you go kid...keep at 'em

It functions as a good white trash litmus test. As in if you like that song, you're probably, you know.

 

Much like Micheal Bolton, Greenwood is a no-talent assclown. And a professional jingoist for the dumber echelons of "god, guns, and gays" conservatives.

 

Unfortunately, the comments in this article are some of the dumbest shit I've ever read. Christian privilege and persecution complex at its ugliest.

 

what a funny guy you are. Christians should expect to be persecuted. unfortunately what many experience as persecution is merely the contemptuous attitudes of people who cannot accept that there is as much a place in contemporary society for expressions of spiritual worship as there is for secularity ( if that's a word ).

i read only the first page of the comments. not much substance, but not dumb.

 

There is no shortage of "spiritual worship" in this country. There are like eight churches within a mile of where I live. Athletes, actors, politicians all express religious sentiment quite freely.

I couldn't care less, really, about public school kids singing "God Bless the USA" because "God" is in it. It's technically unconstitutional, but ya gotta pick your battles. What's appalling to me is the issue people want to make of it, and you hit on it--Christians do "expect" to be persecuted, so they find a way to believe that they ARE . . . in a country where they're the 80% majority, in a country where there is a national freaking day of prayer, and where their ideology has infiltrated every last bit of our lives. As an example--a hundred bucks says 99% or more of the elected officials in Washington are Christian. Double or nothing that zero percent are atheist.

Incidentally, I've been waiting for you to reply to my response to your Dawkins post. Has it been in vain?

 

first of all, the notion that 80% of Americans are Christian is absurd. lots of people think they are Christian because their parents took them to church when they were young. they attend church of Christmas and Easter. they put a $5 bill in the offering plate.

Whoopie, twang!

my guess is that less than 50% of politicians are Christian. Statistically some must be atheist.

you owe me $200.

there isn't any point in discussing the Dawkins video.

you think that's how it happened because the alternative is implausible to you. implausible = it couldn't have happened by an other method than some naturalistic cause.

Dawkins is not saying that the eye developed the way portrayed in the video. he is saying that it is possible that the eye developed that way.

it's possible it didn't.

the fallback that there were 10 gazillion mutations over the span of millions of years still doesn't overcome the hurdle of how life formed in the first place.

 

nah. the constitution doesn't say anything of the sort.

 

1 open atheist, Fortney Hillman (Pete) Stark

http://www.michaelnugent.com/best/americas-top-two-elected-atheists/

 

And the President is Muslim right?

This sounds like a true Scotsman argument.

Now, elected officials (Senate especially) are highly educated, so I would not be surprised that many of those that call themselves Christians are not religious or “secret” agnostic/atheist. But I would not say ½ of them.

I know there is 1 Muslim, 1 Atheist and a few Jewish in the congress, the rest are Christian, of those Christians I would Imagine 20-30% are just culturally Christians,

That would still leave around 65-75% in congress being Christians (even if you do not personally approve of their form of Christianity).

 

Yup, that's exactly what it is.

And really, I should've said 99% "religious." Good catch on Pete Stark.

Then why'd you post it?

I'm going to start a new thread, because responding to this here would be off-topic.

 

Well, he told the woman at the well "neither do I condemn you, Go and sin no more."

He acknowledged what the woman did was sin. He didn't condemn her because the law condemns sin. (Paul goes into this in much details in Galatians, for one.)

Why is having a standard of behavior for employees, students, or people in general un-Christian? Jesus clearly has a standard of behavior for individuals. Cursory glances at the gospels make that very clear.

 

She knowingly engaged in behavior which was against the code of conduct in the contract she signed. She knew that working at a Christian school, there is going to be different expectations than at a public school. She made the choice.

If she had embezzelled money from the school, would it have been unchristian to fire her? If she had made anti-Semitic or racist remarks, would it have been unchristian?

Is it ever unchristian to fire anyone for any reason or should all churches/Chrsitian schools/synagogues have an "anything goes" policy of behavior for their employees so as to not be unchristian by firing them?

 

You're not addressing mine, either.

If an employee knowingly violates terms of employment, then, regardless of type of institution, they can expect to be fired. If a pastor of a church has an extra-marital affair, they can expect to be fired, even if their family is depending upon him for financial support. It's the same thing. In fact, by your reasoning, no one who ever claims to be a Christian could ever fire anyone, because the person who was fired has a family dependent upon them.

If you want to make the argument that the school should have waited until the end of the year and not renew, I guess we could discuss that. But this idea that being a true Christian or that Jesus wasn't concerned with actions is bunk. At the end of the day, she willingly violated the terms of her contract. It was her choice to do so and the schools responsibility to uphold the standards they expect. As far as medical insurance, every person, even when they're terminated with cause as this teacher, has a right to Cobra.

 

Oscar Wilde has a simple repartee. "Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live." This is exactly what these Christian school administrators are imposing upon her.

Embezzling money and making anti-Semitic or racist remarks have real-world consequences on others. Having a child out of wedlock, however, is a private matter.

 

Every single company has standards of behavior that generally don't allow for embarrassing the employer or bringing ill repute. Look at Bobby Petrino--that's a private matter and the University of Arkansas isn't even a Christian school. Any teacher or coach is a public figure, just on varying scales.

Does the woman bear any responsibility whatsoever for knowingly and willfully violating her terms of employment with the school?

 

Because the issue is a "morals clause" you are constructing a strawman of this woman's side by loading your response--saying she has "knowingly and willfully violating her terms of employment." EEOC laws prevent employer discrimination on account of pregnancies or other medical conditions. There are undoubtedly thousands of women working at Christian institutions of all sorts that have been or become pregnant out-of-wedlock. Living in the 21st century, this woman likely had no reason to think her employer was living prior to the 20th.

So no, I don't even accept your question as valid with its inbuilt assumptions.

 

From the article:

"While Samford and her lawyer, Colin Walsh, are working toward filing a discrimination suit against the school, their case may be complicated by the fact that Heritage Christian Academy is a private school, and recent Supreme Court decisions have defended the right of Christian schools to exert more influence on their hirings and firings because they consider teachers to be "ministers in the classroom.""

 

I'm fully aware of the Supreme Court precedent seeing as I am in law school. My hope would be that Kennedy and the four non-theocratic justices would distinguish this because of the vagueness of the language of the "morals clause," but having been unable to locate the actual text of the clause, I can't speak to it one way or another.

 

which, of course, is the main problem discussing this topic, because only the school and the former teacher know the exact language in the contract.

Good luck in your studies.