…and for that reason all I can add is agreement.

…to the Tiger Woods situation.

Woods, as a Buddhist, is basically told by his religion that “what goes around comes around,” and as such his current predicament is cosmic justice being visited upon him for his past sins. That’s not a particularly uplifting belief system for someone who needs redemption in his broken life; Christianity, on the other hand, offers a much more positive and hopeful message.

The fact is, Hume’s suggestion was an entirely practical and meaningful one. He offered Woods very good advice that Woods is obliged neither to accept nor reject. That such an effort should be rewarded with controversy is a testament to the pervasive bigotry and intolerance of the anti-Christian hatemongers among us.

redemption and actually enjoys his immorality. He does not strike me as a man who cares about anything but Tiger and his ability to make the almighty dollar! I think anything he does ie: sex rehab or whatever will be STRICTLY for appearances sake.

“We in this country have so corrupted the First Amendment to inflate this overblown and misstated notion of “separation of church and state” that we risk instilling in future American generations the idea that God should be separated from the living of our lives.”

Amen, and amen!

It occurs to me that these secularists don’t want to acknowledge God. They want Him out of their lives. Therefore they disdain the founding documents and want them forgotten, BECAUSE they explicitly and implicitly acknowledge Him.

Hume was simply voicing his opinion. Why are liberals afraid of opinion?

I am not Christian (I am Hindu), and was by no means offended by what Hume said. All he was saying is Woods may benefit from some faith and redemption right now.

It is absurd what people get upset about these days.

www.neoavatara.com/blog

I truly believe the biggest reason why the Left hated Bush so much was because he wasn’t shy about expressing his Christian faith and the change it had made in his life.

I’m not saying all Liberals hate people of faith, but a large part of their coalition is composed of militant secularism that crosses the line into outright hostility to Christianity. It seems every outspoken liberal I’ve ever met in my life has a BIG chip on their shoulder when it comes to religion.

I think that it was inappropriate. I also think that much of what you’ve written attacks a straw man. None of the detractors of his comments are arguing that his speech was unconstitutional so this has nothing to do with the First Amendment or the Separation of Church and State.

Brit Hume is free to use his on-air time as a political pundit however he wants, but to the extent that he uses it to prosylatize for Chrisitianity, I will take him less seriously as a pundit in general. And though it’s true that I myself am secular, I think that your implication that only secular people were bothered by the incident isn’t right. I would bet that contrary to what you’ve asserted, most Americans in fact *would* think twice about someone acting in the capacity of a political pundit using that platform to exhort one away from his own faith and towards the commentators.

-exits

…the extent to which this comment has been discussed. I’ve even heard some suggest that this was a calculated comment on Brits part to increase ratings. That somehow Brit and Roger Ailes cooked up this scheme. That’s insane! I take Brit at his word. He seemed genuinely concerned with Tigers situation and offered what he believes is the road to redemption. Nothing more.

It’s remarkable how the secular Left portray themselves as open minded and accepting and people actually buy it.

The founders clearly relied on “Endowed by our Creator,” “inalienable rights,” and “With a firm reliance on Divine Providence…” as cornerstones of our republic for very obvious reasons. They were not only as an expressions of faith but also to underlie their resolute conviction that a government of men had limits. Those limits were bounded by the fact that all rights came from God and they were indeed “inalienable”. This is a common theme throughout the founding documents. Can anyone think of a more perfect way to prevent tyranny?

Liberals and statists want to kill God in order to increase their domain over men. Using the vehicle of government, they justify egregious assaults on personal liberty such as the current healthcare assault. These actions assure their continued and increasing dominion over men by diluting the relevance of God in all matters whether it be control of our lives or personal treasure.

They truly believe that obfuscating and demoting the importance of God to our democracy will make us less resolute and cause the republics foundation to crumble- all to remake it in their own image. However, all they have done is stir the cauldron of freedom and make our populace yearn to once again break the yoke of tyranny placed around our necks by them. They have forgotten the lessons of history. These temporary stewards will of our government will never break our will. Never.

Personally, I would call for a day of fasting, humiliation and prayer- just as the founders did when difficult roadblocks confronted them during the Declaration’s writing. I can think of no better way to once again support our republic and honor brave citizens such as Mr. Hume.

Some folks will understand what Hume said and realize it was very applicable and not in the least out of the norm for a Christian. For me it explains a great deal about the integrity of Mr. Hume over the years.

If a Buddhist Hume had suggested that a Christian Tiger Woods consider the karmic fallout of his actions and change his behavior accordingly, the media, the perturbed secularists, and the lukewarm, self-righteous “let’s just keep it between Jesus and you” Christians would have no qualm.

This is soft anti-Christian bigotry watered down to disguise its opaqueness and bitterness.

Amazing how our liberals and secularists want to push Christians into the closet while celebrating every other group coming out of the closet.

But again, nothing new under the sun, and how the darkness hates the light.

There’s another aspect that I would urge the Christians still in the pool, at least, to consider.

The 3 main camps of response to Hume’s comments, both here and in the culture, have fallen, not surprisingly along very predictable lines: full anti (a range of variants upon”he has no right to express himself that way”), qualified (upon “he may have the right, but I wish he hadn’t”) and full pro (upon “he has every right in the world, and I’m glad he did”).

The current melee about Hume could be instructive for a generation which has assumed, but is now seeing an unforecast eclipse of, evangelicalism as a significant, or even unified, American cultural voice, and my hope is that more care will be given to the content of our own public discourse about the faith once delivered to the saints.

More specifically, I agree that from both a cultural and constitutional point of view, the left’s shock and dismay and hatred have no foundation at all: legally, Brit indeed had every right to make his comment, and since the segment was aired, clearly his employer, one of many competing cultural loci, had no problem with his having done so either.

But the unasked question–which I hope will guide our own public proclamation of the Christian faith as voices arrayed against it howl louder in the growing dark–is, under what authority, and with what level of expertise, and with what accuracy, was Brit speaking? The very fact that these questions are so rarely asked by Christians is of far more consequence than the largescale surprise–kudos to hogan for pointing this out!– that opposition will arise, since it means that too much of the church has no idea what it really believes beyond the generic American Civil Religion.

Words matter. Brit spoke of different kinds of “redemption and forgiveness” being offered by Buddhism vs. Christianity, and Christians certainly connected the dots to fill in the blanks of what he left unsaid. But the trouble with needing to connect the dots is that a child who can’t count yet will end up with a very different picture. But he didn’t stop there; he defined this “redemption and forgiveness” in classic American–not Biblical–subjective terminology: “turn to the Christian faith (basing “redemption” on man’s activity, not God’s) and you can make a complete recovery (a promise not found in the Scriptures; did the thief on the cross–although about to enter eternal bliss–get back the years that the locust had eaten?) and be a great example to the world (really? you want him to continue to be motivated by a lust for fame, which has done so well for him to this point? but I forget, fame–or audience–has been highly revered by evangelicals in recent decades)”.

You see, by saying those things in that way, Brit has actually just added one more layer for the Christian teacher and pastor to have to patiently scrub away.

So what could Brit have done instead? Two come to mind:

1) Avoid at all costs the obligatory preamble “I think…”. All American religious blather inevitably begins with “I think / I feel / imo”. But once those words are out you have disconnected the message from objective authority. So maybe something like this:

“Some of you may know that I’m a member of the [ insert branch / denomination name here, or if so inclined "The Church of Chatting with God all by Myself"], among whose foundational articles are the biblical teaching that a repentant sinner, brought to living faith in the historical life, expiatory death and bodily resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, will be forgiven all his sins and stand when God judges the world at the return of Christ. My prayer for Tiger is that he find this faith. Bill, what about you? Would that go for you as well?”

As much as I would love to hear this, however, I would then wonder why he has not done the same when discussing, let’s say, any other public person at all.

2) Say nothing on the air. Some of us then learn, decades from now, from Tiger’s memoirs, that one Sunday morning, rather than appearing on a certain news show, Brit Hume had cancelled his appearance and made arrangements to take him to a small, out-of-the-way church where, for the first of many times, he could sit in the back, staying very small, and hear the eternal gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ faithfully preached.

I am at the point in my life where if you are offended, you can go to your room and cry.
86% of the nation polls having religious belief and 75% are members of some organized religion. So, at most, a minority of c. 14% abjures any acknowledgement of religion, and that’s fine. Just don’t tell me and all else that you don’t take people of faith seriously or their beliefs are offensive. You are denigrating the vast majority of citizens.
Christianity swept away the ancient world and destroyed the powerful pagan societies of the Mediterranean because it promised the mostly poor and often enslaved redemption by merely professing for Christ who said the meek shall inherit the earth.
All successful “talk” rehab is basically a page out of Christianity. Miost of the “social justice” blather is a form of Christianity without Christ. We would not have the Dec. of Ind. or the US Constitution without Christianity. We would not be freely expressing ourselves (even the secular offended) on this site without Christianity.
You don’t see 1st Amendments in China or Indonesia or Turkey.
As to Hume possibly evangelizing to Woods, evangelicals makeup about 1/4 of this entire country, but I think Hume is Roman Catholic, which makes up another 1/4 of the country yet is not famous for conversions since the time of the Spanish Armada.
So, all the angst about forcing Tiger Woods to change his faith is more than a little over the top.
I wish Tiger well, but I think he has next to no religious affiliation as his behavior is all narcissistic egoism.

I was surprised, quite pleasantly so, to see someone on one of the Sunday talk shows actually expressing a Christian message, and of course Brit was completely correct that Tiger needs Jesus. There have been a number of rather incorrect statements in this thread, I’d like to correct just a bit of the errors now. I saw a statement to the effect of, we wouldnt like it if someone who was some other religion, trying to talk somebody out of being a Christian, to rationalize why he shouldn’t have said what he did. Of course that’s also like saying people shouldn’t tell other people not to use drugs, because we non-drug users wouldnt like it if the drug users started suggesting people use drugs who don’t already. You don’t refuse to say what is right because somebody else might then say what is wrong, its just an absurd concept. Tiger needs Jesus, he doesn’t need some false religon. The idea that if noone mentions Jesus then nobody will mention other false religions either is absurd, but even if it were true it doesn’t matter because Jesus is who Tiger (and everyone else of course) needs, and if they don’t have Him then it really doesn’t matter what they end up with.

The bottom line is that Brit Hume was 1000% right, I applaud his courage in standing up to the forces of evil in Washington (and elsewhere), you did us proud Brit, but vastly more importantly than that, I believe you did Jesus proud, and that’s all that really matters.

frequently winds up in political discussions. As a whole our founders did believe in the God Creator. As you cite clearly hogan, the Declaration of Independence states the founders’ belief. We Christians believe as our founders, human rights come from God the Creator and no other. Can a man grant another man human rights? Man did not create man. How can one man decide what rights to grant another? This leads to tyranny. For if man believes his rights are granted by man, then consequently he can take them away. We live in a modern day Soddom and Gommorrah of thought and reason. It reinforces the truth of the Bible. The darkness hates the light which is why they lash out against it.

We’ve been conditioned over time to react this way by the creeping encroachment of secular liberal philosophy and political correctness.

Whether or not it was ever considered to be “cool” to be a Christian by American society at large, there was at least a time when it would have been afforded some measure of respect by religious and secular Americans alike. I don’t think Brit Hume’s comments would have elicited such an uncomfortable reaction fifty or so years ago.

The original source chronicling the life and teachings of Christ is the Bible. If you claim to believe in the God of the Bible (and certainly if you claim to be a Christian), then it would stand to reason that you look to the Bible to determine what it is you’re supposed to do with your life. One of the teachings of the New Testament is to tell others about the way of salvation, regardless of what their current belief system may be. If a person wants to hear it, then great. If not, then you shake the dust off your feet and move on to someone who will.

I’m guessing that, at the end of the day, Brit Hume has decided he is more concerned about being true to scriptural teaching than he is to any societal sensibilities, to which I say, “Good.” I also happen to think the founders of this nation would heartily concur. There would be no need to enshrine the concept of free speech in the Constitution if no one was ever offended or threatened by anything anyone ever said in the first place – which highlights all the more why political correctness (and the stifling of free speech that goes along with it) is so hideous.

Very true. Mr. Woods’ actions would have been all the more shocking-not because this behavior did not occur 50 years ago, but because one was stigmatized by “getting caught”. I’m still perplexed by the initial reaction most Democrats had regarding Clinton’s behavior.

This country has lost its moral compass and the only way to regain it is to have more people like Mr. Hume who are “unafraid”, as he stated many times in the past on the Fox Network.

If I saw someone who was in a desparate situation, a situation I also had experienced, I would want to tell them how I survived. Maybe Britt is subtly telling Tiger that he, Brit, knows what Tiger is going through and that he, Britt, found the answer to his incomprehensible demoralization through a faith in Jesus. I think it is compassionate of Britt to offer his experience as advice.

This is what I want from my faith in Jesus Christ. I want the promises that Jesus says are mine. Jesus says that if I ‘delight myself in the ways of the Lord, He will give me the desires of my heart.’ He says that if I believe in Him and His teachings that He has prepared for me, a sinner, a place with Him and The Father, for eternity. A Heaven that Jesus has created. Jesus is my God, my savior and I want, it is the desire of my heart, to have THAT heaven. I want but do not need to have others know of this Heaven. If one wants another type of heaven I am OK with that. The trouble with secularists is they want what Jesus offers and think that they have a right to it, without all that humility of admitting a need to have Jesus in their lives. That is a mistake that will last through eternity.

Secularists are a minority but are endeavouring to bully the Christian majority.
It is time to stand up to the secularist bullies. America is a largely Christian society. It is time to cry halt and turn back the secularist tide. Christians must speak out fearlessly. Well done to Brit Hume for having the courage of his convictions. Secularists are endeavouring to eradicate all vestiges of Christianity. They have insinuated themselves into many key positions of authority and wield huge influence. Just look at the judiciary and universities and the Democratic Party. Secularists are a minority. Let them never forget that.

‘ And the witness is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, in order that you may know that you have eternal life.” I John 5:11-13.

May the Lord bless you and keep you Brit Hume. May the Lord make His face shine on you, and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up His countenance on you and give you peace.

The United States of America was founded more than 200 years ago by men of Judeo-Christian principles, and that I will defend the first amendment right of Britt Hume to say what he said and I stand firmly opposed to those who would deny such a right.

the attackers of Britt are the group that has correctly theorized that the US constitution and way of life that they so hate has as its foundation, a belief in GOD. Removal of the foundation will cause the complete collapse of the structure.

First: isin’t it great that the the liberals are watching Fox News? My liberal associates will not acknowledge that Fox is on the air.”The only ones watching are a bunch of gun loving, God fearing wackos”. Well, at least they have me pegged.

Second: For all you athiests out there, God does not do your bidding. Never has and never will. It’s the other way around, you fools. You are here to do God’s bidding. You are here to help right the wrongs you see. And you don’t have to “ask” God what is wrong. It should be plain to you. It was plain to Brit Hume, and he spoke out to help a lost soul. That is what God asks of all of us, regardless of our choice of faith. My hat is off to you, Mr. Hume. ..God bless America.

Here’s a suggestion: you stay out of my life, I’ll stay out of yours.

Here’s a suggestion: you stay out of my life, I’ll stay out of yours.

Nor did it end for any of His followers.

Much, MUCH kudos to Mr. Hume for having the courage of his convictions to speak when and what he felt he must. Amen, buddy.

What I find interesting is the backlash, and the idea that Hume somehow violated some sacrosanct principle when he decided to deviate from political punditry for a moment to follow the command of His savior, to publicly confess Him as Lord, and encourage others to do so as well. Oh noes, he can’t be pigeonholed as nothing but a pundit anymore, he’s also a *hiss* Christian. Not only that, but he had the audacity in this postmodern age to suggest that Christ might be superior to Buddha. Oh, the humanity. *rolleyes*

You see, I don’t mind letting Christianity compete in a free market of ideas. I am quite confident it can take all comers. I suspect that fact is the reason why it has been suppressed from that free market of ideas. When all honest inquiry leads to the Cross, nobody else’s idols can compete, and well that’s just unfair. To say nothing of the fact that the powers opposing Christ would love nothing better than to see Him kept as much as secret as possible, keeping Him out of that free market sends the signal to any reasonably intelligent person that He simply can’t compete. No, I say let the Gospel be proclaimed and defended in every coffee shop, television show and living room in the world. We need to stop behaving as though no one outside the walls of a Church will understand the things written in the Bible. The fundamental truth of sin and redemption will ring true to any heart prepared by the Spirit, and make those who are not recoil in horror. That’s the way of it. Keeping the Gospel out of the light of day to spare people the offense seems counter to the Gospel’s own purpose, and the final command Christ gave us as His disciples.

Anyway, I ramble. Hi RedState. Long time no see.

And lest anyone misunderstand, I was not asking for, nor hoping to discuss on this site, a definition of the Gospel. My point was simply, as I wrote about above, that there are more than two polarities–he should/shouldn’t have!!!-to the issue of Hume’s remarks, and many on the evangelical side might be better employed recovering the details of what was once* commonly understood to be the essence of the Christian message and communicating that through the normal means of direct relationship with children, neighbors and co-workers, under the eye of the local church, rather than getting too excited whenever a public person attempts to define the faith, however badly?

* in America, up through 1750, perhaps?