Looks Like Jesus Is Putting on His Combat Boots!! ..about time

[DemocracyInaction]

Did you happen to see the great piece on ABC news a few days ago?? I thought at first when they were introducing it "not another one of these goddamn pieces pushing the politics of the fundamentalists"!!! But it was just the opposite.

Apparently the Council of Churches (which are mainstream churches)are really starting to wage war against the fundamentalists. They are preaching from the pulpits and anywhere else that will give them a listen that the winger-Christians selected a few ugly, devisive issues in order to gain power in D.C. and ignored the whole rest of the gospels regarding Jesus' commands to help the poor, the needy, the sick, etc. They interviewed one preacher who out right condemned the money being spent in Iraq and pointed out how much that money would mean if spent in this country on education, healthcare, social security, and such issues that help people.

And then they finished with a clip of an author who has written a book about this so-called brand of Christianity where he asks: "when did God become pro-rich, pro-war and pro-America". Yeees...finally these freaks are being called out by the rest of the Christian community!!!!

[liberalitch]

1. jesus loves me this I know....

because the bible tells me so....
It's not up to these freaks to add an "unless"

[DemocracyInaction]

5. liberalitch-------that was good!!!!

I keep thinking of our frustration at trying to get the Dem message out across the land and get people to wake up, etc. You know, it can be done perhaps faster in another way. Go infiltrate these churches. Talk "Jesus" to the fundies at the office or neighborhood and point out the areas of the gospels that are ignored and skipped over and other such cherry picking. In fact, I got so sick of these half wits that I took out my Bible (been a life long practicing Christian) and for the first time actually read the gospels from beginning to end. Whoa-----Jesus should be our next nominee because he really smacks these suckers upside the head. No wonder their preachermen "interpret" the scriptures for them.

[liberalitch]

8. I know fundies who don't even take their bibles to church...

Don't need 'em.... not gonna read 'em wouldn't be prudent

[kentuck]

2. Unfortunately, I think this is required...

Nothing about them or their policies would be defined as "Christian".

[laheina]

3. Thank You!!

They (the fundies) have really been pilfering the ranks of the mainstream protestant denominations. I was reading an interesting article about their methods in Business Week, and all that I could think was that the whole thing was very sick.

Add to that the piece on the front page of the Times yesterday about how the fundies are setting their sights on the ivy league universities, and I was wanting to jump off of something very tall. :)

Maybe there's hope.

[DemocracyInaction]

6. laheina---I think they pilfer in more than one way

Besides the obvious trying to lure mainstream Christians to come to their churches, I (as a life-long Christian) was seeing something else happen. I see "mainstream" Christian's trying to drag the message of these creeps into the mainstream churches. I did not like at all in this last election, how many mainstreamers got pulled into the "gay marriage" and "abortion" crap and thought that voting for George was casting a vote for God and voting for Kerry was defying God!!! We always were pretty good about keeping religion and politics separate. But some of these members are trying to make mainstream into a form of fundamentalism. Hopefully, the Catholic Church isn't going to get marching orders from Herr Pope to really crack down in a "fundamentalist" way----I don't think they would dare here in the USof A because they would lose even more members. In fact, they really have an opportunity to lead the way and carve out a reformist group.

[laheina]

11. I've heard stories about evangelical backwash.

Several people have told me stories about pressure tactics in their churches, where they were being told that they couldn't be Christian and vote for a Dem.

I'm not sure what's worse: the required conformity or the mass marketing of it.

[getmeouttahere]

4. Thank you for including the "Pro-America" part....

I've always been especially appalled by these fundies who think we are somehow a "chosen" country or something! I'm no bible expert, but that is something that simply can't be found there. I mean, I can't take these people seriously under ordinary circumstances, but when they bring that stuff up in conversation or in the media, any crumb of crediblity that they might have had a chance for is out the window.

[laheina]

14. I think that it may relate to the "prosperity gospel."

That refers to the twisted fantasy that our being the wealthiest nation is the same as being the most favored in the eyes of God.

If you really wanna puke:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_21/b3934016_mz001.htm

[hecate77]

26. If you believe your religion is the only correct one, you have to

believe you are also chosen and favored. The greatest fault of the major religions is this idea that they are the one true religion. I know this is changing in some places, but way too many still feel this way.

I am not a Christian, although I was raised Catholic. For a long time, I had a hatred of Christianity and anything related to it, but over the years I have come to see that all true paths are equivalent, and that what I hated was not necessarily the core parts of all those religions, but the way in which they were sanctimoniously forcing themeselves on everyone else and were willing to kill to do that.

I respect the teachings of Jesus (but I choose which books I think are really his teachings and which are not), even though I do not think of him as my saviour. I respect the teachings of all religions insofar as those teachings are about equality, love, compassion, and responsibility. I do not respect any 'teachings' that allow you to kill others or hate others.

But, back to my main point. The idea that one's religion is the only way to god/goddess/divinity is so delusional, that it has to be backed up with other delusional ideas, such as being chosen, as being better, as being superior, as being given the right to judge others, as being given the duty to kill those who do not believe as you do.

This is not love. This is not compassion. This is not equality. This is not responsible behavior. And it most certainly is not Divinely inspired in any way. It is mostly about fear. And fear is the most certain way to separate yourself from the divine (in whatever form you believe in it, if at all). And fear is the most certain route to feeling you have to have a definitive answer so you can plan and control your future, so you can be guaranteed a place in whatever afterlife you believe in, if any. And fear is the most certain route to loss of faith. And fear is the most certain route to hatred. And we all know where hatred leads us....

[carnie_sf]

7. Exactly why

I've been calling them alleged christians. I believe Jesus called people like them whitewashed tombs.

[maxrandb]

22. Yes! Here's the Exact Quote

"woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

[puddycat]

9. its about time! They are way behind though.

on a somewhat related topic, I've been reading the "Left Behind" series (I picked them up at a yard sale for a quarter each and wouldn't have paid a nickel more!) and My God!--the two men who wrote these books must be so twisted and sick. Like a lot of these rich Christian Porn peddlers, they have gotten wealthy off of lies and promoting Christianity as a religion of fear, intolerance and pure hatred towards others. These rightwing Christian Extremists have to be stopped from taking any further control of our country. They are sick sick sick sick--and although they have a right to be infested with their sick right-wing fake-Christian ideology, they have no right to infect our government with it.

These books, which are wildly popular among the extremists, are not even based on sound Biblical teachings. The first book starts with the "rapture". Now, no where, NO where in the Bible is mentioned any pre-tribulation rapture--none. And that's just the beginning.

In these books the United Nations is viciously attacked and held up for ridicule, etc. and only conservative political values viewed as Christian, and any liberal values denegrated. When you read this garbage, you know from whence a lot of ordinary thugnuts got their ideas from in the last few years(well besides talk radio).

Also, no mention of the core teachings of Jesus. The books are obsessed with hatred against all "others" including non-right-wing Christians. Moderate and liberal Christians who actually worship JESUS should take back their religion from these jerks.

[gratefull4u]

10. This is such good news!

I am heartsick about what they did to Jesus. It is about time that Jesus gets his reputation back. A Fundie type recently told me that if he were alive today Jesus would drive a pick up truck, own guns, and fight the rag heads. I ask what about him as the Prince of Peace, what about the Beatitudes? He had no idea of what I was even talking about.

[puddycat]

12. well there's nothing wrong with owning guns, but I get the gist N/T

[laheina]

15. I think that they point was

would *Jesus* own a gun.

[gratefull4u]

17. I know owning guns is not the problem but...

It was just very obvious that this guy wanted to use one on me because of my bumper sticker, LOL! They just have us locked into a narrow view that we all oppose gun ownership, want to abort every baby, and that we all try to talk children into being gay and then to marry each other. If the RW gods, Rush, Hannity or whoever else they idolize would say to kill the liberals, they would find a way to do it. On several occasions I have felt frightened by the crazy rhetoric from them. This period in our history makes pre 1945 Germany so much easier to understand.

[Sparkman]

21. TV evangelists amass personal fortunes, "believe & receive"...Christ begge

to differ with holdings, earthly wealth. ALL of the disciples gave up their wealth to follow Christ, yet corporate america prays in their boardrooms, furnished with lavish and unnecessary crap. You want to pursue money, get obsessive over property, you can't preach the gospil, you'll neglect your spiritual life because of misplaced priorities. But you can be a follower, a student a layperson. The war-capitalists and their fundamentalist supporter have a substantive conflict with the basics of Christian truth, and make poor spiritual leaders, but might provide the "what not to do" examples.
Singling out certain sins over others is self-serving, not God serving. ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, basic.
The best of us is as a filty rag. Basic.
Another truth; Christianity has to view all as sinners, and follow the 10 commanmants, and TRY to lead Godly lives. Some are given the office, like Paul, to point out the hypocracy of preachers or leaders who invoke the Lords name for earthly gain, called blasphemy. Demanding perfection from others is not scriptural, basic. God deals with his false prophets, often publicly, after being given chance after chance (long suffering saints)and directing criticism to the leaders in a private, quiet way may work, if it doesn't, God can get direct and cause the mighty to fall.

[Lefergus70]

23. Read about Pat Robertson the con man

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/7027/patrobertson.html

[Sparkman]

27. Nice site, how long will Robinson's online accelerated under-graduate...

degree draw the faithful into partisian political religiosity?
thanks for the resource.

[DemocracyInaction]

16. grateful---yep, Jesus has become both a lucky rabbit's foot and

the "leader" of the hate squad in the minds of these morons. Like everything else, they are uninformed, functionally illiterate, never read one iota of the Bible for themselves, never delved into any scholarly-based theology, etc. Their just a big empty head fueled by hatered diguised as "Jesus" fed into them by sick little men who desire to rule over people and control their lives. It's the same thing we see each day by the same people and their political ignorance. An uneducated (and that doesn't have to be a formal education)moron with a piece of propaganda in his brain is a very, very dangerous animal. And to think we worry about terrorists in this nation..........

[gratuitous]

13. I saw that report over the weekend

On a Saturday, naturally, the lowest viewership day of the week. But they did air the story, and I went to ABCNews' website to look over the story again, and to give them an attaboy for running it. Unfortunately, the story wasn't on their website (they don't put every story there), and there was no "contact us" link that I could find. Bummer.

But it was a pretty good report, all the more notable for being so rare outside of a Bill Moyers program.

[CBHagman]

18. Your thread title brought me in here.

I must confess that I had a fleeting thought of some sort of ribbing, like "Your Savior wears combat boots," especially given some of the things that appear on DU. :-)

But this is good news. People really have to start looking at the Gospel and not assume that every stance taken by a certain breed of so-called conservative fits in with the Scripture. For example, the Bible has nothing whatever to say about the capital gains tax, stem cells, or PBS, but there are principles in the Scriptures, and if our RW GOP crowd really read them and took them seriously, they would quiver with fear.

The problem is that capitalism and an ugly sort of social Darwinism has become the faith of Bush & Co. This has been around in some form or another for years, but now they actually have power and are attempting to inflict it on the rest of us.

[ginnyinWI]

19. It's Jesus People v.s. the Pharisees.

I'm glad they have decided to take a stand against the right wing zealots who want to grab the mantle of holy "righteousness" and get the votes of all Christians who don't see what's going on.

[AndyTiedye]

20. Good For Them!

:kick: the moneychangers out of the temple!

[LittleClarkie]

24. Not only that, there was a peice in the NYT

about the Christian college Bush went to for commencement where 800 people signed a petition stating that Bush didn't reflect what they considered Christian values. Some even wore anti-Bush bumperstickers on their mortar boards.

[woodsprite]

25. Our minister said something that really hit the nail on the head

She said that "Churches are only a small part of where Jesus is and what he really stands for. He is not only in the church, but he is in our being kind and caring for others, volunteering for Habitat for Humanity or Meeting Ground, he's in our homeless shelters and in our work to feed the hungry. He is in EVERY face we look at, whether they are black, oriental, hispanic, white, etc. And THAT is exactly how God meant it to be and don't let anyone tell you anything different."

That was the gist of the childrens' chat she had this past Sunday.