Understanding Evangelical Christianity

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_moksha
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Understanding Evangelical Christianity

Post by _moksha »

In this short informative video, Cenk Uygur from Young Turks gives us some good insight into why Evangelicals are ecstatic about the US Embassy moving to Jerusalem. It is part of their belief in the End Times. Not sure whether Trump plays the role of the Antichrist in this scenario or whether it is someone else like Vladimir Putin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgQ_FzZO7qs&feature=youtu.be
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_subgenius
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Re: Understanding Evangelical Christianity

Post by _subgenius »

how many ecstatic evangelical Christians hold this "end times" belief? and then, to what do you attribute their seemingly powerful influence on American policy ? and finally, how is this influence manifest?

it should be nice to read actual evidence and facts, but hyperbole, conjecture, and hair-fire proclamations of faith are also welcome.
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_canpakes
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Re: Understanding Evangelical Christianity

Post by _canpakes »

subgenius wrote:it should be nice to read actual evidence and facts, but hyperbole, conjecture, and hair-fire proclamations of faith are also welcome.

I have no idea how you manage to sit through any General Conference with an attitude like yours. :wink:
_subgenius
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Re: Understanding Evangelical Christianity

Post by _subgenius »

canpakes wrote:
subgenius wrote:it should be nice to read actual evidence and facts, but hyperbole, conjecture, and hair-fire proclamations of faith are also welcome.

I have no idea how you manage to sit through any General Conference with an attitude like yours. :wink:

clearly i wrote - "should be" and "are welcome".
:cool:
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires...seek discipline and find your liberty
I can tell if a person is judgmental just by looking at them
what is chaos to the fly is normal to the spider - morticia addams
If you're not upsetting idiots, you might be an idiot. - Ted Nugent
_canpakes
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Re: Understanding Evangelical Christianity

Post by _canpakes »

subgenius wrote:clearly i wrote - "should be" and "are welcome".
:cool:

Clearly, I included one of these >> :wink:
_MeDotOrg
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Re: Understanding Evangelical Christianity

Post by _MeDotOrg »

More evangelicals voted for Trump, than Bush, who was an evangelical. Interesting fact to chew on. I suppose the way you rationalize Trump if you are an evangelical is by remembering the time when Jesus turned water into wine at a wedding, saying "Charity? It's a charitable expense. It's a tax write-off"

Then he fired the caterer.
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_Res Ipsa
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Re: Understanding Evangelical Christianity

Post by _Res Ipsa »

Apparently, more than a couple evangelicals hold these beliefs. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/pol ... ba19dc4d45
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_Gunnar
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Re: Understanding Evangelical Christianity

Post by _Gunnar »

Res Ipsa wrote:Apparently, more than a couple evangelicals hold these beliefs. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/pol ... ba19dc4d45

Trump's chosen replacement for Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, is one of them.
Still, even in a Washington, DC, that is used to rude shocks, news of the president’s choice to succeed Mr Tillerson was met with some alarm. Mike Pompeo, who has hitherto been serving the president as head of the CIA, is a zealous, evangelical Christian accused of Islamophobia.

Even among broadly conservative watchers of American foreign policy, there is worry that Mr Pompeo’s apparent sectarian sentiment might be a problem. In the words of Robert D. Kaplan, a veteran global-affairs writer, Mr Pompeo “emblemises an increasingly theological bent in American politics, and in particular in a strand of American conservatism.” This contrasted with earlier eras when “American leaders were often churchgoers but their governing spirit was refreshingly secular.”

As is noted by Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow of the Brookings Institution think-tank, Mr Pompeo comes across as an educated person whose negative ideas about Islam are more thought-through, and hence perhaps more worrisome, than the “visceral, almost incoherent” suspicion of that faith which Mr Trump exuded as a candidate. “It is not a good thing when the public face of American diplomacy holds views which demean an entire religion,” says Mr Hamid.

Several things have earned Mr Pompeo the reputation of being a kind of latter-day Crusader. One is a video clip in which he argues vigorously that at least some individuals are motivated by their Muslim beliefs, and by things they read in the Koran, to commit terrible violence. Watched closely, the video does not show him to believe that all Muslims think that way. What is more striking is the remedy of Christian solidarity he proposes: Islam-inspired terrorists “will continue to press against us until we make sure…we know that Jesus Christ is the only solution for our world.”

If this doesn't raise serious concern about Trump's choices, what will?

See also: Problematic: Trump Pick Pompeo Wants To End The World

Anyone not terrified by the prospect of Pompeo as Secretary of State is not entirely rationa!
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_Jersey Girl
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Re: Understanding Evangelical Christianity

Post by _Jersey Girl »

Gunnar,

Quote from the TYT video you linked to.

"A lot of Christians love imagining looking down on their now damned former friends and family."

Really Gunnar? Really?
:rolleyes:
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_Gunnar
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Re: Understanding Evangelical Christianity

Post by _Gunnar »

Jersey Girl wrote:Gunnar,

Quote from the TYT video you linked to.

"A lot of Christians love imagining looking down on their now damned former friends and family."

Really Gunnar? Really?
:rolleyes:

I wouldn't go so far as to say that a majority of Christians feel that way. I know a lot of very admirable Christians (including you and a lot of Mormons I know), but from what I have seen there there is a substanial enough minority of them who do to qualify as "a lot." I'm sure you have met some yourself. I am also fairly certain that devout evangelicals are more likely to feel that way than most other Christians, and those are specifically the ones TYT was talking about, and the ones who currently have the strongest influence on the hard right conservatives who are Trump's most fanatical supporters.
No precept or claim is more likely to be false than one that can only be supported by invoking the claim of Divine authority for it--no matter who or what claims such authority.

“If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.”
― Harlan Ellison
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