Right Redefines "Christian" to Distance Themselves from Anders Breivik

Over at Fox's answer to the Huffington Post -- Fox Nation -- we're informed of the marvelous news that Bill O'Reilly "shredded" the media for unfairly labeling terrorist Anders Behring Breivik a Christian. This is tremendously unfair, O'Reilly argues, because the man is "is not attached to any church."

This is Stupid Argument Number One. By this argument, the President who most wore his Christian religion on his sleeve was no Christian at all.

Beliefnet:

Throughout the 2004 presidential campaign, Democratic candidate John Kerry has been more responsible than anyone for getting notoriously secular political reporters through the doors of churches on Sunday mornings. Ever since a few conservative bishops raised questions about Kerry's Catholicism, given his pro-choice positions, journalists have trailed the Senator to church, breathlessly wondering if this will be the week he's denied communion. Some have even snarkily commented that his Boston congregation--the Paulist Center--is insufficiently traditional, calling it "New-Agey." What they haven't done is take up the task of following President George W. Bush to his home church. That's because of one small problem: He doesn't have one.

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Right Still Defending Their Pointless War

Barack Obama can't do anything right. It's simply not possible. There are times when the negativity toward the President has some validity, times when it's a bit of a stretch, and times when it's just stupid. This is one of the latter times. In commenting on Barack Obama's formal announcement of the withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq, the right wing's jerking knees are on full display.

"In 'turning the page' on Iraq, the Great Speechifier could find no words with which to give meaning to our epic struggle there," writes Powerline's Paul Mirengoff. "Let's give Obama the benefit of the doubt and assume this is because he thinks the struggle had no meaning, except as it related to domestic politics in the U.S. But then why give a speech about it?"

Our "epic struggle" was a long quagmire of a war in search of a reason for being. When Obama said we had to "turn the page," he was giving people like Mirengoff an out. "I'm mindful that the Iraq war has been a contentious issue at home," the President said. "Here, too, it's time to turn the page." This is an argument these people had lost long ago. If you guys want to trot out non-existent WMD and fabricated ties to al Qaeda and the smoking gun coming in the form of a mushroom cloud, it's your funeral. President Obama basically said, "Look, what's done is done. It's over with now and we can't change the past. We could talk about the lies and the incompetence and the brainlessness of the Bush administration and their neoconservative allies in the media, but that won't change anything. We've got bigger fish to fry right now."

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The Terrorists Among Us

America is under attack from violent religious extremists with no respect for human life. They hate our freedoms and stand against liberty. They do not respect our laws and would dismantle our Constitution. They commit crimes against Americans regularly, speak out against our system of law daily, and spread their hatred through internet chatter every minute of every day. They seek nothing less than the takeover of our nation, so they can force us all the live under the oppression of their religious laws.

Damned Christians.

Look, I'm willing to accept that there are moderate Christians. Good people who just want to live their lives the way they want. But it's hard to believe that the extremists don't speak for them when they're all so silent on their brethren's crimes. Our wake-up call actually came back in May, when a mosque in Jacksonville, Florida was firebombed by radical Christian extremists. It was overlooked -- called an isolated incident -- and we all moved on, foolishly believing that it wouldn't happen again. We aren't some backwater third world nation, we thought, surely our Christian population is civilized.

Then came the cowardly attack on a Muslim cabbie, the desecration of a mosque with urine, a suspected case of arson, and shots fired near those picking through the wreckage of that arson. Not enough? David Gibson has more:

A brick was thrown through the window of a California mosque last week and a few days earlier signs were left at the mosque that read, "No temple for the god of terrorism at Ground Zero." Earlier this month, a plastic pig inscribed with messages such as "Remember 9-11" and "MO HAM MED the Pig" was stuffed into the mailbox of another Islamic center in California. (Like Jews, Muslims have a prohibition on eating pork.)

Clearly, they hate our First Amendment freedoms. So far, I've come across one prominent Christian leader willing to speak out against this hate-wave, but even then, the condemnation was conditional.

"The First Amendment guarantees people the right to worship where they live," [Southern Baptist leader Richard Land] said. "I am calling for all people of faith and good will to stand up for the rights of our Muslim fellow citizens."

Land has criticized plans to build a mosque near the site of the World Trade Center in New York City, saying it was too close to the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

"This is different," he said. "There's no Ground Zero in Murfreesboro."

The message is clear. The jihad against the mosque in Murfreesboro is getting too much attention, so cool it off for a bit. But the fatwa against a Muslim community center in Manhattan still stands. Incredibly, this terrorist leader was allowed to go free and remains at large. Already, fellow Christians openly discuss carrying out terrorist attacks on their extremist websites.

Some Christians may find being tied to the extremists in their midst offensive, but I'd just point out that I'm only applying the unassailable logic of the Christian right to the Christian right. For example, toward the middle of August, jihadi talk show host Bill O'Reilly ran with the familiar theme. In defense of building Christian and Jewish houses of worship, Bill said, "Nobody would be complaining because Christians and Jews weren't involved in the 9/11 attack. Radical Muslims were. And you may remember the Muslim world largely did not condemn the al Qaeda action, while most Christians and Jews did."

But the Muslim world did condemn the 9/11 attacks. They did it right away. So I can only assume that the condemnation must either be universal or come from the leaders of his choosing before O'Reilly would accept it. We must also assume that these leaders have to actively seek out O'Reilly to make those condemnations in person, since it's clear that he couldn't be bothered to actually look for them in news stories. So I'm just holding O'Reilly to the same standard; I've chosen you, Bill. Come over to my house and condemn Christian terrorism or I'll be forced to assume you're a jihadist yourself. Really, it's the only safe assumption I could make. We can't be too careful in these dangerous times. The only wise thing to do is assume a Christian is terrorist until it's proven otherwise.

Think I'm overreacting? Consider this chilling passage from their holy book, "The Bible":

Suppose you hear in one of the towns the LORD your God is giving you that some worthless rabble among you have led their fellow citizens astray by encouraging them to worship foreign gods. In such cases, you must examine the facts carefully. If you find it is true and can prove that such a detestable act has occurred among you, you must attack that town and completely destroy all its inhabitants, as well as all the livestock. Then you must pile all the plunder in the middle of the street and burn it. Put the entire town to the torch as a burnt offering to the LORD your God. That town must remain a ruin forever; it may never be rebuilt. Keep none of the plunder that has been set apart for destruction. Then the LORD will turn from his fierce anger and be merciful to you. He will have compassion on you and make you a great nation, just as he solemnly promised your ancestors. "The LORD your God will be merciful only if you obey him and keep all the commands I am giving you today, doing what is pleasing to him."

Obviously, their holy book calls for the destruction of all infidels, as well as their cities and buildings. The arsonist in Murfreesboro was only obeying his insane god's edict. Unless people like Bill O'Reilly renounce this passage, we can only assume he supports it as well -- as all observant Christians must. Again, it's right there in their holy writings. They cannot deny it.

We mustn't let down our guard, even for a moment. Because if we do, the Christian jihadists will surely see it as a sign of weakness. We are at war with terror, no matter what form that terror takes. If we ignore the fact that we're the target of Christian terrorism, Christians will take advantage of it. It's the logic their leaders apply to the War on Terror, so it only makes sense that we apply it to them as well.

-Wisco


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How to Become a Real Christian

Right wing Evangelical blowhard James Dobson will not ever vote for John McCain -- never. He's made that clear in the past. As a matter of principle, Dobson can't bring himself to vote for a man who's not as Bible-bangin' crazy as he is. After all, it says right there in the Bible that... Umm... Well...

OK, so the word "vote" doesn't show up in the Bible -- but neither does the word "abortion" and we all know how Jesus felt about that. Sure, abortion was a common practice in Israel in Jesus' time, he never said anything about it, but we know he was against it because... Umm... Well...

Never mind about that. Faith is about believing stuff, not knowing stuff. If you believe something hard enough and long enough, faith makes it 100% true. This is why Creationism is so true, despite the fact that all the evidence is against it. You can choose what's true, the religious right believes, and your faith magically transforms the universe to fit your beliefs. At least, that's the way it's supposed to work. God, after all, works in mysterious ways and sometimes refuses to rebuild the reality to fit your beliefs.

-Continued after the jump-


Not that Dobson didn't give reality rebuilding a damned good try. In January, Dobson said, "Speaking as a private individual, I would not vote for John McCain under any circumstances." In April, Dobson told the Wall Street Journal, "I have seen no evidence that Sen. McCain is successfully unifying the Republican Party or drawing conservatives into his fold. To the contrary, he seems intent on driving them away."

Clearly, James Dobson hates McCain with the passion of a thousand burning suns. The reason? As I said, McCain's not nearly crazy enough. Just in case you're not clear on what the problem here is, Dobson spelled it out to right wing radio host Laura Ingraham:

I'm deeply disappointed the Republican Party seems poised to select a nominee who did not support a constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage, who voted for embryonic stem cell research to kill nascent human beings, who opposed tax cuts that ended the marriage penalty, and who has little regard for freedom of speech, who organized the Gang of 14 to preserve filibusters, and has a legendary temper and often uses foul and obscene language. I am convinced Sen. McCain is not a conservative, and in fact, has gone out of his way to stick his thumb in the eyes of those who are. He has at times sounded more like a member of the other party.

That's right, Jesus has an opinion of the Senate filibuster and tax cuts. Every real Christian knows that.

Well, that's all changed now. Dobson is ready to consider maybe backing John McCain. "I never thought I would hear myself saying this," Dobson told his radio audience Sunday. ""... While I am not endorsing Senator John McCain, the possibility is there that I might." According to the report, "In an advance copy provided to The Associated Press, Dobson said that while neither candidate is consistent with his views, McCain's positions are closer by a wide margin."

Why? Because there's only one kind of Christian in the world -- Christians who are right wing lunatics and people who only say they're Christians. Since, by this measure, neither McCain nor Obama qualify as being among the saved, Dobson and company are stuck with the least non-Christian of the two. Since you never see McCain inside a church, you'd assume that would be Obama, but Jesus is a Republican, so it's McCain.

Dobson's withholding of his endorsement was an empty threat -- a bluff. He had held out hope that there was still a chance that the GOP would wise up and nominate a real lunatic, like Brownback or Huckabee, but faith in the miraculous only goes so far. When prayers fail to re-order the universe to your liking, you jump on the bandwagon and hope to remain relevant. It's what Jesus would've done.

Given a choice, I guess it's supposed to be a no-brainer -- which makes it perfect for the religious right. They believe that the devil gave you a brain and you must never, ever use it. The wishes of the Almighty manifest themselves in the jerking knees of the Great Republican Prophets. And those jerking knees tell us that not only is Barack Obama not a Christian, but that his faith is an insult to real faith.

Gary Cass of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, quoted by Right Wing Watch:

"In a calculated ploy to strip away votes from Christian pro-life / pro-family conservatives, Obama has made a concerted effort to make his faith a campaign issue. But when his faith and ethics are scrutinized and revealed not to be Christian, Obama then claims he is a victim of conservative Christians like Jim Dobson and organizations like CADC.

"If Obama is a victim, he is a victim of his own radical theology and policies. They are so radical in fact that faithful Christians cannot simply stand by and let Obama defame and attempt to redefine the Faith by associating it with his wildly aberrant beliefs and radical policies...

"To the extent that Obama wants to make headlines by making his faith an issue, he should be required to define and defend his beliefs and actions," Cass said. "The mainstream media cannot or will not do it. Thank God for Dr. Dobson and others who will not sit back and watch the Christian faith be defamed by being associated with Obama's most radical beliefs and policies."

Get that? Obama's religious beliefs are an unfair attack on real Christians. And a real Christian is someone who believes the same line of crap that all the right wing zombigelicals believe -- i.e., a bunch of unbiblical crap about filibusters and tax cuts. You also have to be completely freaked out by gays, scared brainless by the Muslims, and just plain fanatical in your opposition to abortion. Of course, Jesus never talked about any of this stuff, but that's neither here nor there. Believe all of that or you aren't Christian enough -- and if you're not Christian enough, you just plain aren't a Christian. You're a cruel mockery of Christianity and an attack on faith.

No one put this so plainly as nutbar and frequent FOX News commentator Cal Thomas did last month. In case you don't get the idea, Thomas spelled it out in the headline of his editorial; "Barack Obama Is Not a Christian."

“I’m rooted in the Christian tradition,” said Obama, who has declared himself a Christian. But then he adds something that most Christians will see as universalism: “I believe there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people.”

[Chicago Sun-Times columnist Cathleen] Falsani correctly brings up John 14:6 (and how many journalists would know such a verse, much less ask a question based on it?) in which Jesus says of Himself, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” That sounds pretty exclusive, but Obama says it depends on how this verse is heard. According to Falsani, Obama thinks that “all people of faith — Christians, Jews, Muslims, animists, everyone — know the same God.” (her words)

If that is so, Jesus wasted his time coming to Earth and he certainly did not have to suffer the pain of rejection and crucifixion if there are ways to God other than through Himself.

Slight problem here, Cal. Obama's echoing the words of Pope John Paul II; "We Christians joyfully recognize the religious values we have in common with Islam. Today I would like to repeat what I said to young Muslims some years ago in Casablanca: 'We believe in the same God, the one God, the living God, the God who created the world and brings his creatures to their perfection."

Oops.

Of course, we all know how the religious right feel about the Great Whore. John Paul II wasn't a real Christian either.

When you get right down to it, Thomas' argument doesn't make any sense. A Christian is someone who follows Christ. There's no requirement that you have to be good at it when measured by the Evangelical zealot's scale of lunacy. You accept Jesus as your savior and that's pretty much it -- you're done. You're redeemed by faith, not actions. The worst Christian on Earth is still a Christian.

But that line of reasoning requires reasoning -- that brain the devil endowed you with. It disregards the jerking knees of the right wing theocrats who tell us that, in order to be a real Christian, you have to believe a bunch of stuff that isn't even in the Bible.

So James Dobson can suddenly declare John McCain a Christian -- mostly because principle has become inconvenient. And Obama can be declared unchristian -- mostly because that's the most convenient. It doesn't have to make any damned sense at all, it's just the way the enlightened knees have jerked.

-Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; elections; 2008; Republican; religious right; religion; propaganda; hate; bigotry; John McCain; Barack Obama; The only way to become a Christian is to have James Dobson and Cal Thomas declare you one

On a Mission from God

You know Eliot Spitzer's hooker problem? Turns out that's not the only thing that's happened in this young week. While Spitzer's reputation as a law and order straight arrow makes his story a "man bites dog" one, there's been an almost as surprising turn around elsewhere. The gay-hating, abortion-fighting, evolution-denying Southern Baptist Convention has decided not to be crazy about an issue. It's not really a fundamental shift -- it's been coming for some time -- but good news out of these guys is so rare that it pays to stop and pay attention to it.

Associated Press:

In a major shift, a group of Southern Baptist leaders said their denomination has been "too timid" on environmental issues and has a biblical duty to stop global warming.

The declaration, signed by the president of the Southern Baptist Convention among others and released Monday, shows a growing urgency about climate change even within groups that once dismissed claims of an overheating planet as a liberal ruse. The conservative denomination has 16.3 million members and is the largest Protestant group in the U.S.

The signers of "A Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change" acknowledged that not all Christians accept the science behind global warming. They said they do not expect fellow believers to back any proposed solutions that would violate Scripture, such as advocating population control through abortion.

However, the leaders said that current evidence of global warming is "substantial," and that the threat is too grave to wait for perfect knowledge about whether, or how much, people contribute to the trend.

Real science wins out in the SBC -- wow. This is good news on a few levels. One, it shows that reason can light even the self-benighted. Two, a big part of the GOP's voting base isn't going with the party line on this. Three, there are people who are going to fight global warming like they're on a mission from God -- because they think they are.

This is a big turn-around for a very large faction of the religious right. The late and unlamented Jerry Falwell once said that global warming was "Satan’s attempt to redirect the church’s primary focus from evangelism to environmentalism." Environmentalism, apparently, takes too much time away from hating gays and fighting evolution in schools to be pleasing to The Lord. Almost a year ago to the day, James Dobson expressed his alarm that the National Evangelical Association was too freaked out about climate change and not freaked out enough about the ungodly nature of modern society.

This has become sort of a recurring theme for my posts; that sooner or later, the voters being led around by the religious right were going to wise up. For years, they voted for phonies who claimed moral superiority, who promised they'd get rid of abortion and fight the homosexual menace, only to deliver tax cuts, deregulation, privatization, and global trade deals. Elected to do Jesus' business, these paragons of false piety got right to work on corporate business. For example, in 2004 Bush made a big deal about same sex marriage. Once he was re-elected, he got right to work on Social Security privatization. You'd think he'd never heard of gay marriage before and that he'd run on his Social Security giveaway program. It was one more example of the bait and switch that "values voters" had been falling for for decades.

That this scam could go on for so long is a testament to the power of faith. Faith, as we've seen demonstrated again and again, can be a destructive as constructive, as oppressive as liberating, and as stultifying as enlightening. Faith, it seems, is good only about 50% of the time -- a record no better than guesswork would have.

It turns out that the transformative power of wising up is a greater force for good than faith. If I were a religious type, I'd say that God gave you a damned brain for a reason. We didn't pray the wheel into existence.

Of course, this is a shift on only one issue. They'll still hate gays with the burning passion of a thousand giant suns and compare abortion to the Holocaust. They'll still fight evolution in schools and try to ban Harry Potter books. But if it's a choice between wising up on one issue or wising up on none, I'll take one. Progress is progress.

This shift couldn't have come at a better time. A new study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters tells us that we have to reduce carbon output to near zero. "The question is, what if we don't want the Earth to warm anymore?" asks report co-author Ken Caldeira, a senior scientist with the Carnegie Institution. "The answer implies a much more radical change to our energy system than people are thinking about." To even start moving in that direction, environmentalism is going to have to become a bipartisan issue. And, thanks to the recent shift in the evangelical movement, it is.

To tie this into the election, this is bad news for John McCain. With his embrace of end of days lunatic John Hagee, he's clearly tying himself to the sinking side of the evangelical movement. You don't give a damn about the climate if you think Jesus is coming to end the world next week. The fact that a good chunk of values voters are thinking about the future shows that the "rapture right" is losing ground. McCain is betting on a horse who's already falling behind.

This new side of the religious right has some bad news for the GOP in general. "It ought to be God's agenda, not the Republican Party's agenda, that drives us," said Rev. Paul de Vries last year. "We're actually tired of being represented by people with a very narrow focus. We want to have a focus as big as God's focus." And it's not just the leadership who are embracing this shift to non-partisanship. Back to the AP piece again:

[25 year-old seminary student Jonathan Merrit's] professor had compared destroying God's creation to "tearing a page out of the Bible."

"That struck me. It broke me,"... Merritt said in an interview, "and that was the impetus that began a life change, a shift of perspective for me."

So, yes, there's a story out there that's already tying the word "hooker" with the tired and no longer clever suffix "-gate." It's a big story and it deserves attention. But there are still other stories out there that, while less sexy in a tabloid sense, are much more far reaching and will have a much larger impact on our future. Eliot Spitzer's career may very well be over, but our new future has just begun.

And we may get there with the help of what once were unlikely allies.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; religion; John Hagee; John McCain; elections; 2008; environment; Christianity; Southern Baptist Convention; science; The Religious Right -- on a mission from God to fight global warming

War on Christmas? What About the Genocide on Christmas?

I've written about the right's valiant fight in the "War on Christmas" recently. If your city puts out white lights, instead of colored lights, or the checkout clerk at Sears says, "Happy Holidays," instead of, "Merry Christmas," you're the victim of oppression.

The public voice of this defense of Christmas against the oppressive forces of "secular progressives" is FOX News blowhard Bill O'Reilly, who explains things this way:

See, I think it's all part of the secular progressive agenda... to get Christianity and spirituality and Judaism out of the public square. Because if you look at what happened in Western Europe and Canada, if you can get religion out, then you can pass secular progressive programs like legalization of narcotics, euthanasia, abortion at will, gay marriage, because the objection to those things is religious- based, usually.

See, when that seemingly nice lady at Walgreens says, "Happy Holidays," it means she wants to get wasted, kill her sick parents, have an abortion, and marry that butch chick that works at the photo counter. And the only way she'll be able to carry out her nefarious plan is to destroy Christmas.

Yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense. But, then again, it doesn't really have to. He's not speaking to the concerns of deep thinkers here. O'Reilly, who doesn't really strike me as someone who'd be overly familiar with the inside of a church, pulls this "war" out of his butt every year for the right wing religious nuts in his audience.

Meanwhile, there's an actual war on Christians going on and Bill's a big fan. "It may be the end of Christianity in Iraq," Bishop Antoine Audo of Aleppo, Syria told Catholic News Service. "This is very sad and very dangerous for the church, for Iraq and even for Muslim people, because it means the end of an old experience of living together." If you want to wipe out Christianity, you go on a campaign of ethnic cleansing -- you don't call a sale at ShopKo "Holiday Savings Blowout!"

60 Minutes ran a piece last night on Christians in Iraq. In a secret underground church, the Reverend Canon Andrew White, an Anglican chaplain, explains the problem.

"The room is full of children, it's full of women, but I don't see the men. Where are they?" [CBS correspondent Scott] Pelley remarked.

"They are mainly killed. Some are kidnapped. Some are killed. In the last six months things have got particularly bad for the Christians. Here in this church, all of my leadership were originally taken and killed," White explained. "All dead. But we never got their bodies back. This is one of the problems. I regularly do funerals here but it's not easy to get the bodies."

Asked if they're better off now that Saddam Hussein is gone, White tells Pelley, "The situation now is clearly worse... There's no comparison between Iraq now and then. Things are the most difficult they have ever been for Christians. Probably ever in history. They've never known it like now."

There have been Christians in Mesopotamia literally since year one -- more than two thousand years. And White tells us this is the worst it's ever been for them. Saddam Hussein seemed to have little interest in religion and his state may have had the most religious freedom in the Middle East -- Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, Iraq's number two man, was Christian.

That's all changed now. In July, the BCC reported that Iraqi Christians are "targeted by Sunni extremists because of their religion and by kidnappers - who are often Shia Arab militants or rogue members of the security forces - because of their wealth." If it weren't for the collapse of the rule of law that followed the fall of Saddam, this genocide wouldn't be happening.

It's ironic then, that the same people who've invented a "war on Christmas" in the US are also the biggest fans of the war in Iraq.

Inter Press Service:

...Now, in the waning days of the George W. Bush administration, Gary Bauer, a former Reagan administration official and longtime conservative activist, is heading up a new organisation aimed at countering liberal groups like MoveOn.org, and supporting President Bush's global "war on terror".

The "Forgotten Americans Coalition" is composed of a number of veteran conservative leaders, including the American Family Association's Dr. Don Wildmon, Christian Broadcasting Network's [Pat] Robertson, the Free Congress Foundation's Paul Weyrich, and Tim LaHaye, the co-author of the wildly popular "Left Behind" series of apocalyptic novels, and his wife, Beverly, the founder of Concerned Women for America.

"Just prior to their testimony before Congress of General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker on the situation in Iraq, the Forgotten Americans Coalition (FAC) issued a Declaration 'warning Americans of the catastrophic consequences of a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq,'" IPS tells us. It's impossible to believe that these American Evangelical leaders are ignorant of what's happening to Christians in Iraq.

Of course, you could argue that Christians would be even more screwed if we left Iraq, but that would be true only if they were seeking western protection -- they aren't. "The Christians do not what us to guard the churches openly..." U.S. Army Colonel Rick Gibbs told 60 Minutes. "They feel that if we are overtly protecting the churches that someone underground covertly will come in and murder the Christians because they're collaborating with the U.S. forces."

The extremist propaganda is that Bush's "Global War on Terror" is actually a crusade by Christians to wipe out Islam. By accepting western protection, Iraqi Christians would only be reinforcing that perception. And the American Christian fans of the war aren't helping things any. In 2005, for example, Pat Robertson told the audience of The 700 Club that "Islam, at least at its core, teaches violence." He went on to cite verses in the Quran that demand violence, but I can do the same with the Bible:

Suppose you hear in one of the towns the LORD your God is giving you that some worthless rabble among you have led their fellow citizens astray by encouraging them to worship foreign gods. In such cases, you must examine the facts carefully. If you find it is true and can prove that such a detestable act has occurred among you, you must attack that town and completely destroy all its inhabitants, as well as all the livestock. Then you must pile all the plunder in the middle of the street and burn it. Put the entire town to the torch as a burnt offering to the LORD your God. That town must remain a ruin forever; it may never be rebuilt. Keep none of the plunder that has been set apart for destruction. Then the LORD will turn from his fierce anger and be merciful to you. He will have compassion on you and make you a great nation, just as he solemnly promised your ancestors. "The LORD your God will be merciful only if you obey him and keep all the commands I am giving you today, doing what is pleasing to him."
--Deuteronomy 13:13-19

When you cherrypick verses, you can easily misrepresent a religion.

But, by pushing this line of crap, these people -- who no doubt believe they're the most Christian people in America -- are hurting Christians in Iraq. As I said earlier, there's no way they don't know this. I can only assume they don't care. This "we have to wipe out Islam" line of crap is all over the right wing blogosphere. Bush's GWoT is a Global War on Islam, we're told, and if you're not onboard with it, you hate America and Freedom.

If you ever needed proof that the Evangelical right is a political movement, not a religious one, there ya go.

And, the next time you hear one of these idiots whining about their made up "war on Christmas," consider how unconcerned they are about the genocide of Christians in Iraq. It's hard to take their complaints about "holiday trees" and "winter festivals" seriously when they're stoking the fires of ethnic cleansing in the Middle East.

"I was at a secret church service yesterday. A man came up to me and handed me some photographs of his children. They'd been shot to death. Somebody had come by their house and murdered his children because they were Christians," reported Pelley.

It'd be nice if American Christian leaders gave a damn about that, but the war's more important than those who die in it.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; Republican; propaganda; Bush; Iraq; war; The religious right gets to complain about a "War on Christmas" when they start giving a damn about a genocide on Christians