CIA Director Mike Pompeo has been nominated to be Secretary of State. He would be a great pick, and you can already see from his previous job that he’s well qualified. But what if we decided not to care about his professional qualifications, and instead tried to oppose him based on his religious convictions?
That’s what Democrat Senator Cory Booker did, here’s the video: (and as you’re watching, consider what relevance this has to the job of Secretary of State)
Ben Shapiro, an orthodox Jew, reported on the exchange at the Daily Wire:
On Thursday, Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) offered a bizarre critique of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: Pompeo wasn’t sufficiently enthusiastic about homosexual sex.
Yes, this is a real thing.
Booker asked Pompeo, “Do you believe gay sex is a perversion?”
Pompeo is a religious Christian, so presumably he does. He answered, quite properly, “When I was a politician, I had a very clear view on whether it was appropriate for two same-sex persons to marry. I stand by that.” He also informed Booker, “My respect for every individual regardless of sexual orientation is the same.”
This isn’t the first time that prominent Democrat senators have attacked Christian nominees for their Christian religious beliefs.
Remember when Bernie Sanders did it?
Partial transcript:
Sanders: Let me get to this issue that has bothered me and bothered many other people. And that is in the piece that I referred to that you wrote for the publication called Resurgent. You wrote, “Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology. They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ, His Son, and they stand condemned.” Do you believe that that statement is Islamophobic?
Vought: Absolutely not, Senator. I’m a Christian, and I believe in a Christian set of principles based on my faith. That post, as I stated in the questionnaire to this committee, was to defend my alma mater, Wheaton College, a Christian school that has a statement of faith that includes the centrality of Jesus Christ for salvation, and . . .
[…]Sanders (shouting): I understand you are a Christian, but this country are made of people who are not just — I understand that Christianity is the majority religion, but there are other people of different religions in this country and around the world. In your judgment, do you think that people who are not Christians are going to be condemned?
So basically, there is Bernie Sanders using the power of government force a Christian to deny the exclusivity of Christian theology. Something that no authentic Christian could do in good conscience. But he’s not the only one.
Here’s Democrat senators Dick Durbin and Diane Feinstein doing the same thing.
This is from National Review.
Excerpt:
This afternoon, during a confirmation hearing for 7th Circuit Court of Appeals nominee Amy Coney Barrett, Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein attacked the nominee for her Roman Catholic faith.
Barrett is a law professor at the University of Notre Dame who has written about the role of religion in public life and delivered academic lectures to Christian legal groups. Drawing on some of these materials, Feinstein launched a thinly veiled attack on Barrett’s Catholic faith, asserting that her religious views will prevent her from judging fairly.
“When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you,” Feinstein said. “And that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for for years in this country.” Feinstein is clearly hinting here at the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, a ruling that Feinstein supports so vociferously that she has even called it a “super-precedent.”
[…]Other Democratic senators took issue with Barrett over her faith as well. Senate minority whip Dick Durbin criticized Barrett’s use of the term “orthodox Catholic,” insisting that it unfairly maligns Catholics who do not hold certain positions about abortion or the death penalty. (Durbin himself is a Catholic who abandoned his previous pro-life position.) “Do you consider yourself an orthodox Catholic?” he later asked Barrett point blank.
To me, the more important thing about these stories is how comfortable secular people are about forcing their secular convictions down the throats of others. What they’re essentially saying is this: “I can use power to push my worldview onto you, and I can use power to stop you from living according to your convictions”. You can be certain that Diane Feinstein has answers to all of the same big questions that theists have answers to: “does God exist?” “did Jesus rise from the dead?” “is there a purpose to suffering and evil?” “is there life after death?”, etc. She has different answers to those same questions, but she wouldn’t accuse herself of having dogma. She feels very comfortable pushing her worldview through political power, but doesn’t think that theists ought to be able to do the same. questions with their respective worldviews? The answer is simple.
Why are Christians perceived as irrational? Atheists perceive Christians as having a worldview that is not based on fact. And they perceive themselves as having a worldview that is based on fact. How did this happen?
Well, simply put, Christian leaders made it happen, by refusing to focus on apologetics and evangelism. For better or worse, Christian churches (from fundamentalist Pentecostal to conservative Presbyterian) have decided that evangelism and apologetics are not important enough to focus on at church. And the result of this is that as non-Christians work their way through school and into the workplace, they never encounter any intelligent Christians who have reasons and evidence for their beliefs. Not just Christian beliefs, but policy beliefs, too. The church has failed to teach their members and adherents the importance of having answers, and this (along with the Sexual Revolution) is one of the main reasons why America has gone secular.
Even if you spend your childhood and teen years in church, you will never hear serious discussion of whether God really exists or whether the Bible is historically reliable. These things will be assumed to be true. You will be shamed if you ask questions, and you will even be shamed if you study apologetics to know how to answer these questions. This is considered pious by most church leaders, no matter what denomination you’re in. Atheists are not blind to the fact that most people who profess Christ are ignorant of competing views, and cannot explain why they hold their views using reason and evidence. And that’s why they are comfortable bullying us.
WINTERY KNIGHT 