THE RAW STORY – Louie Gohmert tells Congress the ‘good news’ that non-Christians are ‘going to Hell’

Published On: June 12, 2014|Categories: News, Top News|2 Comments|

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Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) on Tuesday grilled a pastor who supports the separation of church and state, asking him why he did not share the “good news” that non-Christians were going to Hell.

At a House Judiciary Committee hearing about religious freedom on Tuesday, Gohmert told the Rev. Barry Lynn, who serves as the executive director for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, that the Founders of the country — and Franklin Roosevelt — had often mentioned religion in their writings.

Lynn pointed out that he had received the Medal of Freedom from the Roosevelt Institute for his work supporting the freedom to worship.

“But that wasn’t awarded by Roosevelt himself?” Gohmert interrupted, before asking if the pastor understood that the “meaning” of being a Christian was to evangelize.

“Do you believe in sharing the good news that will keep people from going to Hell, consistent with Christian beliefs?” the Texas Republican wondered.

Lynn, however, disagreed with the congressman’s “construction of what Hell is like or why one gets there.”

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  1. dana wichmann June 27, 2014 at 8:52 am

    Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man.” –Thomas Jefferson

    “Lighthouses are more useful than churches.” –Ben Franklin

    “This would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it.” – John Adams

    “Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, the tyranny in religion is the worst.” – Thomas Paine

    “The Bible is not my book, nor Christianity my profession.” – Abraham Lincoln

    “Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.” –

    James Madison

    “The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find

    a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole cartloads of other foolish

    trumpery that we find in Christianity.” – John Adams

    “Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the People alone, without a

    pretense of miracle or mystery,” – John Adams

    “Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the Common Law.” – Ben Franklin

  2. Etaoin Shrdlu July 17, 2014 at 8:29 pm

          It would have been nice, Dana Wichmann, had you included some reference sources for those quotations, so the rest of us could fact check them. I know for a fact at least one of them is selectively edited, in the style David Barton is infamous for. Aping the the conduct of the Christian Nationalists does not enhance the fight against them.

          I am referring to your Adams quotation (which I will shortly supply in full), but first a bit of context.

          He was recounting (in a letter to Jefferson) a theological dispute that erupted between two friends of his (Lemuel Bryant and Joseph Cleverly). In reaction to that he wrote:

    Twenty times, in the course of my late reading, have I been on the point of breaking out, “this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there was no religion in it!!!” But in this exclamation, I should have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion, this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company – I mean hell.

    The works of John Adams, second President of the United States, Volume 10 (Little, Brown and Company, 1856) page 254 (emphasis added).

          Obviously, this puts an entirely different light on Adams’ remarks (particularly the emphasized portion). Most of the men you quote were quite religious, even Christian. They just weren’t the kind of Christians Mr. Gohmert would approve of! (But Reverend Lynn would.)

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