Mr clean burning gay flag
Idolatry is the most dangerous form of religion-and of belief in general-because it mistakes outside for inside, form for reality, displays of piety for piety itself. John Adams also understood the broad nature of the term, writing with concern about “universal Idolatry to the Mammon of Unrighteousness.” He recognized how all tyrants, from Julius Caesar to corrupt governors, exploited “the mad Idolatry of the People,” which inevitably turned into “the surest Instruments of their own Servitude.” Man commits idolatry whenever he honors and reveres a creature in place of God, whether this be gods or demons (for example, satanism), power, pleasure, race, ancestors, the state, money, etc.” Idolatry consists in divinizing what is not God. “It remains a constant temptation to faith. “Idolatry not only refers to false pagan worship,” explains the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Nebuchadnezzar’s sin wasn’t merely the creation of his golden idol. Dazzled by the promise of gold and scared at the prospect of having to share it, they worship a king instead of love. Jerry Falwell’s lack of concern about apartheid South Africa (Bishop Desmond Tutu, he said, was a “phony”) to overwhelming pushback against accepting refugees. For white evangelicals, the most stalwart block of Trump supporters, that has long meant embracing racism, from the Rev. And it was the same spirit that drove Vladimir Putin to coyly boast of the Bible on his plane and Saddam Hussein to have a Quran written in his own blood.įar before Trump’s election, televangelists like his thrice-married personal pastor Paula White were busy rotting their religion from the inside by making wealth and power the goal of prayer. It was the same idolatry that whitens the teeth and tans the cheeks and furnishes the mansions of the prosperity gospel pastors who pant for attention at his side, before returning to homes like Trump’s, choked with the same precious metal that King Nebuchadnezzar used to craft his image of gold. President Donald Trump brandished an upside-down Bible in front of a church he rarely attends and whose leaders and congregation work against the policies he trumpets, the clouds of toxic irritants deployed to part peaceful protesters and allow his visit still hanging in the air, it was idolatry. As the singer John Prine, who died of COVID-19 in April, put it: “Your flag decal won’t get you into heaven.” Only idolaters believe that waving a flag makes you a patriot or wearing a cross makes you a Christian. Just as destroying these objects has no magic power, neither does holding them up. Even the perpetual attempts to criminalize flag-burning consistently-and rightly-fail. The power of words and images in the United States is in the values they represent, not the objects themselves. Its citizens do not worship pictures of leaders. That is why its laws-unlike those of many other nations-do not criminalize the burning of holy books or the destruction of sacred images. Not just the act of idolatry but the very idea that idols have power.
It looks like there is not the votes in the Senate to get a National ban on gay marriage, but that there may be the votes to ban flag burning.America opposes idolatry.
Next, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., wants votes on two perennial conservative causes: repealing the estate tax and giving Congress the constitutional authority to ban flag burning. A meeting Monday at the White House with opponents of gay marriage will follow, then a full-blown debate and vote in the Senate on a constitutional amendment to limit marriage to the union of a man and a woman. In Saturday's radio address, Bush will urge support for a national ban on gay marriage. Call it nostalgia - or election-year jitters. WASHINGTON - When President Bush beat John Kerry in 2004, Republicans said a ballot initiative in Ohio to ban gay marriage sealed the election, drawing legions of conservatives to the polls.īush and Republican senators now will seek another dose of conservative magic to embolden their party's base.
Republicans plan controversial votes on gay marriage, flag burning