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Showing posts from December 30, 2003
Getting Religion Howard Dean’s Theological Critics Miss the Mark (and Matthew) And when you pray, do not imitate the hypocrites: they love to say their prayers standing up in the synagogues and at the street corners for people to see them. I tell you solemnly, they have had their reward. But when you pray, go to your private room and, when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in that secret place, and your Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you. Matthew 6:5-6* In their relentless compiling of reasons why Howard Dean is unelectable, members of the Stop Dean movement seem to think they have found their strongest one yet: the Democratic frontrunner’s apparent lack of religiosity. Advanced by Very Smart People with a conventionally wise bent, these critiques have so far tended to be based on a frightfully simplistic view of American religious belief or, in one notable case, logical inconsistency. They depend on a misreadin