...PLEASE!

I'm a church-going THINKING person, who sings every Sunday in the choir, and THIS person is shaking in his reality-based boots right now. I (obviously) don't have any problem with REAL Christian beliefs, but wedding them to this crackpot right-wing, quasi-fascist crap scares the bejesus out of me.

In her list of right wing crack pots, Goldberg neglects to list crackpot 1, Charles Haynes. This is the guy who will use psuedo constitutional rhetoric to bring theocracy to America.

http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/commentary.aspx?id=16222

But first, we must eliminate Santa and "pagan trees" as too commercial for a Christian Christmas

I don't know if this is Salon-sensationalism or what, but check this: my older sister got with Kirk Cameron back in his teen idol heydays. What a slut, ya think?

meanwhile, those on the left who espouse whatever their religion may be need to be a tad more eloquent about it before it's completely hijacked

the rest of us, who know better from any organized religion, will continue to keep score and respect the U.S. Constitution

I feel a great relief with this article and Kevin Phillip's "American Theocracy" documenting how deranged these regligious rightists have become, particularly after 9/11 gave wings to their worst paranoid instincts. I watched as my own midwestern family was swept up into the "Left Behind" fervor - which (unlike when literal endtimes prophesy surfaced in the 20's and was debunked by mainstream religion) as Jimmy Carter noted in the New York TImes, it was being promoted now by the huge Southern Baptist religion in order to promote their social (war, tax cuts, Bush) agenda. As Phillips so deftly illustrates, with a doomsday scenario to rely upon, there is no need to worry about skyrocketing health care premiums or the geopolitical costs of mindless aggression, since War to trigger Armageddon IS the goal.

I have followed Tim LaHaye's career along with that of his wife Beverly who set up the anti-feminist women's organization (sic) Concerned Women of America. LaHaye was monomaniacal in pledging destruction of the gay liberation movement, and just plain insane over its victory - stomping off to scheme up a rapture movement that could seize control of America, which it has with Bush 2004. I stood in front of the Orlando Convention Center one day and watched hundreds of church buses discharge fresh-scrubbed Christian soldiers in pressed black dress slacks, white arrow shirts with pocket protectors, literally marching to war at a Bush rally.

I think they have to be confronted and called the fraud that they are. I fought these people for 25 years in the successful gay liberation movement and they are evil and vicious but tend to melt when truth is spoken to their imaginary power. For example, over 15 years the GOP seized AM talk radio and turned it into a disinformation operation which, by demonizing liberals mercilessly, gained control of the country's goverment. They were counting on our complicity because good-natured liberals would not point and call them the simple word that neutralized their smearing of liberals AND described them perfectly: redneck. I of course did it as often as possible, to Rush, Gordon, Ollie, Sean - all of them - with relish and passion. And I found it to be a tar that they literally rubbed themselves raw trying to scrub off, speechless in abject horror that a lily-livered liberal would stand up to the bully. It was like a cross shown to Dracula. Get one.

Since God doesn't actually exist! it's really hard for me to tell "good Christians" from "bad Christians". Maybe these nuts are more closely following the Bible than the more liberal Christians who fell outrage at their actions. Thus, I humbly suggest, the problem is not so much who's the better Christian, whatever that means- but it's (at least partly) religion itself.

All the liberal Christians here seem to be faced with a quandary. How do they rationalize the fact that the Bible (and just about every other religious text) does appear to require the stoning and smiting of adulterers, apostates, homosexuals and especially atheists?

This article really saddens me. I can’t believe we’re worried about primitive doctrinaire anti-intellctual religion making a comeback in the 21st century. First Islam, now Christianity (and to some extent, right-wing Hinduism in India). Shouldn’t we have moved on from clinging to literal belief in ancient tribal myths? Have our educational and cultural institutions failed us so badly??

I’d like to think this “Christianist” ideology is confined to uneducated Southern hicks who live in rural areas and have little contact with non-white, non-Christian people. But with their political base growing and choking all reason and moderation from the Republican party, I think we’re in deep trouble.

We need sharp intellectuals of both the secular and liberal Christian variety to stand up courageously and expose the idiotic, childish, fascist mentality of the religious right. Intelligent mocking irony of the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert variety is lost on these anti-intellectual bumpkins. We need a frontal assault on their hollow and dangerous mindset, re-asserting the humanistic, pluralistic ideals that make the U.S. a nation of freedom and justice. And yes, we need to be proud of being Americans – not the foaming-at-the-mouth hyper-nationalistic xenophobic America, but the charitable, fair-minded, hard-working, egalitarian America.

The reason the religious right makes such political and cultural gains is that is presents a clear vision, as bigoted and devoid of depth as it may be. What the left (both humanists and liberal Christians and other religionsts) needs is a strong VISION, a humanist manifesto, instead of just reacting and throwing tantrums against the right.

The left needs to rediscover the principles of the Enlightenment and now wallow in post-modern ineffectuality. It’s time to take a stand before we turn into Saudi America!

There was in interesting question posted recently on the discussion boards of democraticunderground.com that got me to thinking. In a lengthy post, the main point was this; “There seems to be an uptick on DU, both here and elsewhere, of posts in which Christians try to distance themselves from people like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. Why are you doing this? I get it, you're not Jerry Falwell. So what? You're both Christians but you have different opinions. Why is this news?”

That’s a fair question, and I can see why a lot of people would ask it. It cuts to the core of the question of religion, faith and belief by asking “What’s the point you’re trying to make?”

In the interest of saving bandwidth, part one of my lengthy reply can be found at http://www.godhatesrepublicans.org/main/whatsnew.html under the heading "OK, so you preach against what Republicans stand for. What do YOU stand for?" Part One.

The quick summary I can give is, that it's time that the average Christian stand up and say in a loud clear voive "These Klu Klux Klan/Republican nightmare people don't speak for the rest of us."

www.godhatesrepublicans.org - www.wetoldyouso.org