Proud to be known as liberal
January 25, 2004 by Bill
I have often heard myself referred to as “liberal”. I cannot tell you how proud I am to be known by that classification. It is one of the most beautiful and cherished words in our language. It has nothing to do with whether you are a Republican or Democrat, a Unitarian, Presbyterian or Congregationalist. It has to do with an attitude…a frame of mind…an orientation to life and events…a philosophy…a concept having to do with freedom.
Liberal and liberty both have the same root…defined in “Webster’s Dictionary” as…”The quality or state of being free…as a freeman…a free person….as opposed to slavery, bondage and subjection…worthy of a person of free birth…not servile or mean…a noble way…generous…open-handed…free from bigotry…inclined to welcome new ideas.”
If liberalism is that which liberates…which sets free the minds, spirits and bodies of human beings…then how proud I am to be known as one who is dedicated to such a noble concept.
The object of liberalism is to free those caught in the chains of political, social and religious bondage. At the heart of a liberal religion is something called faith. A person demonstrates faith not be believing anything…but by living. In a liberal religion a person arrives at his position through his own reason and experiences and not because of some outside authority. We live our faith in our freedom. In the words of that great poem by James Russell Lowell…”Time makes ancient good vulgar…..they must upward and onward who would keep ABREAST OF TRUTH.”
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The war prayer
January 18, 2004 by Bill
Let me say, right here, in the opening line of this column, that before you write any knee jerk letters about my “lack of patriotism”, please do remember that I was a U.S. Marine Corps pilot for twelve years, flying in both World War Two and Korea, and personally decorated by the Commandant of the Marine Corps.
The United States today is on a “God Bless America” binge, (drunk). Bumper stickers by the millions are offering this prayer for the car behind them. Flags are sticking out of car windows, on billboards, stuck on business fronts, everywhere. Politicians and entertainers can hardly make a statement without ending it with “God bless you”, or “God bless America”. The massive hypocrisy of this obscene display makes you want to throw up.
At the National Cathedral in Washington, America’s clown of Christianity, Billy Graham told the audience that all the murder victims of September 11 were now in “paradise” and “happy to be there”… This same stupidity was said of the pilots of the planes by bin Laden. Billy Graham’s son, Franklin, equally illiterate, said at a press conference that “the Christian God is a “good” God…but the Islamic God is an “evil” God”.
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Fridge notes
January 11, 2004 by Bill
In the discussion time of my Sunday Symposium we have a small ritual. When anyone says something worth remembering, we say “that’s for your refrigerator door.” Everyone has a fridge door library of notes. Here are a few educational gems for the “religion” section of your door…
- “The government of the United States is in no sense founded on the Christian religion.”
President George Washington in the Treaty of Tripoli - “This would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it.” President John Adams The Jefferson-Adams letters
- “I do not find in Christianity one redeeming feature. It has made one half the world fools, the other half hypocrites.”
President Thomas Jefferson - “A just government has no need for the clergy or the church. The fruits of Christianity are pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; and in both clergy and laity superstition, bigotry and persecution.”
President James Madison, author of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. From his address before the General Assembly of Virginia 1785. - “The bible is not my book…nor Christianity my religion.” President Abraham Lincoln to the Washington D.C. clergy
- “The first clergyman was the first sly rogue who encountered the first fool.”
Voltaire - “Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”
Mark Twain - “The bible has some poetry…some blood drenched history…a wealth of obscenity…and upwards of a hundred thousand lies.”
Mark Twain - “Civilization will thrive when the last stone…from the last church…falls on the head of the last priest…”
Emile Zola - “Reason should be destroyed in all Christians.” Martin Luther
- “I pray with all of my heart for the day when we won’t have any more public schools. The churches will have taken them all over and we Christians will be running them…”
Jerry Falwell - “The source and cause of fights and malignancy, persecution, wars and all evil…is religion. Let it once enter our public schools and they would be destroyed…”
Supreme Court of Wisconsin, Weiss vs. District Board…March 18, 1890 - “Buried deep in the heart of every Christian evangelist lies the wreck of a con man”
H. L. Mencken (Billy Graham, son Franklin and Robert Schuller please take note) - “FAITH…(noun)…Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge.” Ambrose Bierce
- “There is one Commandment I have never broken…I can assure you…I have never coveted my neighbor’s wife.”
Ruth Gordon, actress. (Ten Commandments a cultic code written BY Hebrew men FOR Hebrew men) - “ARE WOMEN HUMAN? A subject debated for two weeks at the Council of Macon in Lyons, France, 584 a.d. Debated by 63 Catholic bishops. When the vote was taken, women were declared ‘human’ by only one vote. The Catholic church is still to this day debating this question, in 2004. As are Southern Baptists and many fundamentalist churches.
- “It is fear…that first brought God and Gods into the world.” Petronius
