Public piety, private contempt for Hillary Clinton and aides By Mercedes Schlapp –
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/13/public-piety-private-contempt-for-hillary-clinton-/
In public, Hillary Clinton talks about how she would represent all Americans and pushes the “Stronger Together” campaign theme. But behind closed doors, there is no room for people of faith in her America. Privately, the Democratic nominee and her campaign advisers are pushing a liberal agenda hostile to religion and targeting faith organizations that do not adapt to their liberal “religion.”
The Clinton campaign is no friend of the cause of religious liberty. Internal emails exposed by WikiLeaks showed how her top campaign aides mock believers and view evangelicals and Catholics as backward in their beliefs. Mrs. Clinton herself even said publicly “deep-seated cultural codes and religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.”
Top Hillary Clinton advisers ridiculed individuals for raising their children Catholic, referring to Catholics as being “systematic in thought and severely backwards.” It was disturbing to read about how liberals characterize conservative Catholics as being responsible for an “amazing bastardization of faith.”
Catholics and evangelicals should be troubled by Mrs. Clinton’s hidden agenda to influence and alter the tenets of Christian and Catholic orthodoxy. Perhaps what is most disturbing is that Mrs. Clinton’s team will pander publicly on the stump to Catholics, Christians, Southerners and Hispanics, and then take a very different stance behind closed doors from the comfort of their keyboards. There they express vicious contempt for the very voters they need to win the election.
In an email exchange with Mr. Podesta, Voices for Progress President Sandy Newman wrote, “There needs to be a Catholic Spring, in which Catholics themselves demand the end of a middle ages [sic] dictatorship.” He then proceeded by asking how to “plant the seeds of a revolution.” Mr. Podesta replied, “We created Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good to organize for a moment like this … likewise Catholics United.”
It’s shocking that liberals and Mrs. Clinton’s advisers think they can hatch a “Catholic Spring,” a revolution within the Church carried out by liberal political groups who strongly oppose the Rome’s fundamental teachings. This “revolution” talk is similar to the Soviet anti-Catholic campaigns, where Communist leaders tried to undermine the role and stature of the Catholic Church in Eastern Europe during the Cold War.
Would a President Hillary Clinton and her liberal allies suspend the tax-exempt status of churches deemed “not friendly” to her administration? It is within the realm of possibility considering their hateful beliefs.
Mr. Podesta boasts that “we” created the Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good. His email clearly reveals that liberals and the Clinton campaign are focused on altering Catholic doctrine through political organizations that push a liberal agenda.
The leaked emails show Mrs. Clinton’s communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, directly mocking both Catholics and Protestant evangelicals. Some conservatives are turning to Catholicism, she wrote, because “they think it is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion. Their rich friends wouldn’t understand if they became evangelicals.”
Such comments reflect an elitist mentality contemptuous of genuine religious conviction. It’s both discouraging and insulting to millions of evangelicals and Catholics who just want to live their lives according to their faith.
Has Ms. Palmieri not heard about religious liberty? Her comments contradict the very essence of the First Amendment, and are anti-American to boot. If people of faith stay silent and on the sidelines during this election cycle, this liberal theology will win, and traditional churches will lose.
We cannot afford another four years of liberal Democratic rule in the White House, a White House that has focused its energy on forcing nuns to offer contraception despite their religious beliefs and forcing churches to defend lawsuits on transgender rights where they are being unfairly classified as public places. The Obama administration, cheered on by Mrs. Clinton, is the first administration in history to sue Catholic nuns for their religious beliefs.
Installing an activist liberal majority on the Supreme Court will put religious liberties at risk for generations to come.
We will be left with the state telling the church how to behave, and that is why people of faith need to stop Mrs. Clinton’s anti-religious agenda — now.
• Mercedes Schlapp is a Fox News contributor, co-founder of Cove Strategies and former White House director of specialty media under President George W. Bush.
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