Here are some of the week’s most notable quotes culled from news reports from across Texas, and beyond.
John Green, senior research adviser at the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, discussing the role of religion in this year’s elections on NPR’s Talk of the Nation.
You know, I think this year’s Republican nomination contest, particularly in the Iowa caucuses, has been especially intense in that regard. I can’t think of another race where we had quite as much attention to the candidates’ faith, both by the candidates themselves and by other people who are participating in the contests.
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New Hampshire Republican state Rep. Jerry Bergevin, who introduced one of two new anti-evolution bills in that state’s legislature.
I want the full portrait of evolution and the people who came up with the ideas to be presented. It’s a worldview and it’s godless. Atheism has been tried in various societies, and they’ve been pretty criminal domestically and internationally. The Soviet Union, Cuba, the Nazis, China today: they don’t respect human rights. As a general court we should be concerned with criminal ideas like this and how we are teaching it. . . . Columbine, remember that? They were believers in evolution. That’s evidence right there.
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Rev. Jim Garlow, pastor of a San Diego megachurch and a leading champion of California’s anti-gay-marriage initiative, on the fear among some core conservative activists that Mitt Romney may become the Republican presidential nominee.
I’m not in panic mode, at least not yet. There’s still time, although the fuse is short.
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Patty Whetsell, a Republican activist in South Carolina, talking about Rick Perry.
What you see is what you get, and he stands on the same foundation that I stand on. He acknowledges God in his life, and without God, where would we be? He’s not like some pastors who think they own their church. He acknowledges those around him. And his wife is a great asset. She’s submissive to him, as she should be.
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Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Leonard Pitts, on the intersection of religion and American politics.
The Texas Freedom Network will host Leonard Pitts, January 25 in Houston.
The best thing about the intersection of religion and politics is something we don’t see very often — people of faith demanding government live up to the moral imperatives of religion. This mandates mercy, concerns for the poor, a love of peace, and so on — qualities which you don’t see in many of our modern interpretations. If only people wanted to have a country that mirrored the best aspirations of these faiths. Instead, we seem to have people who see religion as a license to exclude or oppress.
“The best thing about the intersection of religion and politics is something we don’t see very often — people of faith demanding government live up to the moral imperatives of religion. This mandates mercy, concerns for the poor, a love of peace, and so on — qualities which you don’t see in many of our modern interpretations. If only people wanted to have a country that mirrored the best aspirations of these faiths. Instead, we seem to have people who see religion as a license to exclude or oppress.”
Guilty. Just Like Jesus, I have concerns for the poor and all of the other “least of these.” I have plans to oppress the wallets of Christian fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals from sea to shining sea to make sure they own up to meeting their Christian responsibilities. It that pisses them off, then they should have thought about that first before getting their tickets punched to ride on the Jesus train. And as my old friend Johnny Young used to say, “…and I hope you don’t like it.”