing, nor is it a Republican thing. It’s the thing that God calls the government to do in order to bring good to all humanity. Governments are created, says Romans 13, to do good for their citizens, and we have the right to resist governments when they don’t do what is good for their people. We also have the responsibility to encourage governments when they do act in ways that are good.
In Matthew 25:31–46, we read that God will judge the nations in accord with how each nation cared for the poor, cared for those in prison, and how well they accepted aliens. Please note that God holds nations, not just the church, responsible for caring for the poor. That passage of Scripture should answer those who question whether or not there is a national responsibility to care for those who are needy.
Given the times in which we live and the vast needs of the poor in both America and the world, the good that should be done for those who are impoverished requires that church and state work alongside each other to achieve this. My hope is that Red Letter Christians work together toward that end.
Tony Campolo is founder of the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education (EAPE) and professor emeritus of sociology at Eastern University. Shane Claiborne is a Red Letter Christian and a founding partner of The Simple Way community, a radical faith community that lives among and serves the homeless in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. He is the co-author, with Chris Haw, of Jesus for President.This article is excerpted from Tony and Shane's new book Red Letter Revolution: What If Jesus Really Meant What He Said.
http://sojo.net/blogs/2012/10/29/tony-campolo-and-shane-claiborne-conversation-about-politics/?continue 
 

Romney captures the God vote at first debate 4OKT12

THE headline should have continued God saves Himself and escapes!!!!
A post on AlterNet gives us a warning of what mitt robme romney might be like as a mormon president. The beliefs of the mormon church, it's members adherence to them & judgements by the church are issues for the church to deal with. BUT we must be wary of mitt romney's claims that mormonism will not control his presidency for three reasons. First, consider what he has said about the separation of church and state. “Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom, ” Romney asserted in a major 2007 speech. THAT is not an endorsement of the separation of church and state and you know who's religion he is referencing in that speech. Second, consider his campaign for governor of Massachusetts and his governing of Massachusetts (explained in AlterNet http://bucknacktssordidtawdryblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/mitt-romneys-role-as-mormon-bishop.html ). He told the voters what he knew they wanted to hear and then governed according mormonism. Third, the mormon church teaches it is OK to lie if it benefits the faith and mitt romney has proven, through his record and gov of Massachusetts and throughout his presidential campaign that he is a great believer in and practitioner of this mormon teaching. Think a church wouldn't OK lying, deception, misrepresentation and manipulation? Check out Mormon Insider Reveals Insights on Romney & Exclusive: Brigham Young’s Great-Great-Granddaughter on Mormonism and Mitt Romney 7AUG12 

http://bucknacktssordidtawdryblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/exclusive-brigham-youngs-great-great.html 

The mormons aren't the only "religious" people using lies to promote the romney campaign. The evangelical "christian" right wing is using lies, deception and manipulation in their voter guide being distributed in their churches and via cell phones. For more on this most unchristian campaigning by romneys "religious" supporters see 3 Big Lies in Religious-Right 'Voter Guide' Hitting 13 Million Cell Phones ( http://bucknacktssordidtawdryblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/3-big-lies-in-religious-right-voter.html )
THERE has to be somebody in a leadership position in the Christian Church who can address the issue of Christians deliberately lying about political candidates they oppose or support, and about Christians distributing election information about candidates that are filled with deliberate lies, deception, and misinformation to manipulate the Christian vote. Protestant denominations that allow distribution of such material to their congregants are tarnishing the reputation of Christianity and the leadership of each individual church that allows such material to be distributed in their church, to their members, is committing the same sins as those who have produced this material. The God I grew up believing in and that I still believe in has never asked anyone, and will never ask anyone, to lie for HIM.

The Bible tells us not to bear false witness against one's neighbor. Ralph Reed apparently never got the memo. 

 By Sally Quinn

           When Mitt Romney mentioned the “Creator” in the debate Wednesday, he owned it. “We’re all children of the same God,” he said.
            That’s about 85 percent of the country he was talking to. That should have been President Obama’s constituency but he let Romney have it as he let Romney have the debate.
            Citing the Declaration of Independence, Romney said: “Second, is that line that says we are endowed by our Creator with our rights, I believe we must maintain our commitment to religious tolerance and freedom in this country. That statement also says that we are endowed by our creator with the right to pursue happiness as we choose. I interpret that as, one, making sure that those people who are less fortunate and can’t care for themselves are cared by -- by one another.”
This is a religious country. Part of claiming your citizenship is claiming a belief in God, even if you are not Christian.. We’ve got the Creator in our Declaration of Independence. We’ve got “In God We Trust” on our coins. We’ve got “one nation under God” in our Pledge of Allegiance. And we say prayers in the Senate and the House of Representatives to God.
            An atheist could never get elected dog catcher, much less president. (Democratic Rep. Pete Stark of California is a nontheist but doesn’t talk much about it). 
            Up until now, the idea of being American and believing in God were synonymous.
            When the Republicans tried to take away the flag it took a long time for the Democrats to realize they had been hijacked. For years, Democrats were wary of wearing flag pins for fear of seeming to pander. They finally got the message.
            Now it’s God. The Republicans have claimed God as their own this entire campaign, each candidate trying to out-Christian the other. Even Obama, though 17 percent of registered voters think he is a Muslim, has talked about being a Christian as often as he can.
            Still, none of Obama’s references have been in a debate. And there was Obama-- grim faced, nervous, fumbling his words and wearing his American flag pin -- letting Romney, confident and aggressive and in control, roll right over him at every turn.
            But the God thing clinched it. If Obama wants to win the next debate, he needs to wear God, as much as it offends him to do so, the same way he captured the flag for this one.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/romney-captures-the-god-vote-at-first-debate/2012/10/04/e897f44c-0de3-11e2-bb5e-492c0d30bff6_print.html

Mitt Romney's Role as Mormon Bishop Shows His Extremist Religious Beliefs 15SEP12

THIS, from AlterNet, gives us a warning of just what mitt robme romney might be like as a mormon president. The beliefs of the mormon church, it's members adherence to them and judgements by the church are issues for the church itself to deal with. BUT we must be wary of mitt romney's claims that mormonism will not control his presidency for three reasons. First, consider what he has said about the separation of church and state. “Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom, ” Romney asserted in a major 2007 speech. THAT is not an endorsement of the separation of church and state and you know who's religion he is referencing in that speech. Second, consider his campaign for governor of Massachusetts and his governing of Massachusetts (explained in the article below). He told the voters what he knew they wanted to hear and then governed according mormonism. Third, the mormon church teaches it is OK to lie if it benefits the faith and mitt romney has proven, through his record and gov of Massachusetts and throughout his presidential campaign that he is a great believer in and practitioner of this mormon teaching. Think a church wouldn't OK lying, deception, misrepresentation and manipulation? Just see my earlier post Mormon Insider Reveals Insights on Romney & Exclusive: Brigham Young’s Great-Great-Granddaughter on Mormonism and Mitt Romney 7AUG12 http://bucknacktssordidtawdryblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/exclusive-brigham-youngs-great-great.html

Romney has consistently avoided having his Mormon beliefs put under scrutiny. There are some good reasons for that.

Republican nominee Mitt Romney urged a tough line on Egypt amid deadly anti-US violence in the region, as his running mate called for greater "moral clarity" in Obama administration foreign policy.

One winter day, far along into her pregnancy with her second child, 21-year-old Peggy Hayes received a phone call from Willard Mitt Romney. He wanted to talk to her, he said. Could he come over?
Hayes, the divorced, unmarried mother of a 3-year-old daughter, was struggling as a nurse’s aide in a working-class suburb of Boston. She had little in common with the successful Bain executive, but the request wasn’t as odd as it might seem. Hayes was a Mormon. Romney was her bishop. Romney walked into her small apartment, made small talk and then commanded her to give her baby up for adoption after it was born. He was her bishop, and as she knew, Mormonism disapproved of single motherhood. Hayes said no.
“Well, this is what the church wants you to do, and if you don’t then you could be excommunicated for failing to follow the leadership of the church,” Romney said, according to Hayes in an interview with Boston Globe journalists Michael Kranish and Scott Helman. Romney denied he made that threat, although he did not dispute the incident.
Somehow this tale didn’t make it into the Mormon Moment at the Republican National Convention.
Is Mitt Romney a captive of the religious extremists who control the Republican party, or is he one of them? The answer can be found in a subject Romney has been loathe to discuss: his Mormonism.
Now we know that the tin man has a heart. Romney is “a loving father, man of faith, and a caring and compassionate friend,” we learned in Tampa, in genuinely moving stories from Mormons Romney pastored. But there’s another side of Romney’s story that begs to be told. In the wake of Todd Akin’s rape comments and the GOP’s adoption of an extremist platform, voters deserve to hear about how Romney has imposed Mormonism’s retrograde doctrines about women, gays and sex on the people he has authority over.
Given Americans’ limited knowledge about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, let’s begin with an introduction to Mormon mores, where sin-wise “unchastity is next to murder in seriousness.” The Mormon Church forbids any and all sex outside of heterosexual marriage, including “necking and petting”; masturbation; pornography; homosexuality; and abortion in almost all circumstances. Gays who act on their “inclinations” are banned from entering Mormon temples, where many of the most important family events and sacred rituals—marriage, funerals, baptism of the dead—are celebrated. Traditional gender roles are encouraged, and often enforced. Mormonism bars women from the priesthood, enjoins them to have many children, and frowns on mothers working outside the home. In a nation of declining middle-class incomes, there’s not much the hierarchy can do to force mothers back into full-time motherhood and wifedom. Still, the LDS Church doesn’t employ Mormon women with young children or cover birth control for its employees.
In Mormonism, mothers may be exalted, but women sure aren’t equal.
To be sure, the LDS church isn’t impervious to change. It did, after all, end polygamy and eventually allow African American men into the priesthood. Yet when it comes to stepping into the 21st century on women’s equality, gay civil rights and sex—as many ordinary Mormons would prefer-- the Mormon Church has dug in its heels.
And this is where Romney comes in.
In 1981, the 34-year-old Romney was already a fabulously successful consultant at Bain & Company when the LDS hierarchy tasked him to be a lay bishop. The Belmont ward, where Romney’s family worshipped, was a hotbed of Mormon feminism—a sign, from Salt Lake City’s perspective, that the congregation needed a Mr. Turnaround. Romney ultimately spent nearly 14 years as a Mormon clergyman, becoming the highest Mormon Church leader in the Boston region. He resigned in 1994 to run for the U.S. Senate against Ted Kennedy.
Chosen as a kind of enforcer-in-chief, Romney betrayed a zeal far beyond the call of duty. Bishop Romney tried to stop a mother of four whose health was seriously endangered by her pregnancy from having an abortion. The church allows abortion in cases of rape, incest, and danger to the life of the mother, provided a male LDS authority gives permission to the pregnant woman. Romney's superior had already told the woman to proceed for the sake of her health; Romney intervened. Romney refused to allow an infertile couple to take advantage of the LDS adoption service until the wife agreed to quit her job and be a stay-at-home mother. Other reliable reports of Mitt’s years as a Mormon clergyman have him excommunicating adulterers, calling homosexuals under his authority “perverse,” warning a middle-aged divorced woman that she was not allowed to have sex, and telling a leading Mormon feminist, “You’re not my kind of Mormon.”
Perhaps this is why Romney has been as cagey about his Mormonism as he is about his Cayman Islands tax shelters.
Mormon theology—its view of God, the afterlife or Joseph Smith’s revelation—is not at issue here. The issue is whether a President Romney would be able to separate his actions as president from Mormon doctrines about how to live on this planet.
The record from Romney's four brief years in elected office is not comforting.
Candidate Romney supported a women’s right to legal abortion, and opposed abstinence-only sex education; Governor Romney opposed abortion, tried to roll back reproductive rights and embryonic stem-cell research, and expanded abstinence-only sex education. The candidate dropped pink fliers at Boston’s Gay Pride parade saying, “Mitt and Kerry wish you a great Pride weekend.” Mitt the governor tried to change state law to allow Catholic adoption agencies to discriminate against gay couples. Most troubling, given the credible Washington Post report about a teenaged Mitt chopping off the hair of a gay classmate, was Romney’s elimination of the governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth. The commission had been chartered by Republican Governor William Weld to tackle the problem of gay teen suicide.
Given recent controversies over rape and abortion, one particular decision by Governor Romney merits renewed scrutiny. In July 2005, Romney cut short a New Hampshire vacation in order to veto a bill requiring hospitals to give emergency contraception to rape victims. (The legislature overrode his veto.) Romney defended his veto by claiming he had “spoken with medical professionals” who had informed him that the morning-after pill could work as “an abortion pill.” Who those unnamed scientists are and what they told Romney is unknown. But Romney’s contention is as false, if not as patently absurd, as Todd Akin’s now classic “legitimate rape” canard. The morning-after pill contains a different dose of hormonal contraception to prevent pregnancy; it does not induce abortion. Romney persists in calling emergency contraception “abortive pills.”
Mitt’s Mormonism matters because in the one elective office he has held, he governed in accord with Mormon doctrines and against the consensus values of the citizens who elected him. It matters because, by all accounts, it has been the most powerful influence in forging his values and identity. And it matters because the Mormon Church has deployed its wealth and power in the political arena for the purpose of keeping women and gays in their God-given place.
The LDS Church’s outsized role in California’s Proposition 8 is only the most notorious of the Mormon hierarchy’s political campaigns. Mormons contributed up to half of the $40 million spent by the successful campaign to repeal gay marriage in California. This was no spontaneous, grassroots effort. Most of that money came in after Salt Lake City emailed Mormons to warn that Prop. 8 was losing and ask for contributions. As Michael Otterson, the LDS managing director of public affairs, explained, the church “felt there was only one way we could stand on such a fundamental moral issue, and they took that stand.”
This wasn’t the first time the Mormon hierarchy intruded in politics to impose its sectarian views on the public. Claiming that the LDS president and prophet had received a revelation from God to oppose the Equal Rights Amendment, in 1976 the Mormon Church formally opposed the amendment and mobilized Mormon women to be footsoldiers in the anti-ERA campaign. “We fear it will even stifle many God-given feminine instincts,” wrote the members of the LDS First Presidency, Spencer Kimball, N. Eldon Tanner and Marion G. Romney, Mitt’s cousin. Using the same rationale it does today regarding gay marriage, the church deemed the ERA a “moral issue” that compelled it to act. And harshly, at that. Salt Lake City excommunicated Sonia Johnson, a prominent pro-ERA Mormon who had clashed with Senator Orrin Hatch in a Senate hearing. Years after Salt Lake City had helped send the ERA down to defeat, and as late as 2000, LDS authorities were still excommunicating Mormon feminists.
Now, nothing in these stories sharply distinguishes the Mormon Church from the American Catholic Church’s political activism and threats against elected Catholics, say, on abortion or birth control. Nor do these stories of Romney’s governorship distinguish Romney from the Mike Huckabees, Paul Ryans and Rick Santorums of the Republican Party. They do, however, call into question certain assumptions about Romney that the GOP establishment is keen to cultivate--that he is a pragmatic, technocratic conservative who is merely pandering to the religious far-right, that Mr. Turnaround only cares about the economy.
Sixty-two years ago, another presidential candidate from a minority religion told voters, “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.” John F. Kennedy went on to promise that no priest, bishop or pope would hold any power over him. “Whatever issue may come before me as president — on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject — I will make my decision in accordance with [my views as the Democratic candidate for president and] in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates.”
Romney’s statements on religion and politics cut exactly the opposite way. “Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom, ” Romney asserted in a major 2007 speech. If that Orwellian turn of phrase doesn’t give you chills, consider this. Moments before he said that, Romney had asserted, “Radical violent Islam seeks to destroy us,” and thus insinuated that a major world religion was little more than a terrorist front. Granted, Romney acknowledged the “separation of church and state,” but mainly to warn that the greatest threat to liberty emanates from “the religion of secularism.” This dogwhistle to the religious far-right has morphed into Romney’s oft-repeated charge that Obama is waging a “war against religion.”
Romney has now uttered the word “Mormon” in public. That’s not enough. Americans have a right to full disclosure about how his faith shapes his views on policy, how his longstanding personal relationship with the LDS Church might influence his actions as president, and how he might resolve a conflict between his presidential duties and his church over so-called “moral issues.”
Is Mitt Romney an establishment conservative or a Mormon militant? Voters won’t discover the truth unless we ask the right questions and demand that Romney not dodge them. Before it’s too late.

Nancy Cohen is a historian, author and contributor to the Huffington Post. Her latest book is Delirium: The Politics of Sex in America.
http://www.alternet.org/belief/mitt-romneys-role-mormon-bishop-shows-his-extremist-religious-beliefs?paging=off

Franklin Graham Calls Obama's Religious Beliefs Into Question 21FEB12

I have heard a lot of people make comments about Billy Graham and Franklin Graham not being Christians because of their conservative values. I have defended both, pointing out Billy Graham and the BGEA has never been rocked by financial or sexual scandals and that Billy Graham has confessed to errors in judgement concerning his statements on political and social issues (Nixon, the Vietnam war, Jews) and that the story of Franklin Graham is like that of the prodigal son. And I told those who would judge the Graham's faith to leave the judging to God. Franklin Graham has plenty in his life to cause some to question his claim to being a Christian, so who is he to question the claim of Christianity by Pres Obama? Franklin Graham, there is nothing in your judgement that is Christian, and you definitely are no BILLY GRAHAM! From HuffPost.....

Evangelist Franklin Graham called President Barack Obama's religious views into question on Tuesday, stating that he does not know for sure if Obama is a Christian.
Graham, who is the son of Billy Graham and the CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that Obama "has said he's a Christian, so I just have to assume that he is."
"All I know is I'm a sinner, and God has forgiven me of my sins... you have to ask every person," he said about whether he could say for sure that Obama is indeed of the Christian faith.
However, when asked about GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum's religion, Graham gave a much more concrete answer.
"I think so," Graham said when asked if he believes Santorum is a Christian. "His values are so clear on moral issues. No question about it... I think he's a man of faith."
MSNBC's panelists questioned the reverend's double standard, but Graham continued to draw distinctions between the candidates on the issue of faith. On Mitt Romney, Graham was again evasive, stating that "most Christians would not recognize Mormonism as part of the Christian faith."
But Graham was more willing to label Newt Gingrich's faith. "Newt's been married several times... but he could make a good candidate," Graham said. "I think Newt is a Christian. At least he told me he is."
Later in the segment, Graham also said he could not be sure that Obama was not a Muslim.
"All I know is under Obama, President Obama, the Muslims of the world, he seems to be more concerned about them than the Christians that are being murdered in the Muslim countries," he said.
He continued, "Islam sees him as a son of Islam... I can't say categorically that [Obama is not Muslim] because Islam has gotten a free pass under Obama."
Graham drew the criticism of the White House last spring when he suggested in an interview with ABC that Obama had not been born in the United States.
During that same interview, Graham also questioned whether Obama's actions and values matched up with his identification as a Christian.
"Now he has told me that he is a Christian. But the debate comes, what is a Christian?" Graham said of Obama. "For him, going to church means he's a Christian. For me, the definition of a Christian is whether we have given our life to Christ and are following him in faith and we have trusted him as our lord and savior."
Watch Graham's full interview on MSNBC:
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A new generation of political Islamists steps forward from the Washington Post 20JAN12

 Americans fear the Islamist political parties because of ignorance and the hateful propaganda about Islam prominent since 9/11. Sharia law is described as repressive, abusive, and incompatible with democracy. What Americans fail to see, because of the logs in our own eyes, is the "reconstructionist" Christian philosophy of Ron Paul, the Mormonism of Mitt Romney, the extremely conservative Roman Catholic beliefs of Rick Santorum, and the manipulation of Christianity by extremist right wingers of the Republican party as seen in legislation introduced in the last Congress restricting the rights of and sometimes degrading American women (redefining rape is a good example) are a greater threat to American democracy than Islamist governments in the newly freed nations of the Middle East. American voters need to pay more attention to the threats to freedom, democracy and human rights by the current field of Republican candidates for president and worry less about Islamist politics in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and other nations of the Middle East.

By Olivier Roy

Everywhere, the Muslim Brotherhood is benefiting from a democratization it did not trigger. There is a political vacuum because the liberal vanguard that initiated the Arab Spring did not try, and did not want, to take power. This was a revolution without revolutionaries. Yet the Muslim Brothers are the only organized political force. They are rooted in society, and decades of opposition against authoritarian regimes gave them experience, legitimacy and respect. Their conservative agenda fits a conservative society, which may welcome democracy but did not turn liberal.
Under these circumstances, the ghost of a totalitarian Islamic state is raised, with the specter of imposing sharia and closing the short democratic parenthesis. But such an outcome is unlikely.
The Islamists have, in fact, changed: They are more middle-class “bourgeois,” and they benefited from the liberalization of local economies during the last decades of the 20th century, especially in countries with no oil rent. The Islamists have also drawn lessons from the failure of ideological regimes and from the success of Turkey’s AKP party. They are no longer advocating jihad and understand geostrategic constraints, such as the need to maintain peace, even a cold one, with Israel. Realism is the starting point of political wisdom.
The Islamists have been elected with a clear agenda: stability, good governance and a better economy. If they have been able to reach a larger constituency than the hard-core supporters of sharia, it is precisely because they can combine such a reformist agenda while talking about religion, values, identity and tradition. The Nahda party won the majority of the votes cast at the Tunisian consulate of San Francisco, although Tunisian expatriates in Silicon Valley are not known for their Islamic fundamentalism.
This mix of technocratic modernism and conservative values is their brand, and to turn their back on multipartism and legalism would alienate a large portion of their constituency, at a time when they have no means to confiscate power. They have neither military forces nor oil wealth to bypass the people: They have to negotiate and deliver. Their electorate wants stability and peace, not revolution.
They are stepping into a new political landscape: a democracy, although a fledgling and fragile one. The only way to maintain their legitimacy is through elections. Even if their pristine political culture is not democratic, they are formatted by the democratic landscape, much as the Roman Catholic Church ended up accepting democratic institutions. But it will take time.
Another important change, if we refer to the “revolutionary” period of the 1970s and 1980s, is that the Muslim Brothers do not monopolize Islam in the public sphere. In fact, the religious revival that has engulfed Arab societies led to a diversification and an individualization of the religious field. Religious state institutions such as Al Azhar, so recently discredited, are regaining autonomy after so recently being discredited. Al Azhar’s dean, Sheikh Ahmed Al-Tayyeb, openly spoke in favor of democracy and of separating religious institutions from the state. A new phenomenon is the decision of the Salafis, an ultraconservative Sunni sect, to establish political parties. On the one hand they will push for a more Islamic agenda, trying to outbid the Muslim Brothers on Islam, but this will force the Brotherhood to clarify its own position and to find a way to distance itself from the call for sharia.
To do that, the Muslim Brothers have to turn purely Islamic norms into more universal conservative values — such as limiting the sale and consumption of alcohol in a way that is closer to Utah’s rules than to Saudi laws and promoting “family values” instead of imposing sharia norms on women.
In the coming months the hot issue in Egypt, beyond the status of women, will be religious freedom. Not in the sense that Coptic Christians will have less freedom to practice — there were a lot of limitations under the so-called secular dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak — but in defining religious freedom as not merely a minority right but an individual human right, implying the right to convert from Islam to Christianity.
The issue is institutionalizing democracy, not promoting liberal policies. Democracy could take hold only if it is based in well-established values. Liberalism does not precede democracy; America’s Founding Fathers were not liberal. But once democracy is rooted in institutions and political culture, then the debate on freedom, censorship, social norms and individual rights could be managed through freedom of expression and changes of majorities in parliament. However, there will be no institutionalization of democracy without the Muslim Brothers.