Tag: Jerry Falwell

Posted on

Jerry Falwell Makes John McCain Grovel

The Council for National Policy is a secret organization of Christian leaders in America, including Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, and other Republican toadies, that meets several times a year to inform the Republican Party of what it’s policies are to be.

If you were really a Christian and you really believed that you were serving God’s will and you really believed that God was on your side and that Jesus heard your prayers, you would not belong to this organization because this organization is secret. It hides. It sneaks around concealing it’s activities from the general public. It doesn’t even welcome Republicans it considers to be too moderate. It doesn’t allow anyone who they think might not be on their side to attend their meetings and write about them.

Their excuse? The left-liberal media will not report “justly” on their overwhelming virtue and purity. Right. Hmmm. Could it be that the real purpose of the secrecy is to obtain a disproportionate influence on Republican party politics by forming a pressure group within the larger body of membership, like a cabal, or a clique. By throwing their unified support to certain “approved” candidates, they short-circuit democracy and manipulate the party. It’s the kind of selfish, immoral action that has characterized the so-called Christian right in America since George Bush came looking for support.

According to the New York Times, the Council is not very happy with the current crop of Republican candidates because these broad-minded tolerant compassionate people, including John McCain and Rudy Giuliani, are too liberal for their taste.

How do they define liberal? They don’t believe in prayer? They allow their teenaged children to date un-chaperoned? They don’t believe in a young earth and intelligent design? They attend lingerie parties? No. It seems they might actually be against tax breaks for rich people. It seems they might actually countenance the idea of giving partial citizenship to illegal immigrants who have been in the country for many years, and education and health care to their children. Seems they might not be up for another round of invasions and bombings to address the threat of Islamic jihad. To these Christian jihadists, who have declared war on compassion and tolerance and reason, these men are enemies of the faith.

I’m puzzled as to why John McCain doesn’t just tell them to go to hell. Would he really lose the Republican nomination if he did? Maybe. But he would probably gain wide support in the general election. Either way, it appears McCain has sold out to them, and therefore, lost the respect of a lot of journalists who used to admire his non-partisan uncompromising personal integrity.

Posted on

Sinful Pat Robertson

You may have noticed that little storm God sent to Louisiana and Mississippi. The message is clear. God is angry. He wants to punish someone for the grievous sin of blaspheming his holy name. That someone is Pat Robertson.

Just a few weeks ago, Pat Robertson called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela. Then he lied about calling for the assassination of Hugo Chavez and accused the mainstream media of taking him out of context and misquoting him.

But now it’s clear that Pat Robertson was the one who sinned. He advocated murder, which, according to the bible, is the same as actually committing the murder himself. Then he accused others of sin to cover up his own sin. So God sent Katrina to teach him a lesson.

Now, you may have noticed that Katrina didn’t actually do any harm to Pat Robertson but it did do a great deal of harm to a lot of innocent people in New Orleans and Biloxi and Mobile, and so on.

But that’s the way it is with God’s wrath. As Jerry Falwell pointed out, 9/11 was punishment for America’s acceptance and tolerance of homosexuals. It didn’t matter if none of the people in those buildings were actual homosexuals, just as it didn’t matter that none of the people in New Orleans waiting in their attics in water up to their collar-bones was actually Pat Robertson.

If you believe that sort of thing.

You are not sure if God really sent Katrina to punish Pat Robertson? How would you know if I was wrong? You would pray about it, right, and God would tell you?

What if God told you that Katrina was punishment for New Orleans’ tradition of drunkenness and debauchery? What if God told me that it was punishment for Pat Robertson’s militancy? How do we know which is the real message from the real God?

Actually, maybe it’s not as hard as it looks. Just read the bible, especially the gospels. Then try to imagine that God would get more angry at a lot of poor black people who have been beat up and abused most of their lives than he would at a rich and powerful white preacher who, confronted with the problem of dwindling supplies of oil for America’s lavish lifestyle, advocates political assassination over conservation.  And confronted with the problems of racism and poverty and inequality, he would advocate reduced taxes for the rich?

Try to imagine Christ saying, “blessed are those who give tax deductions to investors and shareholders, and who reduce the liability of manufacturers for defects in their products, and whosoever provideth grants and incentives to profitable companies that they might exploit disasters for their own gain…”

You see?  God sent Katrina to punish Pat Robertson.  I prayed about it and it’s true.

Posted on

Jesus is Back

Suppose that Jesus returned tomorrow. He appeared somewhere and announced the end of time, judgment day, the rapture, whatever.

Where would he appear? If he appeared at Bob Jones University, a lot of us would have to rethink some of our value judgments. Maybe that’s where he would appear. He would arrive in a limo surrounded by Secret Service agents, wearing a nice suit, with a cell phone. He would shake hands with Pat Robertson and say, “blessed is he who preserves traditional family values, promotes deregulation, and cuts taxes for the rich.” Then he’d go golfing with Pat and Jerry at Augusta.

But what if he had a kind of funky sense of occasion and appeared in New York? He might drive his own Volvo, or a Prius. He might be dressed in black t-shirt and jeans, and preach in Central Park. He might hang out with beggars, welfare mothers, drug addicts and prostitutes. Mayor Bloomberg might elbow his way into one of these gatherings and try to give him the key to the city. He might say, “there is more love and beauty and truth among these panhandlers and homosexuals and prostitutes, than among your councils and your senators and your police.”

Some people would suggest Jerusalem. I have a hard time believing that Jerusalem has any special claim, especially lately. Does Jesus share our fuzzy conceptions about spiritual significance? I doubt it. Jerry Falwell thinks the anti-Christ is already in Israel. But that’s Jerry Falwell. Maybe Jerry Falwell is the antichrist. So what if Christ appeared in Jerusalem and stood in front of an Israeli tank, like that heroic student in Tiananmen Square, and said, “the endless cycle of violence and retribution can only be broken with an act of grace and love”. Do you think the tank would stop?

Our best guide to where Jesus will reappear is the bible, of course. In the bible, Jesus was born in a very small, insignificant little town. He carried on a lively ministry in several small towns in various areas of Palestine, and even ventured into Samaria. Then he went to Jerusalem where, of course, he was finally arrested and sentenced to death by the civil authorities, after a trial held by the Jewish authorities, the Sanhedrin.

Do I have this all right? I’ll check later. I’m going from memory.

Why would he reappear in Jerusalem? A lot of people believe that there is still a special tie between Jesus and the Jews. The Jews don’t believe that– a lot of born-again Christians do, especially those who buy into a lot of the silly “end-times” tripe being trotted out by guys like Tim Le Haye lately.

The biggest problem here is that some evangelical Christians think that they will do a lot better than the Jews in 0 A.D. They think they will know who Jesus is. They won’t call him a blasphemer and send him to the Romans to be executed. They will see this person who looks like any other man. They will hear him speak like any other man speaks, except for the content of his speech.

They think they will take one look and say, “it’s the Messiah! He has returned!”

Think about that. How will they know it’s really the Messiah? How do they know what Jesus will look like, or what he will say? Do they honestly think he will say “God bless America”? Will he carry a little American flag? Will he say, “you people in your suburban churches with the rock bands and the lighting effects, and the annual trip to Vegas, and the hummer, and clever tax dodges– yes, that is exactly what I meant.”

Or might he say something like, “Cursed be those who make weapons of death and destruction and sell them to tyrants and dictators. And cursed be those who pollute the earth, and rape her forests, and destroy all that lives beneath the sea. And cursed be those who cry ‘war, war’, while the hungry lament in silence. And cursed be those who seek status and wealth; and cursed be those who elect politicians and judges who allow the execution of people whose minds are so shattered they have no concept of right and wrong…”

And cursed be the tobacco companies, Enron, and the companies that make little plastic land mines.

Maybe he’ll tell a parable like the one Nathan told David about the rich man who stole the sheep from the poor shepherd, even though he had thousands of sheep of his own, and maybe he’ll mention the words “Citibank” and “Third World Debt”.

What if he said, “this nuclear bomb is a great evil. Men will make war, and men will die, and evil will be heaped upon evil, but let no man be received among you who has deliberately targeted civilians.”

And what if he said, “my father gave you a beautiful planet that lavishly provided everything you needed to prosper– how well have you taken care of it?” He might take one look at our abandoned open-pit mines, and our slums, and polluted rivers, and plastic islands, and say, “oh my God!”

We wouldn’t like that message. You know what we would do? We would say, “you’re not the real messiah. ”

The real messiah will look more like a gay Caucasian shepherd with a bunch of tiny lambs at his feet, carrying a spool of cotton candy. “That’s more like it, we’d say. Will there be ice cream in heaven?” Of course there will be. It’s melting right now.

And because you people all went to church almost every week and Christmas and Easter and because you gave money that one time to pay for Amy’s surgery after her gymnastics injury because it wasn’t covered by her parents’ health insurance, and because you once almost joined a protest march against abortion, and because you didn’t see any actual nudity in that stripper movie you went to see last year, and because you got married just as soon as you found out you were pregnant, you get to have some.

 

Posted on

Denmark: Copenhagen, City of Dreams

Copenhagen is a city of about 1.6 million people. It is the capital of Denmark. It is the capital of the country that gave us the charming women’s curling team that finished second at the Nagano Winter Olympics.

During the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, you might have heard the following argument, in one form or another:

Liberal: “In Europe, an affair like this would been regarded as ridiculously unimportant.”
Conservative: “That’s because European morality is lower than ours. If we don’t impeach Clinton, it will show that we are just as perverted as the Dutch, or Danes, or French.”

Gee. Who’s right? Well, Danish women sometimes leave their offices at lunch time to sunbathe topless in the city parks. I guess that’s pretty bad behaviour.

On the other hand, Copenhagen has about seven murders a year. New York City has about 1500. Of course, New York is ten times the size of Copenhagen, so let’s make it a fair comparison. Copenhagen would have 60 murders a year, if it were the size of New York.

Which leaves you with a puzzle. If the Danes are so decadent, and so unchristian, why aren’t they out stabbing, robbing, shooting, raping, and bombing each other into oblivion, like all evil people do? And if America is the last bastion of Christian morality in the so-called civilized west, why are American cities so violent and lawless?

I’ll try to argue like a conservative for a minute.
1. Just because the Danes don’t rob, murder, rape, or beat each other doesn’t mean they’re not leading lives of pernicious debauchery, and, therefore, actually leading more sinful lives than Americans do. They probably have more illicit sex than we do.
2. The population of Denmark is fairly uniform ethnically and socially. They don’t have the class divisions that America has.
3. What do we care? We’re bigger and stronger, so we’re right.

Besides, we don’t believe you. You’re probably playing a statistical trick on us. We can’t prove you’re wrong, because we don’t know anything about Denmark and we’ll never care enough to know anything about Denmark, but we’re Americans, so we can be as stupid as we want to be.

Argument 1 implies, of course, that illicit sex is just as bad as robbery and murder, so can we dismiss that one as silly? The only argument that makes any sense, of course, is argument number 2. The trouble is, you have to ask yourself whether a nation that prides itself on its Christian heritage should go around bragging about it’s class divisions and its inability to resolve them. So when Americans say, “You Europeans— the reason you find our obsession with the Clinton scandal so laughable is because you are morally inferior to us!” the accusation rings a little hollow.

Conservative churches in the U.S. never tire of reminding us of how God blesses those who obey Him and follow His commandments. If America really is more faithful to Christian morality than continental Europe is, then why is its prison population bulging at the seams? Why does it have the highest infant mortality rate of the developed world? Why does it vote the same way on international treaties as China and Libya do? Why does it have so many more poor people, as a percentage of the population, than any other G7 nation?

Americans are generally a likeable people. They are generous, on a personal level, to a fault. They can be moved by compassion when disaster or misfortune strikes. They seem to have a strong sense of fair play.

And on the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, they (the people, not the Republicans) consistently see things the way Europeans do. They don’t believe that what Clinton did is worth all the trouble of impeachment. And they’re right.

The funny thing is, if this really was an issue of Christian morality, why is it that Christian “leaders”, like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and James Dobson, are so utterly devoid of the quality of mercy? Why are they so unwilling to forgive? Why did Jerry Falwell sponsor a video “documentary” on Clinton that is filled with lies, exaggeration, half-truths, and distortions, including ridiculous allegations that Vince Foster was murdered? (You have to ask yourself what kind of resources Jerry Falwell would have that Kenneth Starr didn’t have?) Why are these leaders filled with so much hatred for the Clintons, especially Hillary?

 

Posted on

I was watching Larry King on CNN the other night. He had a theologian from some Southern Baptist Academy on, and Robert Schuller, and the President of the National Organization of Women. They were arguing about women, of course.

I learned two thing. Number 1, I will avoid CNN at all costs. The number of commercial interruptions was excruciating. CNN has no shame, no dignity, no self-respect, no honor, and no class. But if they hire any more of these luscious lips to read the news, I’m investing in the company that makes collagen.

Secondly, I am sick to death of these smug, conservative Christians trying to tell me that anyone who disagrees with their archaic social and political views is, therefore, disagreeing with the very word of God. Because, don’t you know, it says right here in Ephesians 22 that women are to submit to their husbands. Simple. Straight-forward. No interpretation required.

This discussion was a little better than most. From a Christian point of view, most feminists probably don’t spend a lot of time reading the Bible, so they don’t argue very well against people like James Dobson and Pat Robertson. But Larry King knew his bible a little, and Robert Schuller knew it pretty well, and they pointed out that shortly after Paul tells women to submit to their husbands, he tells slaves to submit to their masters. Larry King asked the Baptist theologian whether he believed that slaves, nowadays, should also submit to their masters. Well, the theologian almost came right out and said that he did. He certainly didn’t clearly, unambiguously declare that slavery was wrong.

What ticked me off–pardon the expression– was his insistence that he wasn’t responsible for his own opinions. He was merely obeying God’s infallible word in the Bible and anybody who disagreed with him was going right up against the word of God Himself. That is a load of horse manure. But people like Dobson, Falwell, & Company say it all the time, as if they just happened to read the Bible that morning, and low and behold, it just happened to confirm my very own opinions.

The truth is that these guys are gut level conservatives. They were conservative long before they ever read the bible, and they only seem to read only the parts of the bible that coincide with their prejudices. They pick and choose whatever it is in the Bible they like and ignore the passages that don’t jive with their middle American patriotic right wing free enterprise presumptions.

There were lots of other verses that Larry King or the feminist could have asked Mr. Knowitall Baptist Theologian to explain. How about these. The point is that literal inerrancy– the doctrine that every word of the Bible (usually the King James Version, no less) is infallible– is pure nonsense, and the truth is that even the most conservative fundamentalists don’t act as if they really believe it. There is always a measure of interpretation, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It makes more sense to say that the Bible is an infallible guide to the will of the Lord, while allowing for the fact that none of the writers of the gospels foresaw the massive economic, social, and political changes that were going to occur in the next 2,000 years.

Given the social and economic conditions of first century Palestine, Paul would have been no more likely to suggest that women should take leadership positions in the church than he would have been likely to suggest that they go out and get jobs, or put grandma into a nursing home, or start a beauty salon, or go swimming on Sunday, or wear a pant-suit. These ideas would have been meaningless to his audience at the time. It doesn’t mean that women are forever forbidden from doing any of those things.

How do we know how the word of God applies today, then? It’s not all that hard. We know what Jesus means when he castigates the Pharisees, though, Lord knows, we still seem to put up with a lot of Pharisees today. And we certainly know what he means when he says, “Let he who is without sin throw the first stone”. No, he didn’t say it was okay to sin. But he did tell us a lot about those who are quick to reach for stones. I have a feeling that if Jesus met James Dobson today, he’d ask him a question: “How many hungry children did your $180 million a year ‘ministry’ feed today? How many poor inner-city teenagers have jobs, thanks to you? How many of the sick and destitute have seen the inside of your glorious office building in Colorado?”

Posted on

God and Frank

I often wonder what ultra-conservative “leaders” like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and James Dobson think of Frank Sinatra. My guess is that they liked Frank. He was the very embodiment of reactionary, repressive, hierarchical thinking. God bestowed that wondrous voice upon Frankie and made him a star. Therefore he was entitled to special treatment, body guards, limos, mansions, numerous wives (including, astoundingly, Mia Farrow), the best suite at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. Anyone who thought otherwise was a radical, and dangerous to God’s good appointed order.

Then Frank sings “My Way”. The irony is, of course, is that “My Way” is probably one of the most anti-Christian pop songs ever recorded. It is one of the most explicit statements of utter self-sufficiency and moral relativism.

Who says God doesn’t have a sense of humour? There is something wildly comical about the fact that, in his later years, even with the assistance of a teleprompter, poor addled old Frankie couldn’t even get the words right. All those fans paid big bucks to hear the old crooner mumble incoherently while he tried to remember what city he was in. The old man, trying to assert once again his own personal macho myth of self-sufficiency, needed all the help he could get.

Well, who knows? Maybe Pat Robertson is a Dylan fan instead. Maybe James Dobson comes home from a long day of ranting about the evils of toleration and compassion and flips “Sticky Fingers” on the turntable for an hour of relaxation. Maybe Jerry Falwell hops into his limo and says to the driver, “hey, you got any Ani DiFranco tapes in there?” And maybe Jimmy Swaggart, when nobody’s looking, pops in a CD of cousin Jerry Lee’s “Great Balls of Fire”.

Well, when I get a chance, I’ll look up some of these guys’ web sites and see if I can get any of them to respond to a couple of simple questions: do you like Frank Sinatra? Does he represent to you, as a Christian, a morally acceptable style of entertainment? If you really believe that God appointed you to be a spokesman for the Christian community how come you have rigged your organization so that you are accountable to no one but yourself? Where do you guys get those awful haircuts? When did you run out of Brylcreem? Explain to me why you drive around in a limo surrounded by bodyguards while claiming to be a follower of a man who surrounded himself with the poor and the outcasts and rejected material wealth at every opportunity?

Posted on

Killers

So Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson wanted clemency for Karla Faye Tucker, the Texas murderess who was executed yesterday evening. It’s hard to imagine why. Won’t the morals of western society collapse in a sodden heap the day we allow compassion to over-rule our sense of biblical justice?

It is hard to imagine how someone who claims to live his entire life according to the precepts of the bible can come to some of the conclusions that Falwell, Robertson and company come to. According to them, the Bible endorses free enterprise, capitalism, and the American way. It’s mind-boggling. Even if you are a literalist– and I’m not–where on earth does someone get the idea that the Hebrews believed in laissez faire economics? In fact, time and time again, God held the Hebrews strictly accountable for how they invested their capital, used their resources, and what they spent their money on. The widows, orphans, and strangers had to be treated well, or God would withdraw his favours from Israel. Nowhere does God say or suggest, “don’t give generously to the poor, for in so doing, thou wilt encourage dependency and sloth. And thou shalt keep the minimum wage low that the Lord may bless your tax-free capital gains”.

Back to capital punishment: contrary to what I just said, there is sound biblical evidence for the application of capital punishment, right next to the sound biblical evidence for mass murder and genocide. Does that sound harsh? Well, if you’re a literalist, you have to find some way to explain, to your heart’s satisfaction, why God occasionally approved of the slaughter of women and children, along with the soldiers of Israel’s enemies.

Personally, I’m happier believing that the Bible is infallible in the sense of spiritual inspiration, but not necessarily in the sense of historic, social, or economic truth. Thanks to the Dead Sea Scrolls, we have found more than a few errors of translation in the gospels. One more error in translation I’d like to suggest is the idea that God approved of Israel’s violent campaigns against their Canaanite neighbors. More likely, Israel’s writers and historians merely did what all modern writers and historians do as well: attribute a divine moral authority to an all too human act of nasty blood-thirstiness.