2000 Baptist students freaked when John Dear spoke - really

[donsu]

http://207.44.245.159/article8113.htm


Pharisee Nation

American Nation Brainwashed

Last September, I spoke to some 2,000 students during their annual lecture at a Baptist college in Pennsylvania. After a short prayer service for peace centered on the Beatitudes, I took the stage and got right to the point. “Now let me get this straight,” I said. “Jesus says, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’ which means he does not say, ‘Blessed are the warmakers,’ which means, the warmakers are not blessed, which means warmakers are cursed, which means, if you want to follow the nonviolent Jesus you have to work for peace, which means, we all have to resist this horrific, evil war on the people of Iraq.”

With that, the place exploded, and 500 students stormed out. The rest of them then started chanting, “Bush! Bush! Bush!”

So much for my speech. Not to mention the Beatitudes.

-snip-


We have become a culture of Pharisees. Instead of practicing an authentic spirituality of compassion, nonviolence, love and peace, we as a collective people have become self-righteous, arrogant, powerful, murderous hypocrites who dominate and kill others in the name of God. The Pharisees supported the brutal Roman rulers and soldiers, and lived off the comforts of the empire by running an elaborate banking system which charged an exorbitant fee for ordinary people just to worship God in the Temple. Since they taught that God was present only in the Temple, they were able to control the entire population. If anyone opposed their power or violated their law, the Pharisees could kill them on the spot, even in the holy sanctuary.

Most North American Christians are now becoming more and more like these hypocritical Pharisees. We side with the rulers, the bankers, and the corporate millionaires and billionaires. We run the Pentagon, bless the bombing raids, support executions, make nuclear weapons and seek global domination for America as if that was what the nonviolent Jesus wants. And we dismiss anyone who disagrees with us.
-snip-
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2000 robots

[mhr]

1. Amen Brother - Preach It To The Heathen Fundies And Freepers

eom

[tsuki]

2. The only time the Gospels are trotted out is during Christmas and

Easter. You can't the nativity out of Leviticus.

[w13rd0]

3. Pretty powerful stuff...

...and a damning indictment of the Pharisees in the Republican Baptist Convention. Shouting down a plea for peace with chants of "Bush! Bush! Bush!"

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

4. Wow! Another Duer was going to send me this

Great speech

[keith the dem]

5. Great Post

the derogatory term "bleeding heart liberal" is actually a reference to the bleeding heart of Jesus. Funny how having the compassion of Jesus is viewed as a weakness to those RW psuedochristians.

[Nashvilliberal]

6. A courageous Jesuit Priest...one of the many good ones.

John Dear is a Jesuit priest and the author/editor of 20 books including most recently, “The Questions of Jesus” and “Living Peace” both published by Doubleday. He lives in New Mexico where he is working on a campaign to disarm Los Alamos. For info, see: www.johndear.org

[LynzM]

7. Excellent

It makes me sad that there are some who interpret 'blessed are the peacemakers' to mean 'blessed are those who eventually cause peace, regardless of how they get to it'. I don't consider myself a christian any more, but I still think that Jesus taught a lot of awfully good things, if people would only pay attention to him, too, and not just Paul and Leviticus...

[wildeyed]

8. Thanks, that was very interesting.

I am a big fan of the Beatitudes :)