Politics Plus

Loving others is a principal tenant of Christianity, but far to many people many people fail to realize that authentic Christianity and Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christianity are completely unrelated.  Here is an example of Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christianity in action.

ThinkProgress reported last week that Kansas House Speaker Mike O’Neal (R) was forced to apologize to First Lady Michelle Obama after forwarding an email to fellow lawmakers that called her “Mrs. YoMama” and compared her to the Grinch.

Earlier that same week, the Lawrence Journal-World was sent another email that O’Neal had forwarded to House Republicans that referred to President Obama and a Bible verse that says “Let his days be few” and calls for his children to be without a father and his wife to be widowed.

Nick Sementelli at Faith in Public Life notes that Psalm 109, which is a prayer for the death of a leader, became a popular conservative meme after Obama’s election. The “tongue-in-cheek” prayer for the president was seen on bumper stickers. The relevant part of the psalm reads:

Let his days be few; and let another take his office

May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.

May his children be wandering beggars; may they be driven from their ruined homes.

May a creditor seize all he has; may strangers plunder the fruits of his labor.

May no one extend kindness to him or take pity on his fatherless children.

O’Neal forwarded the prayer with his own message: “At last — I can honestly voice a Biblical prayer for our president!… [emphasis original]

Inserted from <Think Progress>

I have often been accused of hating Republicans, but revealing the facts about their avowed beliefs, policies and actions is accuracy, not hatred.  Furthermore, the most harm I have ever wished on any Republican is unemployment from public office, and/or prosecution for crimes with all the rights and protections the law allows.

The People at Faith in Public Life, noted above, in an act of authentic Christianity, have a petition for Kansas House Speaker Mike O’Neal to resign.  I signed it and invite you to join me.

It’s hard to get past a holiday without the pseudo-Christian followers of Republican Supply-side Jesus (not the real one) finding an excuse to display their gospel of bigotry, hate and intolerance.  For Thanksgiving they reached a level of stupidity in their fear mongering seldom seen before.  Cower under your beds!  Your Thanksgiving turkey, they say, is a secret agent of Islam.

Red-blooded Christian Americans, consider yourselves warned. The American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer has discovered a plot to secretly infiltrate America’s ovens with Muslim turkeys:

I want to talk a little bit about Butterball turkeys. And I want to let you know [that] every single Butterball turkey sold in the United States of America has been sacrificed to Allah.

 

Every single turkey that Butterball sells has been ritually slaughtered according to Islamic practice and has had an Islamic prayer prayed over that bird while it is being slaughtered.

If your Thanksgiving turkey starts speaking Arabic or insists on wearing a hijab, now you know the reason. But this is no joking matter to Fischer, who raises the possibility of a pressure campaign against Butterball this Christmas…

Inserted from <Right Wing Watch>

Here’s the video:

The problem, of course, is that Geller and Fischer, are practicing a Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christian holiday ritual. They are lying.

Mellissa Harris Perry debunks this Republican lie.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I am thankful that, as a Christian, I can also honor the faith of those who are not, and I am thankful that authentic Muslims are far more Christian than Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christians.

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.