Does anyone think the pastor is doing this just to get attention? His open hatred and contempt are in direct violation of the Christian Scriptures, for crying out loud!
I’m Christian(Episcopalian flavored) and I think what the guy is doing is dreadful. Gives honest Christians a bad name. Can’t someone tell this Phelp’s wannabe that you catch more flies with honey?
Okay, the guy’s an asshole and an idiot, but really: is a baptist minister in some jerkwater town preaching hate and misinformation about Islam really “news”?
Well, mainstream Christianity does teach that Jesus is divine, and the son of God/God himself, and the only way to salvation. Meanwhile Islam teaches that Jesus was just a prophet, and not divine nor the son of God, but rather Muhammed is the only way to salvation.
What else could one expect when conflicting ideologies like this rub against one another?
Well, Christians might start by looking at the Golden Rule, the second Great Commandment (and the Parable of the Good Samaritan about who is one’s “neighbor”), and the Parable of the Sheep and Goats, as to how to behave towards believers in another faith. And Moslems might take a leaf from the one passage in the Qu’ran that everyone knows, thanks to Heinlein, about what it means if you mingle your affairs with theirs.
But, of course, this all depends on conforming one’s heart to the God who loves all men, and some people are more interested in using their religion to promote hatred than in following the God they preach about.
Basically you have to have faith in God (who is the same God as in Christianity and Judaism), obey the words of the prophets (which in includes Moses and Jesus), do good deeds and avoid doing bad deeds.
IIRC, Muslims believe that your good deeds will be weighed against your evil deeds on judgement day. faith in God and obedience of the prophets will allow you to do good and avoid evil.
So the very short answer is that you have to believe in God and be a good person. Mohammed is a prophet whose teachings inform you of the will of God, but Mohammed, himself, is not seen as any kind of path to salvation.
You also have to remember that there is no original sin in Islam, nothing to atone for or be saved from. In Islam you are saved by your own works, not by somebody else.
Amend that to “It’s not Christ I have a problem with, it’s Christians who don’t follow his teachings” and I’d be right there with you. Brutus, I take it your point is that the same would go for Islam/Muslims? It never ceases to amaze me, how twisted minds can twist words of love and compassion into a snarl of hate and cruelty.
(Sigh) It’s people like that minister who betray the religion they claim to defend. I sometimes wonder if it’s possible for any faith to escape the perversion of fanaticism?
Thanks, Diogenes. I probably should have known that. On the whole I am not uninformed on religions. But that knowledge set seems to have slipped past me.
As quoted by Heinlein, it reads, “For if ye mingle your affairs with theirs, they are your brothers.” It’s part of a conversation between Jubal and “Stinky” Mahmoud.
When I looked at the translation by Mohammed Marmaduke Whatsisname some years ago, I found that that’s not a terribly precise rendering of the Arabic, though it does carry the gist of the meaning. But I don’t have a Quran at hand to look up the actual passage – perhaps someone who does could help?
I wasn’t referring to the Bible but rather to Christ and his teachings about loving your neighbor, forgiveness, and all that stuff that self-righteous bigots seem to think applies only to them and their kind, and not to anyone they don’t happen to approve of. And yup, there’s plenty of stuff in the Bible (especially the Old Testament) that haters can haul out and brandish at their targets.
For the record, I’m an agnostic (raised Congregationalist) who sometimes flipflops toward atheism or Deism. But I’ve given up on organized religion. I just hope that if any specific faith DOES happen to be the One True Way, it accepts good works as the passport to Heaven.
Look here, we are always going to have some random fuckwits laying around. It is inevitable that some of those fuckwits will have access to billboards. As long as you and others recognize the guy as an ill informed and non-thinking fool, and tell him so you have done all you can. It is worth noting that the Reverend Mister Fuckwit is not proclaiming hostility on the part of his particular sept of a particular subdivision of the organized faith as a matter of theology–his billboard proclaims a political doctrine. The message is not that Islam is the enemy of Jesus. His message is that Islam is the enemy of the state. Somebody want to see if this outfit’s tax exempt status need review?
It could be worse. He could have called for a crusade to free the Holy Land from the heel of the unbeliever. If the President can declare a crusade (or a pogrom or an ethnic cleansing) there is no good reason that some random Baptist preacher can’t declare a crusade, too. If so maybe he will take some of the skinhead and Aryan Brotherhood type Christians with him. Maybe some of the Orange Order and Provo IRA types would go along. And the people who think shooting ObGyns is a good idea. And the guys with the strange hair cuts from the satellite religious channel.
