Politics Plus

I am sometimes amazed at the hypocrisy of how Republican supply-side pseudo-Christians express love and support for Israel.  Lurking just behind most are highly anti-Semitic.  Here’s the key.  In extreme fundamentalist eschatological dogma, Israel must occupy the holy land and rebuild the temple before Jesus can return.  However, they believe that, when he does, the majority of the Jews will become crispy critters.  So their so-called love for Israel does not extend to Jews.  Currently, Republican candidates for President are fighting tooth and nail for the endorsements of the most extreme anti-Semites, such as Mike Bickel.

Has the GOP primary gone off the rails before the first vote has even been cast?

In 2008, Sen. John McCain rejected the endorsement of John Hagee, a far-right pastor who had called the Catholic Church the "Great Whore" and said that Hitler was sent by God to be a "hunter" of Jews who had not yet moved to the land that would become Israel. McCain wasn’t exactly running as a moderate – look who he chose to be his vice president – but he knew, at least this time, that a line had been crossed.

 

Today’s GOP presidential candidates seem to have no such scruples.

Compare Hagee’s statements to this passage from a 2004 sermon by Mike Bickle, megachurch pastor, big-time evangelical, and star speaker at Rick Perry’s August prayer rally-cum-campaign launch. In a video found by Brian Wilson of Talk to Action, Bickle prophesies that in the End Times 2/3 of all Jews "will die in the rage of Satan and in the judgments of God." He goes on to discuss a disturbing and ultimately dangerous theory of the Holocaust even more outrageous than that pushed by Hagee:

The Lord says, "I’m going to offer two strategies to Israel, to these 20 million." He says, "First, I am going to offer them grace, I am going to send the fisherman." Do you know how a fisherman lures? I mean do you know how a fisherman does their thing? They have the bait in front, luring the fish. It’s a picture of grace. … And he says, "And if they don’t respond to grace, I’m going to raise up the hunters." And the most famous hunter in recent history is a man named Adolf Hitler. He drove them from the hiding places, he drove them out of the land.

 

Mike Bickle is not just any radical pastor preaching End Times scripture. He was a key organizer of Perry’s The Response rally this summer, lending a number of staff members of his International House of Prayer (yes, IHOP) to the event and emceeing the proceedings himself… [emphasis original]

Inserted from <Huffington Post>

Let me correct one detail.  Before  McConJob and Mooseolini rejected Hagee’s endorsement, they actively sought it out.  McConJob even visited Hagee’s church to do obeisance.  Once the story broke, McConJob defended Hagee.  He only rejected Hagee’s endorsement after the story refused to go away and was hurting his campaign.

McConJob is a model of tolerance, compared to the current crop of ideologues seeking the GOP nomination.  That he considered it so important to get such an endorsement identifies the level of moral bankruptcy to which the Republican Party has fallen.  The notion that Presidential candidates are aligning themselves with people who glorify Hitler for his treatment of Jews puts me at a loss for words.

For people who claim to support the Constitution, Republicans surely have a way of ignoring it whenever it is inconvenient to do so.  The First Amendment to the Constitution of the the United States protects the free exercise of religion, but Republican Bryan Fischer of the AFA insists only the religions he chooses should be protected.

Unsurprisingly, Bryan Fischer is not happy that religious leaders won’t be addressing a ceremony marking the ten year anniversary of the September 11th attacks in New York. A spokesman for Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that they wanted to keep the focus “on the families of the thousands who died on Sept. 11,” and the Wall Street Journal noted [Murdoch delinked] that previous events marking the anniversary similarly did not include religious speakers and that there “will be an interfaith event recognizing first responders on Sept. 6.”

But Fischer believes that Bloomberg is up to something more sinister. By failing to include religious speakers, Fischer insists that Bloomberg is “playing favorites, and his favoritism is heavily stacked toward Muslims.”

According to Fischer [Supply-side pseudo-Christian delinked], such public prayers should “be reserved for Christians and Jews,” (although he goes on to leave out the latter when he calls for prayer to be restricted to “the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ.”) Fischer explains that the Founding Fathers would have wanted it that way because Muslims “pray to a different god.” Of course, as we pointed out on Friday, the AFA made clear that Christians and Jews “do not worship the same God” and that Christians should build friendships with their Jewish neighbors to convert them… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Right Wing Watch>

Fischer’s bigotry anti-American as well as anti-Christian.  Republican hatred toward Muslims directly opposes both Jesus’ teaching and his practice, as he honored people with faiths different from his own.  Fisher is just another Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christian.  His views do not represent authentic Christianity.

Something ugly has risen its head in American Politics.  The New Apostolic Reformation Movement, sometimes called Dominionists, want to reinvent America as a theocracy in which they, as God’s appointed representatives, control the intimate details of daily life from the largest corporate board room to the tiniest private bedroom.  They have been around for a while, but nobody has given them heed, because they warranted none, until now.  Now they have an anointed holy prophet in the person of soon to be candidate, Rick Perry.

Texas Governor Rick Perry’s prayer event “The Response last weekend raised plenty of eyebrows for coming on the heels of much presidential speculation, and for featuring a number of pastors with some controversial views. On her program tonight, Rachel Maddow tried to find the common thread among these pastors, and she argues it is not that they have all “just had a moment where they said something that sounded strange.” They are members of the New Apostolic Reformation, she argued: a small religious group plotting world domination.

Maddow noted that for Perry to have invited many of the characters that appeared at his event was enough of a threat to any potential campaign– not because of the prayer itself, but “the risk for his President campaign was… that the particular stadium prayer event he held was with these guys.”… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Mediaite>

Rachel Maddow has done the most superior job of documenting these Dominionists  that I have seen.  She did so last night in two segments.  In the first, Rachel explained in detail who they are and why Perry waited until next weekend to announce.

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They are a threat to our way of life, and Perry waited to avoid close MSM scrutiny of his fanatical handlers.  It’s easy to see why.

In the second, Rachel discussed New Apostolic political ambitions with staff writer Forrest Wilder.

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Perry succeeded.  As he moves toward his announcement, most of America remains ignorant of the extreme danger this man represent.  Worse yet, he is so off the deep end that he  is sure to attract the support of the InsaniTEA wing of the Republican Party.

In closing, please understand that these are not authentic Christians.  Among other qualities, authentic Christians have no need to shove their beliefs down the throats of others.  They respect the beliefs of others and desire to coexist in peace with them.  They have an abiding concern for the poor.  They recognize that church (render unto God) and state (render unto Caesar) are separate.  They have no Machiavellian plans.  Please do not blame authentic Christians for anti-gospel of hate, bigotry, and greed of Republican supply-side pseudo-Christians.

Many on the right are claiming that Breivik could not be a Christian terrorist, because what he did was not a Christian act.  In a way I agree with them, in spite of their complete hypocrisy, but it’s not that simple.

In the wake of mass murder in Norway by a young man who hearkened to the Christian crusades and calls himself a cultural Christian – many ordinary people of faith were horrified to find Anders Behring Breivik described as a “Christian terrorist.”

Whether that title applies to Mr. Breivik is a suddenly awkward issue – partly lembecause it raises the question about a fast and loose use of “Muslim” or “Islamic” to name those who commit violence in the name of their faith.

While European media seem disinterested in Breivik’s Christian self-definition or the terminology used to describe him, in the US and Muslim media worlds it is a sprawling debate. It was hyped by Bill O’Reilly on Fox News who found it an “outrage” to call Breivik a Christian terrorist; Mr. O’Reilly responded to some reports that early on took Breivik’s statements about his Christianity at face value.

But the Fox talk show host and some others have denied that Muslims who commit violence should be treated by the same rules… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Christian Science Monitor>

The problem here is not Christianity or Islam, as both religions condemn killing the innocent.  The problem is that right-wing extremists have abused both religions to further their political agendas.  Breivik is no more Christian than the Republican Supply-side pseudo Christians here.

Because of his racist beliefs, and his group’s connections to the Koch-funded AFP, perhaps he should be called the Teabagger Terrorist.