Rightwing Christians Free to Leave America

Update: No More Jesus Rifles - After ABC News Report, Trijicon Announces Plan to Remove Bible Codes from Gun Sights Provided to U.S. Military

Dominionist, evangelical Christians regaling in only-through-christ craziness, fighting against liberty in secular America, are always free to leave and form their own Christian colony where they can wage war and try to convert the unbelievers.

We know the religions right has veto power in today's Republican party, bringing us the intellectual heft of Sarah Palin and the Bush-Cheney stewardship of the U.S. Constitution.

We know the GOP religious operative James Dobson's charming Focus on the Family ('hey, beat your children, parents!') and rightwingers' escalation of misogynistic rhetoric in the sporting world, as documented in Tom Krattenmaker's Onward Christan Athletes (Rowman & Littlefield).

But most disturbing and dangerous is control in the U.S. military by the evangelical Christians. We're not there yet, but too goddamn close for comfort. Mikey Weinstein and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) and millions of Americans certainly object. [I told Weinstein in an aside recently that religious whacks genuinely "frighten me." Weinstein's curt, somewhat scolding response: "Scare 'em back. Make them frightened."]

Weinstein and MRFF just broke a major story that the military contractor, Trijicon, inscribed with secret Bible references 1,000s of gun sights used by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. Brilliant move, that will assure Islam of American commitment to pluralism and democracy, no crusades here.

As ABC News reported Monday, the sights are used by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the training of Iraqi and Afghan soldiers. The maker of the sights, Trijicon, has a $660 million multi-year contract to provide up to 800,000 sights to the Marine Corps, and additional contracts to provide sights to the U.S. Army.

As rightwing groups like the Family and myriad theocrats in the armed forces continue their quest for a Christian U.S. military, these stories take on a heightened significance.

Ed Brayton explains why:

Here's a letter that was sent to Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation by an active duty American soldier about those Bible verses on rifle scopes that demonstrates why the issue matters -- and how far the pentagon has to go to rid the military of this scourge of officers who view themselves as soldiers for (the Christian) God rather than as representatives of the United States.

To: Mikey Wienstein and MRFF:

I am a U.S. Army infantry soldier with the rank of (rank withheld). I am married with children. I am stationed at Fort (installation name withheld). I have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan multiple times. I have been awarded medals for direct combat engagement as well as for injuries and wounds received in hand-to-hand combat. I am a Muslim American. My family converted when I was very young. I am caucasian and have a last name that does not sound ethnic.

Therefore, few of my fellow soldiers know that I am a Muslim. My wife comes from a Christian tradition but rarely practices or attends church. I have witnessed terrible religious persecution in the my (number withheld) years in the Army. Most of it comes from ‘angry’ conservative Christians in my unit chains of command and occasionally from my fellow infantry soldiers. I am very familiar with the Trijicon ACOG gunsights and have often had them as part of my personal weapons; both my M-4 and my M-16.

In my first 2 deployments I saw and experienced no incidents regarding the New Testament bible quotes that are written on the metal casing of the gun sights. Many soldiers know of them and are very confused as to why they are there and what it is supposed to mean. Everyone is worried that if they were captured in combat that the enemy would use the bible quotes against them in captivity or some other form of propaganda. As an American soldier I am ashamed that those bible quotes are on our primary weapons. As a Muslim American I am horrified. As one who swore his oath to the Constitution, I am driven to fight this Christian insanity but I know if I try to do so in a visible way that I will suffer at the hands of my military superiors.

I am of low enlisted rank and can be crushed easily. I am prepared to suffer, but I am not prepared for my wife and children to suffer. So I have reached out to MRFF because there is nowhere else safe to go to try to fight this thing of disgrace. There are many other soldiers who feel as I do. Many are Protestant and Catholic and they fear reprisal just as much as I do for trying to stand up to the Christian bullies in uniform who outrank us. But if you try to fight back, you are not ‘asking’ for trouble, YOU ARE IN TROUBLE from the start. And if you are a Muslim American, the hatred is always just below the surface and ready to explode at a moment's notice. After the Fort Hood shootings, it was so bad, even for a low profile Muslim like me, that I had to ask MRFF for help.

Nothing in my first 2 deployments prepared me for what happened with the Trijicon ACOG gun sights during my 3rd deployment to Afghanistan. I will never forget the day it occurred. It was morning and there was a mandatory formation of several companies. A very senior NCO was yelling at us which is not that unusual. He asked a private what it was that he (the private) was holding in his hand and the private said it was his ‘weapon’ several times to which the senior NCO replied ‘and what ELSE is it’?

Finally, the senior NCO said that the private's rifle was also something else; that because of the biblical quote on the ACOG gunsight it had been ‘spiritually transformed into the Fire Arm of Jesus Christ’ and that we would be expected to kill every ‘haji’ we could find with it. He said that if we were to run out of ammo, then the rifle would become the ‘spiritually transformed club of Jesus Christ’ and that we should ‘bust open the head of every haji we find with it.’ He said that Uncle Sam had seen fit not to give us a ‘pussy 'Jewzzi' (combination of the word 'Jew' and Israeli made weapon 'Uzi') but the ‘fire arm of Jesus Christ’ and made specific mention of the biblical quotes on our gun sights. He said that the enemy no doubt had quotes from the Koran on their guns but that ‘our Lord is bigger than theirs because theirs is a fraud and an idol’.

As a Muslim and an American soldier I was fit to be tied but I kept it in. There were many Afghans, both civilian and military, on base within earshot of what was being yelled at us and I can only wonder in shock what they must have thought. This senior NCO was apparently also the head person of a conservative, crazy Christian group called the ‘Christian Military Fellowship’ and made a big deal about the importance of joining to everyone. He told us all that we MUST read a book called ‘Under Orders’ in order to make it through this combat deployment and said he had many copies for everyone. Some of my friends went and got their copies. I refused. Finally, this senior NCO ended his yelling by warning us that if we did not ‘get right with Jesus’ then our rifles would not provide spiritual strength despite the bible quotes on our ACOG gunsights and that we would be considered ‘spiritual cripples’ to our fellow units and soldiers. He didn't say it in so many words, but the message was clear; if anything bad happened in a combat situation, it would be the fault of anyone who had not accepted Jesus Chris in the ‘right way’. I have never felt so ashamed and scared in my life.

I have never hated myself so much for not speaking out. So I thought of my wife and children and endured. Every time I looked at my rifle with that Trijicon ACOG gunsight/scope with the biblical quote from the book of John (8:12), it would make me sick. If I had tried to protest, it would have made me dead. And if I'm dead I'm of no use to my wife and children.

Childs and Tobin Hit Scientology

Joe Childs and Thomas C. Tobin, staff writers for the St. Petersberg Times, do a job on the Church of Scientology and its leader, David Miscavige.

Seems like a Florida-California thing or something you might see on TV, but the whacks are real.

Childs and Tobin's special report links are below.

- High-ranking defectors provide an unprecedented inside look at the Church of Scientology and its leader, David Miscavige

- Scientology: The Truth Rundown, Part 1 of 3 in a special report on the Church of Scientology

- Death in slow motion: Part 2 of 3 in a special report on the Church of Scientology

- Scientology: Ecclesiastical justice, Part 3 of 3 in a special report on the Church of Scientology

James Dobson, That Poor, Sad Person

Check out this letter from James Dobson's Focus on the Family that I ran across on MyDD.

What's interesting is that there are 100,000s of religious whacks who are reachable on a political and human level.

James Dobson's a buffoon.

But a lot of the grassroots religious people seek community and fellowship, and suspect all that compassion-tolerance-love-peace stuff might actually not be realized by war, greed, hate and the screw-you politiks of today's GOP.

Let's not give up on reaching these people.

Religious Right Still Potent in GOP Circles, Buffoonish Elsewhere

With the rise of Mike Huckabee to the top of polls in the race for the Republican nomination for president, the pile of candidates rejected by the religious right is a roster of formerly regarded GOP front-runners or political saviors: Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson.

[John McCain's recently acquired Joe-mentum is a joke, and McCain, of the top four Republican candidates, remains the least acceptable to the religious right, as he deviates slightly from being mean-spirited and dogmatic.]

So, will Huckabee sustain his frontrunner status, propped up by the religious right?

Let's hope so, because the religious right has worn out its welcome among the center of American politics.

As Harold Meyerson writes today in the Post:

As Christians across the world prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus, it's a fitting moment to contemplate the mountain of moral, and mortal, hypocrisy that is our Christianized Republican Party. ...

The most depressing thing about the Republican presidential race is that the party's rank and file require their candidates to grow meaner with each passing week. And now, inconveniently, inconsiderately, comes Christmas, a holiday that couldn't be better calibrated to expose the Republicans' rank, fetid hypocrisy.

As fans of the popular television series House and Bones attest, heroically free-thinking, compassionate and secular American archetypes remain admired figures in the American consciousness.

I mean who wants to see a Gastroenterology specialist who isn't brilliant and rational-minded? And a brilliant and rational president has its advantages too, even imperatives, as the ruin of Bush/Cheney becomes clear and irrefutable.

Craig Unger puts the conflict between reason and religion this way:

(As discussed in the new book, The Fall of the House of Bush), most secularists, who refer to the culture wars or the red state-blue state conflict, still don't understand that what is really going on is an age old battle between faith and reason. After all, America is not only the country that put a man on the moon, that unraveled the human genome, that invented the iPod. It's also a country with tens of millions of people who don't believe in evolution, who think the earth was created 6,000 years ago and who think that the Final Conflict may bring the world to an end any day now.

The religious right remains powerful on Planet GOP, but is faltering badly in the greater reality-based American consciousness.

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Top Republicans Still Wrong for Religious Right

Update II: Novak - McCain's Christian Problem

Update: Read Michael Scherer's report in Salon. The religious right's two-day gathering in D.C. demonstrates the enduring political trouble for the top-tier Republicans running for the GOP presidential nomination.

As reported in the New York Times, the politically significant straw poll taken at the "values voters" conference found three of the top four Republican candidates performing dismally, with Fred D. Thompson at 9.8 percent, Rudy Giuliani finishing second to last with less than two percent of the vote, and Senator John McCain finishing dead-last.

Mitt Romney, the only one of the top four Republican candidates who performed well, placed a close second in the straw poll (two online polls produced conflicting numbers), but did nothing to dissipate the deep skepticism toward his candidacy that has been marked by major flip-flops on social issues.

The NYT's Michael Luo reports that Romney received only a "smattering" of applause; and reading between the lines may have engineered the victory as voting was allowed before the conference.

Bottom line: Still no mandate from the religious right that political observers believe must come out in full force for the Republican nominee if he is to have a chance in the general election in 2008; a conclusion to which even organizers of the conference admitted they agreed.

Straw Poll Results

Mike Huckabee - 51.26%
Mitt Romney - 10.40%
Fred Thompson - 8.09%
Tom Tancredo - 6.83%
Rudy Giuliani - 6.30%
Duncan Hunter - 5.67%
John McCain - 3.15%
Sam Brownback - 2.73%
Ron Paul - 2.63%
Undecided - 1.16%
Not Voting - 0.74%

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American-Israeli Militarism Hit

As Bush militarism has become more intimately tied to the American religious right with its traditionally implicit (and often explicit) anti-Semitism, the militaristic and anti-civil liberties policies espoused by both the United States and Israel are coming under increasing attack.

Tony Karon has an interesting piece at Tomdispatch.

For American Jews, Dissent Against Israel Has Become Mainstream

Tony Karon, Tomdispatch.com

The exceedingly narrow range of 'correct opinion on Israel for American Jews isn't holding together like it used to. Is a Jewish glasnost coming to America?

It was not surprising to read about this week's pro-war statement (Declaration Against Iraq Withdrawal) signed by such religious whacks as Lou Sheldon, Gary Bauer, Don Wildmon and Pat Robertson along with Pastor John Hagee (Citizens United for Israel) and Herb Zweibon (Americans for a Safe Israel).

And as more Americans speak out against the dangers of militarism promoted by a bigoted, know-nothing strain of professed Christianity at home, all brands of militarism will suffer politically.
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The Rapture Index

On the lower-left corner of this page, readers can find a link to the Rapture Index.

The Rapture Index proclaims to arrive at a predictive measure of the imminence of rapture—the instant when true Christians will be taken up by Jesus Christ into heaven and assorted non-believers like Catholics, secular humanists, Jews, Muslims, agnostics and so forth will be left behind to face the tribulations.

Or, even more precisely, a measure of prophetic activity that occasions the Rapture.

As the Rapture Index site states:

You could say the Rapture index is a Dow Jones Industrial Average of end time activity, but I think it would be better if you viewed it as prophetic speedometer. The higher the number, the faster we're moving towards the occurrence of pre-tribulation rapture.

What’s pathetic about all of this is that the millions of fundamentalist Christian millenialists who believe this nonsense comprise a central constituency of the Republican Party under Bush/Rove/Cheney.

But they are the perfect Republican constituency—unthinking, irrational, hostile-to-evidence-and-argument, bigoted, and utterly incapable of altering their dogma through reason.

Current Rapture Index – 159

Rapture Index of 100 and Below: Slow prophetic activity
Rapture Index of 100 to 130: Moderate prophetic activity
Rapture Index of 130 to 160: Heavy prophetic activity
Rapture Index above 160: Fasten your seat belts

Right now, we are at 159, we're right there before Rapture occurs, again.

But as the Rapture fails to occur again and again, as it surly will, we can be sure that the whackos will not change their worldview, and that they will remain Rapture-ready, looking to their Holy Man, George W. Bush, a nut in his own right, but one who occupies the White House as he delivers his own brand of tribulations to the world.

So, what do right-wing pundits think about this nonsense coming from today's Republican coalition? One can't even get most of these guys to acclaim evolution (that most evil of scientific facts) and to denounce the vacuity of "intelligent design," so we should we not expect them to acknowledge the whackos who give them votes.
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The One True Church

Now it’s clear.

Less than one week after the Roman Catholic Church issued its degree that the Catholic Church is the “one true Church of Christ", the one, true Church agreed to a $660 million settlement in the clergy molestation/rape case in Los Angeles, the largest settlement yet for Catholic Church rape/molestation cases.

The one-true-church declaration was issued to clear up the "confusion and doubt" piling up on the church's relationships among other faiths, with the approval of Pope Benedict XVI.

If all those child molestations that the church covered up seem inconsistent with its self-declared “one, true church” pronouncement; just know that none other than the supreme authority on pacifism and tolerance, our own President Bush, said of Pope Benedict XVI: “He's a man of great wisdom and knowledge.”

The Pope earlier this month had also approved the Vatican's inclusion of a prayer for the conversion of Jews in its Latin Mass, which drew the ire of the ADL.

"We are extremely disappointed and deeply offended that nearly 40 years after the Vatican rightly removed insulting anti-Jewish language from the Good Friday liturgy, that it would now permit Catholics to utter such hurtful and insulting words by praying for Jews to be converted ... ," Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, said in a statement.

Excuse me, but Pope Benedict XVI: You stink.

Update:

From The Forward:

Pope’s Statements Raise Concerns About Interfaith Relations

Marc Perelman | Wed. Jul 18, 2007
Two separate documents issued by the Vatican last week are raising concern among liberal Catholics, Protestants and Jews that Pope Benedict XVI is turning back the clock on four decades of ecumenism.

On July 10, the Holy See reiterated a controversial statement from 2000 that the Protestant and Christian Orthodox denominations are not “true” Christianity. Four days earlier, the pope authorized the wider use of a Latin mass that may allow for the inclusion of a previously disavowed prayer calling for the conversion of Jews.

The pair of pronouncements has caused substantial consternation among the more liberal streams of Catholicism, who see the German pope steering the church in a more traditional direction. While some Jewish communal officials have urged Jews to stay out of what they perceive to be primarily an intra-Catholic debate, others are continuing to sound a warning about the statements’ effect on interfaith relations.

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