User:Christopher Erickson
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Christopher Erickson ...
... lives in Groves, Texas. ... grew up in southeast Texas, generally. ... goes to school at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi. ... is almost finished with his Master of Divinity degree from RTS. ... went to school at The University of Texas at Austin. ... received a B.S. degree in architecture from UT. ... has worked for several architecture firms in Texas and Mississippi. ... is currently working for himself. ... dreams about having a wife and family. ... loves women, but has no woman to love. ... considers himself a "Catholic Reformed Baptist" (believe it or not; can explain). ... is still a member of Grace Baptist Church in Jackson. ... dreams about greater church unity, while maintaining church purity. ... wants to create ecclesial structures that help bring the organic unity of the Church into a significant organizational unity. ... wishes he could vote for a party that wants to save babies, rather than just have an issue. ... wishes he could vote for a party that wants to save American jobs and make workers lives better, rather than providing corporate welfare to send jobs overseas. --Chris 00:18, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC) --- updated Chris 18:31, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
- Catholic Reformed Baptist
- I have never heard the phrase from anyone else. I think I have actually coined it.
- My being a "Catholic Reformed Baptist" can be taken two ways:
- (1) It means that I am a Baptist who is Reformed in his theology, particular regarding soteriology, and loves to learn about and from the historical Church (go Athanasius!), and prefers to hold as close to historical Christian practices as possible without falling into idolatry or man-made religion.
- (2) It can mean that I am a catholic Christian, that is, a Christian believer who is part of the "one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church" of Christ, who thinks that the Apostolic scriptures lead him to worship at a Reformed Baptist church; and who thinks that his church and evangelical churches in general could learn something from the Roman Catholic Church, particularly in regard to organizational unity - minus the hierarchy. -- Chris 03:31, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Information about the Christian Democratic Party
Please put comments on my talk page.
Contents |
Christianity
Church Purity and Church Unity
Barriers to Church Unity
Denominationalism
History of Ecumenism
Disagreement on the Nature of the Church
Theology
Covenant Theology
Ecclesiology
Reformed Baptist
| Christian Democratic Party (USA) | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Party Chairman | (Christopher Erickson) |
| Senate Leader | none |
| House Leader | none |
| Founded | September 2005 |
| Headquarters | Port Arthur, Texas |
| Political ideology | Christian Democracy Conservative Communitarianism Social Conservatism Social Market Economics |
| International affiliation | none |
| Color(s) | Burnt orange and Cobalt blue |
| Website | cdp-usa.org |
| NOTE: the party is in an embryonic stage | |
Christian Democratic Party (USA)
Full name - Christian Democratic Party of the United States
Acronym - CDP (local) and CDP-USA (universal)
Founder and Chairman pro tem - Christopher Erickson
Website - cdp-usa.org
Religious Ideology
- The CDP-USA advocates full freedom of conscience, speech, and assembly of all faiths; maintaining that no particular sect or denomination should have official status in the federal government of the United States. Moreover, there is no confessional requirement for members of the party. That being said, officers and senior official members (i.e. members who hold, or seek to hold, higher public office at the federal or state level) of the party shall confess agreement with the Christian Bible and the Nicene Creed, and give verbal confession of their personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
- All positions and proposals of the CDP shall find their root in the teaching of the Christian Bible; and no position or proposal shall stand if found to be in conflict with the Word of God. Official members of the CDP (i.e. members who hold public office) may hold positions that the CDP itself does not hold. However, if an official member is found to hold a position morally repugnant to Scripture, then that position must be abandoned or the official member dismissed.
Political Ideology
Christian Democracy
- While Christian Democratic parties around the globe do not all agree on ideology, there is a basic thread of social conservatism and humanitarian economics that unites them. With this the CDP-USA is in agreement. As it continues to grow, the CDP-USA will seek to establish formal relationships with other like parties around the world.
[edit]Human Dignity
[edit]Radical Centrism
While "radical centrism" is a fad term that means different things to different people, there is a common trait of not fitting into the bi-polar left-right schema of conventional political ideology. In addition, it finds no comfort in being found in the "mushy middle" of fearful compromise, passivity, or indifference. Rather, it rejects one-dimensional, left-right politics; finding that there is more than one spectrum of ideas. At least one of these other spectra of thought is that between communitarianism and libertarianism. The CDP generally finds itself on the communitarian side of that spectrum, given its advocacy of socially conservative and humanitarian economic policies.
Conservative Communitarianism
[edit]Social Conservatism
[edit]Social Market Economics
Human Dignity Amendment
TENTATIVE PROPOSED TEXT of the Human Dignity Amendment to the United States Constitution
— by Christopher Erickson (c) 2005
- All human beings are made in the image of God. Therefore, every human being, despite common fallenness and frailty, has inherent nobility. No person or group of persons, or their representatives, may intentionally offend the dignity of another unique human being, whether conceived naturally or artificially.
- A unique human being is any being whose body expresses a unique human genetic code, or who is distinguishable from another human being of like genetic code. A human being is such regardless of age, stage of development, health, or human genetic malady.
- Offending the dignity of another human being is doing something to them, without legitimate moral warrant, that unnaturally invades their body, or intentionally causes them to be dead, sick, maimed, malnourished, unclothed, unsheltered, or unable to express their love of God; or anything that intentionally causes a person to do such to themselves.
- Legitimate moral warrant shall not be understood to be ultimately a private judgement; nor shall it tread over those human beings who have committed no crime.
- It is the duty of every able person, and every common assembly and association of able persons, to remember the poor. The poor have a disproportionate vulnerability to become malnourished, unclothed, and unsheltered by the vicissitudes of life, and even by seemingly unintentional offenses to their human dignity from systematic agencies. Therefore, no public institution, including but not limited to all governmental authorities and publicly held corporations, may create, maintain, or support policies or programs that intentionally, or ultimately, disproportionately afflict the poor.
- made in the image of God — see Genesis 1:26-27
- remember the poor — see Galatians 2:10, also Deuteronomy 24:14-15, Psalm 10:2, 37:14, 41:1, 72:2-4, Proverbs 13:23, 14:20,31, 17:5, 22:16,22, 29:7, 31:9, Ezekiel 16:49, 18:12, Amos 2:7, 5:11, 8:4, Matthew 19:21, Mark 12:42, Luke 14:13, 19:8, 2 Corinthians 9:9, James 2:2
Voting System Reform
As with many others trying to break out of the politically oppressive two-party system box that is characteristic of the current American electoral system, the CDP advocates instant-runoff voting (IRV), to replace the current first-past-the-post voting (FPTP) system.
The current American two-party system is created by the convergence of two traditions, one constitutionally mandated and the other simply arbitrary. In the United States, the separated legislative and executive branches are constitutionally mandated. This system was created by the founding fathers to help deter any formation of a monarch, a laudible goal. Though most of the founding fathers despised the idea of political parties in general (a bit near-sighted given the nature of man), the system they created (when combined with FPTP voting) helped create an entrenched two-party system. In contrast, parliamentary systems (as in Britain) tend to deter the emergence of an entrenched two-party system. The other tradition, the seemingly intuitive but actually totally arbitrary first-past-the-post voting system, when combined with the presidential, or separated powers, system of governance almost guarantees an entrenched two-party system.
Replacing the current FPTP system with Instant-runoff voting would require no constitutional or legal change at the federal level (some states may require change if they have enshrined FPTP voting). In addition, (contrary to some criticism by two-party system advocates) IRV could easily work alongside the electoral college system. There is no conflict at all between them. The reason two-party system advocates do not like IRV is because it would move the United States toward having a Congress that to a greater degree proportionally represents the real desires and voice of the American people, and it would cause the powers-that-be to lose some of their power. IRV would almost certainly open the system to parties like the CDP, because it would dissuade voters from engaging in the now common practice of tactical voting, which is exactly the thing that entrenches the two-party system.
Curiously, in FPTP, the post (i.e. the requirement to win) actually moves, according to how many candidates are in the field. With FPTP, a candidate in a field of six could potentially win with just 17% of the vote. In IRV, the requirement to win is always a majority of the vote. The winner in an IRV election may not be the first choice of a majority of the voters (as is also true with the current FPTP system), but the winner will certainly be the candidate desired more than any of the other candidates (unlike FPTP) and a majority winner over the second place candidate. This is to some degree true with all runoff voting, but unlike runoff voting in general (as in Louisiana voting), instant-runoff voting (IRV) does not require any additional voting events. You only go to the ballot box once.
Some positive side effects of going to an IRV system would be that more people would be likely to vote, because they could vote for a candidate that more closely represented their views without feeling like they were totally wasting their time. Moreover, because IRV is a "ranked choice" voting system, it is very likely that there would be much less negative campaigning, because candidates would not only be seeking to be the first choice of the voters, but they would also be seeking to be the second and third choice of voters who actually prefer other candidates. The candidates would not want to offend those voters who prefer an opposing candidate by calling their favorite candidate a "slime bag" because they need some of their second choice votes. This would probably produce a great deal more substantive debate as well, because when personal issues are out of the way, more important issues can fill the gap.
