Evangelicals Strategy to Court Catholics for Votes

[RamboLiberal]

Would someone remind the Catholics (and all other faiths who might join these people that they think unless you are "born again" that you will not be saved! (BTW, that was a position I found wrong even as a kid when I was in Catholic school and we were preached basically the same message that if you weren't baptized, yadda yadda yadda).

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/11/07/MNG5F9NITU1.DTL

<snip>

Hanna organized a series of pre-election "pastor policy briefings" designed to inspire conservative Christians to political action. That campaign, which focused on the swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, included the distribution of 12,000 copies of a documentary film titled "Inner Strength,'' a hagiography on the religious faith of George W. Bush.

An additional 500,000 copies of the film were downloaded from the Internet, Hanna said.

"Did we come close to advocacy? Yes, respectfully close,'' Hanna said. "But if we were to compare and contrast George Bush and John Kerry, it would have been more of a political product.''

Hanna, who calls himself an "evangelical Episcopalian," estimates that 20 percent of the churches targeted by Let Freedom Ring Inc. were Roman Catholic parishes.

"We had lots of Catholics participating, along with Mormons, some Jews and even one Islamic mosque,'' Hanna said. "We try to frame the issues in the broadest and most inclusive way possible.''

[ibegurpard]

1. There is a cable channel called EWTN

that is very right-wing conservative Catholic and their programming before the election was pretty much 24-7 anti-abortion rhetoric and how absolutely VITAL this election was. My understanding is that it's headquartered somewhere in Alabama. I was really quite puzzled by some of the stuff I heard on there because it was far more virulent than any mainstream Catholic stuff I've heard over my lifetime. I suspect that this is one of the attempts by the fundamentalists to make inroads into mainstream Catholicism.

[xequals]

2. Dems have to stop playing softball and drive a wedge

between the various religous groups on the right. The way to do this is to box off the fundie nuts and appeal to the reason of the moderates. We fail to do this at our own peril. The religous right grows by the day.