You're Not My Brother And You're Not My Sister

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MrsSpringsteen

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On MLK day too-that's the spirit!

New Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley Criticized for Christian-Only Message - ABC News

Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley offended some of his new constituents this week when he told a church crowd that he would only accept as his brothers and sisters those who had accepted Jesus Christ as their savior.

"Anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother," Bentley said Monday at a church service held moments after his inauguration, according to The Birmingham News.

Some non-Christians said they were offended by the comments and questioned whether the new governor would offer equal treatment to people of other faiths and non-believers.

"We live in a country that is hugely diverse," said David Silverman, president of American Atheists, the country's oldest atheist civil rights group. "The governor basically said: 'If you're not like me, you're second class.' This is a man puts the Bible above the Constitution and his preacher above the president. His words are disgusting and bigoted and reinforce Alabama's reputation for being backward and bigoted."

Speaking to a mixed-race crowd at Dexter Avenue King Memorial Church, Bentley, a Republican, said he considered anyone who believed in Christ to be a brother regardless of color, but people who were not Christian could not have as close a relationship to him.

"If the Holy Spirit lives in you, that makes you my brothers and sisters. Anyone who has not accepted Jesus, I want to be your brothers and sisters, too," Bentley said.

Trying to clarify his remarks Bentley's office issued a statement Tuesday, but for more minority groups the damage was done.

A spokesman for the Anti Defamation League said the governor's comments were "stunning" and "distressing" and were tantamount to proselytizing.

"It is stunning to me that he'd make those remarks. It's distressing because of the suggestion that he feels that people who aren't Christian are not entitled to love and respect," said Bill Nigut, the ADL's regional director.

"On the day that he is sworn in as governor, he's sending a statement to the public saying if you're not Christian you can't be with me. From our point of view that is proselytizing for Christianity and coming very close to a violation of the First Amendment."

Alabama Governor Clarifies Remarks on Christianity

Responding to the backlash, Governor Bentley's office Tuesday released a statement clarifying his comments.

"The governor clearly stated that he will be the governor of all Alabamians — Democrat, Republican and Independent, young, old, black and white, rich and poor. As stated in his [inaugural] address, Gov. Bentley believes his job is to make everyone's lives better," the statement said.

Bentley is not the first recently sworn in governor this year to inflame racial or religious tensions. Last week the new governor of Maine, Republican Paul LePage, told critics they could "kiss my butt" over his decision to not attend a Martin Luther King Day celebration. LePage, who has a black adopted son, said he did not have time to attend the event.
 
Its Alabama, what do you expect? :shrug:

I mean, its the Bible belt, so narrow minds are common there.
 
Huntsville (AL) Times, Jan. 18
Rabbi Beth Bahar of Huntsville's Temple B'nai Sholom was matter-of-fact. "Fortunately, he can be my governor without being my brother," Bahar said. "Realistically, we all have an outlook in the world, our biases, either consciously or not. At least he is up-front about his world view. It's a world view the Jewish community has experience working with. Hopefully, his agenda will consciously include everyone."
Typical Deep South rabbi. And as a "matter-of-fact" coping strategy, I completely agree with her. But in context it also reflects a certain passivity about your status in the community, about what you have a right to expect and demand. That's not something I miss.
 
Bit prejudiced, no?

Yeah, probably. But you wouldn't see a politician from New York or California say any of that.

Also:

"We live in a country that is hugely diverse," said David Silverman, president of American Atheists, the country's oldest atheist civil rights group. "The governor basically said: 'If you're not like me, you're second class.' This is a man puts the Bible above the Constitution and his preacher above the president. His words are disgusting and bigoted and reinforce Alabama's reputation for being backward and bigoted."
 
OK, OK, I shot my mouth off and made an ass out of myself again. Clearly, I have yet to learn how to think before I speak.

Carry on...
 
Way to follow Christ's teachings, buddy :up:!

I have to think these people's filters are broken or don't exist or something...what other reason could there possibly be for someone to sit there and think, "Yeah, this sounds like something that'd be okay to say aloud"?

Angela
 
Alabama governor: Non-Christians are 'not my brother' - latimes.com


I read that article in my morning paper

and this was more of a non-story for me.

The new governor is a Sunday school teacher and deacon at Tuscaloosa's First Baptist Church, which considers "passionately" evangelizing to be a "key core value," according to its website.

Speaking to a large crowd Monday at Montgomery's Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church — where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached — Bentley said that "if you're a Christian and you're saved ... it makes you and me brother and sister," according to a report in the Birmingham News.

"Now I will have to say that, if we don't have the same daddy, we're not brothers and sisters," he added, according to the paper. "So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother."

The guy is a Sunday School teacher speaking from a pulpit trying to bring people to Jesus. What is surprising?
 
Way to follow Christ's teachings, buddy :up:!

I have to think these people's filters are broken or don't exist or something...what other reason could there possibly be for someone to sit there and think, "Yeah, this sounds like something that'd be okay to say aloud"?

Angela

Didn't Jesus say about the same thing?

John 14:6
 
He's also the highest elected official of the state, speaking on a major public holiday honoring MLK Jr., at a racially mixed congregation, and it's Alabama, so, ghosts of history all about (hence his prefacing the statement by professing his "color-blindness")...you want to get it right all-around in a situation like that. There's more going on than just you, the Sunday School teacher, addressing your own congregation. It's an odd and sociopolitically inappropriate situation in which to be asserting boundaries to your goodwill in the first place.
 
Looking closer, I do see it was on a Monday, MLK holiday and not a Sunday sermon. He needs to know that he can not always wear his evangelical hat.

If he wants to be a missionary (full time), he should resign and and take up that vocation.
 
""Anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother," Bentley said Monday at a church service held moments after his inauguration, according to The Birmingham News."



The event was a church service. In this context Bentley was expressing his faith.


The Christian faith is a very narrow faith. The Christian faith says there are not many roads to heaven or many beliefs or ideas that are all equal.


There is only that rebel from Nazareth claiming to be God and claiming to be the only way to salvation.

That is the hard cut of the message of Jesus.
 
Alabama governor apologizes for remarks during inauguration

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley apologized Wednesday for his inauguration day remarks about only Christians being his brothers and sisters and said he would work over the next four years for people of all faiths and colors.

Bentley, 67, said he didn't mean to insult anyone and was speaking as an evangelical Christian to fellow Baptists. The retired dermatologist, who replaced two-term Republican Gov. Bob Riley, is a Sunday school teacher and deacon at Tuscaloosa's First Baptist Church.

"If anyone from other religions felt disenfranchised by the language, I want to say I am sorry. I am sorry if I offended anyone in any way," Bentley said Wednesday.


Alabama governor apologizes for remarks during inauguration - St. Petersburg Times
 
While that's not as good as a plain old "I am sorry for what I said," at least it wasn't "I'm sorry YOU were offended," which is a typical non-apology.

At least he had the second "I" in there.
 
i could write an essay on how pot/kettle my statement was, but it's already been said, so i decided to chip in with the probably overused haha alabama is backward joke.'

i could have made the clearer sooner.



i'd say i'm the second person in this thread to have erred with the tongue in cheek comments, and so we can carry on again.
 
I don't think that talking about the historical reputation of a place, or its people, in broad terms, is always wrong. A few million people live in Alabama. It is impossible to talk about all of their millions of individual opinions. But, fair to many of those individual Alabamans or not, their state has cultivated a certain historical reputation that is often perpetuated by events like this one. Now if a movement of voting Alabamans expressed disgust with his statements, and really kicked up some dust, rather than expressions of hopeful disappointment from some rabbis, then maybe people should start cutting Alabama a break. But, "as a matter of fact", this new governor's statements will probably help him get re-elected, and we know that is true. So, why is it so unfair to talk about Alabama in general terms of historical reputation? It may be a fine line separating this from more ignorant prejudice, but a line nonetheless. He is the elected governor of that state. I wonder what his political campaign was like.
 
true, i just hate how no one can ever just say "i'm sorry for what i said" and end it at that. that's all there needs to be, anyway.

Probably because he's not sorry. He meant what he said because, from a Christian standpoint, he was telling the truth. He said it in the right venue, but he picked the wrong day/time.
 
The Christian faith is a very narrow faith. The Christian faith says there are not many roads to heaven or many beliefs or ideas that are all equal.


There is only that rebel from Nazareth claiming to be God and claiming to be the only way to salvation.

That is the hard cut of the message of Jesus.



i don't doubt that many christians believe this. i can understand where this comes from.

that's why they're so terrifying to the rest of us, and probably to jesus as well.
 
But, fair to many of those individual Alabamans or not, their state has cultivated a certain historical reputation that is often perpetuated by events like this one. Now if a movement of voting Alabamans expressed disgust with his statements, and really kicked up some dust, rather than expressions of hopeful disappointment from some rabbis, then maybe people should start cutting Alabama a break.
The problem with this is that sticking to that cynical, bad-faith stance of "Meh, it's [name of Southern state], whaddya expect" only reinforces the tendency for pushback over such incidents to remain limited to half-assed "expressions of hopeful disappointment," which don't actually call out what's problematic in what happened and insist on change. From historic experience, minorities of whichever type have a habit of reacting to this sort of thoughtlessly alienating behavior by rationalizing, "Well, what else can I expect--my kind are low on the totem pole here; in fact, really I ought to be grateful they abide me as well as they do, so I'll just politely signal that this hurts me a little, but hasten to add that, as always, I look forward to working with them." And that's bad enough, but when outside spectators then vocally adopt the "Meh, it's Alabama..." stance too, that makes it worse, because not only are they also seemingly endorsing this type of passivity, they're doing it in a way that simultaneously tends to make you feel squeezed from the opposite direction. Because even though you're Jewish (or black, or gay, or whatever), at the same time chances are you also have a felt sense of yourself as a Southerner--that's your home, your community, the place many of your folk's customs and traditions come from, and you're fond of quite a lot of that really, so it's also an affront to see (implicitly) the whole of that so easily and scornfully dismissed. And when that outside spectator's attitude towards you appears in so many words to be, "How can you possibly stand living in this human cesspool?!?" you then feel like telling them, "Look, go f--- yourself." It doesn't feel like respectful support.
 
""Anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother," Bentley said Monday at a church service held moments after his inauguration, according to The Birmingham News."



The event was a church service. In this context Bentley was expressing his faith.


The Christian faith is a very narrow faith. The Christian faith says there are not many roads to heaven or many beliefs or ideas that are all equal.


There is only that rebel from Nazareth claiming to be God and claiming to be the only way to salvation.

That is the hard cut of the message of Jesus.

You both have your theology wrong.

Just recently you evoked: "we are our brother's keeper", and there are passages that speak of how we're to take care of the least of our brothers.

Do you really think the Bible is inferring only to those that share your same faith?
 
As they say, I don't have to be wrong for you to be right. I think we are both right.
 
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