{"id":56,"date":"2008-09-23T20:17:14","date_gmt":"2008-09-23T20:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/09\/peace-churches-why-not-ask-ira.html"},"modified":"2008-09-23T20:17:14","modified_gmt":"2008-09-23T20:17:14","slug":"peace-churches-why-not-ask-ira","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/09\/peace-churches-why-not-ask-ira.html","title":{"rendered":"PEACE CHURCHES: Why Not Ask Iran About Peace?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jay, you are half right in discussing the reception (I&#8217;m not sure why you characterized it as a &#8220;celebration&#8221;) to be given by 25 significant religious groups for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. \u00a0He is, of course, a revolting figure in so many ways. \u00a0He is the puppet of the most extreme clerics in Iran. \u00a0His comments about the Holocaust, about gay people (who don&#8217;t exist in Iran, he noted to an audience at Columbia University earlier this year), the death penalty for heretical religious views, and so many other topics should shock the conscience of any thinking persons. \u00a0It was a mistake to offer him the opportunity to give an address on any topic, including &#8220;religious contributions to peace&#8221;, a subject about which he has a monumental level of ignorance.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>What is not a mistake is to have American religious figures meet with him&#8211;and ask him hard questions. \u00a0As some of the comments on your post suggest&#8211;and as I know from experience with Quaker and Mennonite groups&#8211;the President will not have a free ride anymore than the Columbia audience gave him one. \u00a0I hope that when the session is over, the religious representatives will come out and tell us what was said: the good, the bad, and the ugly.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Curiously, in between my speeches in the South this week, I had a chance to see <span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"text-decoration: underline\">our<\/span>\u00a0President&#8217;s final (thank goodness) speech to the United Nations General Assembly today. \u00a0After all the distortions, fabrications and hypocritical nonsense he and Condoleeza Rice (and, yes, Colin Powell as well) have uttered about the United States&#8217; war in Iraq, I wondered: would President Bush meet with all these peace-saturated churches? \u00a0I&#8217;m not suggesting Presidential moral equivalency here&#8211;just pointing out that for a man who believes (as Sarah Palin does) that this is a war God wanted us to fight&#8211;he should have been willing a long time ago, to get a second spiritual opinion. \u00a0Too much to ask, Jay?<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jay, you are half right in discussing the reception (I&#8217;m not sure why you characterized it as a &#8220;celebration&#8221;) to be given by 25 significant religious groups for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. \u00a0He is, of course, a revolting figure in so many ways. \u00a0He is the puppet of the most extreme clerics in Iran. \u00a0His&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":164,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,4],"tags":[28],"class_list":["post-56","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military","category-religious-freedom","tag-peace-churches-ahmadinejad-george-bush-sarah-palin-united-nations"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>PEACE CHURCHES: Why Not Ask Iran About Peace? - Lynn v. Sekulow<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/09\/peace-churches-why-not-ask-ira.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"PEACE CHURCHES: Why Not Ask Iran About Peace? - Lynn v. Sekulow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Jay, you are half right in discussing the reception (I&#8217;m not sure why you characterized it as a &#8220;celebration&#8221;) to be given by 25 significant religious groups for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. \u00a0He is, of course, a revolting figure in so many ways. \u00a0He is the puppet of the most extreme clerics in Iran. \u00a0His&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/09\/peace-churches-why-not-ask-ira.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Lynn v. Sekulow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-09-23T20:17:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rev. Barry W. Lynn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"PEACE CHURCHES: Why Not Ask Iran About Peace? - Lynn v. Sekulow","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/09\/peace-churches-why-not-ask-ira.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"PEACE CHURCHES: Why Not Ask Iran About Peace? - Lynn v. Sekulow","og_description":"Jay, you are half right in discussing the reception (I&#8217;m not sure why you characterized it as a &#8220;celebration&#8221;) to be given by 25 significant religious groups for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. \u00a0He is, of course, a revolting figure in so many ways. \u00a0He is the puppet of the most extreme clerics in Iran. \u00a0His&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/09\/peace-churches-why-not-ask-ira.html","og_site_name":"Lynn v. Sekulow","article_published_time":"2008-09-23T20:17:14+00:00","author":"Rev. 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Lynn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/32b\/32b0f12cad840c65bff61ad01e2664aax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/32b\/32b0f12cad840c65bff61ad01e2664aax96.jpg","caption":"Rev. Barry W. Lynn"},"description":"Since 1992, the Rev. Barry W. Lynn has served as executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington, D.C.-based organization dedicated to the preservation of the Constitution's religious liberty provisions (www.au.org). In addition to his work as a long-time activist and lawyer in the civil liberties field, Lynn is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, offering him a unique perspective on church-state issues. An accomplished speaker and lecturer, Lynn has appeared frequently on television and radio broadcasts to offer analysis of First Amendment issues. News programs on which Lynn has appeared include PBS's \"NewsHour,\" NBC's \"Today Show,\" Fox News Channel's \"O'Reilly Factor,\" ABC's \"Nightline,\" CNN's \"Crossfire,\" CBS's \"60 Minutes,\" MSNBC's \"Countdown with Keith Olbermann,\" Fox News Channel's \"Hannity & Colmes,\" ABC's \"Good Morning America,\" CNN's \"Larry King Live\" and the national nightly news on NBC, ABC and CBS. On the radio, Lynn serves as host of \"Culture Shocks,\" a daily look at various issues affecting society and the culture. In the 1990s he served for two years as regular co-host of \"Pat Buchanan and Company\" and after that did a weekly syndicated radio program, \"Review of the News,\" with Col. Oliver North. Lynn is a regular guest on nationally broadcast radio programs, including National Public Radio's \"All Things Considered,\" \"Morning Edition\" and \"Talk of the Nation,\" as well as having appeared on national networks such as CBS Radio, CNN Radio, ABC Radio and AP Radio. Lynn began his professional career working at the national office of the United Church of Christ, including a two-year stint as legislative counsel for the Church's Office of Church in Society in Washington, D.C. From 1984 to 1991 he was legislative counsel for the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union. In 2006, Lynn authored Piety & Politics: The Right-Wing Assault On Religious Freedom (Harmony Books). In 2008 he coauthored (with C. Welton Gaddy) First Freedom First: A Citizen's Guide to Protecting Religious Liberty and the Separation of Church and State (Beacon Press). Lynn writes frequently on religious liberty issues, and has had essays published in outlets such as USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Nation. Lynn also has op-eds published frequently by the McClatchy and Scripps-Howard newspaper chains. A member of the Washington, D.C. and U.S. Supreme Court bar, Lynn earned his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 1978. In addition, he received his theology degree from Boston University School of Theology in 1973. Lynn, who was born in Harrisburg, Pa., and raised in Bethlehem, Pa., lives in Chevy Chase, Md., with his family.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/author\/blynn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}