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More handpicked essays just for you.
Why is censorship necessary and what are the consequences
Why is censorship necessary and what are the consequences
Why is censorship necessary and what are the consequences
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I wish to plead with you to stop the legal action being taken against the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ branch office and congregations in your country. The constitution of your country guarantees basic human rights including freedom of religion. By eradicating the Witnesses, you are removing their freedom to worship in peace.
Many of your officials my argue that we are extremists, but that term is very misapplied. All around the world, Jehovah’s Witnesses are known for their good conduct, love for God and neighbor, and respect for our governments. The publications produced and the instructions we get from the branch are all embracing those thoughts. (1 Timothy 2:1-4)
We pray that you reconsider. Throughout my life, I have only been greeted with kindness
and love. Jehovah’s Witnesses always stop to help others in need whether it be in a natural a disaster or a lost woman. We as God’s people have been through trials and persecution before, and we still managed to be hopeful, filled with happiness, and unlike most organizations, we forgave what our persecutors have put us through.
"The Persecution of the Mormons." Constitutional Rights Foundation . Constitutional Rights Foundation USA, 2014. Web. 20 Mar. 2014. .
Looking at his most recent mug shot, no one would guess that Warren Jeffs was once a prophet and leader to a church with nearly ten thousand members; without Warren’s dark brown hair and the suits he commonly wore, Warren could be passed off as any other hardened criminal. Despite the dramatic change in his appearance, it is speculated that the convicted sexual predator still manages to maintain control over his people. While the FLDS Church followers believe that Warren is the one and only mouthpiece of God today; the Jehovah’s Witnesses, on the other hand, have a governing body of seven men that lead their denomination. The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society is “the oldest and most important of the corporations of the Jehovah's Witnesses”, and the President of the Society used to be part of the governing body. However in October 2000, the current president Don Alden Adams, resigned from the governing body to take on a purely administrative role which has no influence on the doctrine. (WatchTower.org) Adams is considered to be a 50-year veteran of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and like Warren, Adams grew up with his current religion. (Ostling) Don and Warren slightly resemble each other with their long faces, prominent noses and thin framed glasses, however without their shared belief in a god, their appearance is the extent of their likeness. Just as the FLDS Church and the Jehovah’s Witnesses both share a belief in a higher power, they differ greatly in their origin, doctrine, and practices. By comparing these denominations, it will become clear why one is more popular than the other.
(Claim pursu~nt to 28U.S. C 1331 and ';1361 that Defendants acting under the color of Law deprive Petitioner of Religious Right)
So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary’s hill, three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime—the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth, and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment.
According to dictionaries a cult is 1) a system of religious worship or ritual. 2) A religion or sect considered extremist of false. 3) Obsessive devotion to a person or principle. It is believed that every cult ties into some kind of religion, and religions all have a common basis of “a leap of faith”. Whether this so-called leap of faith is going to heaven or being reincarnated, or moving on to some other planet, depends on the beliefs of the cult itself.
Meetings for worship and study are held at Kingdom Halls. Witnesses are assigned to a congregation in whose “territory” they reside and are expected to attend weekly meetings as scheduled by congregation elders. During meetings and formal circumstances they refer to one another as “brother” or “sister”.
The Heaven’s Gate Cult was founded in the early 1970’s by Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles. Applewhite was recovering, under the care of his nurse Ms. Nettles, when he claimed to have has a near death experience. Applewhite claimed that he and Nettles were the two witnesses spoken of in the Book of Revelation. And they were to prepare the worlds inhabitants for recycling.
“Religious Freedom.” Office of International Religious Freedom Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. State Department Documents / FIND, , 17 Aug. 2011. eLibrary. Web. 31 Aug. 2011.
& nbsp; On arrival, the missionaries barely understood the tribe. They have very little knowledge of the cultural beliefs or rituals that the tribe reveres. It seems inappropriate that they are willing to declare that the villagers' beliefs are false. " He told them that they worshipped false gods, gods of wood and stone. " They don't even acknowledge that this too is a successful community, which works well under its method of religious law.
The Amish, an Anabaptist group that lives mainly on the east coast in Pennsylvania and Maryland, may be seen by the everyday American as a tad unconventional, but peaceful all the same. It can be disputed whether or not you would call the Amish lifestyle “extreme”. Extremism in context means outside the societal norms of everyday living. Although there are connotations that all extremist groups are aggressive and hazardous towards society, this is not always the case. The alternative lifestyle of the Amish is in fact “extreme” due to their living conditions, religion, world views, and educational system.
Everyone has their own feelings when it comes to religion. Some people are big on worshiping God, while others could care less about believing in a God or not. Flannery ‘o Connor, who was a zealous Roman Catholic, wrote stories with the underlining mean that Catholics work harder for their beliefs than any other religions. She uses her writing to vent about Christians singly using God when their life gets difficult, instead of living by the Christian faith. A story she wrote called “A Good Man is Hard to Fine” gives the perfect example of her expressing her anger with people who claim to be religious along with people only using God as a crutch rather than live for him.
I am support and encouragement. Kindness is unconditional just like true agape love. True Agape Love encompasses complete love for others, even enemies, God, and yourself. When a believer illustrates this type of love to everyone, in all situations, people will take notice and see that something is different about them. When Christian's show this kind of love it sets them apart from this circumstantial and conditional world. Agape love is what sets Christians apart and shows the love of God in people daily lives. Kindness is the expression of Christ’s love and when we are kind we radiate
To be a fundamentalist is to wholly believe in the doctrine they are preaching or professing and will go to any lengths possible to have these beliefs implemented by their government, (even using force or violence) (Garner, Ferdinand and Lawson, 2007, p. 149). All religions have a fundamentalist element, however, there is more of a significant conflict between Islamic fundamentalists and Christian fundamentalists. It is wrongly thought fundamentalism is exclusively linked to Islamic fundamentalists such as the jihadi group al-Qaeda. Nonetheless, Christianity is the world's largest religion and is bound to have some fundamentalist component such as the Christian New Right in the United States of America (Garner, Ferdinand and Lawson, 2007, p. 150)....
“Provisions of the International Religious Freedom Act.” Facts On File Issues and Controversies. Jan 21 2000:18.
On the first page of the website, I even mentioned that the beliefs of the group “include complete authoritarianism, of one leader that is pathologically narcissistic, [using] tools similar to that of brainwashing, and search for common ground that is based on quest for religious connection” outwardly stating the dangers of the cult.