[CC] Not In Our Name: No nuclear option! Yes to separation of church and state! (fwd)

[Alan Sondheim]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 17:34:52 -0500
From: Not In Our Name <nion at cloud9.net>
Reply-To: bounce-live-964687071-25638910 at ezinedirector.net
To: sondheim at panix.com
Subject: Not In Our Name: No nuclear option! Yes to separation of church and
     state!


Please forward to friends, other groups, lists, etc
April 23, 2005
Hello -

Recent alarming developments:
     -- Senator Trent Lott has called for Republicans to exercise "the nuclear option" (he coined the phrase) - a proposal to force through a change in the rules of the Senate to outlaw filibusters by the minority.
     -- Senate Majority Leader Frist has stated his intention to join Christian fundamentalist leaders in a simulcast rally against "activist judges" and "out-of-control" courts.

This is a "nuclear threat".  A threat to what have been core principles -- the "rules of law", the system of checks and balances, and the separation of church and state.

People are responding in protest - check our web site soon; still, more people need to become aware of the importance of these events and speak out against them:
We are in the process of posting letters/statements to the www.nion.us web site. See below excerpts of a published letter from The Reverend Phelps of Louisville raising his voice against a theocracy.
     -- The Not In Our Name Statement of Conscience (NION SOC) has received letters to the editor and comments from NION signers around the country protesting these issues.  Please continue to send in your comments.
     -- Over 1000 law students, professors and legal theorists participated in a conference and rally at Georgetown University Law school on April 21st to refuse the radical abuse of power and preserve the filibuster. Other organizations like Move-on.org and Americans United for Separation of Church and State are also mobilizing people to get out information about the attempts to nuke the filibuster.
     -- In the Louisville area, press conferences and other events are planned for Sunday April 24th(see a short list below).

Let us know if you hear of other events. Please write us, nion at cloud9.net, your impressions (what you saw, what you heard, what you thought) after the events! Critical minds want to know. Check our web sites for updates.

Get out the NION Statement of Conscience:
     -- People will be in Louisville with the NION statement of conscience.
     -- We encourage you to get the statement out where ever you go - (download the statement at http://www.nion.us/NSOC/NewNIONflyer.pdf ); get it up in store windows and the laundromat, and post it on the internet. If you want to link up with NION SOC signers in your area let us know and we will work to put you in touch with others(write janet at nion.us).

It's been our experience that people don't know what this "nuclear option" is about, why the "filibuster in the Senate" matters or why it's a big deal that the Senate Majority leader participates in a fundamentalist Christian rally.  The Not In Our Name Statement of Conscience speaks to this as part of the whole Bush regime agenda and its disastrous course. "Could we have imagined a few years ago that core principles such as the separation of church and state, due process, presumption of innocence, freedom of speech, and habeas corpus would be discarded so easily?" These developments are being done Not In Our Name. Please share your experiences with us.

Contribute to NION SOC:
Your contributions to the NION SOC will assist in getting the statement to a ever wider audience; to build up our side; to give strength to people who feel very isolated in today's climate.  Encourage your friends, family, co-workers and everyone you meet to contribute financially as well as in other ways. The cost of "free speech" in this country is very high and as e-mails we have received testify, people need and want to see this statement. There's nowhere else where people are finding what is in their heads and in their hearts.

The suggested contribution is $200, but all contributions are very welcome. Because there are thousands of signers, not all names can appear in the printed ads, but the names of all signers are posted on the web site. Contribute on line at http://www.nion.us/READ_AND_SIGN.htm  or  make a check payable to Not In Our Name and mail to: Not In Our Name,  305 West Broadway, #199,  NY, NY 10013

Help Build the NION SOC staff:
We need your help in building a staff for the Not In Our Name Statement of Conscience. Please write Janet at NION.us to volunteer - you don't need to be in the New York City area - or write in with your suggestions. Send us your resume. We also want to redesign our web site - so you web people/designers out there please write in.

Warmly,
Janet for the NION SOC


Events Sunday in Louisville to say:  NO! to Frist and Theocracy

Sunday, April 24, 2005:  At 2:30pm, 4:30pm & 6:00pm

**2:30 pm
SOCIAL JUSTICE SUNDAY:  Central Presbyterian Church, 318 W. Kentucky St. (@ Kentucky St. & 4th St.)
You are invited to a Public Gathering of Progressive Religious Communities and Progressive Community Groups to witness:

OUR OUTRAGE over the attempt by the Family Research Council and its radical Christian Right colleagues to highjack the judicial selection process for their political/theocratic agenda

OUR DISMAY Senate Majority Leader, Senator Bill Frist, is lending his name and influence to the Family Research Council's claim of universal support from "people of faith" for its strategy, thereby giving false religious credentials to a thinly veiled political agenda

OUR POSITIVE COMMITMENT to defend and strengthen our social context in its commitment to fairness for all people, free of biased religious doctrines and prejudiced attitudes which are inimical to a mature religious understanding of the standards of inclusiveness and justice in American life

AMONG THE SPEAKERS:
Rev. Dr. Nancy Jo Kemper, Executive Director, Kentucky Council of Churches
Rev. Dr. Robert Franklin, Professor, Emory University, Atlanta; former President, Interdenominational Theological Center; ordained minister, Church of God in Christ
Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell. Director, Department of Religion, Chautauqua Institution, Chautauqua, NY (former General Secretary of the National Council of Churches, NCC)
Emily Whitehurst, Director of the 100 year old Ecumenical Council, Austin, Texas
Rev. Dr. Albert M. Pennybacker, Chair & Executive Officer, Clergy & Laity Network; former NCC Associate General Secretary for Public Policy; former Professor, Lexington (KY) Theological Seminary


**4:30 pm
Gathering at Jefferson Square  (downtown across from the old Courthouse)


**6:00 p.m.
Place:  Along sidewalk in front of the Highview Baptist Church, 15201 Shelbyville Road
Garb:   Pulpit robe with full vestments
Event:  *SILENT DEMONSTRATION* -- no chanting, singing, shouting or conversational interchange. No marching. Our presence, our robes and our signs will do all the speaking.

Worship inside the church begins at 6:30, and we will honor that spirit. Plans are a silent demonstration (we have a city permit) by robed clergy at Highview Baptist's "Justice Sunday" this coming Sunday. If you feel compelled to take back the definition of "Christian" and "justice" from the religious right, this is the place to start.


Bring your own signs: "We are committed Christians, and we renounce Justice Sunday," or "We are faithful Christians, and you are not speaking for us," or "Read your Bible again; this is not justice," Use your imagination. Be brief; be pithy.

**************

A Tale of Two Churches
  by Rev. Joseph Phelps
The Louisville Courier-Journal    4/17/2005

"Justice Sunday - Stopping the Filibuster Against People of Faith" is being staged at Louisville's Highview Baptist, a church with a name so similar to my church, Highland Baptist, that they are often mistaken for each other. Despite the name similarity, these sister congregations don't seem to have been born from the same litter or even the same species. …

But like so many other siblings, these sisters take different paths. There is a pronounced difference between the "view" and the "land" of Highview and Highland. This difference is a microcosm of today's religious and political polarization.

Highview Baptist sees a messy world and works to control it by laying out a uniform action plan from a Bible that anticipated and prescribed everything we need to fix the world (thus, the new "Biblical Counseling" program at Southern Seminary, led by Highview's Al Mohler, that pits science and psychology against their view of "what the Bible says"). It is their calling to impose this plan, perfectly written for anyone to see, upon individuals, churches and denominations, but also, finally, upon public policy. .. They know God's truth with certainty, and those who think otherwise are deceived or deceitful….

Highview's sister, Highland Baptist, also yearns for a kind of theocracy, not in the form of a Christian takeover, but as a condition in which God's vision for this world rules the affairs of people and policies. For Highland, Jesus showed that God chooses to work by way of calling rather than controlling, by demonstration of love rather than domination of laws, by God's justice rather than government's justices. …

Read the whole article at:  http://www.refuseandresist.org/culture/art.php?aid=1911



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