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The gender question in the field of religion cannot be separated from the political and cultural progress of humankind. Regardless of whether one is a believer in the Abrahamic or World religions or not, the fact remains that the primacy of men over religious and political affairs of humankind conspired to keep men at the top.
In addressing the presidential campaign and the question of religion, it is dangerous and unwise for all of us to drag the presidential candidates into this orbit. There are five points to remember in dealing with this question.
Since former president Jimmy Carter published his most recent book on the Palestinians and Israel, the debate about anti-Semitism has captured the imagination of many Americans.
Rev. Jerry Falwell, who was born on August 11, 1933, passed away on May 15 2007. He led services at Thomas Road Baptist Church, a megachurch in Lynchburg, Virginia. He changed affiliations from the more traditional Baptist Bible Fellowship International to the mainly conservative Southern Baptist Convention. He ended his self-identification with fundamentalism in favor of evangelicalism.
He will enter the history books as a religious and political force that sought to affect the direction of American religious and political history. Through his religious and social maneuvers as well as his political rhetoric, he helped create in American life a new way of getting traditional Christians, who heretofore were to a certain degree allergic to political matters, more receptive to the callings of his caravan. In doing so he thought and believed American life and thought would reverse the secularizing tendencies. Caught in the web of the Cold War and the culture war in his own country, he tried to exercise political influence among the politicians and spiritual magnetisms among the rank and file Christians of American society.
When we listen to the Democratic or Republican presidential candidates we should take many things into account when matters on religion are discussed. In the interest of time and space let me identify a few points to remember when one looks at a candidate for the presidency.
The first and most important question to me is the candidate's vision of the country. This is to say, one must pay attention to how the human condition is looked at in light of the historical and sociological map of the candidate and the manner in which he defines and perceives American life. Here, belief in God is one thing but practice of one's faith could become the other significant factor that locates you somewhere in the minds of the voters.
Pagan rights can be a subject of dispute only when the state and society are not in sync with respect to the standing of the Pagans as members of society and to the public acknowledgment of their status as fellow citizens.
There are three points to remember about this matter. The first is the question of citizenship and the right of the Pagan to live and let live with Pagan or non-Pagan members of American society. Because the state allows Americans to believe or not to believe in a Deity (monotheism as in the case of the Abrahamic religions), secularism, polytheism and many other world views have coexisted with the Monotheists for many decades.
What Islam Really Says About Violence, Rights and Other Religions
Gomaa, Fadlallah, Mubarak, Khan, Siddiqi, Ellison, others | On Faith
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