Christian Charity

I am back from a week's absence, due to a ripping bad sore throat/fever thing I got from that petrie dish of an office that I work in. I tried to get up and blog a few times that week, between thrashing around in my bed in a pool of acrid sweat, with visions of nude Condoleeza Rice can-can lines dancing maniacally through my head. But I just didn't have the strength. Does that make me the world's lamest blogger? (I would contend that it is my weak, incoherent content, but this couldn't have helped).

Anyway, I am going to ease back into things here...

This, from Talk to Action:

The stacks of information about those worthy of consideration for Theocrat of the Week -- can get very high. But this week Our Distinguished Panel of Judges did not get far down the pile when they recognized the winners and stopped the competition.

Our winners this week plan to reenact the the actions of theocratic martyr Paul Hill next month in Milwaukee. On July 29, 1994 Paul Hill, who sought to set a good example for Christian theocratic revolutionaries, assasinated abortion provider Dr. John Britton and James Barrett one of his escorts, and seriously wounding another, June Barrett, outside an abortion clinic in Pensacola, Florida.

George L. Wilson of Children Need Heroes and Drew Heiss of Street Preach are planning to honor Paul Hill in a series of events called "Paul Hill Days" in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, July 26th - 29th -- "to honor him as God's man and our hero."

Why Milwaukee? Why not? There are people here who recognize Paul Hill as a hero, and we would love to welcome others from around the country who share our belief. Hopefully, in the future, others will host events in their cities.

Planned events include:

Activities at our two remaining killing centers

Literature distribution

Ministry at the Federal Courthouse

Reenactment of 7-29-1994

Paul Hill March

Ministry at other public forums

It should be noted that George L. Wilson, the proprietor of Children Needs Heroes, recognizes two other heroes he believes America's children should learn about: Shelly Shannon, who was convicted of the attempted assasination of Dr. George Tiller of Wichita, Kansas, among other serious crimes, including a series of arsons; and of course, James Kopp, who was convicted in the sniper assasination of Dr. Barnett Slepian in Amherst, New York. Kopp is also the chief suspect in several other shootings.

All three are recognized as Heroes of the Faith by the Army of God, members of which are likely to be on hand for the festivities.

This is jaw-dropping. There is going to be a celebration of home-grown terrorism, with a wonderful Christian bent. From the culture of life. This inspires awe in me. it really, really does. This naked disregard for life is nothing new, of course, and the hypocrisy of this kind of violence-celebrating hate-mongering is well noted in the blogosphere (if not the MSM, who assiduously avoid ever equating terrorists with good Christians). This kind of self-righteous posturing and celebrating of violence is part and parcel of the Christianists, and their benefactors look on with approval. It was exactly this kind of Christian hypocrisy that started my political awakening and pushed me to the left, back in the Reagan 80s, when they were just beginning to flex their muscles.

But this is more than just academic to me. I live in Milwaukee. This is personal, as I see it, an affront to the liberal traditions that long guided it's history. And even if you don't see that part of Milwaukee as valuable, the idea that this sleazy happening is coming here, and that they chose here to make this stand on behalf of domestic terrorism, is still appalling. Apparently, they think Milwaukee is filled with yokels slack-jawed enough to celebrate this kind of guns-n-Jesus idiocy (I especially love the "re-enactment." Perhaps Milwaukee can host re-enactments of other religiously-motivated killings for appreciative audiences-July 6, 1415 comes to mind.) At a time when our self-appointed daddy-leaders are foaming at the mouth to kill as many barbaric Muslims as they can have others bomb, the idea that this is mainstream Christianity is sickening.

I haven't heard of any kinds of counter-demonstration to this point. Obviously, in deference to the 1st Amendment the show can't be stopped, and that wouldn't help anyway, it would just add to their never-ending persecution complex. If anyone reads this, is there any place to potentially organize a counter rally or some such thing?

Christianist Love

I thought this was an interesting story:

Bomb Plot Thwarted at Falwell's Funeral

Even in death, the Rev. Jerry Falwell rouses the most volatile of emotions.

A small group of protesters gathered near the funeral services to criticize the man who mobilized Christian evangelicals and made them a major force in American politics -- often by playing on social prejudice

A group of students from Falwell's Liberty University staged a counterprotest.

And Campbell County authorities arrested a Liberty University student for having several homemade bombs in his car.

The student, 19-year-old Mark D. Uhl of Amissville, Va., reportedly told authorities that he was making the bombs to stop protesters from disrupting the funeral service. The devices were made of a combination of gasoline and detergent, a law enforcement official told ABC News' Pierre Thomas. They were "slow burn," according to the official, and would not have been very destructive.

This harkens back to my post of last week about Christian-based terror. And a fine demonstration of Christian hypocrisy it is.

To listen to Christian fundamentalists, Muslims as a group are predisposed to violence due to their religion's belief system, specifically regarding jihad. Christianity, of course, never specifically preaches any kind of violence. Jesus, when it is convenient, was a man of peace, which makes the Christian fundamentalist a man of peace as well, at least in their heads. A poll of Fundamentalist leaders taken in 2002 by Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron found that 70% believed that Islam is a "religion of violence." There is nothing particularly surprising in findings like this; fundamentalists always think their religion is the one true religion and thus right, and others are of course inherently wrong.

However, it is impossible to miss the cognitive dissonance. Christians are, in fact, attempting and sometimes succeeding in terrorist acts. Their leaders are calling for the assasinations of leaders they don't care for, publicly, like any Mullah might. Their belief in the End Times is behind political support of Israel in the hopes of the Second Coming/Rapture mythology, support that is helping to kill thousands of people a year. Whether or not the Bible actually says to kill in so many words, it is the primary inspiration for these beliefs, a fact you'll never hear them deny.

Religion and spirituality may inspire, but people act. People's actions are a reflection of who they are, not what their religion is. The way they interpret how their religion is supposed to interact with the material world is entirely on their shoulders, whether they are Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, etc. To decry a religion as inherently violent while supporting and even encouraging acts of violence in the name of your own is little more than an argument of convenience.

My first substantial post! And its bad!

Since I am now beginning a blog, the form as a vibrant part of political discourse must be coming to an end, as I am always the last to hop on to a trend. But, here it is.

One of the harder things about doing this is that I will now have to read all manner of idiocy on the web and elsewhere, the better to have something to pontificate about. Thus, after avoiding much of the right-wing opinion mill, I now have to wade through such "intellectuals" as Jonah Goldberg, or...whoever qualifies for intellectual status over there...well, anyway, I'll have to read some very silly stuff.

I have mostly avoided partisan writing on the whole, unless I already agreed with it, leaving the work of actually checking other people's work to the mainstream media and liberal writers, and crossed my fingers that they were doing a good job while I largely wanked off reading various texts and history and hoping to hide away as an academic some time in the future. Though I had been political in my mind since I was but a pup, I had been a big wuss when it came to adding my own perspective. I didn't really involve myself at any level. I was weak, flaccid, pale, clammy. So, coming to this late, after three decades of not really doing much of anything, with no real expertise on issues beyond what I've read and an unused journalism degree, after so many others have done so much with the blogosphere, and after assiduously avoiding even reading opinions that do not jibe with my own, I would say that jumping into the fray now is intimidating. But then, that's ok, since the idea anyone will read this piffle is outrageous anyway.

To make it easy on myself, I thought I would start by insulting Instapundit. That always seems like a good tactic. Unfortunately, the post I wanted to rip fucked me up because he made my point for me-but no matter, because there is always this response from Bryan Preston:

But he’s wrong that “fundamentalist Christians” are going to take this as a cue to start up their own terrorism to get what they want. And he’s wrong because he starts with an error on the basics: Namely, that Christianity and Islam aren’t the same thing, don’t believe the same things and don’t teach the same things. The foundational texts of the two faiths are very different, and the differences make all the difference in the world.

Certainly! Because no Christians have ever turned to violence to advance their causes. Not like this , for example, or this , just to name two.

He continues:

It’s a pity that five years into this war, or nearly 30 if you’re dating its beginning to the Islamic Revolution in Iran, so few people actually understand this. Most of our political leaders in both parties don’t understand it, secular humanists constantly conflate Pat Robertson with the Taliban thereby demonstrating that they don’t get it, and most of our pundits and most of our major bloggers obviously don’t understand it either.

Right. Why would anyone equate Christian fundamentalist leaders with the Taliban or hate-spouting, violence-inducing imams?

As usual we get the claim that Islam is inherently a religion of violence while Christianity is not:

Bin Laden and Zawahiri and Nasrallah and Ahmadinejad constantly quote the Koran to justify their global jihad, itself a dual Islamic concept that includes both internal and external warfare. Saladin’s jihad followed Muhammad’s example. Christianity has no such concept and Christ provided no similar warlike example.

This might make for a very nice religious debate point. As a long time atheist who is only recently converted to religion, I can say it is also semantic horseshit. The long, long history of violence done in God's name has needed no Biblical marching orders-it's been a feature since the beginning. Fundamentalists of all stripes desire control, and religion is their tool. They interpret their guiding works as they see fit to justify telling everyone how they will be forced to live. It matters not at all whether the words are explicit, as in the Koran, or implicit, as in the Bible-or, the Bible as interpreted by Christian fundamentalists. These same Christian fundamentalists feel no guilt at all trying to foment war in the Middle East to bring on the End Times, regardless of who it kills. These aren't acts of God or religion, these are acts of people, people who have specific motivations for doing these things and believing these things quite apart from righteousness. Trying to make the claim that Muslims are drooling, knuckle-dragging barbarians bent on killing good, clean, squeaky Christian angels because the Koran tells them to might get the guns-n-jesus crowd all riled up, but it makes for really dim discourse.