Faithful Progressives: Family Research Council is scared of you
I get Family Research Council’s fundraising appeals, and the latest one contained a shocking revelation: I should fear…me. Well, not me personally, but politicians who agree with my belief that people of faith should focus on a range of issues beyond same sex marriage, abortion, stem cells and public display of religion.
Here is the latest Leftist ploy:
So to make sure they win at all costs, they are hijacking the language of faith in order to sell their anti-faith programs, hiding the truth about their real agenda — and purposely confusing people of faith.
Among these anti-faith programs are “tax hikes and ‘global warming’ initiatives.” (The letter really does set global warming aside in quotes, as though it is a hoax.)
This scheme really matters, too:
And the bad news is, it just might work unless Family Research Council and supporters like you expose them!
It is at once heartening and discouraging that FRC is threatened by a broadening agenda among people of faith. On the one hand, the fear indicates that the progressive faith movement is gaining serious steam. On the other, it’s disappointing that this is feared rather than embraced.
Perkins says liberals are trying to “confuse and divide people of faith.” You read that right, the religious Left are the ones dividing people of faith. The Right cares not for wedge issues. Look at the inclusive common good agenda FRC is protecting:
Throughout the huge and pivotal national debate that lies ahead in 2008, we will flood the media with the facts about who actually believes and will act upon vital family issues such as:
- Is America still one nation under God?
- Should public displays of America’s religious heritage be allowed?
- Should Congress enact dangerous “hate crimes” laws that could be used to destroy religious freedom in America?
- Is every human life a gift from God that should be protected?
- Is marriage the union of one man and one woman only?
These are the vital family issues. If as a person of faith I am concerned about global warming (“the defining challenge of our age,” according to the UN Secretary General), the 47 million Americans who lack health insurance, economic justice, equal protection for the LGBT community, and comprehensive immigration reform, I have been distracted by the Left.
Silly me.
Wow. I never realized that considering a wide range of issues that hit on my core values as a Christian as “religious”issues made me divisive or worse yet intentionally confusing or misleading. As a pastor, I’ve always felt that it’s my calling to lead people to consider thoughtfully what God is calling us to do and be in the world, not mislead them. I never realized that if I considered protection of the environment, or ending poverty, or ensuring that everyone has healthcare (Jesus was a healer, wasn’t he?) I was being divisive or misleading. Wow.
Funny. This comes from the same folks who think that ENDA is going to curtail religious free speech and that pastors will be put in jail for preaching against homosexuality. I couldn’t disagree with them more, but I wouldn’t work to pass a law that curtails free speech. So long as a preacher doesn’t tell their parishioners to go out and commit violence against homosexuals or people with disabilities, they can say whatever they want — regardless of how unChristian I might find it.
Doesn’t matter how much I disagree with them, their speech is protected until it puts others in direct danger. As a society, that’s where we have to draw the line. You have free speech, but you don’t get to yell ‘Fire’ in a crowded theater. You can preach that you believe homosexuality is wrong; but you don’t get to advocate violence. Oh yeah. And I’m the divisive one.
Perkins is so blinded by his faith and some kind of internal hatred that he reminds me of a Christian Taliban in waiting to take over this country. He would turn it into a theocracy, for when one speaks in the name of God, as God, his power desires have no end. And in doing so would set the worlds two greatest powers, An American Christian Theocracy up against a billion plus Muslims who have no problem getting an unlimited supply of suicide bombers. And while Perkins obviously hates gays, he is also known to be tied in with the racist David Duke, who would reinstall segregation in America, all in the name of God. Of course, the FRC came about through the efforts of James Dobson, whose focus on the family is a business grossing hundreds of millions of $ per year, so we know about his “God”, don’t we?
Now what is this all about? It is partially about the idea of Armageddon. Some Christians believe a great and final battle is at hand, where all the unbelievers will perish, and Jesus will return to reward them with unending life. Of course Jesus will be standing on, in his name, Billions of dead people, which is not what my understanding of His Life was about. And of course, the maniacs of extremist Islam also believe in a clash of civilizations, where they will be triumphant, their Caliphate (kingdom) will rule the world, martyrs will be rewarded with 72 virgins in heaven, to which Muhammed supposedly ascended on a “winged horse”, and all unbelievers will die.
Maybe what we should read out of the story of Armageddon is a Biblical warning – that religion run amoke, of whatever variety, is the worlds greatest danger. Over recorded history, almost all wars were built on, or justified by religion. As a religious friend of mine said, “God must weep at the actions of his creation”. And Perkins is just another one of those of that mind set. who with his followers would sink, or lead us onto a path that would sink further and further into depravity.
Perkins is nothing but a more swave, polished version of that madman Fred Phelps. Why is Phelps so crazy – because as one of his estranged sons who lives in Canada says, he (Fred) was beaten by his own brutal old man with an ax handle, and Fred, poor abused man, has to lash out at others. His son says Fred beats his wife and his children. That is part of it. But I would not at all be surprised to find out he too has repressed homosexuality. Hating himself for what was done to him, and failing to have done something about it (guilt), mixed in with hatred for himself in the conflict of his primordial urgings still present despite a dozen or more kids to prove his manliness, he lashes out at gay individuals. This is what Psychologists call projection. He both trys to get out of his hate by hating other, while at the same time trying to hide what he is is with his vitriol.
And when you combine Perkins obvious hatred of gay people along with his tie in and most likely hatred of Black Americans (he comes from Louisiana, the deep south, perhaps our most corrupt state in the past, we have to ask the same question of Perkins. For no matter what he tries to pitch as values, etc. it is nothing but hatred for a minority, in the name of God. Do we live in America, I ask, or do we live in the cesspool of the middle east? How many of us realize that the superwealthy of the Saudi royal family, and others like them, tens of thousands, have handed over that nation to their Wahabi Islamic extremists with their “values”, e.g a raped woman gets whipped – it must have been her fault, never the man. Meanwhile, they go and play in some of the smaller nation-states that surround them. For the super-rich, the protectors of Islams holiest shrines – Mecca and Medina, a little fun out of the country involves drinking, gambling, maybe eating pork, and of course sex, boys included. And that is what gave us 9/11. And Perkins and his ilk would make us just like them, Christian variant, if they gain total control.
Remember Ted Haggard!
And for those who say that Nazi Germany was what it was because it lacked religious moral values, how many know that Hitler was born a Catholic, and even studied in a Seminary. He also invoked “divine providence” quite a few times, including when he was almost assassinated twice. A long out of print book, “I was Hitler’s Doctor”, also says that he was actually illegitimate, his father having been a Jew. What could be worse in Catholic Europe in the late 1800′s, then to be illegitimate, and a Jew to boot, given Christianity’s long term hatred of Jesus own people, another one of it’s hypocrisies? It is only in the last 50 years in this country that Jews have been finally relatively well accepted. So I offer up the idea that religion has been part and parcel, and often the underlying reason, for mankind’s worst endeavor, war. And yes, I do realize that someone said “religion does great things for good people, and terrible things for bad people”. Time we start seeing through religion and understand who is good, and who is not so good.
Jen:
One item you miss the mark on is that conservative churches who speak about “love the Sinner, hate the sin” – can they not possibly realize just how quickly that reinforces in the minds of so many people the idea that it is fine to ‘hate the sinner’. Homophobia has terribly deep roots. It lies in many people below the surface, just waiting for some reason to come out of the darkness and shine a black light upon our beliefs that we are all made in his image, love thy neighbor as thyself, do not judge, etc.
My parents had nothing against gay people. Mom once said maybe about 1960 – “I wonder what makes them that way”, but it was not at all a message of disparagement. But when rumors flew in the extended family that my brother was gay, my parents were beside themselves. I remember 30 years later, in the last meeting I had with my parents, how, when the subject of my brother being gay came up, my mother was on the bed in tears, and my Dad was ranting “Joe’s not gay”, I thought he would drop dead of a heart attack, so bad was his anger and embarrassment. The bottom line of this story is that antipathy against gay people, buried in our psyche without us realizing it, prevented my brother from getting help. He is not gay, but he does have a terrible case of Obsessive-Compulsive disorder. It has ruined his life, it is much too late to help him. And I failed to help him, using avoidance due to my own ignorance of how religious based hatred and fear had permeated me as well. By the way, my brother almost finished his PHD at MIT in theoretical math, and was 4th in his class at Harvard. His life has been ruined.
I always ask about religion – just how much of it is about God and doing good, and how much of it is about power. I urge you to be part of helping bring together this nation after 7 years of a monstrous, Mafioso like regime in the white house which often speaks in total hypocrisy about God, lied about being the “compassionate conservative” and about “being a uniter, not a divider”. And please help end one of the great shames of our society, irrational hatred and lies about gay people. We have several gay friends, we love them dearly, and all of them have suffered terribly earlier in their life, for no reason at all except hatred and ignorance.
Steve