{"id":1202,"date":"2008-02-28T08:15:27","date_gmt":"2008-02-28T13:15:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/1202"},"modified":"2008-02-28T08:28:48","modified_gmt":"2008-02-28T13:28:48","slug":"heathens-are-the-people-in-the-church-across-the-street-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/1202","title":{"rendered":"Heathens Are The People In The Church Across The Street"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When fundamentalists speak of freedom of religion, they don&#8217;t mean what you think they mean&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<div class=\"headlines\">\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfgate.com\/cgi-bin\/article.cgi?f=\/n\/a\/2008\/02\/27\/state\/n103821S82.DTL&amp;tsp=1\"><strong>Calif. Capitol chaplain says religious tolerance offends God<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"georgia md\"><\/p>\n<p>An evangelical chaplain who leads Bible studies for California lawmakers says God is disgusted with a rival fellowship group that includes people of all faiths.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Although they are pleasant men in their personal demeanor, their group is more than disgusting to our Lord and Savior,&quot; Drollinger wrote on the Capitol Ministries&#8217; Web site.<\/p>\n<p>The comments drew immediate fire from others in the capital, including the Republican lawmaker who sponsors Drollinger&#8217;s Bible study group.<\/p>\n<p>Drollinger said &quot;progressive religious tolerance&quot; is an offense against God and causes harm to its practitioners.<\/p>\n<p>He said the other Bible study group was perpetrating a &quot;deadly lie&quot; by presenting Jesus as &quot;a good moral teacher who loves everyone without distinction.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Assembly Republican leader Mike Villines, who sponsors Drollinger&#8217;s Bible study group, said the differing approach between the two groups should not be a cause of conflict between them.<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Right.&nbsp; Until Drollinger&#8217;s kind finally acquires the power to decide what the first amendment means.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jewsonfirst.org\/07b\/capitol_ministries.html\">This on Drollinger&#8217;s Capital Ministries from Jews On First<\/a>&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Capitol Ministries aims to &quot;reach every elected official in every nation of the world at every level of government with the uncompromised, saving message of Jesus Christ,&quot; according to its <a href=\"http:\/\/www.capitolministries.org\/\">website<\/a>. So far, the California-based group has, again according to its website, &quot;singularly focused on establishing biblical ministries in State Capitols throughout our nation &#8230; in order to make disciples of Jesus Christ within the political arena, at every level.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The growing roster of states is worth noting because of Capitol Ministries&#8217; extremism.<\/p>\n<p>The group&#8217;s leader, Ralph Drollinger, is so extreme that the Los Angeles <em>Daily News<\/em> reported this month without qualification that he &quot;has a long record of bashing Catholics, gays and mothers of young children who serve in the state Legislature.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>In his keynote address to the May 8th Harrisburg &quot;Commonwealth Prayer Breakfast,&quot; Drollinger said it was important to challenge legislators to make decisions to &quot;submit to Christ as Lord,&quot; according to Rabbi Paula Reimers of Congregation Beth Israel in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, who attended.<\/p>\n<p>She also noted Drollinger&#8217;s remark that it isn&#8217;t necessary &quot;to coerce one who has come to Christ as to how to vote.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>In 2004 he [Drollinger] offended many in the California legislature when he called Catholicism &quot;the world&#8217;s largest false religion.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>According to a 2005 report in the  <em>Sacramento News &amp; Review,<\/em> the previous year Drollinger &quot;had to move the Bible study from the governor&rsquo;s suites after he labeled Catholicism, the religion of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a &#8216;false religion.&#8217;&quot; Thanks to the sponsorship of three Republican legislators, Drollinger moved the study to a legislative suite, according to the paper, where its attendance was around a dozen Republican lawmakers. There is a separate study group for staffers.<\/p>\n<p>In 2004 Drollinger wrote a Bible study stating that women legislators were sinning by leaving their children to go to Sacramento. &quot;It is one thing for a mother to work out of her home while her children are in school,&quot; he wrote. &quot;It is quite another matter to have children in the home and live away in Sacramento for four days a week. Whereas the former could be in keeping with the spirit of Proverbs 31, the latter is sinful.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Drollinger amplified with a patriarchal assertion about the roles of men and women. &quot;Man&#8217;s is, primarily, to be a breadwinner, and women&#8217;s is to be at home nurturing their children,&quot; according to contemporaneous news reports.<\/p>\n<p>Some members of the state Senate responded by wearing aprons to a legislative session.<\/p>\n<p>In the interview with the <em>Sacramento News &amp; Review,<\/em> Drollinger differentiated his operation from religious right organizations. They, he said, lobby on bills, whereas Capitol Ministries works to win souls (the same distinction he made at the Harrisburg breakfast)..<\/p>\n<p>He also insisted that he supports the separation of church and state, because the two insititutions are biblically ordained to serve different purposes, according to the <em>SNR<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The group&#8217;s own descriptions of its activities suggests quite the opposite. A 2002 &quot;Bible study lesson series&quot; aimed at Tennessee government workers was titled &quot;Decision-Making and God&#8217;s Will,&quot; according to the <em>Nashville Business Journal<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>In 2005, in a retort to the speaker of the California Assembly&#8217;s statement that all are &quot;children of God,&quot; Capitol Ministries&#8217; national &quot;expansion&quot; director, Sean Wallentine, said: &quot;While it is nice to believe that God is everyone&rsquo;s Father, it is not true.&quot; Only those who are &quot;born again&quot; become God&#8217;s &quot;adopted children,&quot; Wallentine said in a written statement quoted by the <em>California Observer<\/em> blog.<\/p>\n<p>The <em>Daily News<\/em> report on the prayer breakfast in Santa Clarita quoted Wallentine disparaging an alternative Interfaith event. &quot;I would just say they&#8217;re allowed to have their meeting,&quot; he said, &quot;but we wouldn&#8217;t be supportive of a meeting that taught that there are many ways to heaven. There are not.&quot;\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Freedom of religion?&nbsp; You&#8217;re very much mistaken citizen&#8230;sin has no rights that men of god are bound to respect&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When fundamentalists speak of freedom of religion, they don&#8217;t mean what you think they mean&#8230; Calif. Capitol chaplain says religious tolerance offends God An evangelical chaplain who leads Bible studies for California lawmakers says God is disgusted with a rival fellowship group that includes people of all faiths. &quot;Although they are pleasant men in their [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[34,13,21,46,6],"class_list":["post-1202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-george-bushs-america","tag-religion","tag-the-abyss","tag-the-kultar-kampf","tag-the-right-wing-mindset"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}