Religious litmus test or discovering if you can serve all Americans?

[MillCreek]

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/09/532116365/is-it-hateful-to-believe-in-hell-bernie-sanders-questions-prompt-backlash?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20170609

Interesting issue.  I wonder if the response would have been different if the candidate had testified that his beliefs were that all Catholics, Jews and most other Christians are condemned to Hell.

[Perd Hapley]

Polls show about half of all Christians in the U.S. believe that some non-Christians can go to heaven. But particularly among evangelicals, the traditional view of damnation remains widespread.

Yeah, no.

Firstly, that would more correctly be described as a scriptural view, rather than a traditional view. While it may be traditional, it is not based merely in some tradition some people decided to believe in. The fact that we're all damned to hell (apart from Christ) is something we have literally from the mouth of God, and recorded in scripture.

Secondly, that some people can't (or won't) distinguish between unpleasant truth, and hatred, is of a piece with political correctness.

[lee n. field]

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/09/532116365/is-it-hateful-to-believe-in-hell-bernie-sanders-questions-prompt-backlash?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20170609

Interesting issue.  I wonder if the response would have been different if the candidate had testified that his beliefs were that all Catholics, Jews and most other Christians are condemned to Hell.

Is that in fact what he believes?

[230RN]

A lot of people have been convicted on circumstantial evidence.  Why can't we apply the same principle to immigration?

[MillCreek]

Is that in fact what he believes?

I don't know, but would the candidate face more opposition if he had those beliefs as opposed to the Muslims being condemned to Hell? 

[Perd Hapley]

One tires of this talk of this group or that group going to hell. Christianity doesn't single out one group as being more deserving of hell than another. "All have sinned and fallen short," etc.

[K Frame]

I think my response would have raised more than a few eyebrows...

"Given that you're a godless atheist communist, Senator, you have no right to ask that question, and no reason to believe that I would stoop to defend my beliefs to a person so prejudiced as yourself."

[K Frame]

"Hussein Rashid, founder of the religious literacy consultancy Islamicate L3C, doesn't agree that the belief itself is a problem.

"I think we have to accept that there are theologies that are what I would call exclusionary..."

Oh, you mean like... Islam, where Christianity is statutorily illegal? 

Especially as it's practiced in, say, Saudi Arabia?

Or am I being Islamaphobic?