Lux Lucet

“Mormonism is not Christianity. It has always been considered a cult by the mainstream of Christianity.” – Dr. Robert Jeffress

A few weeks back, Baptist minister Robert Jeffress caused a quite a stir when he introduced presidential candidate Rick Perry at the Values Voter Summit. Rather than offering the usual vanilla platitudes in support of his favorite candidate, he made a dreadful gaffe and said something that was actually interesting. In today’s PC world, this, of course, is strictly verboten.

Jeffress’ offending words in full were, 

Rick Perry’s a Christian. He’s an evangelical Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ,” Jeffress said. “Mormonism is not Christianity. It has always been considered a cult by the mainstream of Christianity.

In 2007, Jeffress made a similar remark about Romney in a sermon, saying, 

Mitt Romney is a Mormon, and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. Even though he talks about Jesus as his lord and savior, he is not a Christian.

  Jeffress continued, 

Mormonism is not Christianity. Mormonism is a cult. And just because somebody talks about Jesus does not make them a believer.

Now I have to say, none of this terrible upsets me. Dr Jeffress’ comments about Mormonism and Romney were right on target, admirable even. Mormonism is not Christianity and Mormons, including Mitt Romney, are not Christians. Further, given the bizarre history and antitrinitarian doctrine of the Mormon faith, calling it a cult – as the word is popularly understood – is quite accurate..
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Is anyone too big to fail? Many think so. I heard a professor say that the debate over the 2008 Wall Street bailout was the most boring discussion he had ever heard. “Of course,” he told us, “the bailout was the right thing to do. Without it the financial system would have collapsed.”

As usual, the argument over the doctrine of too-big-to-fail (TBTF) hinges on the definition of the term. If by TBTF one means that the current corrupt system of welfare, warfare, phoney money, and bailouts would be threatened by the collapse of a particular financial organization, then yes, some institutions are too big to fail. Does anyone believe for a minute that crony capitalism could contiue without cronies?

On the other hand, if we define TBTF as meaning that the existence captialism, freedom and the nation itself is threatened unless the government aggressively acts to transfer billions or even trillions of dollars from American taxpayers to incompetent investment banks and dishonest insuance companies that made bad investments and as a result are teetering on edge of bankruptcy, then no, there’s no such thing as TBTF.

Capitalism is a system of private property; a system of profit and loss. Let the folks on Wall Street make as much money as they can. But if things go south, they have no claim on the property of others.

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