This statement telegraphs an ethnocentric worldview. Sola Scriptura is in itself an interpretation of how to approach Christianity.

Some Christian groups emphasize tradition while others emphasize spiritual experience.

If you view the Bible as the basis for your faith that does not mean the Bible is the basis for all of Christianity.

Here is a list of Christian denominations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._denominations

Okay

I think the idea of confession in the Catholic tradition is based on James 5:16

ESV

Confessing of sins to other people is not common practice in protestant circles but there certainly is biblical support for it. The argument could be made that Catholics are actually more in line with the Scriptures than protestants in this regard.

There are a range of views among Catholics but I think the majority would understand sins to be forgiven based on Jesus' death.

Helpful for whom? Israel? Undoubtedly so. Israel would sign such a treaty instantly. But I don't see what the U.S. would get out of such a treaty.
Well...I'm not sure that the U.S. is really getting that much out of our relationship with Israel, so symbiosis might not be the right word. However, think of the difference in impact between the U.S. entering WWII on behalf of the Allied countries in Europe and when it was providing military assistance through the Lend-Lease program. The latter was obviously helpful, but direct military assistance was even more so.

Two points: first, the legal status of these U.N. declarations is not that clear. Second, and more important, signing the Declaration did not create an obligation to enforce the treaty by military means.

What I was asking was: what did you think we still had to accomplish in Iraq? We had deposed Saddam Hussein, we had made sure there were no WMDs. We had set up a new (albeit rickety) government. The only thing left that I see were things that were most likely unreachable, such as create a stable liberal democracy, or get rid of terrorism. Those jobs weren't done, but we didn't have the tools to get them done anyway.

Huh? I think you mean a candidate for President (not the sitting President) used withdrawal from Iraq as a campaign promise. Incidentally, this promise was a major reason why he ended up getting elected (I think there is a good argument that Hillary Clinton would be President today if she had not voted to authorize the war in Iraq).

This seems to be democracy in action. The American people had turned against the war and so voted in the party which promised to end it. You can call that "political reasons" accurately enough, but then let's not take that to mean bad reasons.

Political pressure doesn't have to work that directly. The Republican Party, all the way past Barack Obama's election, continued to support the war in Iraq, and so put pressure on their leadership to continue it. However, the more important thing is that Republican leaders recognized that ending in a loss would be a strong negative for their party and so cause them to lose elections (something that in fact happened in 2006 and 08). Thus, they tried to avoid declaring defeat for as long as possible.

There a bunch of problem with this. First, you are conflating, incorrectly, evangelical Christianity with Protestant Christianity. Evangelicalism is a subset of Protestantism, and not the dominant one for most of the history of Protestantism.

Second, most Protestant political leaders have not been evangelicals. England's leaders have typically been Anglicans, which are barely Protestants, let alone evangelicals (notice that e.g. Tony Blair, while nominally an Anglican, converted to Catholicism as soon as he left office). American Presidents also tend to not be evangelicals. For instance, look at this list of religious affiliations--only a handful of them are evangelical (for instance, you have a lot of Episcopalians and Presbyterians, neither of which are evangelical denominations). Angela Merkel comes from a Lutheran background, as is typical for German leaders.

Third, this has little descriptive force. For instance, in East Asia our closest ally is Japan, which has only a very small Jewish and Christian population rather than South Korea, where Christianity is the largest plurality religion (about 20% Protestant). Or what about our close relationship with Saudi Arabia? Or Mexico?

It seems to me that if you want to understand what is actually driving world events, looking at the trade, military, and other geopolitical elements will be much more informative than the religious background of the country.

Okay. My guess is that you aren't even thinking in terms of the national interest, and that is why you can't help me here.


I agree that it would be a bad idea for Israel to bomb Iran's nuclear infrastructure.

Also in regards to men having the ability to forgive sins there is John 20:22-23

ESV

In this passage Jesus addresses the disciples and seems to bestow on them some sort of authority to forgive or withhold forgiveness of sins. This idea is largely ignored by protestants but does have a biblical foundation.

OK we clearly have differing world-views.

Why are you putting responses in spoiler tags? This isn't OOT

Back to the OP more or less: below is a website with very good information on evangelicalism and the growth of the movement in American starting from The Great Awakening. I remember reading about this in another context. Anyway, the following link with the well written article has much useful information.

http://www.astudyofdenominations.com...ism/#political


Portions of text are copied below; as cliff notes or important points:


The Evangelical movement as such began in the 1730s and 1740s with the first “Great Awakening,” involving the preaching of George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, and John Wesley, among others, especially in America4. This period represented the beginnings of revivalism, when meetings would be held in various communities and many would decide to “accept Christ” in a conversion experience. This “awakening”, along with the second “Great Awakening” of the 1820s-1840s, resulted in the “Christianization” of young America and the dominance of evangelicalism over the American religious climate..........

Modern evangelicalism emerged from the crucible of historic evangelicalism and the fundamentalist schism; it is often called “postfundamentalist” evangelicalism, and it began in 1942 with the creation of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE)6. Prominent in postfundamentalist evangelicalism is Billy Graham and his legacy of large meetings and mass conversions; his overall leadership has kept the disparate segments of evangelicalism together...............

...........Another prominent feature of much of evangelicalism is the high level of political involvement among evangelicals. While some level of political involvement was the norm for various denominations since Constantine, the growth and development of evangelicalism alongside the development of the American state led to a particular political ideology of American evangelicals that is otherwise unparalleled, as evidenced in the following quote by a prominent Evangelical:

America’s uniqueness is in the Christian consensus of the Founding Fathers, who penned documents guaranteeing religious and personal freedom for all. This nation was not founded by atheists, secularizers, or monarchists who thought the elite educated class should rule over the common people. America’s founding was based more on biblical principles than any other nation’s on Earth– and that’s the reason this country has been more blessed by God than any other nation in history.



American evangelicalism and populist republicanism were ready allies, and there remains to this day an implicit view that America represents the new Israel, the new chosen land and chosen people of God. This sentiment has been exemplified in many social reform movements over the past two hundred years: evangelicals represented strong voices both for abolition and the promotion of Southern slavery, prohibition, and both sides of the mid-20th century civil rights movement. Since 1979 and the founding of the “Moral Majority,” evangelical Christians have often been enlisted to promote legislation of moral constraints, and other organizations have developed on the other side of the political spectrum advocating rights for the poor and dispossessed13. Underneath all of these sentiments remains a view that Christians and Christian churches have a responsibility to reform or legislate for society. Such a view makes sense in a world where Jesus will return to establish an earthly kingdom, or in a world where the division between the old and new covenants is not maintained sharply ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

******************************************

I think the above is worth discussing and some of the points may have been already hinted at in this thread.

That is a fantastic statement - roughly what I've been saying only more elegant and precise.

The statement jumps straight to Presbyterian Founding Fathers though, which is somewhat misleading. Jefferson wasn't exactly a Presbyterian, more a theology onto himself. The FFs leaned heavily on Hutcheson's framework, as I discussed before.

As for being, "blessed by God", maybe it's not just for Protestants after all.

When MacArthur and his staff re-wrote their constitution, the US Education Mission re-formatted Japan's education system, eradicating the elitist stranglehold on the best higher education places and introducing a new curriculum. An open an equal system for those early generations in 1946 resulted in world domination by 1995 - Japan's GDP was 53.3 vs USA on 76.6, on only half the population. It was elitism and xenophobic business practices that brought Japan crashing back down to Earth, btw

Must be my OCD. It's easier to see and navigate all the tl;dr posts?

Nah, don't worry about TL;DR in RGT. I'm finding the exchange between you and OriginalPosition interesting, but if I have to click another tag I'm going to pray for you to develop warts.

"America’s uniqueness is in the Christian consensus of the Founding Fathers, who penned documents guaranteeing religious and personal freedom for all. This nation was not founded by atheists, secularizers, or monarchists who thought the elite educated class should rule over the common people."

If there's a guarantee, I think I want my money back.

"America’s founding was based more on biblical principles than any other nation’s on Earth– and that’s the reason this country has been more blessed by God than any other nation in history."

The politological framework looks a lot more Roman than Mosaic imo.

Didn't the equal and endowed thing come form someone who was critical of Christianity and probably a deist...


And Franklin come on the dude was a a little out there and a slut.

None of this has anything to do with U.S. national interest. Look, I'm not arguing here that we shouldn't partner with Israel (although I don't think we should), I'm just pointing out that if we do so we'll have to do it on grounds other than security. All of the things you list here we get without a mutual defense pact. We don't need Israel to secure our borders, nor do we have much interest in the region beyond oil, and Israel doesn't have much to do with oil.

Your argument is unclear to me. On the one hand, you seem to suggest that the really crucial causes of Allied victory were the development of new military technology and cryptoanalysis by non-American Allied countries. But at the end you say it was American manufacturing prowess that the Allies a chance to win. Which is it?

Anyway, while WWII historiography is interesting, I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here. The point I was making was that obviously Israel would prefer having a mutual defense pact with the US rather than just military assistance. The US military is by far the most powerful in the world, and having it as protection for its borders would make Israel much more secure. I don't see anything in what you say here that says differently.


We did this, both in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it mostly failed. I think people tended to get caught up in this idea as a slogan without really thinking about what it meant. What we were really saying is training an entire military force. That is really hard to do. But even so, the problem in these countries wasn't just a lack of an effective military, it was also the lack of the kind of political and civil infrastructure to sustain a stable government on the model that Americans feel comfortable with.

What does this have to do with our "long-term interests"? Sounds more like a military boondoggle and certainly no argument for staying longer in Iraq than we did.
If we were willing to run Iraq as a colony this might have worked. But the US doesn't really have the political will to sustain the long-term costs of such a colony. But any form of self-government would eventually run into these kinds of problems. What has happened in Iraq is not unique; it is in fact pretty common for societies that lose most of their ruling class after a dictatorship to flounder before succumbing to another strongman, or to be riven by competing ethnic groups and so on. There is no good reason that I see to think that we could have prevented this. We wanted to, but that desire doesn't mean we could.

No we don't. Now you're just listing problems in Iraq.

Lol, okay. Pretty sure if we did that you'd see the same conflicts we see now as the Iraqi's would probably not appreciate being ruled by the Kurds. I do think there were other possibilites--maybe dividing Iraq up into separate countries along semi-ethnic boundaries--that might have been more successful than what we did. But I don't see much benefit (and a great deal of cost) from the US staying there.

Look. The main point is that the US initially invaded Iraq on poor grounds--it had little significance as either a military or economic target. Then, once we were there, we didn't really know what we were supposed to do. Democracy promotion? Make a new state? Just leave? Kill all the terrorists? This lack of a clear objective made it difficult for us to figure out when we could leave. But fighting wars is extremely expensive and cause great suffering and destruction. So if we are going to do it, we should have a really good reason for doing so. Our initial reasons for going into Iraq were poor, and our reasons for continuing to fight once we were there were also poor. Thus, leaving as quickly

Which President are you talking about?

You are distorting your own source (wiki) here. First, "transdenominational" means that it crosses denominational boundaries, not that all members of those denominations are evangelical. And absolutely, I personally know Anglicans that identify as evangelical. Heck, I even know Catholics and Quakers that call themselves evangelicals.

But they are a minority among those denominations. For instance, if you keep reading down wiki you'll see that it says that approximately 13% of the worldwide Christian population are evangelical. Since 37% of Christians worldwide are Protestants, this means that only a bit more than a third of all Protestants are evangelicals.

I'll also note that contrary to your 99% assertion, probably only around a third of the UK's Protestants are evangelicals. According to a 2007 study by Tearfund, among regular churchgoers, only about a third of all Protestants identify as evangelicals (and 11% of UK evangelicals are Catholics). In the US, that percentage is higher with something like a third of all Americans being evangelical (higher or lower depending on the definition), which is about half of American Protestants.

Well, as is probably evident from my first post in this thread, I think we should beware the tendency to lean too heavily on the particularities of evangelical theology to explain changes in evangelical attitudes towards Jews. While I do think it is probably an element, I think other social and political pressures are at least as strong.

For instance, look at this survey of evangelical attitudes towards Israel. Among all US religious groups, white evangelicals are most likely--even more so than Jews--of saying that the US government is not supportive enough of Israel.



This mirrors pretty closely to an increasing Republican support for Israel as well (since most white evangelicals are Republicans):



So is this change caused by Christian theology? Well, dispensationalist views have been popular for most of the last half of the twentieth-century among evangelicals (my own, purely anecdotal, experience is that they are declining among people of my own generation). So I'm not sure they have much explanatory force in explaining more recent changes in Christian views towards Jews (assuming that they have in fact changed). What has been changing though, is the attitude of Republicans towards Israel. I would guess that is causally more important.

This statement could obviously be its own thread. There are so many statements and ideas that are completely right and completely wrong contained in a very few lines. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to go through it. I would do it tonight, but ironically, I'm helping my daughter study for her AP History test.

Indeed, the link I posted above is important and instructive as one point of view espoused by the website writers. All should know that posting the link does not mean that I espouse those views - Just a good jumping off point for discussion. That errors (honest or otherwise) or misrepresentation or misinterpretation are contain therein is probably a given.



My take as an important point is the moral context and the special chosen of God mentioned in the link and in the "cliff notes" I copied. This has become mixed in the evangelical mind and displayed publically and politically, and with force recently. American is special - Israel, as a new nation state, is also special (founded in 1947, I think). So that evangelicals feel more linked and sympathetic toward Jews than previously. The religious background (the Jews gave 'us' the old testament etc) giving it some legitimacy and cohesiveness. Old Testament prophecies may also play into this. It does not matter whether the above is true or not (being "special" etc.) it is the belief that is paramount.

And this all aside from events that have occurred over the last fifteen years or so.

I think this links somewhat with OP's post directly above. So perhaps some agreement on this?

I must admit I find that somewhat shocking. The existence and security of Israel is part of our WWII legacy. If anything happens to Israel or the Jews, it will sully the efforts of all those who died in the name of freedom. Would you stand for the desecration of Washington war monuments? Israel is a "Washington war monument", albeit a larger one.

Saying you don't care about Israel or the region (on national interest/national security grounds) is pretty much like saying you don't care about Crimea and natural gas. It's hard to over-estimate just how important these issues are to the US and NATO.


I am saying that American manufacturing was the body of the warrior and non-American technology the sword.

The sword landed the killer blow but it would never have got there without the body. Likewise without the sword, the body alone was vulnerable.

It was a team effort, an effort that consumed the Allied nations of Europe and the US. It is one of my ultimate pet hates to hear the British, Americans, Finns or Russians claim to be protagonists. We all bled just the same and were no better than the men standing beside us - men of all creeds from all 4 corners of the Commonwealth. As a WWII buff, I must point out that some of our most important victories in Europe were achieved by soldiers who had never even seen the US or UK.

Islamists, from Al-Qaeda to ISIL, want the US to be permanently at war in the Middle East, to satisfy their own blood-lust and perverted moral compass. If the US had to retaliate every time a nation or group attacked Israel, surely that would mean the US would have to take on the Palestinians, Iran ......... and every other crack-pot terrorist group, forever, by law?


To leave Iraq before the desired structures are in place would make an even bigger mockery of why we went there in the first place. If all we wanted to do was get Saddam, we could have assassinated him and his legion of doubles without too much hassle.

PS: Again, "model that Americans" feel comfortable with. Hmm. I think the term you are looking for is, "coalition forces".

You don't see arming Islamic radicals with the same equipment we use, as being a huge problem for us further down the line?

As it is, these ISIL guys popped up virtually overnight, after the coalition shock and awe had reduced Iraq's military capability to the level of a London Bobby. There is no escaping the fact that coalition (vastly US in this case) taxpayers have indirectly armed ISIL, Iran and Syria. If you thought Iraq was bad before and a threat (WMDs, drugs, human trafficking and radicalism are all threats to us), let it become a failed state pumped up with experienced fighters and heavy coalition equipment, see how that effects things.

Simply, it is our mess, our responsibility to clean it up. If your neighbor left parts of a rifle lying around his lawn and your kids assembled and fired that rifle, would you give your neighbor a free pass? Or would you shout so loud they never did it again?


OK, nobody will fix it then (Saddam's river).

Not like we care about the human rights (fresh water) of the Iraqi people. According to you, we went to Iraq to protect their rights from a dictator. How is it any different now? The Iraqis don't have the technology to fix their own ecosystem, so we MUST do it for them, or permit generational hardships.


You laugh but our current strategy in the Middle East is to make the Kurds quasi-NATO soldiers (we won't need as many/any boots on the ground). The Kurds, btw, are ethnically diverse and religiously tolerant - permitting women to be soldiers, doctors, politicians. Once ISIL and Assad are defeated by the coalition + Kurds, the Kurds will rule Iraq, Syria, Libya and will have the state they always dreamed of. When I think about it, I wonder why we didn't just do this in the first place, or even after WWII.

Barry O'Bama.


I understand this. You made a statement suggesting Merkel, previous Presidents and Anglican leaders in England weren't "evangelicals". I was merely pointing out that is entirely possible they were evangelicals.

I said Ireland, not the UK. Obviously when the Church of England (Anglican) is the median religion, 99% of Protestants won't be evangelicals. In Ireland though (other than Church of Ireland, which is more evangelical in outlook than England), the vast majority of Protestants are American-style evangelicals (I'm thinking of Gospel Halls here) - keep in mind the well-spring of American evangelicalism was the Ulster-Scots/Scots-Irish and Germans.

You aren't reading me closely enough here. I've not said that I don't care about Israel or the region. What I've said is that the US doesn't have a significant national interest in the region. The national interest primarily involves things like the security of the US borders and the protection of US economic interests (eg trade considerations, manufacturing and markets, US companies with significant contracts there, etc), and only secondarl. Obviously there are other things that we as individuals care about. These other things might even be important enough that we are willing to commit to a military operation. But if we do so, our reasons for that military operation is not the national interest, but something else--maybe our legacy as a nation, or maybe moral considerations or to protect innocent people and so on. I'm not here arguing that these other reasons cannot be good reasons for going to war. I'm am only pointing out that they are not reasons deriving from national interest considerations.

The reason I am making this point is because there are many foreign policy thinkers (usually called realists) who think that geopolitics is best understood as being governed by considerations of the national interest. This is usually in opposition to the kind of clash of civilizations framework you are proposing here, where international conflict arise more from cultural differences stemming from differing values.

Sure, I don't disagree with this.

I'm not sure what you are arguing for here. Is it your view that Israel would refuse a mutual defense pact if offered it by the US?

You aren't addressing my claim. I'm saying that we couldn't (or at least were very unlikely to be able to) put the desired structures in place. If that is so, then it doesn't matter whether it makes a bigger mockery of why we went there in the first place. The only options that I see us having were to leave, more or less as we did, with the rickety structure in place that we left there, or to continue to occupy Iraq for the foreseeable future (potentially decades).

I see it as a somewhat inevitable byproduct of the attempt to train Iraqi and Afghan military forces. Corruption is lessened by strong rule of law, which didn't exist in either country.

All excellent reasons to have not invaded Iraq in the first place. Don't see an option other than permanent occupation to have prevented them or some similar group from arising once we left.

[QUOTE] I don't really know what to say. I would certainly have preferred that we didn't let our military hardware get in the hands of terrorists. I'm sure that almost everyone in the military and political class feel the same way. I don't think this is such overriding importance though that we should have a permanent occupation of Iraq. Surely there were ways to lessen this problem before then.

There are a lot of problems in the world. It is not the responsibility of the United States to solve all of them.

Okay.

Your timeline is wrong. In 2008, Barack Obama ran for president. Part of his platform was a promise to withdraw American troops from Iraq. Since the war in Iraq was very unpopular, especially among Democrats, this promise helped improve his share of the vote and contributed to his eventual victory. However, when he made this promise he wasn't a "sitting President." He was the junior Senator from Illinois.

Then, in December 2011, the last American troops left Iraq. In 2012, Barack Obama ran for President again--though obviously not promising to withdraw American troops from Iraq since they had already left.

For what it's worth, I have no objection this. My view is that we should never have invaded Iraq, and once we were there we should have left as quickly as possible. Wars are terribly expensive and cause great destruction and anguish. Thus, if we fight in one, we should have an objective that justifies that cost. I never saw one for the war in Iraq and so in my opinion we were just wasting the lives of American troops while funding an expensive war that only made the lives of Iraqi's worse. I think most Americans eventually realized this, which is one of the reasons why they turned against the Republican Party in 2006-08. So the domestic political pressure that helped elevate Obama to the Presidency in my opinion had a salutary effect in this case.

Fair enough. I'll point out that part of the confusion might be due to a differing usage in what we mean by "evangelical." In my experience, most people in the US mean something much more specific by it than you seem to.

Sorry about that--my mistake. That being said, my point is still correct. As I pointed out, only about half of US Protestants are evangelicals, not 99%. While I haven't found exact numbers for Ireland, in the 2011 Census, the Church of Ireland (Anglican) is still the second largest denomination behind Roman Catholicism, so it is still very unlikely to that 99% of Ireland's Protestant's are evangelicals. So yes, you are making a mistake in conflating Protestantism with evangelicalism, even in Ireland and the US.

The national interest - is a country's goals and ambitions whether economic, military, or cultural. Our cultural ambitions are transparent, capitalist democracies with reverence for UHR.

While our opinions seem to be converging slightly, I just don't buy your short-term fix.

I'm sure you've seen the migrants on the news, the focus lately has been on Africa into Italy. Besides the obvious "American Dream" aspirations, what are the reasons for the scale of these endeavors?

The answer is rogue or partially failed states in Africa - under Islamic or Communist rule, naturally - that facilitate the industrial-level commercialization of people and narcotics.

The situation in Europe is mirrored by the US - Mexico border. I'm sure you know all about the Communist states, paramilitaries and Los Zetas. Do you know it's been proven that ISIL and a bunch of pre-ISIL Islamists we had on our most wanted lists, have formed a symbiosis with the Cartels and Communists? The Islamists are importing drugs (cocaine + their own heroin) and people to Europe while the Cartels are importing who knows what for the Islamists into the US.

Have we had problems in the past with rogue states? Yes, I believe so.

Have we learned our lessons from the Afghan-Soviet conflict? We proved we hadn't when we left Iraq for political reasons.

It's staring us right in the face - we will be back for Desert Storm III if Desert Storm II doesn't adequately resolve the short-comings of Desert Storm I.

*Obviously Crimea mirrors Czechoslovakia - Putin (Hitler) has decided that the ethnically Russian (German) people in Ukraine (Czechoslovakia) deserve to be ruled by Russia (3rd Reich). When pockets of independence illegally hit Crimea (Sudetenland) it destabilized the economy of Ukraine (Czech) and led to the collapse of the State, repatriation to Russia (Germany) and expansionist policy in the Baltic States (Poland, Romania) .............

While I agree with you 100% that immediate withdrawal has benefits, you fail to acknowledge the causation of our current geo-political landscape and what that future landscape will look like, if we continue to ignore the lessons of the past.

I'm saying we pact with a bunch of semi-affiliates and ALL of our major affiliates, so there must be a very good reason why we don't pact with one of our closest military allies.

The reason is perverse incentive (for Islamists and nation states) to attack Israel and the position that would put the US in - either acquiesce to the radicals who have stated that one of their goals is to keep the US military in the Middle East (for the foreseeable future), or break international laws and the defense pacts on which the free world is based. So either Israel, the US, or both, decided it's not in their best interests to have an international agreement -- a flexible bi-lateral understanding works better.

We already built most of the big stuff!! It's like USAID* in Haiti (another Vice episode). They built lovely houses for the American workers, some sort of cultural center and a soccer stadium, while the human beings they went to help, lived in slums outside their gates - lacking clean water or sanitation.

*also applies to some international partners

I'm half-tempted to say we blew up Iraq just so we could rebuild it. As for Iraqi/Afghan government and security services, the coalition has started the process and is doing a fine job - but innocents lost their lives because our vetting process was rushed. As one woman in Haiti said,

"it would have been better if they didn't built it all, than have us look at it every day and wonder what might have been"

That would be our fault. Maybe it will make us think twice before going to war, again, just because we can and we want to.


We have facilitated their corruption. Heck the coalition BRIBED THEM ALL. It's no secret military transports stacked with freshly printed USD have been flowing to tribal leaders all over (plus into the back-pockets of some entrepreneurial soldiers, who also engaged in the heroin trade). And we knew what they were doing with our equipment. It's just easier to let favored firms have consistently high demand at the expense of the taxpayer, than tell taxpayers we gave terrorists tens of billions of dollars through our own arrogance and incompetence.

I merely attributed a previous election pledge to the current/sitting President, with the inference it was successful. I am aware of the time line.


But we DID invade and early withdrawal negates the sacrifices we have already made.

You are of course correct, my 99% figure is an over-estimate. I speak from personal experience - having being all over Ireland and the States, I didn't meet a single non-evangelical Protestant (I'm sure my selection bias accounts for this).

TBH I'm not familiar with all the vagaries of Lutheranism, nor even Anglicanism (vaguely Catholic), save for Gandalf's odd appearance @ St. Paul's Cathedral. I equate "evangelicalism" with Gospel teaching and NT philosophies. So churches that preach the Gospel (Christ crucified, risen, salvation atones for our sins) are evangelical. I do know that churches of various Protestant denominations DO preach the Gospel, carry out missionary duties etc, so even a Lutheran, Methodist or Free-P church can be evangelical, even if the words, "Gospel Hall", aren't in the title. This is roughly the picture given by dictionary definitions.

I have been a Born Again, Evangelical Christian for about 40 years. The Christians never changed their view on Israel or the Jews. There was a false perception by the left that Evangelicals must hate Jews because they rejected Jesus Christ. The true, Evangelicals always supported Israel. It's the crazy Nazis and their ilk, who aren't even Christian, just in name only, who hate Jews. The Jews don't like the Evanglicals, but the Evangelicals support the Jews because they are God's chosen people.

I know this may be controversial, but how do the evangelicals reconcile their support of the "chosen ones" with the following verse?:

Rev 2:9 I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.

And how do they reconcile their politology with God's instructions on how to apportion land?

Numbers 33:54 And ye shall divide the land by lot for an inheritance among your families: and to the more ye shall give the more inheritance, and to the fewer ye shall give the less inheritance: every man's inheritance shall all be in the place where his lot falleth; according to the tribes of your fathers ye shall inherit.

Leviticus 25:10 And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubile unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.

and after disregarding this, how do they then throw away the rest of His laws, then vote to make up their own, after God states:

Deut 2:1Now therefore hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes and unto the judgments, which I teach you, for to do them, that ye may live, and go in and possess the land which the LORD God of your fathers giveth you. 2Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you. 3Your eyes have seen what the LORD did because of Baalpeor: for all the men that followed Baalpeor, the LORD thy God hath destroyed them from among you. 4But ye that did cleave unto the LORD your God are alive every one of you this day.

5Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the LORD my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go to possess it. 6Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. 7For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the LORD our God is in all things that we call upon him for? 8And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day?

and seeing how Jesus has stated:

17Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. 18For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. 19Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

20For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.

?

You're reading more into what is meant by "cultural" than is really there. I don't know if you've ever read anything by Henry Kissinger, but his way of analyzing world events is a characteristic example of what I mean by the "national interest."

Okay? Let me assure you that this is what I've meant throughout this conversation.

I am not nearly as familar with immigration issues in Europe, but I don't think illegal immigration in the US is nearly as serious a problem as most conservatives seem to. I am fairly neo-liberal on immigration in that I think the economic literature seems to indicate that more immigration would be on balance a positive thing for the US (especially with regards to low-hanging fruit issues like high-skill immigrants--I don't see why on policy grounds we wouldn't let any of them come to the US that wanted to). So while I have rule-of-law concerns with illegal immigration, I am not opposed to the immigration itself.

This is a bit too allusive for me to respond to adequately. What lesson are we supposed to have drawn from the Afghan-Soviet conflict that wasn't applied to Iraq? That we shouldn't leave a war for political reasons?

We left because we had no achievable military objective in Iraq. Yes, there was of course political pressure to leave. But that pressure was there because people saw that there was no good reason to stay there. This is how democracies function: when governments make decisions that negatively affect ordinary people's lives they typically pay a price in lost elections as a result. The war in Iraq was probably the most notable decision of the Bush presidency, and it was a mistake that overall had a negative effect on the lives of Americans.

Second, we didn't fight the second war in Iraq because of the failures of the first war. The second Gulf War was a war of choice by the Bush administration, one that never needed to happen. The fact that it did is due to the poor decisions made by (primarily) American leaders after the 9/11 terrorist attack.

Look at the mutual defense treaties the US has signed. There was NATO and a few treaties with Asian countries, which were pretty clearly responses to the Soviet Union and the unique problems of the Cold War. There is the Rio Treaty, which was basically a formalization of the Monroe Doctrine and primarily a way for the US to assert authority over the Western Hemisphere. That's it. The US doesn't need to sign mutual defense pacts because it can secure its borders by itself. Thus, the main impact of such a treaty would be to lessen the flexibility of American foreign policy. Why would we willingly do that?

The perverse incentive you discuss here is just a specific instance of the general principle that I'm citing. For instance, look at how the terrorist attack in Serbia was able to spark WWI, in part due to the interlocking network of mutual defense pacts.

I am not talking so much about building an actual physical infrastructure as building the kind of civil society that seems to me a prequisite to an effective democratic government.

Yes. And I don't think there is a magic wand for us to use that stops this kind of corruption--it seems to me an inevitable byproduct of war, especially of wars like the one in Iraq that use a lot of mercenary and native soldiers.

Okay. It seems to me that this is meant to be a criticism of Obama, but maybe not.

I think the sunk-cost fallacy mars a lot of people's thinking about war. While justifying prior military sacrifices is politically relevant, I don't think it is helpful in thinking about what the best course of action is going forward.

Fair enough.

I'm not really familiar with the denominational structure of Christianity in Ireland, so I can't really speak to that. In the US, I would say that there are two primary (related) ways of understanding what "evangelical" means. First, it refers to a particular tradition in Protestantism associated as arising with the Great Awakening with its emphasis on a conversion experience and a greater focus on personal morality and a view of religion that tended to emphasis its experiential aspects over ritual or theology. Here I am thinking of people like George Whitefield, John Wesley, and Jonathan Edwards initially, and then some of the great preachers of the nineteenth-century such as Charles Finney and Charles Spurgeon.

I think that it is fair to say that this was the dominant (although by no means exclusive) version of Christianity in the US up through the nineteenth-century. However, there was a division among Evangelicals around the turn of the century between those who moved towards modern views of interpretation and philosophy (especially as found in liberal theology and its offshoots and in the rise of the historical-critical methods of interpretating the Bible) and those who hewed to more traditional methods (the most well-known of which were the fundamentalists).

Then, in the middle part of the last century, "evangelical" came back into fashion as a term that referred to a group of scholars and preachers who largely agreed with the conclusions of the traditionalists, but who adopted a more open attitude towards the tools of modern scholarship. It seems to me that in popular culture now "evangelical" usually is used to refer those who continue to accept these more traditional conclusions (especially because most people today use "fundamentalist" as a pejorative term). I think this became more cemented during the 70s and 80s with the rise of the Moral Majority, when "evangelical" became more associated with political goals as well, such as being opposed to legalized abortion and the normalization of homosexuality. However, the older mean is still alive, just less common.

So for instance, even though the United Methodist denomination comes out of the Wesleyan tradition and so is in that sense an Evangelical denomination, because they have tended towards the liberal end of the spectrum both politically and theologically most conservative Evangelicals do not regard them as true Evangelicals (this article is a good example of what I mean). But yet if you look at the UMC website or its wiki page it still is identified as an Evangelical denomination (I think this article is a useful summary of this history).

Edit: I also wanted to add that my guess is that the OP meant the latter understanding of Evangelical more than the former.

Just like you can oppose policies of the state of Israel without being anti-Semitic, you can also support Israel's existence while being anti-Semitic. A segment of my girlfriend's family are Evangelical Christians. They whole heartedly support Israel's existence and the Israeli position on any political controversy. They also routinely make anti-Semitic remarks about individual Jewish people.

I don't see how this verse militates at all against the idea that Jews are the "chosen ones."

That these “Jews” are the natural seed of Abraham can be seen by the description of their assembly place as a synagogue4 and by the analogy of Scripture (Rom. Rom. 2:28-29; Rom. 9:6; Php. Php. 3:2-3). These were the unbelieving Jews of Smyrna, who had physical circumcision, but lacked the circumcision of the heart:

For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God. (Rom. Rom. 2:28-29)
Such Jews relied upon their physical decent from Abraham, but denied him as father by their actions. John the Baptist warned the Pharisees and Sadducees, “and do not think to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our father.” For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones” (Mtt. Mat. 3:9).

They answered and said to Him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would do the works of Abraham. But now you seek to kill Me, a Man who has told you the truth which I heard from God. Abraham did not do this. You do the deeds of your father.” Then they said to Him, “We were not born of fornication; we have one Father—God.” (John John 8:39-41)
Paul noted that only a subset of the Jews were “the Israel of God” (Gal. Gal. 6:16). This believing remnant within Israel were the true Jews:5

But it is not that the word of God has taken no effect. For they are not all Israel who are of Israel, nor are they all children because they are the seed of Abraham; but, “In Isaac your seed shall be called.” That is, those who are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God; but the children of the promise are counted as the seed. (Rom. Rom. 9:6-8)
He warned the Philippian church to beware of the “mutilation” (a euphemism for the physically circumcised unbelieving Jews, Gal. Gal. 5:12):

Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the mutilation! For we are the circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh, though I also might have confidence in the flesh. If anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so: (Php. Php. 3:2-4)
The unbelieving Jews were the major threat to the early church (Acts Acts 13:50; Acts 14:2, Acts 14:5, Acts 14:19; Acts 17:5). This threat was compounded because Christians initially enjoyed protection from Rome by being considered a sect within Judaism. Since Judaism enjoyed protection as a recognized religion by Rome, so long as Christianity was seen as a sect within Judaism, persecution was minimal. But the fundamental rift between Judaism and Christianity eventually brought persecution, not only by the Jews, but also from Rome.

http://www.biblestudytools.com/comme...ation-2-9.html

From a Roman perspective, what do you suppose that fundamental rift was? Surely it couldn't have been: hmm, the Jews are now chanting an additional slogan to go along with their Judaism, and that irritates us, whereas Judaism minus the slogan, is cool?

edit...ah maybe it's more like: Hmm the Jews are battling in the streets, I think it's the christian sects fault. (meh )

Jesus and John must have seemed to think they appealed to Abraham for their chosen status, but isn't that an odd claim really? I mean...Abraham had more that one son, and only his grandson Jacob (whose father was Isaac) fathered the tribes of Israel. Should the descendants of Ishmael claim to be the chosen ones as well, since Abraham is their father? How about Esau?

(why aren't they claiming to be sons of Jacob?)

and it goes on to verse 9 - For this is the word of promise, At this time will I come, and Sara shall have a son. 10And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac; 11(For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth) 12It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. 13As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.

So he seems to be making a point similar to the one I've made above.