Neumann's WELS Church on Jews: Accept Christ or No Heaven for You!

In a March 9, 1997 address to the Madison Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) church [preaches no abortion even in cases of rape, women need to submit to men and gays are to spend eternity in hell], Neumann said his political advisers warned him not to mention his religion in his 1998 run for the Senate against Sen. Russ Feingold.

“When I first ran I had all kinds of consultants telling me not to mention religion. They told me to tone down any discussion we might have. … they did ask me to tone down the concept of religion or values that are taught in our churches and synagogues as being a part of what we were,” said Neumann.

Nice of him to mention synagogues.
---
From Mark Neumann' WELS Church: Did and do Jews go to heaven?

During Old Testament times, did believing Jews go to heaven? How about since our Savior Jesus Christ completed his work of redemption?

Answer:

Salvation, including heavenly citizenship, was always part of the Messianic faith. Believers of all ethnic, cultural, and linguistic groups went to heaven in Old Testament times. This included Jewish believers. The testimony of prominent Jewish believers affirm that they knew about and believed this: David in Psalm 16:11, Asaph in Psalm 73:23-26, Isaiah in Isaiah 26:19, and Daniel in Daniel 12:1-3 are good examples.

The same is equally true during the New Testament era and will be so until the Last Day, at Christ's Second, Final Coming. Believing Jews are citizens of heaven just as believing Gentiles are. The original disciples and apostles were Jewish believers. The New Testament Letter to the Hebrews was addressed to Jewish believers, and Hebrews 12:22-24 affirms that heaven is their eternal home.

If your question is about unbelieving Jews (or unbelievers from any other ethnic group) or followers of Judaism who have rejected Jesus Christ as the Messiah and Savior of mankind, then we must sadly answer that they did not and do not go to heaven. Acts 4:12 affirms that Christ alone is the Savior of mankind. The grief of all believers regarding the loss of unbelieving Jews (Israel) is well expressed by Paul in Romans 9:30-33 and Romans 10:1-13.

Fond du Lac Police: Neo-NAZI Cards Not "blatantly offensive racially," says report

Update III: Fond du Lac Police Captain Steve Thiry: "Obviously, people were offended," or we would not have investigated the incident. The Fond du Lac Reporter's piece gets knocked down.

Update II: Check out the xenophobic comments on the bottom of the Fond du Lac Reporter's piece, and you can understand why Neo-NAZIs in Fondy are in a word: Worrying.

Update: SPLC Maps 12 Racist Groups in Wisconsin

I read with disappointment this morning's report in the Fond du Lac Reporter on the neo-NAZIs leaving their business cards on the car windows of several participants of a Hispanic-Latino event last week.

The "Aryan Wear" group's cards asks if the car-owners had "had enough diversity?"

The card is pictured at right.

The lede in the Reporter piece by Sharon Roznik reads: "Fond du Lac police said the content of anti-diversity cards left on the car windows of several participants of last Thursday's 'HOLA!' event is neither threatening, nor blatantly offensive racially."

What?

What is so insidious about institutionalised racism is that it's sometimes difficult for some to recognize it when it presents itself, making an argument to persuade on the merits of racism [there are none] all the more difficult.

Yet I have to question either the reporting by Roznik or the perspicuity of the Fond du Lac Police. [Note: Fond du Lac Police Captain Steve Thiry just phoned and said, "Obviously, people were offended," or we would not have investigated the incident.

Are we to believe that a group advertising itself as "Aryan" and denouncing "diversity" is, as Roznik reports the Fondy police say, not "blatantly offensive racially"?

Are you kidding me? Are the Fondy police really that dumb? Did the police really make this value judgement? No.

This is the neo-NAZI group, "Aryan Wear" advertising their website and blasting "diversity": http://aryanwear.com/

The Fond du Lac Public Library is an outstanding institution serving as a counterweight to what is often a xenophobic city, a city in which "nigger" jokes were routinely heard during this writer's elementary school experience at Elizabeth Waters elementary school.

I'm curious and I'm going to follow up on these questions: Are they kidding me, since when are Aryans not "blatantly offensive racially"?

J-Street: "Condemn Settler Pogroms"

Update: United Nations' human rights rapporteur: Israel's policies against the Palestinians are tantamount to a "crime against humanity".

[Picture above-right: The delivery of essential aid to Gaza has been stemmed by the Israeli blockade. [AFP]]

The new pro-Israel, pro-peace movement blasts Jewish settlers and the treatment of Palestinians as a new era of right wing militarism in Israel and the United States continues unabated.

From the J-street e-mail:

"We are the children of a people whose historic ethos is built on the memory of pogroms. The sight of Jews firing at innocent Palestinians has no other name than pogrom. Even when Jews do this, it is a pogrom." - Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Olmert, December 7, 2008 [1]

Dear J Street Member,

Prime Minister Olmert's description of the recent violent riot of Jewish settlers through Palestinian areas of the West Bank city of Hebron still sends chills down my spine.

While many American Jewish organizations denounced the extremist settlers' actions - there was one notable omission: the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the self-proclaimed "central coordinating body for American Jewry." [2]

Despite public calls for a statement on the settlers' actions, the Conference, and its leader Malcolm Hoenlein, have refused. It's time to make our voices heard, particularly with other provocative settler actions and marches in the works.

Click here to demand that the Conference of Presidents condemn the violent settler riots in Hebron.

What the settlers did was shocking. They shot two Palestinians, burned fields and homes, assaulted Israeli soldiers, and defaced Muslim graves. [3]

Israel's political leadership - Defense Minister Ehud Barak, outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni - have denounced the violence and the extremist settlers' disregard for the rule of law in the strongest possible terms.

American Jews have a real obligation to speak out on settler extremism. Because, while mainstream Israelis recognize the necessity of reining in the settler movement, a large part of the money supporting the settlers' presence in Hebron is coming from right here in America. The Brooklyn-based Hebron Fund, for instance, has raised at least $6.6 million since 2002 to support the extremist Jewish community in Hebron [4] - and is actively undermining the possibility of a two-state solution with the Palestinians.

American friends of Israel must not only condemn Palestinian terrorism and vile threats from Iran, we must also speak out against extremist settler violence. The settler movement and settlement construction poses an existential threat to Israel's survival as a Jewish and democratic state.

Too often, the American Jewish community turns a blind eye to the damage being done with funds and support raised here that propel the settlers and their destructive agenda.

That's why the American Jewish community must send a strong and unified message on settler violence in the West Bank. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations should be silent no longer. It's time for Malcolm Hoenlein and the Conference to condemn the recent violence in Hebron.

Click here to send a message to Malcolm Hoenlein right now and demand that he condemn the settler violence in Hebron.

This isn't the first time that Malcolm Hoenlein has misrepresented American Jewry from his post at the Conference of Presidents.

In September, Hoenlein and others invited Sarah Palin to speak at an Iran Unity rally for the American Jewish Community. After intense pressure from many (including J Street) who cringed at the idea of Sarah Palin speaking to American Jews on Iran, Hoenlein and the rally organizers disinvited Sarah Palin. [5]

Sarah Palin was stopped from speaking at the Iran Unity rally in part because we gathered tens of thousands of petition signatures within 24 hours. Grassroots pressure works - and that's why we want to turn up the heat. J Street is going to be very focused in 2009 on ensuring that the broader American Jewish community is mobilized to stop support from the United States for the settlers. We'll also be pressing the leading voices of our community to speak out far more boldly and urgently about this threat to Israel's security and survival.

I hope you'll take a moment to send a message to Malcolm Hoenlein and then forward this message to your friends and family.

Thanks.

Isaac Isaac Luria
Online DirectorJ Street
December 15, 2008

[1] "Israeli PM: Settlers' actions tantamount to 'pogrom'," by Shira Medding. CNN, December 7, 2008.

[2] "About the Conference." Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations Website, accessed December 15.

[3] "Israel braces for settler violence in wake of Hebron house evacuation," by Nadav Shragai and Amos Harel. Haaretz, May 12, 2008.

[4] "Tax Form 990," submitted by Hebron Fund Inc. Guidestar (requires registration). 2006.

[5] "Palin disinvited from Iran rally," by Ben Smith. Politico, September 18, 2008.

----------ABOUT J STREETJ Street is the political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement. J Street was founded to promote meaningful American leadership to end the Arab-Israeli and Palestinian-Israel conflicts peacefully and diplomatically. We support a new direction for American policy in the Middle East and a broad public and policy debate about the U.S. role in the region. Learn more at our website by clicking one of the links above.

Hitting Wildmon-AFA's Bigotry

Folk Bum has a post displaying the American Family Association’s (AFA) promotion of a Christmas-lighted cross that appears precisely like the image of a burning cross.

And the AFA is drawing howls.

“The American Family Association--they of the our-morality-for-all bent--is offering a sweet new Xmas gift,” laughs Folk Bum.

"The American Family Association has really topped themselves," observes John Cole.

The AFA’s founder is of course one Donald Wildmon—a self-proclaimed decency advocate challenging Jews, gays, humanists and other assorted going-to-spend-eternity-in-damnation types by “focusing primarily on the influence of television and other media” that Wildmon fears promotes witchcraft, homosexuality and so on.

Wildmon is of course a fool, as documented well, for example:

"During a 1985 speech before the National Religious Broadcasters, Wildmon cited a survey of top media executives conducted by two researchers, claiming that the results ‘indicated that 59 percent of the people who are responsible for network programming were raised in Jewish homes. If the people who control the networks in Hollywood were 59 percent Christian and if they were only 1 percent as anti-Semitic as the networks are currently anti-Christian, there would [be] a massive public outcry from the national liberal secular media.’"

More revealing is the response to Folkbum's post from the we-hate-evidence crowd of Wisconsin Republican bloggers.

- “Now you're just being stupid and insulting.” - James Wigderson

- “The post steps over the line at first impression.” - Dad29

Today’s Republican commentators on the net, seemingly with the sole exception of David Blaska, never were that big on civil rights and the fight against the social pathologies of racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, and homophobia.

Since the inception of Nixon’s Southern Strategy in 1968, continuing through Reagan’s 1980 campaign kick-off in Philadelphia, Mississippi [the site of the murder of civil rights workers, Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney, 16 years earlier], right on up to Bush and McCain, playing on the bigotries in America has been standard GOP fare.

Reading Wisconsin GOP bloggers, listening to Milwaukee talk radio, it seems apparent that this will continue.

So, as one considers the GOP and its allies in the religious right like the AFA (and their blazingly brilliant theories on Jews, gays, witchcraft and “decency”), their burning cross seems an apropos symbol for the anti-Semitic idiots.

And don't expect Republican bloggers to denounce Wildmon and his imbecilic rants.