The Christian Alliance for Progress is a new national movement to reclaim Christianity from the Religious Right. The Alliance wants America to know that the Religious Right does not represent the beliefs or politics of most Christians and that they reject the Religious Right’s use of the name of Christ and the language of the Christian faith to advance a divisive, radical agenda to erode the separation between church and state.

The Christian Alliance for Progress, which is supported by private donations, began organizing in March of 2005 and has thus far attracted around 3500 members. The Alliance, which is based in Jacksonville, Florida, describes itself as a grass-roots organization and has plans for a national membership modeled after the Christian Coalition, a conservative political organization that was begun by Pat Robertson.

The Alliance was founded by Patrick Mrotek, a health management consultant from Jacksonville, Florida. “We can no longer stand by and watch people speak hatred, division, war and greed in the name of our faith,” Mr. Mrotek said in a telephone interview with Lisa Anderson, Chicago Tribune national correspondent, “We believe we can no longer stand by and watch the language of our faith used in that manner, and we think it is time to reclaim our faith.”

There are millions of Christian Americans who hold moderate to progressive views — or who are, at the very least, offended by the Religious Right’s extremist political rhetoric. These Christians have become increasingly aware of how the Religious Right’s appropriation of the language of Christianity has caused many people to become circumspect with regard to the politicization of Christianity and to suspect and question the motives of any and all Christians involved in politics and government.

Mainstream and progressive Christians do not accept the Religious Right’s interpretation of Christian values and they reject the idea of Christianity being usurped by government as a device for the advocation of bigotry and injustice via ostracism and subjugation. They believe that the Religious Right’s misuse of Christianity and misunderstanding of core Christian values has caused the Christian faith to be associated with the radical ideologues and theocrats who have made large contributions to the polarization of our nation.

The Christian Alliance for Progress wants the political and church leaders of the Religious Right to learn a better understanding of basic Christian values, like justice, tolerance and compassion:

How We Seek to Follow the Jesus of the Gospels - Seven Values We Share:

Compassion and Care for “The Least of These”
We follow Jesus’ call to compassion and his command to “love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

Responsibility and Obligation
We heed the call to take up our cross - to transform our lives, but also to do more: to move beyond the “personal” and to take responsibility in our communities and country.

Justice for All
We stand against powerful systems of human injustice in our world as Jesus stood against them in his.

Equality and Inclusiveness
Like Jesus did among women, tax collectors, Samaritans and others, we reject hurtful exclusionary distinctions between “us” and “them.”

Faithful Stewardship
We follow Jesus’ call for responsible stewardship - caring protection for the environment and sharing of our worldly treasure.

Right Use of Power  
We turn away from fear; we use the power of God that flows through us to protect the innocent and build justice in the world, not to coerce others to our will or force others to accept our vision.

Spiritual Foundation
We turn to God as our spiritual foundation.

Christians (and others because the Alliance is inclusive and tolerant, welcoming people of all faiths) who want to let the Religious Right know that they do not speak for them can add their signatures to The Christian Alliance for Progress’ Jacksonville Declaration, a letter in which the group uses relatively strong language (“Know that you do not speak for us. We oppose so many of your words and deeds.”) toward our conservative Christian brothers and sisters, invoking the Scriptures to refute misinterpretations of Biblical wisdom and Christian values.

The Jacksonville Declaration quotes a number of prominent conservative Christians’ statements that the Alliance considers in contradiction with the spirit of tolerance and compassion in the Bible:

“You owe liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ.” — Church Leader Bob Jones, to George W. Bush after 2004 election

“I hope the Supreme Court will finally read the Constitution and see there’s no such thing, or no mention, of separation of church and state in the Constitution.” — House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas)

“Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost. As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence…in short, over every aspect and institution of human society.” — Dr. D. James Kennedy, Coral Ridge Ministries

“…the liberal, anti-Christian dogma of the left has been repudiated…” — Tony Perkins, Family Research Council

“I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians … the ACLU, People For the American Way … I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped this happen’.” — Rev. Jerry Falwell, on Pat Robertson’s 700 Club discussing the WTC attacks

Progressive to moderate Christians are just now beginning to feel the sting of the backlash that the Religious Right has caused to be visited upon all Christians and many such Christians are sick and tired of being associated with that small, but vocal minority known as the Religious Right. Some are afraid to admit to being Christians for fear of being branded as bigots and fanatics. Others have learned to keep their progressive to moderate political views to themselves inside their own churches, lest they be shunned for failing to toe the Religious Right’s party line as if it is tantamount to the Word of God.

Calling religious and political leaders to task with the Scriptures and demonstrating how their own words reveal their true “moral values” is an approach that has the potential to reach the millions of progressive to moderate Christians who reject the fanaticism of conservative Christian radicals like those quoted above. It will serve the purpose of getting progressive to moderate Christians engaged in discussing these issues amongst themselves so that they may discover that it is they, not the Religious Right, who actually represent the vast majority of Christian Americans.

Blogcritics.org: Michael Jackson On Trial

Everything you ever wanted to know — or didn’t want to know — about the Michael Jackson trial has been collected and documented by Eric Olsen of Blogcritics. The above link leads to a master post that contains numerous articles and discussions

If you have an interest in this topic, Blogcritics is the place to go. Mr. Olsen is an excellent writer and the comments/discussion section has a pretty good signal to noise ratio.

Enjoy!

America as “the land of the free and the home of the brave” is not just a snippet of lyrics from our National Anthem, it is an axiom. A free people must be very brave because freedom isn’t free and must be continuously protected and defended against the forces of tyranny, especially those within their own ranks.

We must have a lot of courage (and prudence and temperance) to resist the unavoidable temptations that come with our liberty because the maintenance of order in a free society requires that every citizen voluntarily practice personal responsibility without the benefit of an Earthly system of punishment and reward designed to restrict free will and conscience beyond the prosecution of crimes that violate civil and human rights.

Freedom is a frightening prospect for people who lack the fortitude to resist temptations of the flesh and therefore have little to no faith in their fellow Americans’ ability to do the same. So they become “culture warriors” and fight for the preservation and expansion of oppressive laws that are intended to curtail temptation by placing limits upon free will and conscience.

A Contest Between Freedom and Tyranny

Cultural uniformity cannot be made essential to unity in our free and pluralistic society without defeating the principle of liberty and justice for all. American culture is a collective hodgepodge of many other world cultures and far too diverse to ever take any sort of homogenized form in which our country could remain free. We are obliged to exercise tolerance with regard to our cultural, religious and other differences in deference to the one commonality that binds us all together as Americans, our Constitution and the civil and human rights enumerated therein.

The “culture war” is not about Christians versus non-Christians or believers versus non-believers. Nor is it about the partisan battles between political parties and the various camps of esoteric liberals and ambiguous conservatives. It is not a question of whether America is a democracy or a theocracy (it’s neither, actually). And although some self-proclaimed culture warriors sincerely believe that it is their mission, it is not about the saved working furiously to convert the sinners before the Rapture.

In spite of growing confusion wrought by the propaganda and doublespeak of sanctimonious people who assume themselves to be qualified as moral dictators whose privilege it is to prescribe how their fellow Americans should live, this “culture war” is actually nothing more than a conflict of ideas and ideals in which freedom-loving Americans are pitted against the tyrannical forces of dogmatic absolutists who seek to mitigate liberty — and by that same measure, our Constitution — because they are afraid of freedom and the notion of free will and conscience uninhibited by an Earthly moral authority (as if us mere mortals could effectively fashion such a thing in the first place).

Which Side are You On?

Examine both sides of any of the various freedom versus tyranny (”culture war”) issues/battles. One side stands for free will and the other stands against it. One side denounces the injustice of oppression whenever their fellow Americans’ civil and human rights are arbitrarily violated or denied, while the other side feels oppressed when the civil and human rights of people they find objectionable are recognized as being equal to theirs. One side is willing to give their fellow Americans the benefit of the doubt, the other trusts no one — not even themselves.

Should there even be a contest between freedom and tyranny in America of all places? Is there really any contest between these two ideologies at all? Would the vast majority of Americans actually prefer to live under the oppressive doctrine of an authoritarian state rather than a system in which government has no authority over the free will and conscience of the people, except when it applies to protecting and defending our civil and human rights?

This is a gender-neutral, non-partisan and multicultural public service announcement that is intended to slightly improve the quality of the blogosphere.

If you’re a male, female, intersexed, transgendered, Democrat, Republican, independent, libertarian, authoritarian, capitalist, communist, socialist, fascist, Nazi, anarchist, imperialist, isolationist, red-stater, blue-stater, swing-stater, gay, straight, bi-sexual, asexual, liberal, conservative, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Satanist, Buddhist, Hindu, Wiccan, Scientologist, devout, doubter, atheist, agnostic, activist, apathetic, progressive, regressive, pragmatist, rationalist, generalist, propagandist, flame baiter, etc, blogger and/or blog commenter of any shape, size color or style you must check your spelling for the betterment of the blogosphere.

None of us are above the occasional spelling or typographical error. And since there are several freeware, browser extension utilities available to help us to catch those little mistakes and avoid the bandwidth-wasting wrath and flames of the legions of self-appointed spelling police who inhabit the blogosphere and other forums, there are no excuses other than perhaps, “I’m too lazy to be bothered with such trivialities as proper spelling and accurate typewriting.”

SpellBound is a port of the spellchecker code and user interface from the Mozilla Suite’s Composer that enables spell checking in web forms such as html textarea / input elements (html input password elements are not checked by SpellBound) and rich text form elements. This allows you to spell check forms (e.g. message board posts, blog entries, wysiwyg, etc.) before submitting them when using your Mozilla Firefox or Mozilla Suite browser.

ieSpell is a[n] Internet Explorer browser extension that spell checks text input boxes on a webpage (form fields). It should come in particularly handy for heavy web mail and/or forum users. The program installs as a new button in the IE toolbar - after filling a form, just hit the ieSpell button and it pops up a dialog, similar to the MS Word spell check.

tinySpell is a small spell checking program, that automatically spell checks a selected word that is copied to the clipboard. You can also set tinySpell to check your spelling on the fly while you are typing and alert you by sound whenever it detects a misspelled word. The program runs in the system tray and suggests correct spellings via mouse click menu or hotkey. Additional features include a private dictionary and an auto-replacement feature. Unique and compact, great for quick spell checking.

These are but three spell checking solutions out of many that are available. Searches on the string, [“spell checker” web browser freeware] on Yahoo and Google return many results.

These programs won’t improve your content or your grammar, but they will help to minimize spelling and typographical errors, thus lending you little bit more credibility by making you appear educated enough to at least know how to spell.