Leonard Pitts Jr.: Billy Graham's son questions Buttigieg's faith -- after defending Trump's

[babylonsister]

Billy Graham’s son questions Buttigieg’s faith — after defending Trump’s | Opinion
By Leonard Pitts Jr.
April 26, 2019 03:50 AM, Updated April 26, 2019 06:54 AM

snip//

Yet white evangelicals — Graham prominent among them — embraced this swaggering sybarite and accepted him as a Christian. Trump, Graham once told an interviewer, “defends the faith.” Pete Buttigieg? Not so much. Last week, Graham attacked the South Bend mayor and Democratic presidential aspirant in a series of Twitter rants like the following:

“Mayor Buttigieg says he’s a gay Christian. As a Christian I believe the Bible which defines homosexuality as sin, something to be repentant of, not something to be flaunted, praised or politicized. The Bible says marriage is between a man & a woman — not two men, not two women.”

To spend any time listening to the Trump faithful is to live in perpetual cognitive dissonance. It is to hear Melania complain about cyber bullies or Don Jr. lament the loss of civility and to marvel at their ability to maintain straight faces. And yes, one feels the same when Graham questions Buttigieg’s faith after defending Trump’s.

But one also feels something else: a too-familiar sense of Christianity — white, conservative Christianity, at least — once again standing athwart onrushing change with its hand up yelling, “Stop!” They did it when Martin Luther King preached of his dream, when Betty Friedan decided she’d had enough, when Harvey Milk demanded the right to be. They are doing it again now. And you have to wonder:

Don’t they ever get tired of being wrong? Don’t they ever tired of being the last ones to get it?

more...

https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article229709994.html?fbclid=IwAR1K8N0YsUstjNqYNFBxvpg_TgoNK6oVPJlcKmVR9oBmEV9fCBo86Ua4KMk

[emmaverybo]

1. No one should question any other person's faith, for faith takes many forms, organized and not,

individual to the believer.
Faith has its roots in world religions much older by centuries than the faith Graham and his fellows embrace, at the same time that it has sanctity in a personal heart and soul.
Faith should never be politicized, exploited, made exclusive, or be questioned as to its fidelity to a particular group’s dogma.
We can not establish a universal test for faith or call one kind of faith superior to another.
We must accept faith on faith’s terms.
The very essence of faith is belief in that which we can not see, can not know through all our science, and which defies our tests.
As a species, we are hard-wired for faith, an outrageous and passionate devotion to a reality we can not touch, see, prove, dispute.
Oh yee of little faith is a saying meant for Grahams’ son, for if he had enough faith, he would have no need or inclination to judge another’s.

[NastyRiffraff]

2. Hypocrisy personified:

Graham:

“Mayor Buttigieg says he’s a gay Christian. As a Christian I believe the Bible which defines homosexuality as sin, something to be repentant of, not something to be flaunted, praised or politicized. The Bible says marriage is between a man & a woman — not two men, not two women.”

Trump:

"I moved on her like a bitch. But I couldn’t get there. And she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look."

So in Frank Graham's bible, homosexuality is a sin, but moving on a married woman "like a bitch" means you're a defender of the faith?

[NoMoreRepugs]

3. They NEVER tire of being wrong - EVER.

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

4. Rabid conservatives live for the rush they get from the fight. They love the adrenaline surge

that kicks in when engaged in a fight-or-flight battle with someone about their chosen outrage (abortion, Mexicans, women, liberals, Democrats, Hillary, Obama, etc.). I find it helps me to view them as untreated drug addicts who require bigger and bigger doses of adrenaline to get their high, just like a heroin junkie does with their drug of choice. The harder you fight them, the bigger adrenaline high they get.

I don't view them as being stupid or ill-informed so much as being under the control of a powerful drug. They need a Twelve-Step program, "Adrenalineholics Anonymous." "I am powerless over adrenaline, and my life has become unmanageable."

That's why the anti-abortion fight keeps expanding, from initially being against abortion to being against abortion in all cases, including rape and incest, and now to eliminate birth control, which they argue is tantamount to abortion.

In A.A. they teach that alcoholism is a disease, not a character defect. It might help to view extremist conservatism in the same light.

[babylonsister]

6. They lost all morality in their quest for the rush. nt

[not_the_one]

5. "the Bible which defines homosexuality as sin"

it's not the first time "god" got it wrong...

That little tidbit was nothing more a blatant attempt to firmly establish patriarchy, with women as subjugates, nothing more than property used to receive as large of a "dowry" as possible.

Marriage was established as a business proposition.

[keithbvadu2]

7. The Bible also defines adultery as a sin. The Donald who brags about his adultery, Franklin.

The Bible also defines adultery as a sin.

The Donald who brags about his adultery, Franklin.