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Almost all of the declared and undeclared Republican candidates for 2016 could be found this weekend at one of two events, or both.
The first was organized by the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, and held in Point of Grace Church in Waukee.
Dominated by Evangelical Christians, who were 60 percent of Republican caucus-goers in 2008 and 2012, the Point of Grace Church event drew no fewer than nine Republican hopefuls.
Ex-Gov. Mike Huckabee and ex-Sen. Rick Santorum, past winners of the Iowa caucuses, were there. So, too, were Sen. Ted Cruz and Gov. Scott Walter. Cruz and Walker are sons of Christian preachers.
All nine GOP hopefuls espoused Judeo-Christian values, and all nine pledged unyielding opposition to same-sex marriage.
“At a forum before evangelical Christians,” wrote The New York Times, “the Republican candidates told a cheering crowd that the fight over same-sex marriage would not end with a Supreme Court decision.
“Mr. Cruz said advocates of traditional marriage should ‘fall to our knees and pray.'” Sen. Marco Rubio declared that the “institution of marriage as one man and one woman existed long before our laws existed.”
Onward Christian soldiers!
At the second event, however, there was not a lot of kneeling and praying, and not much talk of same-sex marriage. For it was held in Sin City at the Venetian hotel-casino and home of Sheldon Adelson.
Having amassed a fortune of $29 billion from gambling dens in Macau and Vegas, the 81-year-old Adelson is among the richest men on earth. The event was the annual conclave of the Republican Jewish Coalition.
In Vegas, The Washington Post reports, “a crop of White House aspirants sought to outdo each other in opposition” to the Iran nuclear deal. “Ted Cruz declared that he ‘intends to do everything possible to stop a bad Iran deal.’ … Indiana Gov. Mike Pence pledged that ‘Israel’s enemies are our enemies. Israel’s cause is our cause.'”
Now, there is no conflict between being pro-Israel and anti-same-sex marriage. Yet there is still something jarring here.
What are candidates who profess Christian values doing in Sin City courting a casino mogul for millions in contributions, when that mogul compiled his immense fortune by exploiting the moral weakness of Christians and non-Christians alike?
Does not the Bible condemn gambling? Do Evangelical Christians not regard gambling as a vice, and a moral failing? Are not Christians supposed to practice what they preach?
Googling “Evangelicals” and “gambling” one comes across a compelling 2009 essay of Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, flagship school of the Southern Baptist Convention.
“The nationwide explosion of legal gambling may well be the most underrated dimension of America’s moral crisis,” writes Mohler.
“The Bible is clear on this issue. The entire enterprise of gambling is opposed to the moral worldview revealed in God’s word. The basic impulse behind gambling is greed — a basic sin that is the father of many other evils. Greed, covetousness, and avarice are repeatedly addressed by Scripture …
“Gambling is a direct attack on the work ethic presented by Scripture. … Gambling corrupts the culture, polluting everything it touches. … Why are Christians so silent on this issue? … The silence and complacency of the Christian Church must end.”
In defense of their courtship of Adelson, Republicans say that gambling is now legal. Yet, so is prostitution and marijuana in some precincts, and abortion and homosexuality are constitutional rights.
Would Christian conservatives accept campaign contributions from men who grew rich running abortion mills, or bathhouses for homosexuals, or from selling pot, or from Planned Parenthood?
Reportedly, Adelson contributed $92 million in 2012, to the campaigns of Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and other Republicans. And he is poised to spend more for a Republican president in 2016.
A tiny fraction of that $92 million, in attack ads, could break a candidate to whom Adelson is opposed. A large fraction could make credible a candidate who would otherwise be an also-ran who would not survive the first primary.
With that kind of money on offer, the temptation to tailor one’s views to accommodate Adelson is great. But it is a temptation.
In this tale of two cities this weekend, Waukee and Vegas, we may be witnessing a shift in moral power in the Grand Old Party.
It is hard to imagine that the Moral Majority of Rev. Jerry Falwell in the Reagan years would have been comfortable with the ascendancy of Sheldon Adelson in the Republican Party hierarchy.
And as America appears to be accommodating herself to same-sex marriage, do the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family have the same following they once did?
When the Iowa caucuses are behind us, and the nominee chosen, will the Republican ticket still be eager to be associated with the Iowa Faith and Freedom Council? Or will the ticket be putting the social issues on a back shelf for the November election?
Is the triumph of Vegas values over Biblical values inevitable?
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book “The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority.”
Copyright 2015 Creators.com.
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Scum Adelson is for ‘gay marriage’ and open borders.
Sure they would Pat, if it was behind closed doors they’d even take money from drug cartels:
http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_18924755
^ Just like Rick Perry’s administration has bent over backwards to cover up the same.
And here’s your bathhouses for homosexuals precedent:
http://ronaldthomaswest.com/2015/01/11/who-punked-the-cardinal/
^ “Vatican buys Europe’s biggest gay bathhouse and sauna”
I somehow doubt they bought it to close it down…
A Buchananosaurus named Pat
Seemed to dig where the DEA’s at:
“Reefer Madness is here!
Change ‘One Love’ to ‘One Fear’!”
But his fears from the fifties fell flat.
It’s disappointing the great Pat Buchanan does not mention the elephant in the room: it’s all about Israel and the power of the Israel lobby.
Carrie Pat has his Bible and axe,
Hell-bent on crusadin’ attacks.
“Yea, no pot-smokin’ Jews
Be allowed in my pews,
Eatin’ Alice B. Toklas’s snacks!”
American politicians….whoremonger/warmongers
Evangelical values- have more in common with Islamic Republic of Iran– in a good way– than with the Jewish and Democratic state money-men.
But that’s not so hard to imagine: zionism has little to do with values other than Jewish hyper-nationalism and the perpetuation of false victimhood.
And Iranian culture and history is, at its core, Zoroastrian, which is the ethical heart of Christianity and also the basis for most of Judaism’s ethical tradition.
Christianity has deeper roots in Zoroaster and Iranian culture than in zionist Israel.
I can’t understand how we’ve gotten to a point where a casino owner, of all things, has so much influence over our country.
““The nationwide explosion of legal gambling may well be the most underrated dimension of America’s moral crisis,” writes Mohler.”
I’ve never been able to understand the expansion of legalized gambling in our country, from casinos in Mississippi, to gambling on Indian reservations, to the various state lotteries. It all seems like a bad move, and not one designed to make our our citizenry or collective national culture stronger.
““Gambling is a direct attack on the work ethic presented by Scripture. … Gambling corrupts the culture, polluting everything it touches.”
It leads to a jackpot mentality, which is the opposite of a mindset focused on building a life through consistent, hard work. It makes a mockery of the notion of hard work and following the rules.
I wish one could join the Catholic Church, which most nearly expresses the totality of my beliefs, without faith.
Hey -it’s just free enterprise; no wonder the Repubs like it. What are you, a commie?
Please elaborate further.
”Does not the Bible condemn gambling? Do Evangelical Christians not regard gambling as a vice, and a moral failing? Are not Christians supposed to practice what they preach?”
BINGO! As you Catholics like to say:
http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Catholic/2007/06/A-Catholic-Tradition-We-Could-Lose-Bingo.aspx
”But it’s for the diocese!” doesn’t change the fact that it’s gambling even ”it’s for a good cause!”
It paved the way for all the State lotteries and all the other expansion of gambling over the past 50 years – to this:
http://www.beliefnet.com/News/2003/05/The-Bookie-Of-Virtue.aspx
What about the atheistic Catholicism of Graham Greene? Or the agnostic-atheistic (later in life) Catholicism of Frederick Copleston, S.J.
I wish one could join the Catholic Church, which most nearly expresses the totality of my beliefs, without faith.
The saving grace of the Catholic Church is that it is the most Christian. Every religion has two components to it – first it explains one’s connection to a god and then it provides a prescription for living – a philosophy for living. The Catholic Church sticks closest to Jesus’ prescription for living. Jesus Christ was an idealist – that is why throughout history He has been embraced by good people. The Christian philosophy is the champion of having hope, saying that life is sacred, saying to love your neighbor as you love yourself, to seeking truth, to forgive, and to extending grace to all. All these fine things are ideals. The Catholic Church does the best job of promoting these earthly human ideals.
Whether Jesus was the son of god, or the result of a virgin birth, or arose from the dead is immaterial. One does not have to believe these thing to love Jesus. One does not have to believe these things to gather with others and celebrate His life and embrace His ideals for living.
p.s. Christianity must be grateful to Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation. It brought on a freedom for the individual Christian – the Catholic Church of that time wheeled a most crushing un-Christian power over its adherents. But Protestantism also created a problem, in its search for authority, it embraced the Bible over Christ’s idealist teaching. It brought back the Old Testament into prominence which is 100% different from the teachings of Christian Philosophy.
Adelson is bigger than AIPAC, his concerns go far beyond mere ‘Zionism’. He works just as hard for the PRC.
Good morning, Mr. Khamenei, enjoyed cheering on the Baltimore mob, did you?
JUDEO-CHRISTIAN—AN OXYMORON.
Sir, you have a very interesting article and I agree with you for the most part, but your answer was already at the top when you used the term “Judeo-Christian.” Adelson is the Judeo and the church is the Christian.
Judaists spit on Christians in Israel, call Mother Mary a who.. and say Jesus is boiling in excrement in hell in their Talmud (See: “Talmud Unmasked” by Rev. Pranthis, “Jewish history, Jewish religion” by Israel Shahak.)
See:
http://www.talmudunmasked.com
http://www.answering-christianity.com/jews1.htm
Also see “Judaism’s Strange Gods”, by Michael Hoffman
Judaists DESPISE Christians and hate them more than Muslims and want to destroy white christian nations with immigration, gay marriage, liberalism, feminism, etc. Biden admitted that the Judaists were pushing this left-wing agenda. See ihr.org.
The stupid Republicans are just groveling at Jewish feet for money. And the Christians worship the Judaists and call their biggest nemeis “God’s Chosen People” and die for them in their wars! Insane beyond belief.
JEWISH PROFESSOR URGES WHITES TO COMMIT SUICIDE.
Before groveling in front of a Jewish Oligarch like Adelson, people must remember a few things.
Such as the Jewish professor who urged whites to commit suicide:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2013/11/25/liberal-professor-tells-white-male-students-commit-suicide-benefit-so
With such anti-white and anti-Christian hate lurking in the Jewish psyche, it is ironic to see Whites and Christians pandering Judaists.
The catholic church[!?] the “most” christian.The deity of Christ, virgin birth immaterial?
Your way off base brother.
Your material worldview has brought us all to a most uncomfortable place.
The Lord would have it that we all believe and repent and be saved.
Christs work was finished on Calvary.
Broad is the path to destruction and narrow is the gate to eternal life,few will find it.
The GOP is the party of big business and money, the so-called Conservative values it promotes are nothing but a smokescreen. It doesn’t care about the working and middle-class, about securing the border or making sure people have decent jobs, it doesn’t care about Constitutional rights, etc.
On issues like:
Using H1-B foreign workers to replace American workers – the GOP is all for it.
Using free trade pacts to off-shore American jobs – the GOP is all for it.
Using the NSA to spy on Americans – the GOP is all for it.
Using illegal aliens to replace Americans on low end jobs – the GOP is all for it.
I could go on, but just on economic issues the GOP is totally hostile to the average working and middle-class American. They are in fact waging war against them when you examine in totality the policies they support.
The fact that now that all the leading presidential candidates make a pilgrimage to a festering fanatic and oligarch like Adelson just shows how obvious it now is. They are for sale to the highest bidder.
What, then, was the point of the Resurrection and the Ascension, and the forty days in between? Why are so many Christians awaiting, still, the Second Coming? Is it perhaps the Nicene Creed that makes Christians believe that there is more work to come?
Christ was witnessed by many in His resurrected body,the disciples were paralyzed with fear after His death and had scattered.
His resurrection gave them courage unto death -as many of them would be martyred.
The Nicene creed is a tradition of the roman catholic church- the state religion of the roman empire
Jesus said” you make the scriptures of no account by your traditions of men.”
I am not aware of a majority of Christians being opposed to investing in stocks and bonds. Isn’t that gambling although with less risk and hopefully better research ans strategy?
ps Jesus said the entire OT was about him. So in throwing the OT under the bus you inadvertently put the Idealist under there too. oops. Unless of course you don’t believe you can trust what the NT says about Jesus, which means you are deciding what Christianity is, making yourself God. that’s the problem with not accepting the Scriptures as the present themselves, the unchanging, external, emotionless truth.
From Wikipedia:
***
The Nicene Creed (Greek: Σύμβολον τῆς Νίκαιας, Latin: Symbolum Nicaenum) is a profession of faith widely used in Christian liturgy.
It is called Nicene /ˈnaɪsiːn/ because originally adopted in the city of Nicaea (present day Iznik, Turkey) by the First Council of Nicaea in 325.[1] In 381, it was amended at the First Council of Constantinople, and the amended form is referred to as the Nicene or the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed.
The churches of Oriental Orthodoxy use this profession of faith with the verbs in the original plural (“we believe”) form. The Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church use it with the verbs of believing changed to the singular (“I believe”) form. The Anglican Communion and many Protestant denominations also use it, sometimes with the verbs of believing in the plural form but generally in the singular.
The Apostles’ Creed is also used in the Latin West, but not in the Eastern liturgies.[2] On Sundays and some other days, one or other of these two creeds is recited in the Roman Rite Mass after the homily. The Nicene Creed is also part of the profession of faith required of those undertaking important functions within the Catholic Church.[3][4] In the Byzantine Rite, the Nicene Creed is sung or recited at the Divine Liturgy, immediately preceding the Anaphora (Eucharistic Prayer), and is also recited daily at compline.[5][6]
***
Hardly the creation of the Roman Catholic Church….
“Does not the Bible condemn gambling?”
Well, no…it doesn’t. That is why Mohler can’t quote chapter and verse, but has to say that gambling is opposed to the “moral worldview” of Scripture. Technically, gambling is what is known as adiaphora – things not explicitly encouraged nor forbidden in moral law. Pat must have been asleep in catechism class when this subject came up because, at least when I was growing up, almost every Catholic parish had a bingo night.
Mohler’s assertion that the “basic impulse behind gambling is greed” is patently false. That is like saying that the basic impulse behind dancing is lust, or the basic impulse behind eating in a nice restaurant is gluttony. Most people gamble for the entertainment value, the excitement of a pecuniary risk and incentive added to the playing of a game. And compulsive gamblers do not become so because of greed but because they have addictive personalities. There is no quicker way to the poorhouse than to become a gambling addict.
You could with as much or greater veracity assert that the basic impulse behind capitalism is greed, and I think you will be waiting a long time for either Pat or Mohler to condemn capitalism as contrary to the “moral worldview” of Scripture.
Of course, gambling at the enterprise level (as distinct from your neighbor’s friendly Saturday night poker game) does come with a significant social cost. That is why enterprises that profit from gambling should be compelled to pay towards alleviating those social costs, as they in most cases are through taxes and regulation.