we are ALREADY living in a Christo-fascist theocracy...

[MnFats]

...
there are a couple of pieces in the new Harper's magazine that ought to scare the shit out of all of us:

http://www.harpers.org/FeelingTheHate.html


here's a snippet:


Lepine then shows us another video, this one featuring the current president of the Family Research Council, former Louisiana state representative Tony Perkins, a telegenic man who authored the American History Preservation Act, a law intended to prevent “censorship of America’s Christian heritage in Louisiana public schools,” and who also wrote the first Covenant Marriage Law.

“Deep in the nation’s capital,” a baritone voice booms as the camera pans across the Washington mall, “America’s culture was hijacked by a secular movement determined to redefine society from religious freedom to the right to life. These radicals were doing their best to destroy two centuries of traditional values, and no one seemed to be able to stop them—until now.

“Will Congress undo 200 years of tradition?” the video asks ominously. “Not on our watch.”

The mood of the convention is set. All Christians, everywhere, are under attack. Perkins, dressed in a dark suit and white shirt, climbs the stairs onto the stage. He promises to halt “the cultural decline” and to end “misguided” judicial decisions. Before long, Frank Wright, the new president of NRB, takes the stage. Wright, who has white hair and a cold demeanor, lauds the recent transformation in Washington and says that 130 members of the House of Representatives are now “born-again.” He tells a story about a late-night private tour of the Capitol in which he and a group of other pastors stopped and prayed over Hillary Clinton’s Senate floor desk. The crowd roars its approval.

“Today, the calls for diversity and multiculturalism are nothing more than thinly veiled attacks on anyone willing, desirous, or compelled to proclaim Christian truths,” he says. “Today, calls for tolerance are often a subterfuge, because they will tolerate just about anything except Christian truth. Today, we live in a time when the message entrusted to you is more important than ever before to reach a world desperate to know Christ.

“Does it strike you,” he asks, “that we are the first generation in the history of the world that might see every nation, tongue, and tribe reached with the Gospel?”

[Kerrytravelers]

1. Whose Gospel? Their biggoted one full of hate? Or the one Jesus taught?

[getmeouttahere]

2. It will be interesting to see....

if Americans who don't want religion (yes, including Christianity) in their lives will wake up and say NO! Frankly, I'm skeptical.

[NMDemDist2]

3. not me, I live in a city that has 2 churches per block and I'm hearing

folks getting pretty upset with the religion/government connection.

Of course, AZ is a bastion of libertarians so that may explain some of it.

[Cats Against Frist]

4. I think "Soldiers of Christ I" is actually the creepier one:

http://www.harpers.org/SoldiersOfChrist.html

"The band stood. A skinny, chinless man with a big, tenor voice, Ross Parsley, directed the musicians and the crowd, leading us and them and the choir as the guitarists kicked on the fuzz and the drummer pounded the music toward arena-rock frenzy. Two fog machines on each side of the stage filled the sanctuary with white clouds. Pod-shaped projectors cast a light show across the ceiling, giant spinning white snowflakes and cartwheeling yellow flowers and a shimmering blue water-effect. “Prepare the way!” shouted Worship Pastor Ross. “Prepare the way! The King is coming!” Across the stage teens began leaping straight up, a dance that swept across the arena: kids hopped, old men hopped, middle-aged women hopped. Spinners wheeled out from the ranks and danced like dervishes around the stage. The light pods dilated and blasted the sanctuary with red. Worship Pastor Ross roared: “Let the King of Glory enter in!” Ushers rushed through the crowds throwing out rainbow glow strings.

--snip--

And that is why he believes spiritual war requires a virile, worldly counterpart. “I teach a strong ideology of the use of power,” he says, “of military might, as a public service.” He is for preemptive war, because he believes the Bible’s exhortations against sin set for us a preemptive paradigm, and he is for ferocious war, because “the Bible’s bloody. There’s a lot about blood.”

--snip--

It is not so much the large populations, with their uneasy mix of sinner and saved, that make Christian conservatives leery of urban areas. Even downtown Colorado Springs, presumably as godly as any big town in America, struck the New Lifers I met as unclean. Whenever I asked where to eat, they would warn me away from downtown’s neat little grid of cafés and ethnic joints. Stick to Academy, they’d tell me, referring to the vein of superstores and prepackaged eateries—P. F. Chang’s, California Pizza Kitchen, et al.—that bypasses the city. Downtown, they said, is “confusing.”

[MountainLaurel]

6. Combine that

With the institutionalized religious discrimination at the Air Force Academy (and presumably the other academies as well) and it makes up for one fucked-up frightening scenario in which the christo-facists are in charge of the U.S. military.

[Cats Against Frist]

9. Combine THAT

with the fact that Raytheon, one of the largest defense contractors is run by a Dobson-elbow-rubbing nutbag Dominionist.

[mr blur]

5. If I lived in the US, I'd be very, very worried.

As it is I'm worried that if they take over the US they'll start on the rest of us - and then there will be a lot more death.

[getmeouttahere]

7. Well, mr blur, that's not likely..

because the U.S. doesn't have enough soldiers, military, christian or otherwise, to take over the world. Have you noticed how we haven't moved on North Korea? We're stretched so thin that all we could do is bomb them, and you know what that means. We can't even win a ground war in IRAQ, for crissakes! And if you think a draft here in the U.S. will solve the soldiering problem, you'd be sadly mistaken. The flight of potential draftees for this war would make the Vietnam draft-dodging look miniscule in comparison. I believe that BushCo doesn't care if we're doing well in Iraq...as long as there is conflict there, all their corporate cronies can continue to make billions on so-called "reconstruction."

[housewolf]

8. Could we please calm down a little re: theocracy ...

First of all, let me say that I do not for one second deny that there are people who want to turn this country into a theocracy. I do, in fact, believe that there are folks who desire that.

However, the number of people who desire theocracy, the Dominionists aka Reconstructionists, is actually VERY small. It is a tiny minority within Christianity who actually wants to see a return to biblical law and a wholesale subversion of government to religion.

By far, the vast majority of Christians are as distrustful of the Dominionists as we are.

That is not to say that we don't need to be alarmed and concerned about their activities - most certainly, we do. We need to be informed and aware of them, their aims, their goals and their activities.

However, we do not need to be running around going "the sky is falling, the sky if falling, we are already under a theocracy." This is not helpful, and it is not true. We do ourselves harm by ceding power and authority to the theocrats that they do not possess.

The theocrats are a small fringe radical minority. Yes, they happen to be quite vocal and it is true that they have some friends in high places. That does not mean that they have the power or authority to inflict their agenda onto the country before anyone notices.

We need to watch what they are doing, be aware, pay attention, talk about it and put forth our own positive vision as a counter.

It might be helpful to look back in history and recognize that for half or more of the 20th century, the radical fringe vocal minority that scared the pants off everyone was from the left (communism and socialism). This time it's from the right. At least at this point, there is nothing to suggest that the theocrats will be successful in their endeavors.


An interesting historical occurance that might be worth investigating, for someone who has the time, are the "Great Awakenings." There are periods of intense religious revival. So far the US has experienced at least 2 of the Great Awakenings. We may be in the midst of a 3rd Great Awakening. These are historical cycles that rise, peak and then fall, then rise again at a later time only to cycle again.

[ken-in-seattle]

10. Wrong.

The previous "great Awakenings did not have mass media and stressed "withdrawal from mammon and worldly things". The current crop learned from Father Coughlin how powerful the media and especially radio can be to the sheeple.

Look at the leadership of congress, the senate, and coming soon the supreme court. The judiciary is headed there at full tilt. Dminionist and reconstructionist. The military has 1000% more reconstructionist as chaplains now than just 1990. (fundy religions do not require any education at all before ordainment) And the airforce academy is across the street from Dobsond focus on the family compound. Space based weapons systems are not called "rain of God" for nothing.

The dominionist *by them selves* could probably be dealt with, but the neo-cons plan to use them as shock troops for their own goals. The compliant corporate media respects their money raising and advertising spending far too much to speak out until too late.

What the pew fillers think is irrelevant at this point. The theocons have already passed that gate and any real republicans have been run over as well. When the thoughtful Christians of this country show up at the polls in 2006 to throw the fascist out, then we can believe that there is any power to the main stream denominations.

Christians do not even have to know what the difference between a reconstructionist, a post-millinialist, dominionist or even be aware that such things exist, The organization to steer their voteing power is in place and controled and operated by the worst of the theofascists.

[ken-in-seattle]

11. Quotes from prominent "Moral Absolutists":

Quotes from prominent "Moral Absolutists":


--------------
"You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense. I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist. I can love the people who hold false opinions but I don't have to be nice to them."--Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, January 14, 1991

---------------


"Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It's no different. It is the same thing. It is happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians. Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today. More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history."--Pat Robertson, 1993 interview with Molly Ivins



"There is no such thing as separation of church and state in the Constitution. It is a lie of the Left and we are not going to take it anymore." --Pat Robertson, November 1993 during an address to the American Center for Law and Justice





"I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good...Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a Biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism."--Randall Terry, Founder of Operation Rescue, The News-Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Indiana, 8-16-93



"We want...as soon as possible to see a majority of the Republican Party in the hands of pro-family Christians by 1996." --Pat Robertson, Denver Post, 10/26/92



"Many of those people involved with Adolph Hitler were Satanists, many of them were homosexuals--the two things seem to go together."--Pat Robertson, "The 700 Club," 1/21/93



"I think we ought to close Halloween down. Do you want your children to dress up as witches? The Druids used to dress up like this when they were doing human sacrifice... are acting out Satanic rituals and participating in it, and don't even realize it."--Pat Robertson, "The 700 Club," 10/29/82




"We are to make Bible-obeying disciples of anybody that gets in our way."
--Jay Grimstead, February 1987

"Nobody has the right to worship on this planet any other God than Jehovah. And therefore the state does not have the responsibility to defend anybody's pseudo-right to worship an idol."
--Rev. Joseph Morecraft, Chalcedon Presbyterian Church, "Biblical Role of Civil Government" speech given 8/31/93 at Biblical Worldview and Christian Education Conference

"This is God's world, not Satan's. Christians are the lawful heirs, not non-Christians."
--Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989), p. 102

"e need a legal strategy which protects the rights of those of us who hold Christian convictions which will afford us the opportunity to contend once again for the mind of this culture."
--Keith A. Fournier, ACLJ brochure "Religious Cleansing"


"When the Christian majority takes over this country, there will be no satanic churches, no more free distribution of pornography, no more talk of rights for homosexuals. After the Christian majority takes control, pluralism will be seen as immoral and evil and the state will not permit anybody the right to practice evil."
--Gary Potter, president of Catholics for Christian Political Action

"We are engaged in a social, political, and cultural war. There's a lot of talk in America about pluralism. But the bottom line is somebody's values will prevail. And the winner gets the right to teach our children what to believe."
-- Gary Bauer, Family Research Council

"We're going to bring back God and the Bible and drive the gods of secular humanism right out of the public schools of America."
--Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan addressing the anti-gay rally in Des Moines, 2-11-96


"So let us be blunt about it: We must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will be get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God."
--Gary North, "The Intellectual Schizophrenia of the New Christian Right" in Christianity and Civilization: The Failure of the American Baptist Culture, No. 1 (Spring, 1982), p. 25

"The judges need to be intimidated, they need to uphold the Constitution. If they don't behave, we're going to go after them in a big way."
--House Majority Whip Rep. Tom DeLay, The Washington Post

"Our culture is superior. Our culture is superior because our religion is Christianity and that is the truth that makes men free."
--Pat Buchanan, speech to the Christian Coalition, Sept. 1993, as reported in ADL Report, 1994

"The Church has through the centuries, understood that ideas are really more dangerous than other weapons. Their use should be restricted."
--Francis J. Lally, American Roman Catholic Monsignor, Mike Wallace Interview, Fund for the Republic, 1958]

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