Elections, Haggard, and My weekend

Hey everybody!

As you know Election Day is tommorow. Dont forget to vote!

I'm voting Lieberman and Simmons, no idea for Governor. I dont like Rell, and I dont know enough about DeSteffano...

Now onto the Ted Haggard situation. I was asked by a friend who is not an Evangelical Christian what I thought last Friday. I said at the time that Mr. Haggard has to be guilty of something, because no one resigns that quickly if they are innocent. As it turns out, Mr Haggard himself admitted to being guilty of some of what he has been accused of. This whole tragic incident should cause us as Christians to do several things. First and most importantly, we must pray- for Mr Haggard and for His family, for the National Association of Evangelicals, for Mr Haggard's Church. Secondly we need to pray for other high profile ministers because Satan loves nothing more than destroying those who preach the Gospel Of Jesus Christ. Third we must pray for ourselves and the other believers around us that we live above reproach, and that God's enemies have no reason to revile Him because of our actions.
More on the reactions of other ministers to the Haggard scandal here

My weekednd was good. I travelled down South to sing with the Gospel Choir at My University at a convention for African American Cultural Centers.
The keynote speaker on Saturday evening was a man from Columbia University. He spoke for about 45 mins -75 mins on the issues of affirmative action and minority disenfranchisement. He also spoke on what he sees as an attempt to disenfranchise minority voters in this country with the criminal justice system.. As he put it, 45% of the people in jail today are African American, Hispanic or Native American. If you are convicted of a felony in this country, you are often denied the right to vote while you are in prison, and once you get out of prison. With a disproportionate amount of minorites in the prison system, the minorities are being slowly disenfranchised.
On Affirmative Action, he said that it is a good thing and that the Conservatives are taking it away from minorities.
I understand where the speaker was coming from. This is a man whose ancestors were exslaves. He himself has been through the Civil Rights movement and he has experienced racism first hand. However. I did have some problems with what he said. When he spoke on affirmative action, I got the impression that he believes that all white conservatives are racists. He spoke of white liberals as "our friends" and although he never said it, the implication I got was that all white conservatives are racists. It is possible that I misjudged him, because I am certainly not perfect. However, I do want to say that I am in fact white and am in fact a conservative. If you asked anyone who knows me, they will all say that I am not, nor ever have been a racist. I undersatnd that there are racist conservatives, but there are also white liberal racists, and there are racists in the black community as well because human nature is human nature, and hatred exists in every culture group.
Now the best way to combat the impression that all white conservatives are racists is to Love people. Those of us who do fit that category of white conservatives need to go out and show Christ's love to our brothers and sisters in the African American community. They need to know that we love them and that we care about them because that is what Christ taught us to do. The devil has lied to our black brothers and sisters saying that we are racists and bigots. Well, we are not what the devil has said about us, and we need to combat the lie by showing love to our brothers and sisters in the African American community