I am ever so ashamed that the leaders of the SBC are not this passionate or faithful to Christianity:
Transcript of LCMS President Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison’s Feb. 16 Testimony before House Committee on Government and Oversight regarding Obama forcing religious organizations into providing HHS health care that includes the "next-day pill," its like having a whole abortion clinic right in your own medicine drawer.
“Mr. Chairman, it’s a pleasure to be here. The Lutheran
Church—Missouri Synod is a body of some 6,200 congregations and 2.3
million members across the U.S. We don’t distribute voters’ lists. We
don’t have a Washington office. We are studiously non-‐partisan, so
much so that we’re often criticized for being quietistic.
“I’d rather not be here, frankly. Our task is to proclaim, in the
words of the blessed apostle St. John, the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s
Son, cleanses us from all our sin. And we care for the needy. We
haven’t the slightest intent to Christianize the government. Martin
Luther famously quipped one time, ‘I’d rather have a smart Turk (FYI that's a Muslim) than a
stupid Christian governing me.’
“We confess that there are two realms, the church and the state.
They shouldn’t be mixed – the church is governed by the Word of God, the
state by natural law and reason, the Constitution. We have 1,000 grade
schools and high schools, 1,300 early childhood centers, 10 colleges and
universities. We are a machine which produces good citizens for this
country, and at tremendous personal cost.
“We have the nation’s only historic black Lutheran college in
Concordia, Selma. Many of our people [who are alive today] walked with
Dr. King 50 years ago on the march from Selma to Montgomery. We put up
the first million dollars and have continued to provide finance for the
Nehemiah Project in New York as it has continued over the years, to
provide home ownership for thousands of families, many of them headed by
single women. Our agency in New Orleans, Camp Restore, rebuilt over
4,000 homes after Katrina, through the blood, sweat and tears of our
volunteers. Our Lutheran Malaria Initiative, barely begun, has touched
the lives of 1.6 million people in East Africa, especially those
affected by disease, women and children. And this is just the tip, the
very tip, of the charitable iceberg.
“I’m here to express our deepest distress over the HHS
provisions. We are religiously opposed to supporting abortion-‐causing
drugs. That is, in part, why we maintain our own health plan. While we
are grandfathered under the very narrow provisions of the HHS policy, we
are deeply concerned that our consciences may soon be martyred by a few
strokes on the keyboard as this administration moves us all into a
single-‐payer ... system. Our direct experience in the Hosanna-‐Tabor
case with one of our congregations gives us no comfort that this
administration will be concerned to guard our free-‐exercise rights.
“We self-‐insure 50,000 people. We do it well. Our workers make
an average of $43,000 a year, 17,000 teachers make much less, on
average. Our health plan was preparing to take significant cost-‐saving
measures, to be passed on to our workers, just as this health-‐care
legislation was passed. We elected not to make those changes, incur
great cost, lest we fall out of the narrow provisions required under the
grandfather clause. While we are opposed in principle, not to all forms
of birth control, but only abortion-‐causing drugs, we stand with our
friends in the Catholic Church and all others, Christians and
non-‐Christians, under the free exercise and conscience provisions of
the U.S. Constitution.
“Religious people determine what violates their consciences, not
the federal government. The conscience is a sacred thing. Our church
exists because overzealous governments in northern Europe made decisions
which trampled the religious convictions of our forebearers. I have
ancestors who served in the Revolutionary War. I have ancestors who were
on the Lewis and Clark expedition. I have ancestors who served in the
War of 1812, who fought for the North in the Civil War – my
88-‐year-‐old father-‐in-‐law has recounted to me, in tears many
times, the horrors of the Battle of the Bulge. In fact, Bud Day, the
most highly decorated veteran alive, is a member of The Lutheran
Church—Missouri Synod.
“We fought for a free conscience in this country, and we won’t
give it up without a fight. To paraphrase Martin Luther, the heart and
conscience has room only for God, not for God and the federal
government. The bed is too narrow, the blanket is too short. We must
obey God rather than men, and we will. Please get the federal
government, Mr. Chairman, out of our consciences. Thank you.”
you.”
you.”
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