Religious, right?

POSTED BY JHW22

In his book, "The Great Awakening", Reverend Jim Wallis said, "Ironically, despite how the Religious Right has discredited the role of faith in politics in recent decades, faith is now coming back to life as a force for progressive social change." And Reverend Welton Gaddy and his Interfaith Alliance often say, "The Religious Right is neither."

These two men consistently speak to what should be good about Christianity. They remind listeners, readers and watchers that the messages of Christianity are about helping your neighbor live the best life they can, reaching out your hand and helping them up when they are down, seeking those in need and providing them with opportunity, and simply caring. These two men speak to my heart and mind despite the fact that I am an atheist. They speak to me deep inside because we share the same values. My values are those of a Christian's and a Jew's and a Muslim's and a Buddhist's. I am an atheist but I care about humanity. And that is why I am also a Democrat.

After watching what Glenn Beck presented as some mock revival I felt a mix of emotions. Disgust and anger over this fraud he is perpetuating on people desperate for something missing in their lives. Sadness for those people who don't realize that they can find what is missing if they'd stop looking for it to come from charlatans. I felt laughter for the ridiculousness of all that is Glenn Beck. But what came through most intensely for me was a great sense of relief that I am confident in what I believe and what my values are. I am more sure each day I see the likes of Beck and Sarah Palin that my principles are embedded so deeply in me that I don't need to seek answers from an entertainer masquerading as a beacon of inspiration. My anger is at people like them trying to confuse so many. But my pride is in the fact that I am one of the millions who see it for what it is -- a sham.

And so I choose to listen to Reverend Gaddy's weekly internet radio show and read Reverend Wallis's books, Sojourner's, and essays. I don't need to be a Christian to know that these men consistently, honestly and humanely speak about true values for the right reasons and not for the right's reasons.

Frank Schaeffer on the 9/12 Marchers

...Ordinary folks from Planet Earth may ask why the Republican Party, right-wing activists and members of the Religious Right seem so unreachable with mere facts let alone decency and decorum. (As the proud father of a US Marine who fought in Afghanistan I'm particularly outraged that these people would exploit the 9/11 attacks after my son and others were prepared to give their lives in response to our enemies.)

As a former Religious Right leader, who was raised (and home-schooled by my Evangelical-leader parents, Francis and Edith Schaeffer) in the movement, let me explain just why the ordinary rules of decency don't apply to the right these days...

Read the whole post here.

Why Are Conservatives Stupid?

by Armadillo Joe

Or should I ask "why are stupid people so conservative"?

Because my formulation of the GOP membership as "The Stupid, The Deluded and The Corrupt" remains intact and reinforced every single day. In today's edition, the educational braintrust in the Great State (and future Republic) of Texas directing the book-learnin' of the supple young minds in their care have concluded that too much "fact" and not enough "fiction" can be damaging to young minds with regards to, um, science and hard data. Instead of being able to dismiss these drooling Jebus-freaks as yet another bunch of banjo-pickin' toothless-goobers determined to keep themselves and their offspring mired in the intellectual and sociological poverty of 13th Century thinking -- and cheering on their defeat after defeat in court rooms across the land from the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925 to the Kitzmiller v. Dover decision in Pennsylvania in 2005 to their electoral defeat in Kansas a year later -- we actually have to pay attention to this particular group of self-righteous religious kooks because when it comes to high school textbooks in America, Texas is the 800-lb gorilla. Texas buys so many textbooks that textbook publishers generally tailor their entire line of books to Texas state standards, forcing the other 49 to comply simply by narrowing the field of alternatives.

It's scary. From Salon.com:

Textbook publishers demonstrated as recently as last year that they're not immune to pressures to pander to one of their biggest markets. In 2002, in an effort to appease Texas, references to the Ice Age as occurring "millions of years ago" in a history textbook were changed to read "in the distant past" so it wouldn't conflict with literal interpretations of the Bible. In 2001, the board rejected an environmental science book as "anti-free enterprise" and "anti-Christian" for its coverage of global warming.

Just because Barack Obama is our president doesn't mean these people have been vanquished. Not by a long shot. If "Scopes" (and "Inherit the Wind") didn't shame them into forever hiding under a rock (or, I dunno, becoming smart), they know no shame and nothing will ever drive them into permanent hiding. They must be fought at every turn as the mindless, unthinking and (in this specific case) brain-eating zombies they are.

Their relationship with the truth of the modern world is best described by this quote from The Terminator:

"It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead."

So, to answer the question posed in the title of this here post: because they choose to be. And they will not rest until they force everyone else to join them in the intellectual sewer.

God help the children of Texas.

Values Voters

Guest posted by Armadillo Joe

Once, during my senior year in high school, a girl accused me -- in front of everybody -- of being a "satanic atheist." When I attempted to explain to her the stupidity of that statement, she started crying and yelling that I had been tempted by Satan to reject the god who loves me and his son who died on the cross for my sins and that made me a "satanic atheist."

That experience was not the only reason I left Texas and The South, but the fact that she was not only not that unusual in the braindead bigotry of her beliefs nor even their spittle-flecked passion, but is in fact pretty much considered mainstream illustrates the type of people many Texans and Southerners are in their core and why I had to leave for more wide-open minds.

Which brings me to this story (h/t Booman Tribune). In South East Texas, 16 miles outside of Jasper -- the internationally famous, racist shithole where James Byrd, Jr. was dragged to his death behind a pickup truck about ten years ago -- it seems a 35-year veteran of the Brookeland, Texas Independent School District had the temerity to express his un-reactionary views a little too much in class. He had the unmitigated gall to tell his students that he was a supporter of Barack Obama and that Fox News and Rush Limbaugh were lying about Mr. Obama being a Muslim. Soon enough, he was suspended following an argument in a school building hallway with an upset parent (yes, a parent came to the school to confront him about speaking ill of Fox News and the porcine drug-addicted sex-tourist -- during school hours). After a few weeks of on-again, off-again questioning that culminated in the ISD's superintendant asking him if he was a Christian, and to which he replied that it was none of the school district's business, he was ultimately dismissed him for a trumped-up charge of "inappropriate contact" with students. The best part is that he was replaced by the Baptist minister who leads the church where the majority of the Brookeland ISD's supervisors get their churchin'.

Which was purely a coincidence, I'm sure.

You can read the finer details of the whole sordid tale here, but only do so if you don't want to bash your forehead into your desktop.

Stories like this explain how George W. Bush was able to get the second election close enough to steal and the continued political careers of neanderthal nitwits like Pete Sessions and John Cornyn. However many good, awesome True Blue hippies and other assorted space cowboys one might find in Austin and the Texas Hill Country or even in certain isolated pockets of Dallas or Houston, by and large the State of Texas, especially the South East corner of it near the Louisiana border -- like the rest of Old Dixie it is so close to -- is still the racist, unevolved sewer it has been since the days of slavery.

And Barack Hussein Obama is their president.

So suck on that, haters.

The Rick Warren Issue

Yesterday it was reported that Rick Warren was chosen to give the invocation at President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration. At first I thought it was a joke or a misreporting.

Surely there are better choices than the anti-choice Rick Warren who compared abortion to the Holocaust. There must be a better pick than the anti-gay rights Rick Warren who, athough admitting that divorce is a bigger threat to marriage than gay marriage, still compared it to incest and pedophilia while hiding behind the excuse of the "redefinition" of marrige (which is fodder for a completely different post altogether). The man who said that stem-cell research is "non negotiable" for Evangelicals when deciding on their presidential choice couldn't be the guy that Obama chose to speak at his inauguration, could it?

It looks like it is true, and for a moment I felt a little better after reading this:

...the decision to get involved with Saddleback was actually not Obama's. The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, run by the House and Senate, put together the program for the swearing-in ceremony. Congress, not Obama, invited Warren...

What the hell is that all about? Great, so Obama doesn't have a choice on who gets to give the invocation at his own inauguration ceremony?

Or does he? Why is the New York Times online reporting it this way a full day later?

Barack Obama has selected the Rev. Rick Warren, the evangelical pastor and author of “The Purpose Driven Life,” to deliver the invocation at his inauguration, a role that positions Mr. Warren to succeed Billy Graham as the nation’s pre-eminent minister and reflects the generational changes in the evangelical Christian movement.

...Mr. Obama’s inauguration program, for Jan. 20, was announced Wednesday by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Celebrations.

Inauguration programs follow a traditional outline but also allow a president-elect to put his stamp on the proceedings and set the tone for his administration.

The choice of Mr. Warren, pastor of a megachurch in Orange County, Calif., is an olive branch to conservative Christian evangelicals. Mr. Warren is an outspoken opponent of abortion and same-sex marriage — litmus-test issues for Christian conservatives. In fact, his selection set off a round of criticism by gay rights groups angered by his support for California’s ban on same-sex marriages.

So did Obama decide on Warren or what is decided for him? Did the "release" of this information precede Obama's knowledge of it in an attempt to corner him into accepting the program? And why haven't we heard a statement from the transition team? Or is the quesiton even being asked - too much Blagojevichin' to worry about Warren, you know.

I have mixed feelings about this. If this is a political game to placate the Religious Right and try to win them over, then it won't work. Even though Obama did get twice the number of votes from young Evangelicals that Kerry received in 2004 he still received about 25% of their vote overall, the same as Kerry. The other issue I fear is the "what have you done for me lately" effect. Sure, the Religious Right will tolerate Obama... for about as long as Warren's invocation lasts. But unless he's going to do a 180 on Pro-Choice and stem-cell research, I don't think he'll gain any new supporters, and he'd certainly lose more than he'd gain.

On the flip side, what does the choice of Warren say about what Obama or the Democratic party thinks of it's Progessive supporters. Right now, they are majorly pissed off about the Warren issue.

"My blood pressure is really high right now," said Rev. Chuck Currie, minister at Parkrose Community United Church of Christ in Portland, Oregon. "Rick Warren does some really good stuff and there are some areas that I have admired his ability to build bridges between evangelicals and mainline religious and political figures... but he is also very established in the religious right and his position on social issues like gay rights, stem cell research and women's rights are all out of the mainstream and are very much opposed to the progressive agenda that Obama ran on. I think that he is very much the wrong person to put on the stage with the president that day."

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..."Pastor Warren, while enjoying a reputation as a moderate based on his affable personality and his church's engagement on issues like AIDS in Africa, has said that the real difference between James Dobson and himself is one of tone rather than substance," read a statement from People For the American Way President Kathryn Kolbert. "He has repeated the Religious Right's big lie that supporters of equality for gay Americans are out to silence pastors. He has called Christians who advance a social gospel Marxists. He is adamantly opposed to women having a legal right to choose an abortion."

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..."Let me get right to the point," Joe Solomnese, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a harsh letter to the president-elect, "Your invitation to Reverend Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at your inauguration is a genuine blow to LGBT Americans."

Does someone get to review what Warren will say in his invocation before the event? Will he insert some unapproved passage and take a shot at the LGBT community? Will he compare Pro-choicers to Hitler? Probably not. But there's always that slim chance...

To those who aren't especially religious (including yours truly), does it really matter? Just because Warren is there doesn't mean Obama is all of a sudden adopting Warren's policy views. And I think we're pretty safe to assume that Obama is still in favor of the separation of church and state. Otherwise, we should just be pissed off that there is an invocation and a benediction to begin with. We should be angry that religious observance is part of the inauguration ceremony at all, shouldn't we? Or is that just a formality and therefore okay?

We take what we want out of the words of these people, don't we? If we are in agreement with them, it is of a secular nature. If we happen to disagree with something, it's based on their religious beliefs and don't pertain to us. Yes, Warren has said some pretty shitty things, but that's not to say he hasn't done any good. And let's not forget that Rev. Joseph Lowery, who was a founding leader of the Civil Rights Movement will be there as well. Does Lowery's benediction cancel out Warren's invocation? Does it supercede it?

And finally, maybe in Barack Obama we really did get someone who is doing what he said he would do.

Lee Stranahan:

Apparently, Barack Obama meant what he said about our politics being too small for our problems.

...I don't understand how anyone who listened to Obama during the campaign would be shocked that Obama lets Warren give the invocation. It's vintage Obama. It does not signal agreement with Warren's political positions, some of which are clearly at odds with Obama's. Warren isn't making policy or even giving a sermon. He's saying a prayer and then possibly dancing later at some inaugural parties. If anything, it's the possibility of this dancing that should be deeply troubling to all Americans.

...Rick Warren felt some of this same heat when he invited Barack Obama to speak at his church on World Aids Day. Conservatives railed against Warren for legitimizing Obama. People with different political opinions aren't supposed to come together in anything but a shouting match.

...There's something bigger at play here and you can't say Obama didn't warn you. He talked about reaching out, about expanding our politics and that crazy bastard actually meant it. Nobody on the left or right quite knows what to make of it. We want to cram Obama into our old, divisive, two toned ideological and political frame and if he doesn't fit, we'll attack him too. Attacking is what we're used to doing.

But in the long run this new politics benefits us all. Ironically, it benefits the minorities and marginalized and ill-treated the most. I know this may be hard for many to see right now but the truth is that this sort of symbol is what America needs. Not seeing just Warren on stage or just Lowery but seeing both of them of there at once.

Obama said it in the abstract time and again during the campaign. Now he's showing us. Seeing the things that Pastor Rick Warren and Reverend Joseph Lowery have in common is more important than seeing the things that separate them. America needs to see that. It's a step down the road where a majority of us see the things that straight Americans in love want are the same things that gay Americans in love want, too.

Lee Stranahan is a better man than I. My first instinct is definitely not "do unto others." I think I eventually get there most of the time, and not so quickly. But I do agree with his idea that attacking is what we are used to doing, so maybe we should keep an open mind about things. Case in point, now it seems that the Religious Right is angered over Warren's participation in the inauguration.

So who knows? Maybe he'll back out, although I doubt it. Just as I doubt Obama would change his mind about having him there.



UPDATE (12:20pm): Obama press conference where he is asked about the Warren choice.



(H/T Paddy)

Also, more Stranahan:

If opposing same-sex marriage but being on record for equal rights is homophobic then Obama, Clinton, and Edwards are all homophobic. I can think someone is wrong about gay marriage without calling them a homophobe. Throwing around that word doesn't help and it's generally unprovable.

UPDATE II (3:10pm): Thom Hartmann. Wow.

Note To Rudy: I Want My Fruitcake!

Not to be outdone by Mike Huckabee and his spine chilling Christmas/Jeebus commercial, Giuliani does one of his own.

It's horrible. Not only does Rudy misread my Christmas list (I have no "sthrict contherative judgeth" on it), but he comes off like an idiot trying to parody Huckabee's message without enough parody.

Even Joe Scarborough flips out! And this guy wants to be President of the United States. He couldn't even be my latex salesman.

Romney's Pander to the Religious Right

Mitt Romney's pandering speech to the religious right shows once and for all how this man will say anything to get elected and how he's soooo not ready to lead this country, or anything else that needs an objective eye for that matter.

How can one speech contain "Let me assure you that no authorities of my church, or of any other church for that matter, will ever exert influence on presidential decisions. Their authority is theirs, within the province of church affairs, and it ends where the affairs of the nation begin," AND "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom."?

And in fruitlessly trying to compare himself with John F. Kennedy, Romney says this:

"Almost 50 years ago, another candidate from Massachusetts explained that he was an American running for president, not a Catholic running for president. Like him, I am an American running for president. I do not define my candidacy by my religion."

...but then says this:

"...the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It is as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America - the religion of secularism. They are wrong."

..."Any believer in religious freedom, any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty, has a friend and ally in me."

So screw all the non-believers. They're all going to hell anyway. Talk about an A-1 panderer in full bullshit mode! Someone should remind Mitt that this country was founded on the belief of freedom of religion and freedom FROM religion if one so chose. He even tries to make it sound as if our forefathers had religion on the brain during the founding of our nation. And as everyone knows, that is just entirely wrong.

As Lee Papa at RudePundit.com (graphic language) states:

Romney also cites a bit of writing by John Adams often used by right wingers hoping to shove religion up all our asses. In his letter to a brigade of the Massachusetts militia, yes, Adams did write, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

But in the rest of that letter, Adams says, "[S]hould the people of America once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another, and towards foreign nations, which assumes the language of justice and moderation while it is practising iniquity and extravagance, and displays in the most captivating manner the charming pictures of candor, frankness, and sincerity, while it is rioting in rapine and insolence, this country will be the most miserable habitation in the world; because we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net."

Adams warned us not to be fucking hypocrites. He was talking about religion in its truest sense. Not as a way of saying that one is superior because one has religion, but in the sense that religion ought to be humbling, not a reason to preen like a goddamn nit-filled peacock before the salivating hyenas of the media and the Republican base.

Amen, Brother Papa!

For Romney to suggests that atheists and agnostics have no place in America shows that his magic underwear is a bit too tight. Thanks for playing, Mitt. Leave your endorsement for the Joseph Smith/Brigham Young ticket at the door on your way out.
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UPDATE: THE NATION: John Nichols - Defending his candidacy and his Mormon faith in Texas, Mitt Romney did little to assure those who expect their president to serve the national interest and resist pressure from religious groups.

UPDATE II: Mitt's No JFK: Maureen Dowd - The problem with Mitt is not his religion; it is his overeager policy shape-shifting. He did not give a brave speech, but a pandering one. Disguised as a courageous, Kennedyesque statement of principle, the talk was really just an attempt to compete with the evolution-disdaining, religion-baiting Huckabee and get Baptists to concede that Mormons are Christians.
...The world is globalizing, nuclear weapons are proliferating, the Middle East is seething, but Republicans are still arguing the Scopes trial.
Mitt was right when he said that “Americans do not respect believers of convenience.” Now if he would only admit he’s describing himself.