Is it true that Tiller was excommunicated from LCMS because of his profession?
That shouldn’t surprise me, I suppose, but it does … kinda – that how one makes a livelihood could be scrutinized … and condemned.
Is that typical in other branches of evangelicalism, that someone’s livelihood is seen as an indication of their spiritual condition?

I guess if the “livelihood” is something that is considered immoral, then it should be.
Prostitutes don’t generally do well as members (if they are still in sin). Neither should those who kill unborn babies (making a distinction between the panic that many early term abortions occur and the gruesome techniques used to end viable later-term pregnancies.)

I don’t know about free abortions, but it did motivate me to throw a few bucks toward Planned Parenthood. If Tiller’s murder does any good, it will be to expose the “pro-life” movement for the terrorists they are.

I guess if the “livelihood” is something that is considered immoral
Prostitution is illegal. Not to split hairs (or suggest a double-standard).
“Livelihood” was intentionally ironic, I admit.
Does anyone really want that much oversight? Elders visiting and all?

I am a 76 year member of the LCMS. Have held Church Offices and served as a Deacon. Granted, my congregation was relatively conservative and did not attract high profile individuals. The statement that he was excommunicated need to be addressed and explained by the District President of Wichita. Excommunication as I was taught is defined as “Putting out of Union”, and this can be accomplished in various ways and events. Adultery, Divorce, Riotous Living, Incest, Desertion and then of course Murder. I personally Pro-Life and Pro Choice, except my definition of Women’s Choice is to just keep their knees together, unless they are running or walking.

“I believe it is short sighted to blame only President Bush and the Republicans for the economy”
hmm. the economy was quite peachy when clinton was president. after that, well… bush and republicans had 8 years (6 years with them in total control of the government) to either keep it peachy or to fix the problems that existed – started by reagan, not carter, added on by clinton and both bushes. in those 8 years, the economy fell apart.
“every. single. thing. that happens under the Obama administration will be blamed on him, regardless of when it started”
conservatives are already doing that. they did the same thing to clinton just as you do to carter. i don’t expect you all to stop.
“Is there anything that he could do that would cause you to not vote for him?”
sure, he could moving to the right. he could bash gays and continue to deny them equal rights. he could start another pointless war (like the one in iraq). he could continue to move this country toward theocracy as bush did. he could sit on his butt like the bush administration and wait for bin laden’s annual address to the world. he could ignore reality as mccain does. he could become brainless like palin, or spew hatred like limbaugh.
“Is there any point where he should start taking responsibility for what happens under his administration?”
for his actions, absolutely. from day one. and i should point out that i disagree with him on several of his decisions! but i’m saying that turning the economy around is not like turning a tricycle around. i’m willing to give it time to save/create more jobs and to have greater affect. and in the end, we’ll have a better infrastructure instead of a razed foreign country to show for the investment. he inherited 2 open-ended and mismanaged wars, an out of control deficit and trade deficit, increasing unemployment and a failing economy. this with all of the same problems that bush faced when he started his presidency: national security, failing social security and medicare, an educational system in decline, sky-rocketing healthcare costs, and more. if obama can fix any single one of these problems we face, it would be a move in the right direction because bush failed at all of them.

stupid beliefnet. the previous comment was from an earlier blog entry that must have been cached.

Excommunication … can be accomplished in various ways and events … Divorce …
Divorce bears probably the closest similarity, being civilly legal like abortion but against the Bible (uh, yeah). Those other things listed are, again, illegal to some degree. Alright, I’m foggy on adultery.
If your point is that people excommunicate themselves by their choices, then, yeah, I get that.

unfortunately, the family has decided to close the clinic, giving in to the domestic terrorists who hide behind the moniker “pro-life” – leaving desperate women with no choice but to be forced to carry an unwanted fetus to term or to scrape it out with a hanger.
i don’t apologize for pasting such a large chunk of this article. it’s too important to trust that you’d follow the link to read it. frank schaeffer writes,

“This ‘lynch mob’ mentality is the context in which Dr. Tiller was murdered. A lot of this emerging domestic terror has to do with a larger story. It has to do with what becomes thinkable under a barrage of hateful words.

“When you look at what the right wing ‘leaders’ are saying these days it can’t possibly be to win votes from the majority of the mostly centrist, sensible and pragmatic American population. Its only purpose can be to do one of three things: self-’vindicate’ bad loser revenge, sell products, such as advertising on Fox News, books, speaking tours etc. and/or troll for the unhinged on a ‘fishing expedition’ for tomorrow’s assassins. And even if the latter is not the motivation, it might as well be given the sort of people we have lurking in the shadows of this country.

“During President Obama’s trip overseas in April, Fox News took Obama’s remarks out of context to support the claim that he was on an ‘apology tour.’ Fox News made some smear of Obama’s current trip painting him as a traitor to America and to Israel.

“And in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh repeated his desire for President Obama to fail. Limbaugh then went the next step: he claimed that Obama was doing such a good job of destroying the country that: ‘If al-Qaeda wants to demolish the America we know and love, they better hurry, because Obama is beating them to it.’

“The former vice president has actually declared that our President is making America ‘less safe,’ in other words that he has betrayed his constitutional duty. (All our reputable national security leaders say the contrary by the way.)

“When Rush Limbaugh says that President Obama is doing Osama bin Laden’s work, when the historic and visionary presidential speech in Cairo is described as an ‘apology tour,’ when there are tens of thousands of Americans sitting in evangelical churches every Sunday wherein the President is vilified as an abortionist, a Communist, a secret Muslim, and even as the Antichrist, when Christian and Jewish Zionists are claiming Obama is working against God’s will by trying to bring peace to Jews and Arabs… we’ve left recognizable political territory and entered the realm of violence-inciting delusion.

“The more successful the president is with the majority of sane Americans, both Republicans and Democrats, Jews, Christians, non-believers and Muslims, the more extreme his far right Republican critics are going to become.

“The 20-year-plus agitation in and around Dr. Tiller’s Wichita clinic (egged on by evangelicals, Fox News and other commentators) eventually turned into a little pro-life industry with four groups raising funds and opening headquarters in that city attracted to Dr. Tiller’s clinic the way cheap motels spring up around Disneyland and feed off the crumbs. So today a whole far right industry, led by Fox News, Limbaugh, the evangelicals, right wing Roman Catholics, Palin, the former vice president and his daughter — etc. — is growing up and into a permanent, negative and profitable hate-Obama industry. It is catering to the deluded, the paranoid, the fearful and – let’s be frank – none too bright rube underbelly of white America.

“There’s another thing too: President Obama allows closeted racists to be open racists again. His name is now code for the ‘other.’ Because Obama is black, lived abroad and is educated, a professor and part of that hated world of higher learning that the right wing feels is a threat to their willful ignorance (and profitable misinformation campaigns), the mere utterance of his name alone by Limbaugh, Fox News etc., is the new ‘N’ word.

“The dirty secret is that cowards such as Murdoch, O’Reilly, Dobson and Limbaugh who hide behind their multimillion dollar media fortunes and protectors are smart enough to know that they are goading bottom-of-the-
barrel members of the unwashed mob to take actions which they — the media barons — will then disavow once extreme actions are taken spurred by extreme words. Meanwhile there is commercial air time to sell, ratings to go after and revenge to be taken on a president who makes them look very, very stupid.

“But make no mistake: taken at face value ‘The Truth’ that the right-wing noise machine is grinding out is leading inexorably to violence.

“The moron class of Americans who stocked up on guns and ammunition when President Obama was elected, because of fears that he would ‘take our guns away;’ the willful fools to whom Glenn Beck is a hero, are the same population that — right now – have their TV remotes set on Fox News 24/7. They are listening to Rush Limbaugh too as they rattle around in their pickup trucks driving to wherever they’re practicing on targets but fantasizing about putting the president, or other people they hate, in their scope’s cross hairs.

“These are the same folks on the fringe of the ‘pro-life’ movement who are waving huge signs wherein Obama’s name is plastered on the picture of a dead fetus’ and the word ‘murderer’ is scrawled in bloody letters over our President’s picture. Read the signs that were being waved by pro-lifers at Dr. Tiller’s funeral. ‘God Sent the Killer!’ Is it hard to imagine these people cheering if our president (who they all call ‘an abortionist’) was killed?”

thanks to the fear mongering and hate spewing of the right wing politicians, media talking heads and leaders in the church, we have nut jobs out there who now can rationalize killing a transvestite by bashing in her head, and the lynching of blacks, and the torturing of muslims, the premeditated murder of a doctor in his church, the gunning down of a guard at a holocaust memorial museum, and the plotting of assassinating our president.
we saw this openly in action when palin and mccain fanned the flames in their right wing mobs to the boiling point where people were shouting out that obama is a terrorist and nooses began to show up around the country as a grim reminder of the racial hatred still out there. how many domestically concocted plots to assassinate obama have there been in these few short months? the worst threats bush faced here was re-election and the jabbing of a finger in his chest. i’ve been approached by 3 people who just couldn’t stop themselves from sharing their racist jokes where obama is the subject, and that doesn’t include all of the racist emails that i get about obama.
righties are toasting and cheering the assassination of dr. tiller. and these are the tools that the right utilizes to get what it wants: terror, hate and murder. you must be so proud of what you sow.

“I personally Pro-Life and Pro Choice, except my definition of Women’s Choice is to just keep their knees together”
i’m sure that all the girls who are brutally raped by strangers, or by priests or teachers or others they might know, or who are victims of incest by brothers, fathers, or uncles are all comforted by your definition, as are the women who find themselves in the dire situation of having to choose to abort a fetus or risk their own lives.
respectfully, 76 year old harry juech, you’re an ass.

I read the whole thing … and I do love his writing style … “a demented cousin pissing on the picnic basket” … ha-HA!
I’ve seen this, “the culpability of smart people knowingly or unknowingly playing to the lowest common denominator” … and just the notion of lowest common denominator is infuriating.
This, of course, could be used against him: “the preachers back in town who stirred them up Sunday after Sunday (as it were) will be … no less culpable.”
I disagree that domestic terror is on the rise.
Finally it was kind of Mr. Schaeffer to qualify precisely “who” from earlier statements: “So today a whole far right industry, led by … right wing Roman Catholics, …”

It is tragic that the closing of Dr. Tiller’s clinic leaves only a couple in the entire USA that will or are able to serve women in need of that service. It is also tragic that the “accused” killer has accomplished what he set out to do. Mark one for a killer!
Dr. Tiller was breaking no laws…he was operating inside the law…and helped many women with his service. How many women will be giving birth to deformed babies…am talking about those with no brain stems, or their skulls aren’t formed,etc. Those were the folks Dr. Tiller helped and many doctors are not trained to perform that type of abortion. I seriously doubt that the women were going there to just say…”Hey! I’m 6 months pregnant…and don’t want it”. They went because there was a serious medical reason…if a woman doesn’t want to continue a pregnancy she should and many times does make up her mind in the 1st trimester….not in the 3rd.!
As to “free abortions”? I doubt that there was a rush on the clinic!

heh – yeah, i laughed at that, too. just the visual that it left me with…
“I’ve seen this, ‘the culpability of smart people knowingly or unknowingly playing to the lowest common denominator’ … and just the notion of lowest common denominator is infuriating.”
can you elaborate?
i think you’re correct, the preacher comment will be the boomerang that comes back to clock him one.
i agree with his statement that domestic terror is on the rise, relatively speaking. clearly times in our history have been worse. but school shootings, church shootings, hanging nooses around certain areas of the country, the brutal and lethal beatings of gays and transgendered, the verbal and physical attacks on immigrants are clearly on the rise. and i feel that there is a simmering in the right wing that schaeffer addresses in his article. never before in my life has anyone approached me to tell me racist jokes or to joke about assassinating our president! the number and size and boldness of racist hate and supremacist groups are all on the rise according to those in intelligence who monitor them.
“Finally it was kind of Mr. Schaeffer to qualify precisely ‘who’ from earlier statements: ‘So today a whole far right industry, led by … right wing Roman Catholics, …’”
well yeah, there are of course many catholics who aren’t right wing. they, however, tend to not be the ones with the soap boxes and microphones and publications.

just the visual that it left me with…
That’s his way of weeding out thin-skinned readers.
just the notion of lowest common denominator
I read it as “base instincts” … it’s dehumanizing even w/o manipulation.
many catholics who aren’t right wing.
A silent majority imo.

Dr. Tiller was someone who was created in God’s image. God had a special plan for his life. It is unfortunate that he chose to use his talents for evil things. What I mourn is that we all lost out on the fulfillment of what God had planned for Dr. Tiller to accomplish and to bless all of us. However, I do not mourn his loss any more than I would mourn the loss of one of the Doctors of the Holocaust who murdered innocent suspects in the process of performing so-called scientific experiments on them. The Tiller legacy is unfortunately one that has left a stain not only on the earth but on our American democracy. It is unfortunate that both our American political system and legal system has allowed for this evil to find legal sanction in the first place.
http://www.toddnessa.blogspot.com/

nice post,I like the post thank you