The problem with constituencies

For years the GOP has placated the religious right, even as Christian fundamentalists have steered the movement to the fringe. On a national level, at least, that constituency has been heard but not seen.

Sure, George W. Bush spoke openly of his faith and helped secure a second term behind the gay marriage boogeyman, but he was a child of Washington — son of “Poppy” with a pro-choice wife.

Rick Santorum may be Catholic, but there’s never been a presidential candidate more in line with the Christian fundamentalist wing. You’ve heard little about Santorum home schooling his eight children but the religious far right has certainly noticed. And it would be foolish to ignore their influence.

The movement now sees that to reclaim America for God, it must first reclaim that tradition for Him, and so it is producing a flood of educational texts with which to wash away the stains of secular history.

Such chronicles are written primarily for the homeschoolers and the fundamentalist academies that together account for at least 2 million of the nation’s children, an expanding population that buys more than half a billion dollars of educational materials annually. “Who, knowing the facts of our history,” asks the epigraph to the 2000 edition of The American Republic for Christian Schools, a junior-high textbook, “can doubt that the United States of America has been a thought in the mind of God from all eternity?”

Santorum shares this providential view which, for example, views science as an enemy.

Santorum also said he accepts that Obama is a Christian and was not questioning his faith when he said at a campaign appearance Saturday that Obama supports a “phony theology, not a theology based on the Bible.”

He said he was talking about “radical environmentalists” who share Obama’s “worldview that elevates the Earth above man and says that we can’t take those resources, because we’re going to harm the Earth by things that frankly are just not scientifically proven.” He pointed to the debate over global climate change as an example.

Establishment Republicans who wish Santorum would just go away better think again. Christian fundamentalists truly believe they are persecuted and are eager to fight. Santorum is just the first of many to rise up through their ranks.

Why is this man laughing?

Meet Pastor Rodney Harold Browne, the latest boob to endorse Newt (along with Todd Palin, Chuck Norris and Rick Perry).

Actually, “boob” is too kind a description for this con man:

When the Holy Ghost Bartender (who also refers to himself as the Holy Ghost Hitman) arrived at my seat, he began threatening to have me thrown out of the sanctuary. “I’m telling you right now,” he hissed, “you’ll drop dead if you prohibit what God is doing!” Dramatically he gestured toward the crowd and warned them that those like me, who would dare question that what he was doing was of God, had committed the unpardonable sin and would not be forgiven in this world or the next.

The following day he crowed, “The last time I had a confrontation like that…was…with a bunch of Mormons… you could see their spirit, y’know…just a really religious, pharisaical spirit, that’s what it is. Amen?…And I smelt it — y’know, I can smell them religious devils from about a hundred yards —- I could smell them blindfolded, man….You could see, last night we meant business.” He labeled his critics “idiots” and warned that they were about to experience either “riot or revival.”

Browne introduced Gingrich Monday at a rally in Tampa. Somehow, he refrained from laughing.

Whatever happened to Hare Krishnas at airports?

I couldn't even find a picture of Krishnas at an airport.

I think I might’ve seen them there, years ago, but sometimes I confuse memories with movies.

Perhaps they moved to bus terminals, though I suspect one of the less committed but cooler Krishnas convinced them airports were so 1977. Probably their first webmaster. Dude named Devadidev.

ANSWER:

They’ve gone mainstream.

Cap du jour

Jan Couch: religious broadcaster, Georgia native, classic caricature (her doctorate is an honorary one from Oral Roberts University)

 

In defense of religious bigotry

To be clear, I’m not condoning the wingnut attacks on Mitt Romney’s Mormonism. There’s plenty of reasons to vote against The Anchorman — his religion is not one of them.

But to be honest, certain religious beliefs would be a deal-breaker for me. Any fundamentalist — be they Christian, Muslim or Jew — is automatically disqualified. Same with Scientologists.

Voting against religious bigots doesn’t mean you’re bigoted against religious people.

Related articles

• Pastor denies remarks against Romney were ‘bigotry’ (politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com)

Follow the angel in the cheap white suit

The protagonist of this little melodrama founded churches in Gainesville and Orange County that draw more than 15,000 congregants per week (he’s the one who sounds unmistakably like a Southern Baptist).

(via Christian Nightmares)

Has the religious right fostered less religious identification?

People of faith do wonderful things. They feed the hungry, shelter the homeless and demonstrate a compassion often lacking in the secular world.

Unfortunately, so-called people of faith are also hypocritical, judgmental and determined to impose their beliefs on those who see things differently.

Most people don’t identify with the latter group, which has come to represent religion, namely Christianity, in America for three decades now. The result:

In “American Religion: Contemporary Trends,” author Mark Chaves argues that over the last generation or so, religious belief in the U.S. has experienced a “softening” that effects everything from whether people go to worship services regularly to whom they marry. Far more people are willing to say they don’t belong to any religious tradition today than in the past, and signs of religious vitality may be camouflaging stagnation or decline.

“Reasonable people can disagree over whether the big picture story is one of essential stability or whether it’s one of slow decline,” said Chaves. “Unambiguously, though, there’s no increase.”

Science + Religion Today notes that this has been a trend since the 1950s but the number of Americans claiming no religious affiliation has accelerated greatly since 1990.

Michael Hout and Claude Fischer, sociologists at the University of California, Berkeley, claim—and I think they are basically right— that it is part of the reaction to the religious right’s rising visibility in the 1980s. That is, before 1990, people who were raised, say, Catholic or Baptist, but were socially and politically liberal and already religiously inactive, would still be comfortable enough with their religious background to tell a pollster they were Catholic or Baptist. And then they saw all this conservative politics happening in the name of religion, in the name of their own religion maybe, and said, “You know what, I’m not that.”

Related articles

• Duke prof.: American’s religious faith waning (sfgate.com)

Rick Perry should’ve invited this guy to Houston

You gotta hand it to a preacher who thanks the Lord for his “smokin’ hot wife.” Amen, Brother Nelms.

Now playing in my personal Hell

A Christian Jim Carrey impersonator. Ack!

“You’re not making Christianity any better you’re just making comedy worse.” HRH (slightly paraphrased)

(via Christian Nightmares)

The Rapture and me

Despite accepting the “invitation to receive Christ” on more than one occasion, I wasn’t convinced of my salvation. I was only 11, after all — unprepared to handle the implications of eternal damnation.

My family’s 1981 summer vacation was preceded by a Southern Baptist revival. For those of you lucky enough not to be raised Southern Baptist, revivals feature out-of-town pastors imported to scare the hell out of congregants. I remember a ruddy-faced man with fat cheeks and a bad toupee painting a vivid portrait of life on Earth following the Rapture. I would’ve gone forward again had my parents not stopped me.

It was nearing sunset on Seagrove Beach when I experienced what I thought was the Rapture, complete with swarms of locusts descending from a fiery sky. Or so it seemed to my vivid imagination, which veered into overdrive when I couldn’t find my parents. I went down to the beach. Nothing. I called their names inside and outside the house. Nothing. After about five minutes my worst fears were realized. They’d been “raptured” while I was left behind to deal with the Apocalypse.

Naturally, I went into hysterics, circling the perimeter of the house repeatedly, my arms flailing, screaming for mommy and daddy. Neighbors ventured outside to watch, unsure of how to handle an 11-year-old raving lunatic. They kept their distance.

Finally, my parents emerged from the basement I didn’t know existed. They were clearly disturbed but I couldn’t tell them what had caused my nervous breakdown. I can’t recall my story but know that I’ve always been a gifted liar.

That evening they took me to Panama City to see “Cannonball Run.” I welcomed the distraction though I couldn’t help but wonder: would Burt Reynolds be left behind like me?

And you thought the pedophile priest scandal was bad

I hear the Episcopals are accepting new members.

Jesus: 'I was crucified for this!?!'

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The party of Bachmann

The takeover is complete in Minnesota, of all places.

The most recent GOP nominee for governor, Tom Emmer, backed a “Tenther” bill that would require a two-thirds state legislative vote to ratify any federal legislation and supported a state constitutional ban on gay marriage.

Emmer got into some trouble when it was found that he appeared with a local “heavy metal ministry”—after it became known that its pastor said it was “moral” to execute homosexuals.

The 2010 party’s nominee for secretary of state nominee, Dan Severson, playing Protestant mullah, said, “There is no such thing [as separation of church and state] … I mean it just does not exist, and it does not exist in America for a purpose, because we are a Christian nation.”

Among the excommunicated is the former two-term Republican Governor Arne Carlson. “The Republican Party—both nationally and in Minnesota—has drifted away from balancing the budget to enlarge the role of social issues,” Carlson said in a phone call, pointing out that Pawlenty left his successor a $6 billion deficit.

Yes, but Pawlenty supports reinstating “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” so many so-called conservatives will happily look the other way.

Megachurch pastor takes on his own

Amen:

Platt’s first target is the megachurch itself. Americans have built themselves multimillion-dollar worship palaces, he argues. These have become like corporations, competing for market share by offering social centers, child-care programs, first-class entertainment and comfortable, consumer Christianity.

Jesus, Platt notes, made it hard on his followers. He created a minichurch, not a mega one. Today, however, building budgets dwarf charitable budgets, and Jesus is portrayed as a genial suburban dude. “When we gather in our church building to sing and lift up our hands in worship, we may not actually be worshipping the Jesus of the Bible. Instead, we may be worshipping ourselves.”

Would Jesus fly coach?

Might as well milk this fifth anniversary thing with a Sunday-appropriate flashback, first posted on 8/28/05. For the record, Bishop Eddie Long remains a “respected” religious leader in the community.

WWJD, Part II? Buy a Bentley!

That’s what Bishop Eddie Long of Atlanta did with the proceeds from a charity, aptly named for himself. Seemingly indisputable evidence lists Long as the primary recipient of the fund, obtaining at least $3.07 million during a four-year period, nearly as much as was given to those in need, according to the AJC.

With the money, Long, a rising star among black religious conservatives and pastor of a 25,000 member mega church in suburban Atlanta, purchased a $350,000 Bentley and a $1.4 million six-bedroom, nine-bath home on 20 acres of land. Of course he’s done this in part through taxpayer charity, since, as a church, New Birth Missionary Baptist is tax-exempt. The government won’t get a dime of the three million plus Long accrued.

I’m not a religious person, but I spent enough involuntary time in the Baptist church to be familiar with the Bible, in particular the teachings of Jesus. You know, that homeless guy so many Christians like to ignore (since his approach doesn’t quite jibe with the condemnation and wrath the Falwells of the world prefer).

Wasn’t it Jesus who said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God?” Yep, the very same guy who instructed his followers to “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” The very one who fashioned a whip to chase merchants from the temple: “My house will be called a house of prayer but you are making it a den of robbers.”

Somehow, Long has a different take. “I would love to sit with you and walk with you through the Bible to show that Jesus wasn’t poor,” he told an AJC reporter. Those verses can be found in the book of Pastor Delusion.

Long is not alone in preaching this warped ideology that rationalizes the unbridled pursuit of prosperity. Here in Atlanta, I know of two mega church ministers living in million dollar homes. The pastor of Atlanta’s First Baptist Church used to tool around town in a brand new Mercedes, accompanied by bodyguards. And the children of Dr. Martin Luther King, sadly, have traded on the sacred name of their father in favor of commercial dollars, selling the “I Have a Dream” speech to the highest bidder.

And of course there’s the televangelists, standing behind pulpits in crystal cathedrals and traveling to highly paid speaking gigs in private planes. You think Jesus would ever fly coach?

Beyond the perverse betrayal of their faith, these religious “leaders” are also ripping off taxpayers. The government needs to investigate, but likely won’t since this crooked cabal would likely counter with the “religious persecution” card. Their followers already seem to buy that lie, standing behind Long, according to the AJC article. And the bishop claims his congregation is inspired by seeing its pastor do well.

“I’m not going to apologize for anything …” he says.

To quote Max Van Sydow’s character in “Hannah and Her Sisters”: “If Jesus saw what people were doing in his name, he’d never stop throwing up.”

The Malcontent turns 5

What do Naomi Campbell and Pat Robertson have in common? Both lust for Liberian butcher Charles Taylor’s diamonds.

Robertson’s relationship with Taylor was the subject of my first post, from Aug. 2005.

“We’re undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels to take over the country,” he said on his 700 Club show about good pal Taylor, the deposed Liberian president. “And how dare the president of the United States say to the duly elected president of another country, ‘You’ve got to step down.’” (Yet Robertson supported the removal of Saddam Hussein). …
Washington Post religion reporter Alan Cooperman revealed in an article two years ago that Robertson — who blamed the Liberian bloodbath on State Department opposition to Taylor — had an $8 million agreement with the Baptist president to mine gold in his country. Operation Freedom Gold, he called it. Freedom for what, Robertson’s debt?

Stay tuned for more pointless reminiscing throughout the month.