The Institute of Progressive Christianity Condemns the Recent Attack on the Christianity of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on MSNBC

The Institute of Progressive Christianity Condemns the Recent Attack on the Christianity of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on MSNBC

WASHINGTON, June 28 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Institute for Progressive Christianity condemns the recent neoconservative attempts to denigrate mainstream Christians as godless. An eggregious example occurred in an exchange between Andrew Ferguson of the Weekly Standard and host Tucker Carlson on the June 14, 2007 edition of MSNBC's Tucker, when Ferguson claimed that Sen. Clinton, a longtime member of the United Methodist Church does not believe in God.

Carlson: "Can you imagine a scenario, though, where the Democrat gets religious voters? Or is abortion is still the stumbling block?"

Ferguson: "Only in -- religious in the way that Hillary Clinton is religious, which is to say of a very liberal Protestant sort of view, in which they believe in everything but God."

"Andrew Ferguson probably thought he was terribly witty to claim that Senator Clinton does not believe in God," said IPC Director Reverend Mark Farr. "This is gutter politics."

Fellow IPC Director Frank L. Cocozzelli pointed out, "This technique is employed by neoconservatives and the religious right to demonize Christians who embrace the liberal Social Gospel tradition." Cocozzelli continued. "There is nothing lower in public life than claiming that people with whom you disagree politically do not believe in God."

"Ferguson is the Don Imus of the question of faith in public life," adds IPC Director Stephen Rockwell. "No responsible broadcaster should allow such malicious denigration of the faith of others to go unchallenged. Carlson's silence is complicity."

About The Institute for Progressive Christianity

We are Progressive

We are progressive in that we desire to promote: the Love of God, Neighbor and Self; Compassion; Justice; and the Common Good.

We are Christian

We are an ecumenical group of Christians of different theological orientations: Liberal, Mainline Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, and Evangelical. We believe in being in community that maintains unity while acknowledging and supporting our diversity. We are united in our conviction that our progressive values flow directly from our understanding of the message and example of Jesus.

We are an Institute

We have faith that we can positively confront the ills of this world with a progressive Christian witness that is coherent, convicted, intelligent, and passionate. In a spirit of being affirmative, we believe that engaging society's questions should be done transparently and authentically from a reasoned yet inspired place of substance. We research, analyze, and discuss the issues with an eye to welcoming other people into a dialogue where we can encourage and provoke each other to fulfill our destinies as unique but interdependent reflections of the Creator. http://instituteforprogressivechristianity.org/joomla/

CrossLeft
IPC's Blogging and Activism Website:

http://www.crossleft.org/

Source: Institute for Progressive Christianity

CONTACT: Stephen Rockwell, Executive Director, +1-215-317-1865,
srockwell@instituteforprogressivechristianity.org, or Frank Cocozzelli,
Director, +1-516-435-3800, FCocozzelliEsq@aol.com, both of Institute for
Progressive Christianity

Web site:

http://instituteforprogressivechristianity.org/
http://www.crossleft.org/

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