On Obama, race, and Fast and Furious

Obama begins playing the race card and the primaries haven't even heated up yet...

"At a forum on American Latino Heritage, President Obama goes through a litany of ideas that he is for, including his new stimulus, and ends with "none of this matters to Republicans in the Senate." One of those ideas is believing America is "a place where every child, no matter what they look like, where they come from, should have a chance to succeed."

Click here for a transcript of Obama's remarks.


On a related note, if anyone is still under the delusion that the election of Obama would help bring about a post-racial society, then Thomas Sowell's latest article is a great read and a real eye-opener for the selectively myopic. Sowell mentions the release of the blockbuster, new novel titled Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department by former Justice Department attorney J. Christian Adams. He concludes the article by stating...

"The Department of Justice under Attorney General Eric Holder has not only turned a blind eye to blatant evidence of voter fraud, it has actively suppressed those U.S. Attorneys in its own ranks who have tried to stop that fraud.


Even in counties where the number of votes cast exceeds the number of people legally entitled to vote, Eric Holder's Justice Department sees no evil, hears no evil and speaks no evil -- if the end result is the election of black Democrats. It has become the mirror image of the old Jim Crow South.


This is an enormously eye-opening book which makes painfully clear that, where racial issues are concerned, the Department of Justice has become the Department of Payback. A post-racial society is the last thing that Holder and Obama are pursuing."

If I may be so bold as to make a prediction, I think Attorney General Holder can expect to have the opportunity to closely examine the undercarraige of a large bus very soon if Obama's words are being interpreted correctly...

"Maybe no one noticed, but he actually threw Eric Holder under the bus on the “Fast and Furious” gunrunner program saying he had confidence in Holder; this remark was a set up. He knows that Holder is on his way out and he pitched a curve to Holder when he said, “both he and Holder would be “very unhappy” if guns were allowed to pass through to Mexico in a way that could have been prevented.”


Obama is pretty confident his backside is covered in the “Fast and Furious” gunrunner program and he definitely knows that he just dealt Holder a losing hand."

EDIT: Townhall.com is wondering aloud as to whether or not Obama knew about "Fast and Furious" even before Holder did.

Occupy J Street

"I am appalled that Democrat politician after Democrat politician, including the president and vice president, are embracing these protests, even claiming to understand their supposed concerns and motivations, when so many of these people are using, among other things, anti-Semitic slurs of the oldest kind,” .... It is appalling and I hope the public takes note.” Mark Levin

While democrats rush to embrace the Occupy Wall Street movement, they never once considered what these clowns actually stand for or if they did, they just said 'to heck with it' and decided to show their own true colors...

"Take the Occupy Wall Street movement. This uprising was sparked by the magazine Adbusters, previously best known for the 2004 essay, “Why Won’t Anyone Say They Are Jewish?” — an investigative report that identified some of the most influential Jews in America and their nefarious grip on policy."

The Daily Caller follows up this particular revelation up with...

"Yeshiva World News, an Orthodox Jewish news outlet, explained in an editorial Thursday that “many Jews” are feeling a bit uncomfortable with the growing protests because of hateful video footage claiming the U.S. economy is organized for the benefit of Jews.

“The reasons for these ‘uncomfortable feelings’ don’t need to be elaborated on this page,” the editorial reads. “Suffice to say that Jews have been blamed for the world’s troubles for thousands of years, and many are nervous that this finger-pointing will soon start — or , maybe it already has.”

National Review Online and The Blaze have published online video footage this week showing Occupy Wall Street protesters saying and shouting anti-Jewish slurs.

“Go back to Israel,” shouted one protester at an elderly Jewish man."

One thing that I've learned from this ongoing circus is that the word 'banker' can be a code word for 'Jew' in some instances in the New World Order as Rush Limbaugh explains...

"To some people, banker is a code word for Jewish; and guess who Obama is assaulting? He’s assaulting bankers. He’s assaulting money people. And a lot of those people on Wall Street are Jewish. So I wonder if there’s – if there’s starting to be some buyer’s remorse there."

On Skeptics and so-called Biblical Slavery

As so often happens when one gets involved with skeptics in online argumentation, their patented method of snipe-and-dodge is employed and direct questions that require an 'either-or' or 'yes-no' type of response are steadfastly avoided by the skeptic. This is understandable from their viewpoint being that if a definitive answer is given, then a stating point is then created to actually discuss (and possibly decontruct?) their profoundly held but factually tenuous, pet belief.

I was involved in one such exchange recently and one can access the relevant thread I am referring to over at Mike L.'s blog by clicking here. I will copy and paste the pertinent statements so there is no ambiguity...

JD Curtis: Rather than getting bogged down in various rabbit holes, I would like to concentrate on the following 2 points. Especially since you have absolutley no rational basis for your own self-righteous indignation of the writings contained in the Holy Bible.

1. Is the system of 'slavery' you mention that appears in the Bible the same system of slavery that existed in the antebellum south or was it a system that was totally and completely different?

2. Let's pretend that there was an ancient, Old Testament admonishment to all households to 'free all slaves'

Then what? What were the newly freed slaves going to do? Hubby gets the 2nd shift job at McDonalds to help provide for the family while wifey-poo works the opening AM shift at 7-11?

I know that you aren't so completely clueless as to not know that the Industrial Revolution, the Department of Labor (Wage and Hour Division) and union shop stewards were only several thousand years ahead in the future.

So tell me, a that time, what were they going to do and what other options existed for them?



The Skeptical Magician:

JD - I'd hate for you to get bogged down in having to explain why rape was okay and encouraged by Yahweh, so yeah, let's move on.

"1. Is the system of 'slavery' you mention that appears in the Bible the same system of slavery that existed in the antebellum south or was it a system that was totally and completely different?"

Well, let's see... You have Israel going into foreign lands forcing people of another ethnic identity into slavery. We have the buying and selling of human beings, and passing them along as personal property (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT). You could buy sex slaves as long as you gave them food and clothing and screwed them (Exodus 21:7-11 NLT). You could beat your slave into a comma with rods and even kill them if it took a couple of days and it was okay, because the slave was your property (Exodus 21:20-21 NAB). If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, what else would you call it?

"2. Let's pretend that there was an ancient, Old Testament admonishment to all households to 'free all slaves' Then what? What were the newly freed slaves going to do? Hubby gets the 2nd shift job at McDonalds to help provide for the family while wifey-poo works the opening AM shift at 7-11?"

Gee, I don't know... maybe they could hunt and gather, or raise livestock like every other person during that time. By your logic here, we should take very low-income person who is working a job at McDonald's and make them a slave, because that would be the nice thing to do. By your logic we also should have never freed slaves in the United States."

Notice how TSM tries to change the subject and assumes that the God of the Bible thinks that "rape was okay and encouraged" when I just asked him two very direct questions concerning so-called slavery as it appears in God's Word. Obfuscation is one of the intellectually dishonest skeptic's best tools at their disposal. I don't mind discussing the fact that TSM seems to mistakenly believe that the Triune God condones rape, but I would just like to treat it as a seperate issue deserving of it's own thread.

That being said, I doubt that I could add anything else to a discussion on 'Bible rape' that hasn't already been cleared up by True Free Thinker who did such a knowledgeable job in decimating the matter.

But back to TSM's objections to slavery as contained in the Bible. First off, ...

"You have Isreal going into foreign lands forcing people of another ethinic identity into slavery"

I'm not sure what TSM means by this so I'll let them explain this further. Because according to Scripture, slavery (or 'bond-service') was necessarily voluntary. If these people in the surrounding countries were 'bought" (I think 'hired' would be a more accurate term) then who received the money? I would say that it was the servants themselves unless TSM can argue otherwise. “‘If an alien or a temporary resident among you becomes rich and one of your countrymen becomes poor and sells himself to the alien living among you or to a member of the alien’s clan, he retains the right of redemption after he has sold himself." Leviticus 25:47-48a, NIV, emphasis mine.

Furthermore, the practice of manstealing was strictly forbidden by the Israelites which further strengthens the argument for it having to be a voluntary act for anyone entering into such an agreement. "And he that steals a man, and sells him, or if he is found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death" Exodus 21:16, KJV.

"We have the buying and selling of human beings, and passing them along as personal property (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT)


Leviticus 25:44 "However, you may purchase male and female slaves from among the nations around you." New Living Translation

Insofar as "passing them on" as a "permanent inheritance", I'm sure SM realizes that this was from a time before Social Security, pension plans and 401 K's. What other cultures at that time promised that the infirm and elderly would be passed on to successive household generations and that they had to be provided for?

It so happens that I have a personal email (from 2009) from Rabbi Zev Leff pertaining to the so-called 'slaves as referred to in Leviticus 25:44-46. He wrote me concerning these passages, quote....

"dear mr. curtis,

these bondsmen and women were slaves that willingly subjugated themselves as such or were captured in war time. in any event they could only be held as slaves if they willingly accepted to
renounce idolatry and be converted to semi jewish status. if they completed this process they became the property of the master both they and their descendants and they were also part of the master's estate for inherhitance. under certain circumstances they could be freed upon which they became full fledged converts. the master had to provide for their basic needs and treat them humanely, if he even by accident put out their eye or tooth or any other limb ending as a finger etc. the slave went free.-sincerely, zev leff"

Such relationships were loving, familial ones and SM is free to quote the Torah scholar they consulted when examining this passage here. Which brings us to another canard point raised by SM...

"You could beat your slave into a comma with rods and even kill them if it took a couple of days and it was okay, because the slave was your property" (Exodus 21:20-21 NAB)



"And if a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod and he dies at his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, he survives a day or two, no vengeance shall be taken; for he is his property"

TSM, let's say that you are living in Biblical times and the harvest that you and your bondservants (or 'slaves' if you prefer) have worked on all year is upon you. Your entire livelihood for you and your entire household depends on effectively harvesting your crop.

On the morning of the harvest, you notice that every single one of your harvesting implements have been destroyed and are now worthless. You are now facing almost certain economic hardship and famine and it comes to your attention that one of your servants (or 'slaves') was seen by multiple witnesses destroying the implements the night before and when confronted about it, it turns out that they admit they did it and it was over some petty jealousy. What would you do with the bond-servant (or 'slave' if you prefer) in question?

"Gee, I don't know... maybe they could hunt and gather, or raise livestock like every other person during that time"

As has been previously posited, these are people that sold themselves into servitude. Nothing really prevented them from being hunter-gatherers but perhaps they wanted a roof over their head and a daily cooked meal to look forward to after a day of working. How were they going to obtain livestock if they had nothing to exchange for it?

Author Wayne Grudem once wrote...

"Slaves in this sense had a higher social status and better economic situation than free day laborers who had to search for employment each day (see Matthew 20:1-7, where the master of the house goes into the marketplace to hire day laborers at different times during the day). By contrast, those who were bondservants (or "slaves") had greater economic security with a continuing job and steady income."

If this was true during Roman times, then was it not true in the Ancient Near East? Feel free to explain this here.

"By your logic here, we should take very low-income person who is working a job at McDonald's and make them a slave, because that would be the nice thing to do. By your logic we also should have never freed slaves in the United States"

This is just stupendously stupid SM as you somehow managed to twist facts and logic by using an illustration showing that there were hardly any competing offers for employment at that with I want low-income service employees made into slaves. Feel free to clarify though.

While The Skeptical Magician is struggling with the direct questions that they now should answer, I would like to raise a brief point concerning so-called enslavement through military conquests. Christian Think Tank has posited the following, citing the Anchor Bible Dictionary by David Noel Freedman (Doubleday, 1992) as their source...


"Within all the periods of antiquity, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Hittite, Persian, and other Oriental rulers carried away great masses of captives from their victorious battles. But only an insignificant part of them was turned into slaves; all the others were settled on the land as palace and temple serfs….The question arises, why the masses of war prisoners were not enslaved. Slavery was the optimal form of dependence, and very often there was no shortage of prisoners captured in war. Besides, there were no legal or ethical norms preventing these prisoners from being turned into slaves. But this happened in a negligible percentage of cases, while the overwhelming majority were settled in places specially set aside for them, paid royal taxes, and carried out obligations, including military service." (Emphasis in the original )



TSM is of course free to attempt to refute this and cite their source while doing so.

Let's Play 'Who Can Spot the Racist?'

Or perhaps we can call it "A Tale of Two Racism Accusations". Let us critically examine two cases of alleged racism by association and then measure as to which accusation better withstands scrutiny. First up, Texas governor and GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry. Columnist Brent Bozell explains why the hushed tones of unsourced accusations of racism seem to be unsourced for good reason.

"Is there a clumsier group of newspaper character assassins than the hit squads at The Washington Post? On Oct. 1, the Post was back on the racist-Republican attack with a 3,000 word, investigative treatise over a rock. Specifically, Gov. Rick Perry had leased a property where the N-word was painted on a rock, and then he had it painted over with white paint.

But investigative genius Stephanie McCrummen could see a virtual Klan hood on Perry's head. "As recently as this summer, the slab-like rock -- lying flat, the name still faintly visible beneath a coat of white paint -- remained by the gated entrance to the camp."

Near the end, she underlined it again: "In the photos, it was to the left of the gate. It was laid down flat. The exposed face was brushed clean of dirt. White paint, dried drippings visible, covered a word across the surface. An N and two G's were faintly visible."

Three thousand words on this.

Apparently, investigative reporting at the Post means staring at old rocks under paint (with a microscope?) to discern almost invisible letters and suggesting this should ruin a presidential campaign."

Bozell goes on to mention that two days later the Washington Post ran an article to support the contention that Perry has a "complicated" record on race.

"Yes, Perry "appointed the first African-American to the state Supreme Court and later made him chief justice" and oh, yes, "One chief of staff and two of his general counsels have been African-American." But many "minority legislators (read: Democrats) say Perry has a long history -- dating to his first race for statewide office more than 20 years ago -- of engaging in what they see as racially tinged tactics and rhetoric to gain political advantage."

What kind of offensive tactics? Guess what's listed first: "Black lawmakers have been particularly troubled by Perry's recent embrace of the Tea Party movement."

I wonder if these particular black lawmakers are also concerned about the Tea Party's embrace of Allen West and Tim Scott. Probably so and with good reason. People may begin to realize that simply hurling unfounded accusations of racism at a political movement that clearly isn't racist doesn't add up and that might mean that they now have to debate the issues rather than engage in their preferred method of ad hominem attacks and thus they will likely lose those arguments every time. If they had something a bit more substative to support their arguments, we probably would have seen it by now.

Bozell then goes on to examine the actions of President Obama in order to compare who appears to be more motivated by race here...

"That's not to say the Post was unfamiliar with the scent of this scandal at Obama's own Trinity United Church of Christ. The news folks could have read Post columnist Richard Cohen denouncing [Reverend Jeremiah] Wright in a column on Jan. 15, 2008, over how Trinity's church magazine fulsomely praised anti-Semitic Louis Farrakhan. But the Post "news" hunters weren't turning over that rock."

That Obama attended a church that for years was headed by a confirmed bigot is beyond debate. One other item that was not mentioned in Bozell's article was the fact that Obama publicly marched with the highly racist, militant and extremely bigoted New Black Panthers Party while running for president....

"Newly resurfaced photographs show President Obama appearing and marching with members of the New Black Panther Party as he campaigned for president in Selma, Ala., in March 2007.

BigGovernment.com posted the photographs, reporting the images were captured from a Flickr photo-sharing account before they were scrubbed.

The photos are reportedly featured in a book set to be released tomorrow by J. Christian Adams, the Department of Justice whistleblower in the New Black Panther Party, or NBPP, voter intimidation case.

The book is titled "Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department."

Among the people visible in the pictures with Obama is NBPP Chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz, a defendant in the voter intimidation case that Attorney General Eric Holder dismissed in 2009.

Also present was the Panthers' "Minister of War," Najee Muhammed...

The NBPP is a controversial black extremist party whose leaders are notorious for their racist statements and for leading anti-white activism.

Shabazz himself has given scores of speeches condemning "white men" and Jews.

The NBPP's official platform states "white man has kept us deaf, dumb and blind," refers to the "white racist government of America," demands black people be exempt from military service and uses the word Jew repeatedly in quotation marks.

Shabazz has led racially divisive protests and conferences, such as the 1998 Million Youth March in which a few thousand Harlem youths reportedly were called upon to scuffle with police officers and speakers demanded the extermination of whites in South Africa."

There is no doubt that Obama, like other liberals, absolutely LOVES to engage to identity politics, but does he have to affiliate with such extreme bigots when he does so? Add to this Obama's "typical white person" comment and it becomes all the more obvious as who is far more deserving of the charge of racism in this side-by-side comparison between Obama and Perry.

No Doubt About It, The Guardian is Thoroughly Obsessed with Michelle Bachmann

That the British tabloid newspaper The Guardian is thoroughly and demonstrably obsessed with Representative (and GOP presidential candidate), Michelle Bachmann is something I've brought up before. Don't believe me?

July 22nd, Michelle Bachmann is apparently a 'homophobe'. Link. (Never mind that the term 'homophobia' has been found to be an etymologically incorrect term.)

June 27th, They licked their chops over Michelle Bachmann mixing up two towns out in the boondocks of Iowa as to which was the hometown of John Wayne as opposed to the hometown of John Wayne Gacy. Two people, both with 'John Wayne' in their names and both from Iowa? A forgivable offense, I suppose. If the hit piece article's author has ever made reference to Obama's 57 States flub or his Special Olympics fiasco, then I might say that it wasn't prejudiced.

July 11th, Michelle Bachmann is anti-new style light bulb. They put Bachmann's photo front and center on the article despite the fact that numerous elected officials at the federal level and in state legislatures opposed any moves to phase out incandescent light bulbs. But why let that get in the way of the obvious fun they are having at their favorite whipping girl's expense?

July 13th, When a bill concerning incandescent light bulbs fails, Michelle Bachmann's image again is put front and center of the story. Apparently, there is a concerted effort to AGAIN focus on Rep. Bachmann during this particular legislative process.

Which brings us to the most recent example of politically motivated agitprop masquerading as 'commentary' entitled, Growing up in Michele Bachmann's world. I'll just quote one of the more obvious paragraphs for our purposes here...

"Unfortunately, millions of evangelicals – and this would include much of the political base being courted by the GOP presidential candidates as well as the candidates themselves – are trapped in an alternative "parallel culture" with its own standards of truth. The intellectual authorities mentioned above – with the exception of Schaeffer who died in 1984 – all have media empires that spread their particular version of the gospel. Millions of dollars every year support the production of books, DVDs, radio shows, school curricula, and other educational materials. Very few evangelicals grow up without hearing some trusted authority – perhaps even with a PhD – tell them that the age of the Earth is an "open question". Or that scientists are questioning evolution. Or that gays are getting spiritual help and becoming straight. Or that secular historians are taking religion out of US history."

Insofar as the "intellectual authorities mentioned" that appear in the article, a veritable 'who's who' of intellectual boogeymen that the Left despises like poison are trotted out in an attempt to scare the reader into a guitly by association fallacy that is as transparent as it is intellectually dicey. Francis Schaeffer, Henry Morris, Ken Ham, James Dobson, Peter Marshall, and David Barton are all given the intellectual frog-walk/perp-walk in the article, yet at no point are any of the ideas of any of these people presented and deconstructed. They are simply dismissed out of hand as being just plain wrong as if it were a given fact.

They go on to basically state that the age of the earth is somehow settled and yet among geologists the figures range from 4.5 billion years to 6 billion years and I have even heard the figure of 10 billion years offered up when it comes to the dating of certain rocks.

The article further assumes that there aren't scientists that differ with Darwinian evolution and yet there is no mention of the ever growing list of scientists that are in fact skeptical of Darwinism, particularly when it comes to the mechanism of natural selection.

The writer seems incredulous that "gays are getting spiritual help and becoming straight" and is apparently comepletely clueless to the fact that the number one reason that gay men seek to leave the homosexual lifestyle is to heal emotional pain.

I could go on and on dubunking the baseless statements offered up by this rag, but you get the picture. These people apparently have an irrational obsession with Rep. Bachmann (R-MN). But why? They seem to be very afraid of her and all of this bigoted, unfair, and negative publicity turns me off to the point that I might actually vote for her in the primaries even though she might not be my favorite candidate. Practically any of the GOP candidates that are polling over 3% now would do a much better job than Obama and if Bachmann is ticking these people off to the exent that they are obsessing over her to this degree, then she must be doing something right.

Gallagher: From whence 'the moral authority of gay men'?

In her most recent column, Maggie Gallagher hits the nail on the head when describing the state of affairs in the ongoing culture war between radical gay activism and mainstream America....

"Moral authority is, of course, in itself a curious phenomenon. Where does it come from? Who has it? How is it made visible in the external and everyday world?

Every human child begins with anxiety: Am I OK? Is what I do good enough? Am I a good person?

The reassurance that mothers and fathers give ultimately passes to some external force in human affairs, one that defines and binds a society together: Moral authority is that influence over the human mind that requires no external backing. We crave it, we seek it, we respond to it. Human beings are made that way.

The moral crisis that the gay rights movement poses for American civilization is ultimately a crisis in moral authority.

The original civil rights movement built upon a Judeo-Christian and biblical foundation, used the power of suffering, with dignity and courage, to call for social respect for African-Americans.

The new civil rights movement takes Christian pity and uses it as a weapon to unmoor the Christian tradition itself of all moral authority in our society in order to accomplish the "transvaluation of all values."

The phrase is Nietzsche's, of course.

"I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity. ... I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind. ... And one calculates time from the dies nefastus on which this fatality arose -- from the first day of Christianity! Why not rather form its last? From today? Revaluation of all values!" he wrote in "The Antichrist."

For Nietzsche, the two great besetting sins of Christianity were its elevation of pity -- the moral authority of the weak -- and chastity; both in his mind were violations of the natural order in which desire and the strength to attain desire were the natural basis of morality. Christianity was "anti-life" because it interfered with the twin goods of strength and desire.

The genius of modern Progressivism is to instead take these two Christian virtues, pity and chastity, and pit them against each other -- to take pity for human suffering and direct it against the restraint of sexual desire..

To the gay rights movement, a strong moral confidence in the goodness of our marriage tradition is in itself the core moral offense, which requires disciplining, punishing, silencing, shunning.

Why? So that legitimate pity for the gay man, and his suffering as a child, can be turned against the moral authority of chastity, for that system of sexual ethics that begins not with our desires but with our responsibility to discipline and elevate them."

Bravo to Gallagher for the willingness to stand up against the Pink Hand and speak truth to power.

Given the economic downturn of recent years, I wonder if hard times really will produce hard men with the absence of decadence and wealth as one author has posited. Perhaps all of the moral posturing of homosexual activism might all go for naught as we may very well have already experienced Peak Gay.

Pastors Challenge Free Speech Bigotry

The Christian Post is reporting on a growing phenomenon among Christian churches in which pastors are speaking freely on political matters from the pulpit and thus challenging the so-called Johnson amendment...

"This Sunday, more than 400 pastors will be using their pulpits to preach politics and challenge the Internal Revenue Service's regulations that restrict religious leaders from endorsing candidates and discussing policies with their congregations.

Oct. 2 is Pulpit Freedom Sunday, and this year Alliance Defense Fund and its supporters have quadrupled its participation from last year. Last year, 100 pastors committed to the event, but this year, registration lists are exploding, with 475 pastors who will participate in the event...

While no participants of the project actually lost their tax-exempt status, several churches have been subject to a possible investigation after preaching the biblical view of government policies and politicians in their churches.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed an IRS complaint against Warroad Community Church in 2008 after Minnesota pastor Gus Booth taught his congregation what the Scripture says about abortion and same-sex marriage and compared those teachings to candidates' positions.

In 2009, a California-based lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights group filed an IRS complaint against the Catholic Diocese of Portland, Maine, after it announced it would gather signatures for a voter referendum on the state's same-sex marriage law."

If I may be allowed to weigh in on the topic, my views on this are as follows.

My main concern on religious freedom in the pulpit is allowing pastors to preach through all sections of the Bible and not have to worry about reprisals from the government. For example, a Swedish pastor was sentenced to a month in prison after delivering a sermon critical of homosexuality. I don't doubt for a moment that free speech bigots in this country would gladly do the same since it took seven years for a Canadian pastor to be cleared of hate crime charges after writing a letter to the editor of an Alberta newspaper. I would never want to see the government hold 'tax-exempt status' held over the heads of churches for the refusal to accept the radical agendas offered up by Gay Inc. or the abortion industry.

Another item brought up in the above, cited article is the endorsement of specific political candidates from the pulpit. I think Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention summed up the optimal way candidates could be seen as 'endorsed' by a specific church.

"We (Southern Baptists) don't believe that pastors and churches should be endorsing candidates," he said. "We believe that candidates should be endorsing them and their values and beliefs.”"

I believe that candidates seeking out churches that reflect their values and themselves striving for their endorsements is the best way to proceed here. The only way I could see a church specifically endorsing a political candidate is if a particular candidate's position[s] on certain social issues is SO extreme, well, I can then see how some churches could feel compelled to endorse a candidate in certain election races. That doesn't mean that such instances are highly optimal or even desired. I admit that how one determines whether a candidate's position is extreme or not is a bit subjective and I welcome your feedback in the comment section below.

EDIT: I found an interesting article from 2008 that appeared in The Los Angeles Times featuring a dialogue between Barry Lynn of Americans United for Seperation of Church and State and the head of the Pulpit Initiative, Derek Stanley, if anyone is so interested in this topic. Link