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Subject: Prayer request

 

 

Prayer request from Methodist Minister Dr. John Tisdale:

Dear Friends, As I was listening to a news program last night, I watched in horror as Barack Obama made the statement with pride. 'we are no longer a Christian nation; we are now a nation of Christians, Jews, Muslims,  Buddhists, . . .

As with so many other statements I've heard him (and his wife) make, I  never thought I'd see the day that I'd hear something like that from a  presidential candidate in this nation. To think our forefathers fought and died for the right for our nation to be a Christian nation--and to have this man say with pride that we are no longer that.

How far this nation has come from what our founding fathers intended it to be.

I hope that each of you will do what I'm doing now--send your concerns,  written simply and sincerely, to the Christians on your email list. With God's help, and He is still in control of this nation and all else, we can show this man and the world in November that we are, indeed, still a  Christian nation!

Please pray for our nation!

 

The Chickasaw Plum’s Response:

 

Dear Rev. Tisdale;

On a typical day where I live, about 8 miles from the LA city limits, I may see Manh Singh at the corner grocery, he of the formidable mustache and artfully wound turban. Often I have lunch at my Thai friend Bee’s restaurant, where an ornate porcelain Buddha presides from his shelf high on the wall. My computer guru, Norman, from Mongolia, has a PH D from Washington U. The manager of a small store nearby, Harry, working so hard to support his family, is from Mumbai. There is a rather handsome mosque with agua minarets a very few miles down the Ronald Reagan Freeway. There is a delightful elderly subcontinent Indian couple, doubtless octogenarians, that take a walk down Tapo Street in the cool of the evening; he in his Nehru Jacket, she in her sari with that crimson bindi on her forehead. Some of my most ethical friends, here in Southern California and elsewhere, including South Carolina’s one-time gubernatorial candidate, Dr. Herb Silverman, are atheists.

In watching clips from 9.11 on the History channel recently, I noted that the ambulances from Beth Israel hospital had script in Hebrew and English on the side.

All of the above add color and meaning to my life and that of the community. They are Americans now, and none, by any stretch of the imagination, are Christians.

Moreover, not a one of them have had the brazen effrontery to stop me on the street to attempt to impose their belief system on me, (Love Jesus, don’t forget a big check, or be tortured eternally). Not one of them sent a pair of callow and uneducated 18-year-olds to my house to try to convert me to a belief system with no more credibility, ultimately, than the tooth fairy myth. None had has the snide arrogance to tell me this is a Buddhist or Sikh or Hindu community, implying that I am somehow the lesser for having a different perspective or for not sharing their belief system. 

One of the things that occurred to me again as I watched those 9.11.01 news clips recently, airplanes becoming battering rams at the hands of religious fanatics, is what a volatile and unseemly mixture politics and religion are. I deeply appreciate that wall of separation between state and church that Thomas Jefferson and others built.

 

Best Regards,

John R. Guthrie

 

 

 

The Chickasaw Plum  -  Volume V - Number 10 - October 2008

 

 

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