You Say You Want A Revolution-- No, Not YOU... The Heavily Armed, Violent Freaks On The Far Right

Frederick Clarkson has penned an important essay for Religion Dispatches about calls on the religionist right for revolution. In the video above, NY Times best-selling author Eric Metaxas, is equating Obama with the Nazis and you'll even hear something about "bullets." In Metaxas' fevered mind Obama is Hitler and America needs to stop him now. Metaxas sounds perfectly reasonable-- he isn't drooling and screaming-- until you listen closely to what he's saying and realize he's actually mentally ill. Equating a regulation in the Affordable Care Act that requires employer insurance packages to include contraception coverage with Nazi atrocities probably makes a lot of sense to people who follow Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Michele Bachmann... but it's this kind of hysterical hate talk-- this time is plain vanilla wrapping-- that is tearing the country apart.

“This HHS mandate,” Metaxas warned almost matter-of-factly, “is so oddly similar to where [anti-Nazi German theologian Dietrich] Bonhoeffer found himself” early in the Nazi era. “If we don’t fight now, if we don’t really use all our bullets now, we will have no fight five years from now. It’ll be over. This it. We’ve got to die on this hill. Most people say, oh no, this isn’t serious enough. Its just this little issue. But it’s the millimeter... its that line that we cross. I’m sorry to say that I see these parallels. I really wish I didn’t.”

This is what Clarkson means when he explains how elite Christian Right "thinkers" are imagining revolution and encouraging whoever gets suckered into listening to their bullshit to do the same. Clarkson says that this doesn't necessarily mean that they are organizing or stockpiling bullets. "But it does mean," he says, "that they are trying out giving people a vision." And it's not just Metaxas. Prominent Opus Dei Catholic priest C. John McCloskey has a 30 year look back from the year 2030 describing how the Church was persecuted; that Catholics and evangelicals joined forces in a bloody civil war; and succeeded in breaking up the U.S. into independent regions. If Ayn Rand hadn't been an atheist she and John McCloskey might actually have been parents in more than just a spiritual way to freaks-of-selfishness like Paul Ryan, Alan Greenspan, Ron Johnson, and the idelogues of today's Republican Party-- though not yesterday's Republican Party:

McCloskey recently published an update of his essay. “I-- or perhaps my thesis” he wrote, “received quite a bit of vitriolic criticism from the elite mainstream media and even from the late Tim Russert on Meet the Press. A goodly number of faithful Catholic writers also found it dark and threatening, however, although I had intended it to be positive and optimistic.” “My avatar priest,” he continued, “looked back from the vantage point of 2030 to reflect on recent ‘history’: the story of American Catholics who became confessors and martyrs to the faith as the federal government of the ‘Culture of Death’ persecuted them.” In his original essay, McCloskey’s avatar, Fr. Charles, explained how “the great battles over the last 30 years over the fundamental issues of the sanctity of marriage, the rights of parents, and the sacredness of human life have been of enormous help in renewing the Church and to some extent, society.” McCloskey’s literary device allows him to avoid openly seditious language, while suggesting that conservative Catholics and allied evangelicals should prepare for civil war.

It's another dimension to consider when the national debate on gun control resumes in light of the mass murder in Aurora... if it does. Delusional priests-- and what priest isn't, to one extent or another-- with assault rifles.

Religion-- Like Spraying Perfume On A Casket

Powerful video... and it's been watched by over 18 million people on YouTube.

Religion puts you in bondage
While Jesus sets you free
Religion makes you blind
Jesus makes you see

I spoke to a candidate for Congress the other day, a devout Catholic with a devout Catholic wife. They go to church every Sunday and they're active in the charitable works of their church. They're pillars of the community and the parish-- and friends with the bishop. They forbade their sons from becoming alter boys or ever being alone in a room with a priest.

The American unrepentant Catholic bishops took some time out from molesting children to rail against the Obama administration on behalf of their allies in the Republican Party. But a survey by the Public Religion Research Institute shows that, as usual, the bishops are out of sync with most Catholics. A majority, 58%, "support including birth control in health care plans and back the decision by the Obama administration that requires most employers to include such coverage."

Their views are in contrast to leaders in the Catholic Church, who are vigorously opposing a rule by the U.S. government that says most employers must include contraception coverage in their health care plans.

Despite the opposition of Catholic leaders, Catholics are actually more likely than non-Catholics to support including contraception in health plans, according to survey results by the Public Religion Research Institute.

About 58% of American Catholics "believe that employers should be required to provide their employees with health care plans that cover contraception," the survey showed. That was higher than the percentage of white mainline Protestants (50%) and white evangelicals (38%) who believe that. The Catholic Church officially forbids contraception use, but 98% of Catholic women who have been sexually active have used birth control. The survey comes as Catholic bishops and their supporters are protesting a decision last month by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The decision clarified a rule that came about after the passage of a health care bill in 2010 that calls for universal health coverage. Part of that includes contraception for women.

The Jan. 20 decision allows an exemption for religious groups such as churches. So a Catholic parish, for example, does not have to provide contraception in its health care plans. But the decision also says that religiously-affiliated institutions that serve people outside its religious groups-- such as a Catholic hospital that treats patients of different backgrounds-- are not exempt and must include contraception in its health plans for employees. The decision would affect metro Detroit institutions like St. John Providence Health System, which currently does not provide contraception coverage for its employees.

Tuesday Blue America welcomed our newest candidate, Cecil Bothwell into the fold. We didn't talk about Cecil's religious views but they fit in pretty well with the founding fathers-- and, perhaps, with the videos on this page. Sarah Jaffe at Religion Dispatches poked around how Cecil's reputation for atheism has impacted his career as a community organizer and public official. Cecil, she reminds us, "actually prefers the term 'non-theist' to 'atheist'.”

“I know that some atheists feel that stance ducks the issue and that we should force the issue,” he says, “But my ethical/spiritual beliefs ought not to be of any import in holding public office. I’m not in any way running as an ‘atheist.’”

But that hasn’t stopped efforts by others to use his beliefs to gain political points. During his Asheville City Council campaign in 2009, two direct mailings were sent around warning voters of his non-belief, and after his election opponents tried to prevent him from being sworn in. The US Constitution, of course, forbids religious tests for office; so the former green builder, journalist, and author (of a political biography of preacher Billy Graham) was able to take his seat.  


...GetEQUAL NC’s [Angel] Chandler who, like Bothwell, is a volunteer escort at a local family planning clinic that provides abortion services, says “[Bothwell] will likely be attacked at every angle due to his position on LGBT rights, women’s reproductive rights, ending the drug war, and due to his religion or lack thereof.” She continues, “What I hope folks see is Cecil’s commitment to giving people power in their own lives to make their own decisions rather than empowering the government to tell us what we can and cannot do, who we can and cannot have a committed relationship with.”  

Bothwell thinks that his message will resonate with rural voters. “So-called conservatism includes a large number of populist and libertarian voters whose real interests are much more closely aligned with progressive politics than with corporatist politics in either major party,” he notes, pointing out that despite being a non-theist, he is an active member of the local Unitarian Universalist church, a member of its Social Justice Council, and the founder of a jail ministry.

Here's another video I thought you might like, the infamous "Tea Party Jesus" clip. Before you watch it-- or after you watch it-- please consider making a contribution-- in a grassroots campaign like his even $5 and $10 contributions make all the difference-- to Cecil's campaign... here at our Blue America ActBlue page. 

Religious folk really do have useful things to say -- you just have to listen to the right ones

by Ken

If you say anything against religion, it then becomes impossible to persuade large segments of the religious community -- especially the really stupid ones, that you're not necessarily against religion, just against the kind that's practiced by most of the organized denominations, for whom it is primarily a way of enforcing their orthodoxies and prejudices on people whose primary interest is being told what to think and do. The terrible thing is that the so-called "religious revival" in the U.S. that set in roughly over the last quarter of the 20th century is almost entirely Crap Christianity.

So it doesn't matter how many times I say that some of the wisest and most committed people I know and have read about were inspired by their faith. Note, though, that those people hardly ever have much standing in their faiths' org charts. Among Catholics the shining exception was Pope John XXIII, who was elected to be a brief, do-nothing caretaker pope, to give the warring cardinals a breather and see if they could agree upon a longer-term choice next time around. Instead Pope John set about opening all those dank closets and sealed windows, and for a lot of Catholics their church began, for the first time, to have meaning for their lives. One result was the liberation theology movement, which set about trying to bring decent lives to the oppressed of the New World. Of course the church hierarchy hated that. After all, those poor souls' oppressors were some of the church's most loyal (and richest) supporters -- most of that oppression was (and is) carried out, not just with the approval, but with the active participation of the church hierarchy. Needless to say, the sainted Pope John Paul II made sure that that heresy, along with every other humane one he could track down, was finally destroyed. And Pope Cardinal Ratguts will make sure that nothing of the sort gains a foothold on his watch.

(Catholics, by the way, and Mormons too, have no idea why there is such strong feeling against them, for the simple reason that they pay no attention to the words and deeds of theirs that arouse that feeling -- like when Catholic leaders drag their flock into cahoots with the vilest, most hate-mongering and hateful and reactionary elements of our society in support of their hateful and reactionary dogmas, or when the Mormons flood a state like California with cash to enforce its primitive bigotries. Already there are tiny-brained neanderthals with negligible reading skills who will say that I've just denounced all Catholics and Mormons as vile and hate-mongering reactionaries. Well, their hierarchies certainly work their darnedest to be.)

As a result of all this, the idea of religion as a force for good seems to a lot of us a theoretically plausible concept, but one that has at best a quaint ring in the real world. Since I'm not particularly looking for religious inspiration, I'm not a good source for information about where to find the good stuff. It was only when I was writing on the subject the other day that I realized how long it had been since I'd sought wisdom from my official go-to guy on the subject, Pastor Dan Schultz, and tracked him down to the Religion Dispatches website. Since then we've heard from our friend Evan Derkacz, a wise and committed progressive colleague who turns out to be the managing editor of the site and insists that, while the name may be unglamorous, they've proud of the quality of the contributions they've been putting out since they set up shop in 2008 (they're now celebrating their second anniversary), and have gotten a fair amount of attention in the MSM.

The people who operate Religion Dispatches are certainly an impressive group, and from my quick glances it really does look like a place where you can find intelligent and humane discussion of the basics of our modern world from a religious perspective. I just glanced at the current front page and found the following highlighted articles:

* "Catholic Child Neglect: DC Archdiocese Cuts Adoption Rather Than Abide Same Sex Parents"

* "The Pope and Social Media: A Digital Counter-Reformation?"

* "Meet the New Haggards—Same as the Old Haggards?"

* "Mauled by an Angel: Why Do Americans Need 'God’s Secret Agents'?"

And the following highlighted blog posts:

* "How Intelligent Design Advocates Helped Shape the Christian Right's Texas Curriculum Standards"

* "Hundreds of Thousands Spent to Fight Gay Marriage While Poverty Grows"

* "Is Tax Evasion a Christian Value?" [I threw in the link because that really sounds like a good one!]

* "Conservative Activist Says Tea Party Movement Needs 'Reverence to God'"

* "Convicted Wall Street Con Artist Finds New Target: Gays"

By the way, Evan assures us that Pastor Dan will indeed return to posting as soon as the book I mentioned in my post is done. By all means check it out.

#