Astronomy and Politics Through the Lens of Epistemology
How do We Know What We Know?
What is Our Method of Evaluating Truth?

If you have ever watched the beginning news item on the 700 Club for the last 30 years, you would have an idea how the encroaching hand of government has invaded the Charismatic and Evangelical worlds.  Yet Catholics have had a mounting issue in dealing with the U.S. government which could not reflected better than by the government’s attempts to control the personal religious convictions of The Little Sisters of the Poor.  This is being done through Obama Care’s insurance regulations. There are a tremendous number of such government interferences with the lives of people of faith in recent years that I just do not have time to innumerate.

According to the Heritage Foundation, “The Little Sisters of the Poor, like many religious organizations that believe life begins at conception, do not wish to be involved in providing coverage that includes life-ending drugs and devices and contraceptive methods.”  Of course, the government provides a form for the Sisters to fill out which supposedly release The Little Sisters from any moral responsibility in the matter.  The Little Sisters are obviously not buying it and rightfully so.  “Legal scholars have equated the scheme to a “permission slip” signed by religious institutions for insurers or administrators to provide abortion-inducing drugs and contraception.”  (See Heritage Foundation article).

The Little Sisters deserve all of our prayers collectively.  After all, if the government can do this to a Catholic order’s charity organization, they can do it to every one:  Baptists, Mormons, Jewish charity organizations, whatever group the reader might be a member of….there is no limit!  Here, as in so many other situations, the government is arbitrarily defining Church or Synagogue as simply a religious activity inside the four walls of a worship building.  So all church/synagogue activities outside those walls are dealt with as independent of that particular religion and therefore subject to secular, business like regulations.  I do not know any Christian or Jewish groups that would define their faith as only operating in that walled space, although the government and many secular groups wish to keep us confined there!

So although my original intent for this article was to stimulate Evangelicals to action, I quickly realized that I would have to include many Charismatic Christians as well.  When I thought about it more, I knew I would have to write it for the eyes of Catholic, Mormon and Jews as well.  After all, many Evangelicals are watching in horror as 30-40% of their own membership is voting in the primaries for Donald Trump!  What are they doing many evangelicals ask me?  My former LDS roommates back in the late 60’s-early 70’s would have been having a cow at observing such a phenomenon as this!  No doubt, many Jews and Catholics who are serious in their faiths, maybe even politically conservative, are probably thinking the same thing with the same kind of questions, irrespective of their particular religion.  So I now think this article should be an open book to enlighten and both Evangelicals and other faiths as to what in the world is going on regarding Evangelicals in the news right now.  In that sense, the title of this blog could have contained Catholics and Trump, Mormons and Trump, Jews and Trump in that government interference is a growing problem regardless of our differences.  This interference in our practices and/or convictions can threaten all of us and the candidates we choose need to be scrutinized on this level. Regardless of the huge differences in our faiths or religions, we are all in this together, a government threat to any of our faiths or religion is the same as a government intrusion into our own.

However, Jewish members will encounter the difficulty of having to put up with or skip over the Christian New Testament references in this blog series.  I cannot solve that problem without compromising a certain percentage of the discussion.  Nevertheless, since much of this text in what Christians call the Old Testament and what Jews call the Tanakh, I will be adding a new feature in a week or so.  When I cite the Old Testament (mostly in the New King James), you will also be able to click on the verse reference and see a window citing the same passage in the Jewish Publication Society's English version of the Tanakh.