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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>P-</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Thanks for your reasoned comments.
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>My response will focus on a statement of yours that
seems to be the core of your perspective. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>You wrote (below): "<FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3>Why target them with this protest? Let them have their
fun."</FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>My response:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The Trinity Fest is designed as more than "fun" --
it is a political gathering and a recruitment event. This Christ
Church/NSA group is reaching out to potential church members and prospective
students. They are trying to get bigger and more powerful.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>There's nothing inherently "wrong" with
that. The University of Idaho and every other college in the US does the
same thing.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>But the point is that this outreach event is a
political action. The goal is to grow and take over more of downtown
Moscow. (remember that by their ownership of more and more of Moscow,
the tax burden shifts to other businesses and residents)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Those who object to the Christ Church/NSA goals
have the political right to protest and more important, the obligation to
demonstrate against what they think is wrong.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The protest will remind all those attending the
Trinity Fest that many people in Moscow object to Christ Church and
NSA</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>BL</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=godshatter@yahoo.com href="mailto:godshatter@yahoo.com">Paul
Rumelhart</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=sslund@roadrunner.com
href="mailto:sslund@roadrunner.com">Saundra Lund</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Cc:</B> <A title=london@moscow.com
href="mailto:london@moscow.com">'Bill London'</A> ; <A
title=vision2020@moscow.com href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com">'v2020'</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Friday, August 03, 2007 9:22
AM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: [Vision2020] Trinity
Festival protest</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>Saundra,<BR><BR>I admit that I don't like that they can
apparently do as they wish downtown. I don't know if they have the right
people as part of their church, or if they have some kind of influence they
shouldn't have. Maybe the rules aren't as clear-cut as we'd like to
think and they are simply using existing loopholes. I don't know.
<BR><BR>I also disagree with not only their theology but their idea that they
are above the law. That's one of the dangers of organized religion of
any type. When you have God on your side, or so you think, you tend to
think you are special. I would be condemned to death if their biblical
society ever came to be because of my past studying of the occult and because
I'm not a professing Christian. Yet, they aren't pushing for laws to do
that. So it's just talk.<BR><BR>It's a case of "hate the sin, love the
sinner". The individual Christ Church members, especially those that
aren't elders, should be treated with the respect due anyone else. What
I'm objecting to here, I've come to realize, is barging in on their
festival. You have lots of kind people (at least the ones I've met),
simply having fun. They have their families there, their children are
playing together, etc. Why target them with this protest? Let them
have their fun. <BR><BR>Now, as has been pointed out to me, if people
have protested the officials in Moscow that appeared to allow the rules to be
bent or broken and nothing has come of it - then what do you do? I say,
whatever you do, leave the individual Christ Church members alone unless you
are talking about the guys that make the decisions there. Take up your
fight, again, with the powers that be in Moscow. Talk to the press
(again).<BR><BR>Just make sure that it's their undue influence that you are
protesting and not their theological beliefs. They have the right to
believe as they wish, it's their actions that have to be looked at. If
they ever start trying to pass laws that state that heathens or gays or
adulterers should be executed, then I'll be right beside you to fight
it.<BR><BR>Paul<BR><BR>Saundra Lund wrote:
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<DIV class=Section1>
<P class=MsoPlainText>Hi Paul & Visionaries:<O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText><sigh> It's a good question, but I
sometimes feel like people haven't been paying attention over the last few
years.<O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText>I'm a Christian, and I absolutely do *not* agree with
the Kirk's . . . theology. I don't believe in forced salvation (if
they can't win us over by conversion, then they want the teeth of the law to
force the rest of us to act/behave as they think we ought to behave), and it
really disturbs me the way God's word has been perverted by Kirk hierarchy.
<O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText>However, IMHO, of larger concern is the Kirk
hierarchy’s refusal to follow the "secular" rules and laws the rest of us
are expected to follow. The rules are for others, not for them.
Lying under oath -- no problem. Lying to government officials --
again, no problem. Thumbing their noses at planning and zoning
regulations -- absolutely no problem. Failing to live up to the very
limited requirements of tax exemption – they excel at that. Parking
where they have no right -- no problem. Withholding information vital
to the safety of our community’s children – absolutely no problem. And
on and on and on the list goes. In essence, while there are wonderful
individual Kirk members, Christ Church itself has proven time and again that
it is the quintessential Bad Neighbor.<O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText>My dear friend Rose Huskey blogged on this very topic
recently -- you might want to read what she had to say:<O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText><A
href="http://cleaning-house.org/?p=591">http://cleaning-house.org/?p=591</A><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText>I'm sure she won't mind if I repost
here:<O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText>"Nests of Pests<O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText>Temperatures in Moscow hover in the 90’s during the
dog days of August but that’s not why many community members are boiling.
For the past three years we have endured the civic embarrassment generated
by the pseudo-Ceilidh, pseudo-Calvinistic jamboree known as the Trinity
Fest. Members of the Confederation of Reformed Evangelicals aka CREC, view
Moscow as their Rome, Jerusalem, Mecca, and Ganges River. They gather in
August to sit at the knee of Massa Doug Wilson, (the brains behind the
beards) greedily ingesting the racist, sexist, homophobic preaching
disgorged from his pie hole. It has been my habit to refrain from going to
town during the week that Doug attempts to claim Moscow as his papal seat.
However, this year I will join with friends to acquaint (or reacquaint as
the case may be) CREC visitors and Kirk members with long-standing community
values. Flyers have been posted throughout downtown Moscow and in the
windows of supportive businesses asking folks to:<O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText style="MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in">[T]ake a stand for
traditional American values of tolerance and diversity as we gather to voice
our collective community opposition to the racist, sexist, homophobic agenda
of Christ Church, New St. Andrews College, The Confederation of Reformed
Evangelical Churches and the Association of Classical and Christian
Schools.<O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText>Uninformed readers might (mistakenly) believe that it
is, at best, ironic to take a stand for tolerance and diversity while
simultaneously opposing a “religious” celebration. The following analogy
might help to clarify my position. Suppose you wake up one fine morning and
notice - in a dark corner of your closet - a sweet little nest of spiders.
On the whole you like spiders (Charlotte’s Web was your favorite childhood
book), so you adopt a live and let live attitude toward the little critters.
Five or six days later you have an opportunity to take a closer look at mama
spider. She is a glossy black color, and son of a gun, has a red hour glass
on her belly. This is not what you had in mind when you believed your closet
was big enough for you and the spiders, was it? An apathetic reaction is not
in your best interest. Silently acquiescing to bigotry is as risky and
stupid as deliberately sharing your closet with black widow spiders. And
while the Brotherhood of the Kirk always exacts a price from their critics
the cost of going along to get along is much too high for me.<O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText>Rose”<O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText>HTH,<O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText>Saundra Lund<BR>Moscow, ID<BR><BR>The only thing
necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.<BR>-
Edmund Burke<BR><BR>***** Original material contained herein is Copyright
2007 through life plus 70 years, Saundra Lund. Do not copy, forward,
excerpt, or reproduce outside the Vision 2020 forum without the express
written permission of the author.*****<O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText>-----Original Message-----<BR>From: <A
class=moz-txt-link-abbreviated
href="mailto:vision2020-bounces@moscow.com">vision2020-bounces@moscow.com</A>
[<A class=moz-txt-link-freetext
href="mailto:vision2020-bounces@moscow.com">mailto:vision2020-bounces@moscow.com</A>]
On Behalf Of Paul Rumelhart<BR>Sent: Thursday, August 02, 2007 7:19
PM<BR>To: Bill London<BR>Cc: v2020<BR>Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Trinity
Festival protest<O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText>Doesn't freedom of religion trump simple dislike for
the church or some of it's members? If there are irregularities with
how they were granted permits or something, then that should be looked
into. But why disturb their festival? What is their political
and economic agendas that these activists are protesting?
<O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText>Granted, people have a right to protest as long as
they keep it civil and follow the law. It's just that I have never
understood why people are so opposed to them. Most of the objections
I've heard have to do with zoning laws and permits for the NSA school.
That sounds like a problem with the authorities and not Christ Church.
There are lots of comments about their theology (Southern slavery, odd ideas
about how they think a "biblical" society would work, etc), but so
what? They have every right to believe as they wish, whether or not I
think the lot of them have been standing too long in the hot sun with no
hat.<O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText>I don't agree theologically with them at all.
But who am I to try to tell them they can't expand
themselves?<O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText>I have great respect for you all as community leaders,
I just think you going too far sometimes.<O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText>Paul<O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText><O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText>Bill London wrote: <O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText><O:P></O:P></P>
<P
class=MsoPlainText>
<O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText><O:P></O:P></P>
<P
class=MsoPlainText>
Protest Planned for Christ Church Trinity Festival<O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText><O:P></O:P></P>
<P
class=MsoPlainText>
<O:P></O:P></P>
<P
class=MsoPlainText>
<O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText><O:P></O:P></P>
<P
class=MsoPlainText>
A group of local activists invite the community to join their demonstration
of opposition to the political and economic agenda of Moscow's Christ Church
and the church's Trinity Festival, announced spokesperson Selena Rosewater.
<O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText><O:P></O:P></P>
<P
class=MsoPlainText>
<O:P></O:P></P>
<P
class=MsoPlainText>
<O:P></O:P></P>
<P class=MsoPlainText><O:P></O:P></P>
<P
class=MsoPlainText>
The group will meet in Friendship Square in downtown Moscow at 7:30pm on
Friday, August 3, and then march to the Trinity Festival event at the
Kenworthy Performing Arts Center.<O:P></O:P></P>
<P
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