If the Constitution claims there MUST be a separation between church and state and that everyone has freedom of choice and religion - HOW can these fundy moron wastes of oxygen/DNA/evolution possibly justify what they do without being un-American and anti-constitutional?

Oh yeah - they want to take over the world so it's all nice and shiny and clean when Jesus comes back, because heaven knows - Jesus would never want to come back before his Chosen Dickheads had taken over.

When confronted by reason, Christianity must use force to maintain itself.

Given choice -- or in other words, free will -- Christianity evaporates.

One of the points to the DeVinci Code, the book is that Jesus was a natural man with a wife and fathered a child who when to live in southern France. That fact alone could destroy The Far Right. I have spent the last month reading about what I found in the DeVinci Code. Holy Blood/Holy Grail is a good read on what was found in the DeVinci Code, even though its authors did not win their law suit against Dan Brown.

Margret Starbird has published some well documented books around the early church and how who Jesus was distorted. Her belief that until we restore women to an equal partners in marriage, which equal rights; Men will continue to self destruct. This has nothing really to do with religion and more to do with individual spiritual belief. The Eastern Religions understand the ying and the yang and the belief that personal enlightenment comes out of balance relationships between male and female energies. This was Jesus true message of love, taking care of those who need help and balance in all things. He was not a God and he said he was not a god. He was a man with human needs and desires. The Church made him a God.

I am not a christian, but a pagan that believes in Mother Earth as a living being and a balance between man and female energies on this planet. I fear the far right and one only has to read a little of Christian History between 1200-1400 to understand what happens when the Church wins. It will take all of us to change what is happening, just as this articles says. It is an excellent article with a good balanced view of our political situation now and what we can do.

Evangelical Christans are united by their misery, not love. They are consumed by "sin" and find it easier to project ionto an external figure to relieve their inner anquish and self loathing rather than take the path of self awareness by letting go pride and ego as a means to achieve humility and embrace all other people. That is the essence of practicing Christian prinicples and this they decidedly do not do. Evangelicals are sadomasochists who gain relief and pleasure only after experiencing the misery and torment that is part of their daily lives. The classic example is Mel Gibson who views any identification with Christ from the viewpoint of physical and relentless beatings and humiliation. This punishment is felt as deserved on some level by evangelicals but outwardly is expressed as blaming someone for their suffering. Gibson blamed the Jews, evangelicals blame all those they consider not one of them. This brings them immense relief and pleasure. And those motivated by inner guilt and misery with an equal measure to punish and take revenge on "others" can be quite destructive, until they turn upon themselves. And the will.

America's success in keeping religion from taking over our government has been due to strong leadership from the nation's social and intellectual elites in government and industry.

We don't like to admit that we have an elite class, but we do, and they have played a key role in maintaining some degree of sucularity in our government. Now those leaders have been bypassed by the Republicans' very successful grass-roots strategy, a trend that is fueled by today's high-speed communications.

Unfortunately, those grass roots tend to be very conservative and very religious, so religious that they are perfectly willing to dispense with church-state separation.

This is a very dangerous trend. My bag isn't packed yet, but I would suggest keeping a close eye on Supreme Court decisions and be prepared.

Unfortunately for those of us who scoff at biblical bullshit and the fanatical extremists who spout the divisive gibberish of "christianity," the climate of fear currently permeating our country creates the conditions for manipulation of those gullible enough to believe such fantastical nonsense. So long as people run scared religion will do a thriving business.

I'm an evangelical Christian who is appalled by the right-wing "Christian" nationalists. In gratefulness to the free salvation from Jesus, I want to follow his teachings. "Love your enemy" and "Love your neighbor as yourself" leave no room for governmental coercion, including war.

Jesus (and the rest of the Holy Bible) are strong on active compassion for the poor and oppressed. Is that what the religous right practices?

The Bible teaches care for the earth. Christians who miss this are missing a major message.

The Bible teaches that God shows his love for us by Jesus dying for us sinners. Jesus' followers are to follow his example in sacrificial love - for sinners (which includes ALL of us humans.) Those who are not acting in love are not acting as Christians.

Evangel means good news. What is being described in the article is not good news. The way to confront the religious right is with the truth of Jesus.

The way of Jesus is the way of peace. See Bible Pacifism.

It isn't terrorism that will bring us to our senses. It will be environmental catastrophe.

We are going to have to change and change rapidly if we want to survive as a human species. This means letting go or changing some of the beliefs we hold as sacred now and replacing them with beliefs based on surviving and living in harmony and peace. Sounds crazy doesn't it? Harmony and Peace.

The outrageous belief of rapture is not going to serve us any more than the 17 (or however many) virgins belief will. Who makes up this stuff? It is fatalistic and void of our taking responsibility for our all too human behavior. Sorry but it is not "those others" who are the problem. It is all of us who are collectively destroying the earth. We can understand this if we take the religious blinders off and look at things as if they were meant to be in balance.

Are we really that ignorant that we think the incredible gift of the real eden - our planet home - was ours to destroy so we could have an ultimate war of the fools? Are we going to let these religious radicals destroy the earth?

There are millions of people who are not afraid of taking responsibility and are making changes now to reverse the disastrous course these religions have put us on. Evolution in human thought will have to take place because these destructive religious beliefs cannot be part of future solutions.

Religions have failed to include the planet in their doctrine and dogma. The false belief that we are somehow chosen by a God-man (created by us in our image) over all other species is ridiculous. The arrogance of thinking that we have some sort of ultimate rule over the earth is bringing us to the brink of disaster. Our denial of our interdependence in the web of life will have to change if we want to survive.

Extreme religions will not survive. They won't be able to make the needed changes.

Whether the transition is done well or will be dangerous and destructive evidence of our hubris and ignorance is up to us.

And it lives here, among other places:

Sojourners

The right has no monopoly on the Divine, unless we let them have one.

Ultimately, a fight against Christian nationalist rule has to be a fight against the anti-urban bias built into the structure of our democracy.

Liberals should work to abolish the Electoral College and to even out the composition of the Senate, perhaps by splitting some of the country's larger states.

Both of these require a fight on the national level, not on the local level that Ms. Goldberg recommends as the solution. It was the imbalance of representation she cites that worked to put the religious right in control. The same strategy won't work for a miinority concentrated in underrepresented urban areas.

Our only hope is that the Christians aren't monolithic there is a continuum. There are Christians who will vote on economic issues if given the chance. They are now faced with a choice between Tweedle Dee and Teedle Dum, the Republican Right and the Republican Lite. Given only that choice they vote for the party who pays lip service to their religion.

The answer is to unite the voters not into Christians and non-Christians but into lower and upper economic classes. The lower classes are the majority. The answer is to take control of the platforms of both parties now and force them to run on issues important to the people. We can make "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" a reality.

This can only be done now before the election before the platforms are set as "for family values" and "against family values". We must force them to run as pro-lower classes or anti-lower classes. Fortunately before the election is the time when our votes have power. Once a vote is cast it has no power.

Join The Lincoln Initiative get both parties to run on the majority's issues. Click on Join Us Today

The notion that religion is taking over government is pure nonsense. It's the opposite.

Or that religion is taking over the society. That notion is also opposite to reality.

Instead, we have religion losing any and all effect on society. We have homosexuals prancing down Main Streat, USA, in codppieces, cavorting in public at Disneyland. We have government intruding itself into the churches, buying them off in George Bush's "faith based initiatives."

George Bush is no Christian, born again or otherwise. Rather, he is a Luciferian Illumininist working for the New World Order. The goal of the New World Order is to destroy Christianity and replace it with the worship of Antichrist.

Along the way, the diabolical plan is to TAKE OVER religion, to bribe and corrupt it, pay Christians money to leave their Bibles and the gospel home, and to become, in effect, government social workers and agents.

As John Lennon said, Imagine a world with no countries, no possessions, no religion, with everybody living for today.

The so-called Relgious Right has tried to jockey for power within the political system. It has been a complete failure. The religous left will instead create a system of institutionalized child sacrifice, orgiastic rituals, elimination of marriage and enforced vegetarianism, and death to all Christians and Jews. Big Brother will never be so pervasive as when the haters of God succeed in erecting their Brave New World.

Since 1973 a 1.5 million babies have been slaughtered each year in America. This is something that was thrust on America by the Supremes. Sure, it looks like the day may be coming (but I'd be shocked if it does) that the Supreme Court may reverse Roe v. Wade. This is known in the game of chess as "sacrificing a pawn" in order to capture the queen and checkmate the king. The purpose of bringing such an event to pass is to fan the flames of hatred against Christians.

George Bush has one job to accomplish. He was hand-picked by the Luciferian Illuminists to bring in the New World Order, destroy America, and to stir up hatred against Christians and Christianity. The goal is to reduce world population to a mere 500 million. See the Georgia Guidestones.

All Christians will be purged in the formation of the NWO utopia. We will be blamed for the mayhem and destruction wrought by George Bush in the name of Christianity. The Bible calls this the Great Tribulation.

Even the peaceful Amish, who have retreated completely from society, don't even vote, never write a letter to the editor or even read the newspapers, who just mind their own business and raise their families -- even they will be sent to the camps our so-called Christian president has building and equipping, for sorting and annihilation.

These days can be equated to the days before the Nazi takeover in Germany. GWB's administration and military is made up of homosexual sadists. Kay Griggs says nobody gets promoted nowadays in the military unless they are willing to participate in homosexual Nazi orgies. The occultic Black Military in their underground cities practices Nazi mind control techniques involving torture and use of children, diabolical breeding experiments.

Jesus said his kingdom was not of this world. The ruler of this world is Satan and his minions. Jesus came to save us from our sins, to provide the way that we might be forgiven and delivered from sin, to find our way to, and remain upon, the narrow path that leads to life everlasting.

For as the Jesus says: What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?

Aside from Iraq and Bush, the evangelist element is spoiling the image of America in the eyes of the rest of the world. Of course, at the moment Iraq, Bush and evangelism forms an 'unholy trinity' (ha ha!) in America - they are all co-ordinated and feed off of each other.

For me (I'm British), this is a crying shame as I love America. I guess the way I see it is there is the Republican god-fearing side to America and then there is the more moderate and liberal Democrat side. The rest of the world loves the liberal side to America but has no time whatsoever for the god-stuff. But then, I am a European 'heathen'!

well what on earth do people expect when you gut the education system so that private religious schools dominate educating our young people. I was severely disillusioned the other day to see a poll of Harvard graduates who didn't understand the basic principles of photosynthesis. terrifying.

Isn't t there supposed to be a false Christ in power first - before the ACTUAL Christ returns?

CAN ANYONE NAME THE OTHER FALSE CHRIST BEFORE THIS ONE?

Me neither.

It has always been my belief (and many will call this naive) that the noise being made by religious fundamentalists of all stripes is but the braying of a great beast on the precipice of extinction. The rule of life is change or die. Religionists, ignore this at your peril. I’m sure no dinosaur ever thrashed about so violently and made so much noise as when it was sinking into the tar pit. Gods and religion are anachronisms and they are damned to irrelevance. Already they have no practical value in the world. They answer no questions, solve no problems, create nothing, are paracitical, accomplish no good deeds that cannot be accomplished just as well without them. Religion is a lie and gods are a fraud. Mankind is like a precocious child: capable of great things even while so young, but still afraid of monsters in the closet, but this will change with growth.

for a change?

United we stand AGAINST TYRANNY, divided we fall FOR TYRANNY !

"Whenever I talk about the growing power of the evangelical right with friends, they always ask the same question: What can we do? Usually I reply with a joke: Keep a bag packed and your passport current."

Could your first reaction -- your "joke" -- have been the best one? I have seen far more tolerance among European Christians than these so-called "Evangelists" who preach hate and try to justify oppression, repression murder and robbery.
Those that consider themselves followers of Christ might take a look at Revelations 18: 4 & 5: And I heard another voice from heaven, saying , Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.

While you´re at it, you might read the whole of chapter 18.
Not that it has anything to do with America, you know. Just something to do if you have a few minutes to kill.

And for those that aren´t Christians, well, you´ve all got a God and/or conscience to tell you or advise you what to do. And George Bush has Jiminy Cricket -- er, sorry Karl Rove. I think Jiminy Cricket was sent to the electric chair last month.

If the media would WAKE UP and quit give voice to the fundamentalists and allow the voices of progressive Christians in print you all wouldn't be so afraid!


EXCERPTED April 16 WAWA blog:
The Book of Revelation was written in a time of occupation. It was written twenty years after the empire of Rome had reconquered Palestine and had crushed a Jewish resistance movement.

The Book of Revelation is political and spiritual. John, exiled on Patmos [or perhaps he is a refugee?] confronts the unjust empire of the first century by exposing or unveiling -which is what apocalyptic literature does- the injustice he sees all around him.

The Book of Revelation was never meant to be understood literally; even Christian Zionists understand this fact now and then. In John’s revelation Christ is pictured as a lamb; the absolute contrast to the lion.

It is the nonviolent lamb that points us the way that Christ taught: that the way to peace can only be through nonviolence.

The Book of Revelation was written as a critique of empire and that is how we should read it today.

2,000 years ago zealots stood up to the empire and were crucified.

Today, the empire: USA and Israel
prefers to ignore zealots.
To paraphrase TP:
"You can stand us up at the gates of hell, and we won't back down."

There are voices rising out of the wilderness on the www

Google "WAWA blog"
and you will find us

You say your ideas are not about reconciliation and healing, but it is possible to come from such a place. I have just returned from a conference of the Network of Spiritual Progressives in Washington, an organization that grew from the ideas of Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun (to heal the world) Magazine. Twelve hundred progressive Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Unitarian Universalists and Wiccans, Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims, as well as people who define themselves as Spiritual but not Religious and atheists met for four days to discuss how we might work together. Among the premises of this group are that there IS a spiritual crisis in the US caused by our lust for money and power that the Left has failed to address, that the Right has wrongly married the spiritual hunger of the poor and middle class to the economic interests of the rich, and that the God it worships is one based on fear, retribution and military dominance.

The answer to the Christian Right is to counter it with love compassion, and true social justice, not some chilly secular materialism.

”The mass movement I've described aims to supplant Enlightenment rationalism with what it calls the "Christian worldview."

Perhaps they call it the Christian worldview because it is the viewpoint to which they intend to compel the world to hold (or to give lip service to).

Besides, they couldn’t very well sell it using language such as benighted (or bedimmed) irrationalism. That of course is what it is inasmuch as it would like to take us back to the time before the scientific method was established, before the contributions of men like Bacon, Galileo, Kepler and Newton who together showed the power of observation, hypothesis, experimentation and mathematics could combine to reveal many of the secrets of the physical world.

This, of course was a direct challenge to the authority of the church that had claimed all along to have access (God’s ear so to speak) and inside information about how the universe works. Apparently, God either hadn’t discovered the value of science for Himself yet, or didn’t see fit the share its benefits with us. This is rather inconsiderate considering that we are not omnipotent and don’t have magic at our disposal like he does, so we could certainly have used –say antibiotics- a few centuries before the twentieth.

Christianity teaches three pernicious “facts” that have profound implications for our ability to survive our transition from the age of religion through the ages of technological discovery and implementation and into the spiritual age:

1. The earth and the entire physical universe are unimportant. They are a stage through which we pass for the blink of an eye compared to the eternity that follows. They are disposable. The universe is made of an inferior substance, matter, the inferior form that God had to assume to pay your way into the vastly superior world of immateriality: heaven. They will all be destroyed very soon in war and fire, so there is nothing there that can be protected or that needs protecting.

2. All life below human is soulless and is the property of man to exploit as he sees fit without concern for suffering.

3. Man has no good ideas and can contribute nothing of value to the fund of human knowledge all of which comes only from scripture. All valuable knowledge is in the Bible and is timeless. All other thinking is vanity. Government that is not authoritarian and God-centered is invalid. Man has no right, just gifts from God. Humanity is worthless and, like all other flesh and matter, is unfit to be in the presence of God.

There you have it: all of space and its material contents including earth; all of the biosphere including humanity; and the all thought not derived from the Bible are all worthless, offensive garbage. Vanity of vanities. All of man’s libraries can safely (even profitably) be burned and all ideas less than 2000 years old discarded.

Christianity is incompatible with freedom, democracy, science and human and civil rights. It will always seek to stifle and eliminate to the extent that the law permits them too. A Christian theocracy is a totalitarian state without a constitution or written laws (apart from the Bible) in which citizens have no inherent value and are born owed nothing.

The Purpose Driven Life Takers: an incredibly evil video game of the right wing end of time believers and pushed by the leadership of mega-churches that are more accurately called Christians against Jesus can be seen at www.talk2action.org/story/2006/5/29/195855/959 . The lives of two of four of my fellow siblings has be completely destroyed by the teachings of these churches, requiring psychiatric hospitalization and medication for as many as 21 years and counting.

To get a clear understanding of what these people believe, it is important to get educated. Theocracywatch.org is a must read. The most recent actions of these end of times hypocrites can be found in the "new links" section under "What's New" at http://www.theocracywatch.org/new_links.htm
The dogma of these "churches" is dead in faith and is killing our country through decision by theology rather than sound science. Our schools are dumbing down at a fantastic rate and many of our Universities are no better that an extended high school.

Throughout history, these people have crippled any advancements to make the world a better place in almost, if not every single area of a person's life. These people have declared war on an unwitting public. If not put in check, this country will fall from the corruption they have spread in the halls of leadership, to the trashing of the entire educational system from kindergarten through college.

Our father, which art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our tresspasses as we forgive those who tresspass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Amen.

Pray for this country.
Pray for peace.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net

A story with links of the new religious fascism, and I do mean it in every way, can be seen as well as read about at
www.dailykos.com/
storyonly/2006/5/22/144636/455
This is may be a liberal blog, but it is an article that everyone that has an interest in keeping our nation should read.
Christian Battle Cry is a creation of Ron Luce, a criminal in every way that is brainwashing kids. The numbers of kids is in the hundreds of thousand and their activities has to be seen to be believed. It has the full blessing of many often cited religious leaders, congressmen, senators and of course, our president. Taking a part of the description of the event at Philadelphia, (just one of many sites), Dave Niewart states:

BattleCry Philadelphia was more than just a vulgar carnival designed to suck donations into the coffers of Ron Luce's corporation "Teen Mania". Indeed, it had a point, to recruit the future elite "warriors" in the coming battle against the separation of church and state. It turned dark and frightening on Saturday afternoon. After Franklin "Islam is a Wicked Religion" Graham came out to thunder against the evils of homosexuality and the Iraqi people (whom he considers to be exactly the same people as the ancient Babylonians who enslaved the tribes of Israel and deserving, one would assume, the exact same fate) we heard an explosion. Flames shot out on stage and a team of Navy Seals was shown on the big TV monitors in full camouflage creeping forward down the hallway from the locker room with their M16s. They were hunting us, the future Christian leaders of America. Two teenage girls next to me burst into tears and even I, a jaded middle-aged male, almost jumped out of my skin. I imagined for that moment what it must have felt like to have been a teacher at Columbine high school. 10 seconds later they rushed out onstage and pointed their guns in our direction firing blanks spitting flames. About 1000 shots and bang, we were all dead.

This should not be happening here. Yet it is with the blessing of our nation's leaders!

That is a fact. The evangelicals would not be spreading their world view if they didn't believe this to be so. There is only one God, the Trinity which are in the book of life. All non-believers will be cast into eternal hellfire and damnation, PERIOD. That is central to their belief. There are no progressive evangelicals as it is against their central belief (What evangelism means and how it is practiced).

All this conjecture is wonderful. Here is another idea.

The Christian Right is convinced that the 'Rapture' will take them all away, leaving us sinners here to suffer. My take on that is that the obnoxious religious among us will be raptured out and we can have their stuff- 0r- they will just keep waiting and pretty soon they will all look silly . As a matter of fact, they look silly now. I have been asking my local 'Christians' if I can have their stuff when they rapture. How about having a good laugh at them while remembering the laws of karma. If one claims to believe in the teachings of Christ, those teachings become the driver of the life. When that life is out of harmony with the teachings, things happen to bring this fact to the attention of the individual. Example - the wonderful Christian family with perfect lives and perfect children has one son who goes out and gets drunk and kills someone. OOPS! Happens all the time if you just pay attention. There sit those 'upright citizens' with egg on their faces. That stiff, cold,arrogant 'Christian' attitude just isn't going to work. It isn't what Christ is about. What goes around really does come around.

It is possible to say No to these people. If enough of us would stand in behalf of the gays, women, children and general domestic balance, perhaps we could change things. The Christ I know would be happy to give some energy to kindness. It certainly does no good to sit in fear and try to figure out what 'The Christians' will do next.

I lived in the 50s with the cold war, McCarthy hearings, back room abortions, racism, child abuse,subservient women. You know what happened when things got too bad?------ the 60s where it all blew up because the people had enough of stiff, mean spirited, patriarchal thinking. It was time to bust the game, and although it appeared chaos, it needed to happen all at once. A lot of good things came from that revolution- some not so good. And so it is........

Times are looking similar and worse. Time for change? You bet! The question is ----- are Americans willing to get up off our collective fat butts and stand for what we believe or are we going to let the ' religious right' dictate our lives?

Some really bad places
http://www.raptureready.com/
http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/
http://theendtimesproject.com/
http://secure.agoramedia.com/
leftbehind/index_leftbehind26.asp?promo=3BE088F9-
D909-418E-A21A-068B7607CB07&email=&pu=0
http://www.victorious.net/prophecy/index.shtml
http://www.antipasministries.com/
http://www.leftbehind.com/
http://www.chritech.com/iseek/pages/
Theology_and_Apologetics/Eschatology/
http://www.campus-watch.org/
http://www.promisekeepers.org/
http://www.hallindseyoracle.com/
http://www.jvim.com/
http://www.terrylcook.com/
http://www.bible-prophecy.com/links.htm
http://www.coralridge.org/
http://www.reclaimamerica.org/
http://www.alliancedefensefund.org/main/default.aspx
http://www.cc.org/
http://www.nae.net/
http://www.seekgod.ca/cff.htm
http://www.namebase.org/cgi-bin/nb06?
_RELIGIOUS_ROUNDTABLE_
http://www.namebase.org/cgi-bin/nb01?
RELIGIOUS_ROUNDTABLE_
http://www.sweetliberty.org/index.shtml
http://www.afa.net/
http://www.agapepress.org/
http://www.cufi.org/

I am tired of pastors/preachers/evangelists who want to play in politics rather than do their real job: teaching the Bible to those who choose to attend. Playing political pundit is not part of the job description. I sincerely believe that many of those 'called' to the pastoral ministry were not called by God but by their wallet and thirst for power.

The Bible teaches that the followers of Jesus should live quiet & peaceful lives with their personal conduct being the primary witness of their faith. They are to obey and abide by civil law and respect authority. Directed to be forgiving and charitable, they are charged with looking out after the people at the margins of existence-- the last with the least. Does this sound like the clowns masquerading as pastors in many churches today?

Jesus taught his followers that people would come into the church without faith-- seeking to co-opt it for their own purposes. He likened then to ravenous wolves that masqueraded as sheep. They are widespread and powerful in many denominations today.

I am a Christ-follower and I want the church out of politics and politics out of the church. I do not want organized prayer in schools or fake science taught in the classroom. I would like to see others who claim to be christians more interested in helping those in need and less about politics and wealth accumulation.

One of the cornerstones of Christian Theology is the concept of people being free moral agents-- otherwise you have an inherent right/responsibility to determine your own views and faith. 'Christians' who advocate advancing their viewpoint into law are actually going against foundational Christian Doctrine. If these so-called leaders and teachers are unaware of this fact , they are not qualified to teach. If they know it and ignore it they are also disqualified.

The sheeple in the pews have been hand-fed for so long that they cannot tell the difference. Please do not confuse honest Christ-followers with the freaks abusing the church for their personal benefit.

my father is quite conservative, a total ditto head, but a closet intellectual (or at least he used to be). my step-mother is a devout catholic, who teaches a catchetism class. Im the long-haired lefty liberal son, living abroad. when I go home we play a game where I argue against my dads conservative platform by asking my stepmom to counter only using jesus' quotes from the bible. my dads pretty good, but Im afraid the laughter of my stepmother, who also supports bush (funny that) and my 16year old sister, always make his arguements sound ridiculous, like when bush is talking about stem-cell research, I'll paraphrase, he says you cannot sacrifice innocent life to save others, and he sort of catches himself mid-sentence, thats when bush's mind clicks, and he realizes the complete hypocracy of his words, and he almost loses it for a second, and hopes nobody in the room will call him on it.

History tells us that aggressive religious movements tend to become strong political movements. How to separate the "beliefs" form the politics is the problem. What seems idealistically irrational may be politically quite pragmatic. The Xtian Right has gained more political clout for a whole bunch of little white people than they had until recently.

He has said this on his appearance on The Daily Show. There was only hope for Jon Stuart if he converted!

the originators of the constitution were aware of the religious power to over throw any opposition to the belief of said religion. So listening to moyers interview other.... asked what is religion? answer....connecting the body with spirit. possibly a bit revised. the common good of all ah is to have all teaching of religion a say. To play with the earth requires the ability to see, hear, feel, the better good for all. aloha carlin et al.

I'm a Baptist, and a pretty darn conservative one. I oppose abortion, euthanasia and medical experiments on embryos. While I oppose gay marriage on religious grounds, my political opposition to it is actually rooted in my view that the very concept of "gay marriage" is a contradiction in terms, like "dry water." I supported the decision to invade Iraq, and still do.

And yet, I just don't feel especially rabid. I can't say I hate you guys. Frankly you strike me as more silly than anything else, but probably nice enough folk. I've no interest in outlawing your opinions, or hauling you off to some gulag somewhere. I'm perfectly content to live in the same country as people who think the way you do. I kind of enjoy it, in fact.

But I keep reading the nutzo ravings about the Evangelical Menace and I find myself wondering--what on earth are you people smoking? You take odds and ends of evangelical pop culture--which is, if anything, stupider than pop culture in general--and whip it into some grand conspiracy of evil.

Look, here's an idea. Calm down. Do yourselves a favor. Subscribe to a few serious magazines, like Christianity Today, or First Things. Hang out at good Christian websites like markdroberts.com or albertmohler.com. Get a feel for the best in evangelical thought. You might find that most "jellies" are a reasonably sane bunch, with more than a few deep thinkers amongst them. Sure, it's not as much fun as fretting over the Rise of the Wackos, but it's a lot closer to reality than anything I've seen in this bizarro thread. And it'd let you guys get more sleep at night, knowing that we are not, in fact, Coming For You.