Mary wrote: > My own personal experience of Catholicism is that many practitioners, > including myself, take an *enormous* amount of leeway in following, or not > following, certain church teachings. Moreover, one strand of Church > doctrine, while not always emphasized, holds that *individual conscience* > is primary in making these decisions. Debra mentioned this some time ago.
I agree - that is my experience, too. > When the day is done, I simply don't see picking > and choosing, not to mention using one's conscience to vote against church > teaching on a regular basis, as "fundamentalist," and I likely never will. I don't either. > Do some "fundamentalist" Protestants vote Democratic? It probably happens > ocassionally, as I allowed for last week. I simply don't think it happens > very often, and the election figures Jerry posted back that up. Not to be annoying but I do think it depends on how one defines "fundamentalist beliefs." "Right wing" fundamentalists or all fundmentalists? But I understand where you are coming from with your definition. >The voting pattern you speak of is the exception, not the rule. I can state > confidently that I have NEVER heard a liberal Democratic candidate endorsed > on a Christian radio station or similar TV show, or read this kind of > endorsement in a letter to the editor by a self-identifying "fundamentalist" > Christian, although I've seen and heard a fair amount of anti-Democratic > jibes on these shows, and in these letters. Maybe this is where I get uneasy about the way terms are thrown around (and not pointing out you in particular but the general vernacular). Calling it "Christian radio station" for one can, IMO, harm many of other Christian faiths who do not operate or conduct themselves as do the particular sects speaking for themselves on a radio station. I guess I wish there were a better way to define it. Clinton and Gore are both Southern Baptists, which has always been a fundamentalist religion. Many of the evangelical and other sects splintered off from the Southern Baptists. Many who voted for them are from those religious roots. They may not have radio stations that they use to set forth their political views in a partisan way, but they do vote for Democratic candidates. Perhaps they also are setting aside personal religious teachings and voting for what they feel is a greater good. > Re: the power of politically conservative Protestant evangelicals in this > country, and in the Republican party: you may wish to distance yourself > from it, and you may wish that this faction hadn't virtually hijacked the > party 25 years ago. So do I. But that doesn't mean it didn't happen. I > think, in contrast, that the evidence is rather strong that it did. I think it did but more from a perceptual standpoint. At any rate, it is unfortunate, both the perception and the reality. > I would suggest, if you don't like this state of affairs, that you work within your local Republican party and perhaps >beyond to organize the systematic presentation of a different conservative belief > system. Therein lies the dilemma - they are not powerful on the local level in LA or most of California. I never hear a peep about them here vis a vis politics. That probably shades my opinion in the larger sense on the topic. Kakki
