This is for all those that want to decry Christrians and Barack Obama's identity on DU:
http://www.motherjones.com/cgi-bin/print_article.pl?url...and
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/09/hillary..."Through all of her years in Washington, Clinton has been an active participant in conservative Bible study and prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group known as the Fellowship. Her collaborations with right-wingers such as Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and former Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) grow in part from that connection. "A lot of evangelicals would see that as just cynical exploitation," says the Reverend Rob Schenck, a former leader of the militant anti-abortion group Operation Rescue who now ministers to decision makers in Washington. "I don't....there is a real good that is infected in people when they are around Jesus talk, and open Bibles, and prayer."
"When Clinton first came to Washington in 1993, one of her first steps was to join a Bible study group. For the next eight years, she regularly met with a Christian "cell" whose members included Susan Baker, wife of Bush consigliere James Baker; Joanne Kemp, wife of conservative icon Jack Kemp; Eileen Bakke, wife of Dennis Bakke, a leader in the anti-union Christian management movement; and Grace Nelson, the wife of Senator Bill Nelson, a conservative Florida Democrat.
Clinton's prayer group was part of the Fellowship (or "the Family"), a network of sex-segregated cells of political, business, and military leaders dedicated to "spiritual war" on behalf of Christ, many of them recruited at the Fellowship's only public event, the annual National Prayer Breakfast. (Aside from the breakfast, the group has "made a fetish of being invisible," former Republican Senator William Armstrong has said.) The Fellowship believes that the elite win power by the will of God, who uses them for his purposes. Its mission is to help the powerful understand their role in God's plan."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15157545 /
The roster of regular participants has included such notable conservative names as Brownback, Santorum, Nickles, Enzi, and Inhofe. Then, in 2001, just after the new class of senators was sworn in, another name was added to the list: Hillary Rodham Clinton.
One spring Wednesday, a few months into the term, Senator Sam Brownback’s turn came to lead the group, and he rose intending to talk about a recent cancer scare. But as he stood before his colleagues Brownback spotted Clinton, and was overcome with the impulse to change the subject of his testimony. “I came here today prepared to share about this experience in my life that has caused great suffering, the result of which has deepened my faith,” Brownback said, according to someone who watched the scene unfold. “But I’m overcome now with only one thought.” He confessed to having hated Clinton and having said derogatory things about her. Through God, he now recognized his sin. Then he turned to her and asked, “Mrs. Clinton, will you forgive me?” Clinton replied that she would, and that she appreciated the apology.
“It was an extraordinary moment,” the member told me.
This repentance fostered an unlikely relationship that has yielded political bounty. Clinton and Brownback went on to cosponsor one measure protecting refugees fleeing sexual abuse, and another to study the effects on children of violent video games and television shows. “That morning helped make our working relationship,” Brownback told me recently. “It brought me close to someone I did not ever imagine I would become close to.” Since then, Clinton has teamed up on legislation with many members of the prayer group.
http://hotlineblog.nationaljournal.com/archives/2006/12..."Though Strider, as a onetime staff member for Nancy Pelosi, is squarely in the liberal camp, Clinton is part of not one, but two, prayers groups with distinctly conservative bents: an exclusive Senate prayer group that meets on Wednesday mornings, and a women’s prayer group that she’s been a part of since her early White House days. The women’s group is run by Holly Leachman, a layperson at the McLean Bible Church in Virginia, itself magnet for prominent conservatives, including former independent counsel Kenneth Starr, Republican senators John Thune and James Inhofe, as well as several Bush staffers and their families."
http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/010937.phpIgnorance cannot be an excuse here, because a Google search would tell you the Fellowship believes that Christian elites have a duty to rule the world, and serve Jesus Christ in a higher calling than their duties as leaders of nations. Plainly put, according to Sharlet, “the Fellowship believes that the elite win power by the will of God, who uses them for his purposes. Its mission is to help the powerful understand their role in God’s plan.” The notion that Christian elites should rule the world for the rest of us, and should lead their countries not for the benefit of all, but to pursue God’s plan as defined by the Fellowship and founder Doug Coe runs contrary to what this country was founded upon, and is anything but progressive.
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I re-posted this thread because my original thread got totally hijacked by people who didn't even read the original point. The point is that people should be very careful about anti-Christians rants if their own candidate, and the likely nominee, has significant involvement in an extremely religious group within the Senate who's membership list is an anathema to DU and the nominee's supporters. Obama is regularly attacked for his associations w/ the anti-gay, ex-gay minister but yet I think if people saw that Clinton is very tied in religious ways with anti-gay Senators it might open their eyes.
I'm imploring people to have a consistent set of standards for all their candidates.