All posts tagged Jesus

Jesus Hebdo

If you were to spend any time visiting Planet Hate, also known as the conservative media complex, you would find these days a lot of pundits and commenters using the following quote from President Obama, which they think makes him sound like he is firmly on the side of the extremist Muslims of the world:

The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.

The President said that to the United Nations General Assembly in 2012. But, of course, he said a lot of other things and the quote above is just one among other “the future must not belong to” items he listed, like “The future must not belong to those who target Coptic Christians in Egypt.” When have you seen a conservative use that quote?

In any case, I will supply what followed that seemingly Islam-embracing sentence in Obama’s UN speech that conservatives are tossing around like it proves our president is, if not a terrorist sympathizer, at least a Muhammad-loving, Jesus-hating appeaser:

The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. But to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see in the images of Jesus Christ that are desecrated, or churches that are destroyed, or the Holocaust that is denied.

So, you can see that really the President was lecturing Muslims about the sins of hypocrisy. Or more strongly, he was saying: If you don’t want your prophet dishonored, then stop hating on Christians and Jews. Obviously, he was not rhetorically siding with one group or another, but was expressing his concept of civility. That was, in essence, what his speech was about—even though I think the President was off-key in some of his remarks.

It all depends on what he meant by “slander” in “slander the prophet of Islam.” If he meant “making false statements” about Muhammad, that is one thing. The president is right about that. People should speak the truth, as they see it, about the prophet of Islam, or anyone else for that matter.

But if President Obama meant any criticism, including harsh criticism, of Muhammad or Islam is out-of-bounds, then he was quite wrong. That is what the entire Charlie Hebdo incident is about. Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, or any religious leader today including the Pope, is fair game for criticism, even fair game for satire, even biting and sometimes offensive satire.

Whatever the President meant when he gave that speech in 2012, we know he is not on the side of those who killed innocents last week in Paris, even though some delusional right-wingers, those who comment on certain articles (like this one), tell themselves that he is (“Sounds like the shooting represents a “mission accomplished” for imam Barry,” says someone using the name “Libslayer”). These are sick people, and the depth of their hatred for Obama, a man they don’t know or understand, is otherwise inexplicable.

Leaving aside the clearly mentally disturbed people who call Obama a “miserable Muslim snake” and “the most evil man in America,” there are some more sober-minded Christian right-wingers who use Obama’s “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam” quote as evidence that his heart isn’t in the fight against terrorism, as Mollie Hemingway at The Federalist suggests. She writes:

The fact is that, when it comes to Islamist radicalism, the Obama administration works to downplay threats. And probably for reasons related to that approach, the administration isn’t going to be the strongest defenders of art that is considered a capital offense of blasphemy by Islamist radicals.

Her reference to “art” is to Charlie Hebdo. All of a sudden, Christian conservatives are in love with Charlie—and they are mad at the “liberal” media because some news organizations are not publishing most of the satirical cartoons or are pixelating the naughty parts of some they do publish. These conservative Christians love Charlie right now because the magazine is unafraid to toss cartoon grenades into Islamic foxholes.

But I want to remind everyone that Charlie Hebdo doesn’t much like fundamentalist or conservative Christianity either. And if there’s one thing we know about right-wing Christians, it is that as much as many of them are now celebrating the lampooning of Muhammad and radical forms of Islam, they can get quite upset when Jesus is the butt of jokes or when Christianity is mocked or when their leaders are attacked (or they can just make up stuff, like the War on Christmas, and get all delirious over that).

I also want to remind everyone that Jesus wasn’t exactly a sheep-toting fan of the dominant religious leaders of his time, nor was he respectful of all the traditions of his faith. In fact, while most of the Jewish zealots in Jesus’ day were focused on ridding the land of Roman infidels, Jesus had a different enemy: Jewish leaders themselves.

He mocked them. He called them bad names. He condemned them. He was relentless in his criticism. If there were a Charlie Hebdo around in first century Palestine, Jesus could have been a cartoonist using sarcasm and satire to make his point about the absurdities of the leaders of Judaism and some of the ridiculous traditions they had established and some of their creative, self-serving interpretations of Jewish law.

I will leave you with a rather lengthy passage from the The Gospel of Matthew that I hope you will read in its entirety. And when you read it, think about all that we have seen and heard over the past week regarding Charlie Hebdo. And then wonder how the Jesus below fits in with it all. How does he and his words relate to the debate over civility, over criticism of religion, and over harsh language directed at powerful religious figures, some of whom, as Jesus himself discovered, are eager to see the execution of someone who has offended them:

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The teachers of religious law and the Pharisees are the official interpreters of the law of Moses. So practice and obey whatever they tell you, but don’t follow their example. For they don’t practice what they teach.  They crush people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden.

“Everything they do is for show. On their arms they wear extra wide prayer boxes with Scripture verses inside, and they wear robes with extra long tassels. And they love to sit at the head table at banquets and in the seats of honor in the synagogues. They love to receive respectful greetings as they walk in the marketplaces, and to be called ‘Rabbi.’

“Don’t let anyone call you ‘Rabbi,’ for you have only one teacher, and all of you are equal as brothers and sisters. And don’t address anyone here on earth as ‘Father,’ for only God in heaven is your spiritual Father.  And don’t let anyone call you ‘Teacher,’ for you have only one teacher, the Messiah. The greatest among you must be a servant. But those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

“What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you shut the door of the Kingdom of Heaven in people’s faces. You won’t go in yourselves, and you don’t let others enter either.

“What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you cross land and sea to make one convert, and then you turn that person into twice the child of hell you yourselves are!

“Blind guides! What sorrow awaits you! For you say that it means nothing to swear ‘by God’s Temple,’ but that it is binding to swear ‘by the gold in the Temple.’ Blind fools! Which is more important—the gold or the Temple that makes the gold sacred? And you say that to swear ‘by the altar’ is not binding, but to swear ‘by the gifts on the altar’ is binding. How blind! For which is more important—the gift on the altar or the altar that makes the gift sacred? When you swear ‘by the altar,’ you are swearing by it and by everything on it. And when you swear ‘by the Temple,’ you are swearing by it and by God, who lives in it. And when you swear ‘by heaven,’ you are swearing by the throne of God and by God, who sits on the throne.

“What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are careful to tithe even the tiniest income from your herb gardens,but you ignore the more important aspects of the law—justice, mercy, and faith. You should tithe, yes, but do not neglect the more important things. Blind guides! You strain your water so you won’t accidentally swallow a gnat, but you swallow a camel!

“What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy—full of greed and self-indulgence! You blind Pharisee! First wash the inside of the cup and the dish, and then the outside will become clean, too.

“What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs—beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people’s bones and all sorts of impurity. Outwardly you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness.

“What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you build tombs for the prophets your ancestors killed, and you decorate the monuments of the godly people your ancestors destroyed. Then you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would never have joined them in killing the prophets.’

“But in saying that, you testify against yourselves that you are indeed the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Go ahead and finish what your ancestors started. Snakes! Sons of vipers! How will you escape the judgment of hell?

“Therefore, I am sending you prophets and wise men and teachers of religious law. But you will kill some by crucifixion, and you will flog others with whips in your synagogues, chasing them from city to city. As a result, you will be held responsible for the murder of all godly people of all time—from the murder of righteous Abel to the murder of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you killed in the Temple between the sanctuary and the altar. I tell you the truth, this judgment will fall on this very generation.

by R. Duane Graham on January 14, 2015  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on January 14, 2015

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2015/01/14/jesus-hebdo/

Desperate Kids Should Not Be A Means To An End

“It’s not just about having a heart. It’s about having a soul. And the soul of our country is about respecting the dignity and worth of every person. The soul of our country is about giving every person access to rights who is in our country.”

—Nancy Pelosi, discussing a House Republican bill to address the humanitarian crisis at the border

“We ought to say to these children, ‘Welcome to America. You’re going to go to school, get a job, and become Americans.'”

—George Will, stumbling uncontrollably over a rock of compassion

wwhen I was attending church, many moons ago, a popular saying among the congregants, one designed to initiate spiritual self-examination, went something like this:

If Christianity were a crime, would there be enough evidence to convict you?

If we ask the same thing of Americans as a people (roughly 80% of whom identify themselves as Christians of one variety or another), here is some evidence we might want to consider:

america not a christian nation

I think most of us would say that if Jesus were asked those questions, he would side with the kids. At least the Jesus I was first introduced to in Sunday School. But either Jesus has changed a lot since then, or the people who tote Bibles and quote scripture and demand cultural fealty to their version of the Word of God don’t much care what side Jesus would be on, when it comes to desperate children from Central America.

And the people most likely to tote Bibles and quote verses and fashion public policy based on Iron Age ignorance—that is, Republicans—are also the ones most likely to turn against Jesus and the kids:

The responses expose a partisan rift, with 70 percent of Republicans saying Central American children should not be treated as refugees compared with 62 percent of Democrats who believe they should. On whether the United States has an obligation to accept people fleeing violence or political persecution, 66 percent of Republicans say it does not and 57 percent of Democrats say it does.

For a party that wears its Christianity on its sleeve, if not in its heart, that’s a pretty damning indictment. I guess the migrant children should thank God, first for that majority of Democrats, and then for that 30% or so of Republicans who take their Christianity, not to mention their American values, seriously. But maybe I’m being too hard on the folks in that particular poll. Perhaps average people, even average Republicans, shouldn’t be expected to think through these kinds of issues with Jesuitical precision.

But Paul Ryan, who is not an average person, should.

Ryan, who is a Roman Catholic with a reputation for Big Ideas, appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press this past weekend and he was asked the following question about the kids who have come here from Central America:

DAVID GREGORY: Do you think these children and others, tens of thousands of them, should be sent back home?

REP. PAUL RYAN: Yes, I do. Otherwise the humanitarian crisis will continue. Otherwise families in countries far away, on the other side of Mexico, will be giving thousands of dollars to traffickers to take their children over the border and the humanitarian crisis will get worse…

That kind of thinking is fairly prevalent on the right (some Democrats, at one time including President Obama, have expressed a similar idea, too, but few do so today, and Obama is tinkering with a much better idea). Just this morning I matt salmon on msnbcheard another tightfisted Tea Party congressman, Matt Salmon of Arizona (who seriously argued in 1999 that Ronald Reagan’s mug should be carved into Mount Rushmore!), say that he believes,

…the most effective deterrent would be to immediately repatriate those children back to their homes and reunite them in their countries with their families, and that’s what we’re planning to do…and it costs less money to actually move the children back home and bolster the border than it does to indefinitely put them up in the United States while they wait for a trial three to five years from now.

You can see how the concern is not immediately with the children who are here, but with sending a message to people who may come here sometime in the future. And while we all ought to be concerned about the dangerous conditions under which these folks travel to America, and while we all ought to be concerned about the deplorable conditions that exist in their home countries, conditions that drive them to seek refuge in the United States, we cannot ignore the duty we have toward the kids who are here, the duty we have to honor our own laws and the values behind them, and the duty we have to justice itself.

Those who are seeking to send the children back as soon as possible are really, quite cynically and deplorably in my view, using the kids as messengers to send a very stern and un-American message to other desperate people: you are not welcome here. They are using weary and frightened kids as a means to an end. And even if the end was somehow justified, even if the message was less harsh, even if the message was “don’t make the journey because it is dangerous and ultimately pointless,” using the children who are already here to send that message would be immoral and un-American, not to say ungodly.

 

by R. Duane Graham on July 30, 2014  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on July 30, 2014

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2014/07/30/desperate-kids-should-not-be-a-means-to-an-end/

Christians Beware: A 10-Point Plan On Immigration Reform

Anson Burlingame responded to my last post, saying he was “frankly confused” about my position on “illegal immigration.” He asked if we should “just open the border and let’m all come in” or “try hard to stop the flow of such people across our southern border?” He also wrote:

You spent considerable time in this blog suggesting what Christ would do in this situation. Do you have a solid answer to that quest, Christ’s intentions regarding American policy toward immigration, or any other country, Christian or not in that regard? Or instead would you leave Christ and his teachings out of political discussions regarding immigration law in America?

Here is my reply:

First, let me be clear about one thing. I don’t believe any public policy ought to be fashioned based on the words of an ancient religious text, Christian or otherwise. We are, of course, partly a product of our past, and in our particular history Christianity played a very large part in shaping who we are culturally and nationally. Thus, in some important ways, we are still, as G. K. Chesterton put it, living in “the shadow of the faith” and I don’t doubt that many of the good things in our public policy sprang from some notion of Christian charity or morality.

That being said, our Constitution is a secular not a Christian document and, over time, we have (almost fully but not quite) embraced the idea that, when it comes to making our laws, religious sects should not be given any more deference than other groups of people. In fact, that idea is enshrined in the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …”) for those with eyes to see it, with eyes not scaled over by religious dogma.

Second, my criticism is clearly directed toward those on the right who make certain claims about how this is a Christian nation, when, as I have said, it is obvious that this present humanitarian crisis demonstrates that we are not, never was, and were never meant to be. murrieta protestersKeep that in mind. I am not advocating that our immigration policy should be based on this or that interpretation of the New Testament or of the words of Jesus himself. What I have been doing is pointing out the hypocrisy of folks who claim they believe in the Bible, wave it in our faces and demand our government follow it, but ignore it when it says uncomfortable things like the following from the Old Testament:

The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.

Do you see anything in that scripture about treating those “foreigners” merely as lawbreakers? As illegals? “Love them as yourself,” the Bible says.

In the New Testament we have the claim that Jesus himself spent his early years in Egypt as what some Tea Party-ish Egyptians might have called an “illegal immigrant.” His parents brought him there, it is alleged, to escape a dangerous political regime in Palestine. Yet today we see countless people, many of them undoubtedly church-going Jesus-followers, ignoring Jesus when he says, “I was a stranger and you invited me in” and concluding,

…whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.

If any of those Central American children are not “one of the least of these,” then I don’t know who would be.

On this point I will add that I have been told all of my life that we are made in the “image of God,” as the Bible says. Such is supposedly why we are special creatures. I find it odd that the same people who believe the Bible is God’s Word, who presumably believe we are all created in God’s likeness, somehow see those seeking asylum here—even if they do so by crossing our border without documentation—as less than special creatures. More than odd, I find the hypocrisy appalling. According to the Apostle Paul, at one time Christians were “foreigners to the covenants of the promise” but now their “citizenship is in heaven,” so I don’t see how so many Christians today conclude that kids trying to find hope in the United States are simply lawbreakers who need to be sent home no matter the danger involved.

Third, you asked me, a local liberal, a fair question:

(W)hat do you suggest American policy should be in terms of controlling immigration across our Mexican border, specifically and should it be any different from how we control other immigration into America for anywhere else?

I’ll start by stating the obvious: We won’t all agree on what is a good immigration policy, one that satisfies our notions of law and order and justice while demonstrating a certain amount of compassion towards those desperately (and perhaps illegally) seeking work or asylum here. Good and honest people can disagree about the emphasis we place on law and order as opposed to compassion. Enforcing the laws and treating people compassionately are both components of any notion of the common good.

I will also tell you that based on my idea of the common good—how I derive such an idea is too long to go into—I begin with the proposition that borders ought not matter, when it comes to people starving to death or escaping some form of persecution. What I mean is that it is only natural for people, who cannot find work enough in one place to support themselves or their family, to seek work elsewhere. Just as it is natural for people to flee from things like forced gang membership by the threat of death or from oppressive regimes that threaten their liberty and well-being. Often there isn’t time to get in a orderly immigration line and wait.

With that in mind, I will give you my thoughts on the matter, with the understanding that I am responding provisionally and generally:

1. Those undocumented young people who are here because their parents brought them here (illegally) should be granted citizenship, without any strings attached, today. Right now. Not another minute should pass before that is done. These kids are American citizens in every way, except for the paperwork. Shame on the Republican Party for standing in the way of getting that accomplished. It is unconscionable.

2. The millions of other people here for years without proper documentation should be given a clear path to citizenship, along the lines adopted by the Obama administration. If you can pass a background check and you arrived here before, say, December 31, 2011 (as in the Senate version of immigration reform), then you can stay and partake of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, so long as you pay some taxes and a penalty and get in line behind those who sought citizenship legally. I would jettison Obama’s requirement that you have to learn English, since there are several palefaces here in Southwest Missouri who find the language challenging. Heck, one of them is a regular columnist for the Joplin Globe.

3. As for those Central American children and others who have come here in the last two years, they should be allowed to stay and eventually become citizens, if they can substantiate a claim that going back might prove dangerous. I will add that the evidence needed for substantiating such a claim would be rather modest, as far as I’m concerned. Most of them will need lawyers, or perhaps paralegals, for this, but so be it. Needless to say, we should provide the adequate funding to pay for legal assistance and basic humanitarian needs, like food, housing, and medical care, including immunizations. We should also establish more (and hopefully temporary) immigration courts to handle the current backlog (estimated to be around 367,000 cases, with 3200 of them in Missouri). Or else we could tell them to go to hell, which is essentially what some Americans, many of them Christians, are endorsing

4. If you have arrived here in the last two years but can’t prove a claim of asylum, then you should be able to prove you have some other reason that merits some type of forgiveness for entering the country illegally, like, for instance, reuniting with family members who are citizens (and immigration law should be changed to expedite the unification of families; that’s the least that so-called family values conservatives should do, don’t you think?). Again, such people would have to go to the back of the line and wait their turn to become citizens.

5. In order to clear up any misunderstandings and to discourage the dangerous trip through Mexico to the U.S. that thousands of children have taken, Congress should change the law so that Central American immigrants entering the country illegally can be deported faster than they can be under current law. Then an advertising campaign in the relevant countries should follow.

6. As for the border issue, for reasons other than keeping desperate people out, I support secure borders. In this age of portable terrorism, it makes no sense to have gaping holes in our border security. I will leave it to the expertise of others to figure out the best way to accomplish this, but I doubt putting up millions of pictures of Dick Cheney along the border would be an effective measure (it would, though, work for me; I wouldn’t come within a mile of the border), nor would building thousands of miles of foreboding fence be a viable option. I do think, however, that if folks like the two pictured below were positioned at the border, it might keep the foreigners, dangerous or otherwise, away:

7. We should open up the legal process and expand opportunities for foreign workers to come here and do what they do best. This would help discourage illegal immigration and perhaps prevent the deaths of hundreds of migrant deaths each year. Such a process should also provide help for U.S. workers adversely affected, help such as financial assistance and job training or re-training.

8. As President Obama has said countless times, we should also make it easier for foreign students educated in the United States to stay here and contribute to the nation’s well-being.

9. Step up law enforcement when it comes to employers hiring and financially abusing undocumented immigrants. Employers who knowingly hire folks without papers and who pay them sub-par wages should have to spend a year in Branson cleaning hotel rooms at the Baldknobbers Motor Inn. That should get their lawbreaking minds right.

10. We should also work more diligently with our nation-state neighbors closest to our southern border (about 80% of undocumented immigrants reportedly come from Mexico and other Latin American countries, which means we should focus our efforts there) in helping them better educate and better provide for their citizens, as well as fight people-traffickers who exploit horrific conditions and make a buck off fear and misery. Again, I will leave it to the experts to figure out how this could best be accomplished, but we should provide funding for a reasonable plan to help improve economic conditions.

by R. Duane Graham on July 6, 2014  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on July 6, 2014

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2014/07/06/christians-beware-a-10-point-plan-on-immigration-reform/

Of “Illegal Immigrant Children” And Millstone Necklaces

Let’s play a little game. I’ll provide you with three headlines and you tell me which one is from Fox “News.” Okay? Here we go:

1) Showdown: California town turns away buses of detained immigrants

2) Protesters Block Bus Carrying Immigrants

3) Protests turn back buses carrying illegal immigrant children

I know, I know. That was too easy. That last one, with its purposeful use of “illegal,” tells you all you need to know. And if, like me, you are wondering just how children can be illegal, I’ll get to that in a minute. For now, though, I will note that the obvious Fox headline appeared below an “Illegal Immigrants” header that linked to other stories on Fox, including: “Sheriff Arpaio calls for military action in border crisis.” Damn! I guess the hate-filled sheriff wants to send our troops into Mexico and threaten the kids before they get here! Then we wouldn’t have to worry about all those messy immigration laws! Genius!

In any case, one of the headlines I used was from NBC Los Angeles (“Protesters Block Bus Carrying Immigrants”) and if you bother to read some of the hundreds of comments on that story, you will be amazed at how much support the protesters in Murrieta, California, have. And by support I mean rabid support. It is hard to believe, when one reads through the comments, that the anger expressed is essentially directed toward children. Excuse me. “Illegal” children. As an example, I have selected a comment from “Lola Guin” (an “alternate profile” on Facebook from, uh, Massachusetts), who, as a “Top Commenter,” wrote:

...more of us need to be taking a stand like these good patriots. And to the illegal invader who is quoted in the article, due process only applies to citizens of this country. Illegals are not entitled to such things. When you break the law and invade another person’s country, you’re not afforded privileges like due process. Go back to your own country and make it better. Stop trying to mooch off the hard work of Americans. America is not the birthright of everyone on the planet. Our ancestors worked hard to make this country great. You can’t just show up after America becomes the most successful nation on the planet and expect to reap the rewards without putting in the work. You are NOT entitled to our tax money. Go home and do something with your own nations and get the heck out of ours. We’re all full up here, we can’t even support our own people because we’ve let too many of you leeches in. Trust me, illegal scum. You’re NOT wanted or needed here. Go away.

I remind you that was said to and about mostly kids, “illegal scum” and everything. The comment, so far, received 222 “likes.” Yikes.

I would bet ten-thousand Romney dollars that whoever Lola Guin is that he or she is some kind of Christian. Same with many of the other people whose comments were hateful, bigoted, racist, or some combination. One such commenter to that NBC Los Angeles story happens to be a local woman, a local right-wing woman who often comments on Joplin Globe stories, named Mary Schillaci. A man named Jeff Wagner had the gall to write into the string of vitriolic commentary and say to someone,

I hope you don’t pretend to be a Christian. You make me sick to my stomach.

Our local right-winger from Carl Junction wrote back a shoutin’:

Jeff Wagner How about “God helps those who help themselves.” Fair enough? Their countries need to help their own people and we will help ours with OUR TAX DOLLARS. Americans first!

I think she got that “Americans first!” sentiment from the GOP Annotated Bible, although I can’t be sure. But I am sure that in the real, non-GOP Bible the quote she offered—“God helps those who help themselves”—isn’t in there. If it were, then Christianity itself is a joke because its central claim is that Jesus helped us and saved us precisely because we couldn’t help and save ourselves. So it would be more accurate, by Christian standards, to say that, “God helps those who can’t help themselves.” But I digress.

Judging from her Facebook page, Mary Schillaci has some interest in God. Earlier this year she posted the following:

mary schillaci on facebook

Now, in this present humanitarian crisis, that might be a good message to send to those children coming here from Central America, since it appears many of them are down to nothing. And it is likely that many of those children think that what God is up to is making a place for them here in Christian America.

Fat chance.

Commenting on that NBC Los Angeles story, Rich McKeever (his real name), who is another “Top Commenter,” wrote:

This is what needs to happen. It seems we must take a page from the leftist playbook and take to the streets. It worked at the Bundy ranch, it worked here and it will work elsewhere if we can turn out the overwhelming numbers of people we need to become, as they say, too big to fail.

The idea, thanks to Cliven Bundy and his right-wing promoters, is that if enough folks carrying guns get together and are willing to use those guns against the government, then, by God, those children coming up from Central America won’t have a fightin’ chance! And I say “by God” in this case because, as it happens, Rich McKeever says on his Facebook page that he likes “Being Christian,” which is another Facebook page “where you can learn how to accept Jesus Christ as your Savior, read daily devotionals, and be inspired.” 

Rich also says he likes a group called “Jesus Loves You,” which claims,

We’re giving away the love of Jesus Christ. 

Apparently when they were giving away the love of Christ, Rich was in a different line. Perhaps he was in line waiting to buy up all the ammo before Obama could get his hands on it, I don’t know. But we can see that Rich at least aspires to be a follower of Jesus. And just for him—no, for all those like him who want to simultaneously follow Jesus while being mean to desperate children from Central America—I have another news story for you about children, this time from a 1st-century journalist named Matthew, who was doing a write-up on Jesus:

At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

Whoops! But he’s not finished:

“Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.”

Uh-oh. “Illegal immigrant children,” anyone? “Illegal scum”? “God helps those who help themselves?” “Americans first!”? If I were those folks, I’d get to work on learning to swim while sporting a giant millstone necklace. And should they fail to figure out how to make that work, when they hit the ocean floor it might comfort them to know:

When you are down to nothing, God is up to something.

 

by R. Duane Graham on July 4, 2014  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on July 4, 2014

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2014/07/04/of-illegal-immigrant-children-and-millstone-necklaces/

Why A Muslim Teenager Is A Better Christian Than A Whole Roomful of Jesus-Loving Conservatives

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”

—Jesus of Nazareth, from the Sermon on the Mount

malala Yousafzai, the Muslim teenager who was shot in the head by the Taliban in Pakistan for advocating that, among other things, girls should go to school, appeared on Jon Stewart’s show, and the short segment is must-see television. She talked about how she first found out that the Taliban was targeting her (she was 14 at the time) and she revealed her subsequent thoughts (to a gasping Jon Stewart) about what she would do when a member of the Taliban came to do her harm:

malala yousafzaiI used to think that the Talib would come and just kill me. But then I said, “If he comes what would you do, Malala?”  Then I would reply to myself, “Malala just take a shoe and hit him,” but then I said, “If you hit a Talib with your shoe, then there would be no difference between you and the Talib. You must not treat others with that much cruelty and that much harshly. You must fight others through peace and through dialogue and through education”…I would tell him how important education is and that “I would even want education for your children as well. That’s what I want to tell you. Now do what you want.”

Now, I can’t imagine anything more in tune with Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount than that, can you?

Contrast that with what is currently going on at the 2013 Values Voter Summit in Washington, put on by an allegedly Jesus-loving outfit called the Family Research Council. Annually this group gets together to blaspheme their savior by essentially repudiating much of what he stood for in the scriptures these folks hold to be infallible.

Jesus, who offered folks free health care while he was on the earth, must have winced when Senator Mike Lee appeared this morning and said of the Affordable Care Act,

We must stop it. We must defund it. We cannot accept it.

He received a standing ovation from the roomful of, uh, Christians.

The gathered faithful also joyfully and enthusiastically welcomed a militant Mark Levin, a rabid talk-show host who said the President of the United States should just “sit down and shut up.” Apparently the applauding Bible-thumpers forgot about Romans 13, which I suggest they read in full, especially the parts I have highlighted for their edification:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience.

If one takes the Bible seriously, if one believes that it is the Word of God, as all those Values Voter Summit attendees do, then they all should hope that Barack Obama doesn’t take his “avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” role literally. It could get ugly.

Finally, there was Dr. Ben Carson, formerly a famous neurosurgeon and now an in-demand right-wing Christian speaker, who said the following about the Affordable Care Act, which, I remind you was primarily designed to bring health insurance to millions of folks who can’t afford it or can’t get it because of preexisting health conditions and keeps very much alive the for-profit health system:

I have to tell you ObamaCare is, really I think, the worst thing that’s happened in this nation since slavery. 

Dr. Carson, who appears to be black, went on to say that the new law “is slavery, in a way,” and it is “evil,” and it is “socialized medicine” and, of course, it is being used somehow to turn us into a commies.

These folks, I remind you, say they are Christians.

In any case, with all the weirdness going on in Washington, D.C., both in an out of the government, I suppose it makes perfect sense that a little Muslim girl from Pakistan, who bravely stood up to the fanatics around her and lived to tell about it, better represents the Sermon-on-the-Mount Jesus than all the Values Voter Christians put together.

by R. Duane Graham on October 11, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on October 11, 2013

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2013/10/11/why-a-muslim-teenager-is-a-better-christian-than-a-whole-roomful-of-jesus-loving-conservatives/

Billionaires, Big Jesus, And Barry

If you go to the Tulsa-based George Kaiser Family Foundation Facebook page, you’ll find this description of the “Non-Profit Organization”:

A charitable organization dedicated to breaking the cycle of poverty through investments in early childhood education, community health, social services and civic enhancement.

And you can find this nice article in the Tulsa World about the “non-profit” group:

George Kaiser Family Foundation gives $7.2 M to area nonprofits

The newspaper story quotes Ken Levit, Executive Director of the foundation:

Organizations in Tulsa are working hard to help meet the needs of many Tulsans who struggle to obtain basic needs and other critical services. The foundation is pleased to present these Social Services Safety Net 2012 year-end grants to assist organizations as they serve more individuals and families throughout the community.

All very nice stuff, no? I mean, helping to break the cycle of poverty, helping those who “struggle to obtain basic needs and other critical services”? Who could be against that? What a great guy this Kaiser fella must be. And by the way, he was a big fundraiser for Obama during his first presidential run. What a guy.

But then you can read a Bloomberg article today with this headline:

Billionaire Kaiser Exploiting Charity Loophole With Boats

Uh-oh.

One of the richest folks on the planet, who went to public schools in Tulsa, graduated from Harvard Bidness School, then returned to Oklahoma to work for his father in the oil bidness, George Kaiser has more money than God.

Okay, okay. At least he has more money than that 900-foot-tall Jesus who, reportedly, once told the late Tulsa evangelist Oral Roberts that he would see to it the faith preacher would have enough dough to build a City of Faith Medical and Research Center in Tulsa. And, guess what? The hospital was built and remained opened for eight years. It seems Big Jesus had the bucks to get it up and running, but didn’t have Kaiser-ish money to keep it going.

But I digress, even though Oral Roberts’ account of seeing Big Jesus seems much more honest than what Kaiser, at least according to Bloomberg, has been doing:

At least $1.25 billion of the charity’s $3.4 billion in assets is invested in ways that benefit Kaiser’s for-profit endeavors, according an analysis of the George Kaiser Family Foundation’s 2011 tax return by Bloomberg News. The charity invests alongside the billionaire’s stakes in some companies. In other instances, it directs funds in ways that support his for- profit businesses, such as the Excellence, which provides guaranteed shipping capacity.

“There are very wealthy people who play by the rules and others who don’t, who use public charities to further their business interests,” said Pablo Eisenberg, senior fellow at the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute. “One of the problems is the laws are so vague as to be absent of any serious regulation by the IRS or any state’s attorney general. Almost anything goes.”

Ouch. You can get more details from the article on how all this stuff works, much of it way over my head, and quite likely way over the head of our 900-foot-tall Jesus. But suffice it to say that the rich, as we say here on this blog all the time, are really, really different from you and me. And it’s not just that they play by a strange set of rules that don’t apply to the rest of us, it’s also that, well, I’ll just let a commenter on the article, going by the name of “jmzf,” explain  it:

The billionaires claim it’s perfectly legal and they should know since they paid the lobbyists to put it in the tax code, had their people draft the legislation and then contributed to lawmakers’ campaigns to get it passed.  Charity has been perverted here to benefit the billionaires, not the needy.

Again, ouch!

And in the comment section, I found other interesting takes, like this one from “gotohealth”:

Whether a market or state managed economy, excessive concentration of wealth never ends well for all concerned. Foundation scams, off-shores and prostrating vulgar politicians appear to be at an all-time high. The rabid pursuit of the least costly means of production is the fatal flaw in capitalism. Maybe not yet for management, but their redemption time will come.

None of us breathing now will likely live long enough to know if that prediction will come true, but it certainly describes the way I feel about it. And speaking of feelings, another commenter on the story had a decidedly different opinion:

Henry Miller:

Good for these people. Starve the Obama/Soetero beast.

Ah. It has been a while since I’ve come across that “Obama/Soetero” connection (it’s actually “Soetoro,” as in Barry Soetoro, but birther conspiracists don’t worry much about getting the spelling right), but it’s good that old Henry Miller used it because at least we know where he’s coming from, as another commenter demonstrated:

Benjamin Dover in reply to Henry Miller 

Oh, your mother must be so proud, Henry.  You have grown into a tool for the 1%, a Stepinfetchit for the modern age, a waterboy for the Kaisers & Romneys of the world.  Who do you imagine wrote and lobbied for the laws that allow people like Kaiser to create a fake “charity”, donate (& take tax deductions) for money given, and then have the “charity” use that money to support his own businesses?  It is theft, plain and simple, and the other 99% pay for it.  But you have no problem with that.  They say ignorance is bliss … you are clearly one of the most blissful people around!

And speaking of bliss, all of us can happily go about our day knowing that there are gazillionaires out there who are making names for themselves as big donors to Democrats and as big-time philanthropists and, as is the American way, figured out how to do all that and make a buck to boot!

What a country!

________________________________________

george kaiser

by R. Duane Graham on May 3, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on May 3, 2013

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2013/05/03/billionaires-big-jesus-and-barry/

Guns And Planks

Look at this headline from a couple of weeks ago:

Mexico: Towns Arm Themselves For Self-Protection Against Organized Crime

From the story:

While the argument that American citizens will take up arms against its government, or create militias to patrol unsafe streets seems like something out of a science fiction novel, but Mexican citizens in small towns in Mexico are doing exactly that.

Now, we can look down our collective noses at a country in which its citizens feel the need to take the law into their own hands, but consider the following headlines from today’s news across our own country:

At least 1 shot outside Texas courthouse

Teen Who Performed At Inaugural Events Fatally Shot

Alabama school bus shooter is a survivalist with anti-government views

Police searching for suspect who shot 3, killing 1 in Arizona office building

6 wounded in shootings overnight across Chicago

And here is an outrageous headline and lede from here in Missouri:

Dan Brown, Missouri State Senator, Wants Gun Education In First Grade

A Republican state senator in Missouri has proposed legislation that would make gun safety a mandatory part of the first-grade curriculum.

And, perhaps most outrageous of all, the following story aired on NPR this morning:

Milwaukee Sheriff: ‘You Have A Duty To Protect Yourself’

A top law enforcement official in Wisconsin is urging people to arm themselves for their own protection.

Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke is airing a new public service announcement telling residents that due to budget cuts, calling 911 for help is no longer their best option.

I will leave you with some wisdom from Jesus of Nazareth as applied to American civilization:

How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?

 

by R. Duane Graham on January 31, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on January 31, 2013

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2013/01/31/guns-and-planks/

Farting Jesus

I spent the first 16 years of my life living with this picture of Jesus:

heinrich hofmann jesus

Heinrich Hofmann’s 1890 “Christ in Gethsemane” graced the wall of our living room (okay, okay, it was a somewhat murkier copy) for all the time I lived at home. I stared at it often.

Look at Jesus sitting there, earnestly and majestically looking to heaven, with heaven looking back and lighting up his noggin’. This is the image I had of Jesus almost the entire time I was an evangelical Christian, a quaint mixture of earthiness—the slightly unkempt hair and the scraggly beard—and godliness—he could command supernaturally-lit attention from on high.

This picture, using an ancient inconographic technique, tells us that despite the messed-up hair and the wayward beard, Jesus wasn’t really like you and me. He was holiness on steroids.

I couldn’t help wondering, though, as a kid, if Jesus did ordinary things, things like take a piss or, well, worse. And when I wondered those things I felt guilty thinking about them, what with that halo and all.

In any case, the Jesus that many of us came to “know” was in so many ways the Untouchable Savior, in the sense that we were told that he was one-of-a-kind, without sin and without blemish. Tempted? Yes. Just like us. But Jesus never failed the test. He passed every time. Every time. Who could really relate to that? Who could, in ways that we would call personal, really know someone like that?

In all the Sunday school lessons I sat through, and then later all the sermons I endured—a few I even preached—I never heard anyone go so far as to say that we should think about a farting Jesus.

But let’s face it. Jesus passed gas. If he didn’t, he wasn’t like any man I know (and some women, but they shall remain nameless).

Now, we don’t have to think that Jesus was such a man that would deliberately, just for laughs, spray his disciples with the vapors, but maybe he did. After one such episode, I can imagine the rowdy Peter exclaiming,

Oh my God, Jesus! You needeth prayer!

Or something like that.

If any of this makes you cringe, don’t blame me. I started thinking about all this again when I read a piece on CNN’s Belief Blog by a bona fide right-wing fundamentalist big shot from Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. It was written by Johnnie Moore and titled, “Jesus was a dirty, dirty God,” and it began like this:

Jesus was a lot more like you than you think…

In order to make Jesus more you-like, Moore had the nerve to suggest to his “astounded colleagues” at Liberty that Jesus “might have even had dysentery on an occasion or two.” I know why his colleagues were stunned because I am sure there are lots of people who can’t imagine Jesus taking a dump, let alone having severe diarrhea.

He wrote,

It seems like an obvious statement if you believe that Jesus was “fully God” and “fully man” (as most evangelicals believe and call the Incarnation), but to some of us it seems in the least, inappropriate, and at the most, sacrilege, to imagine Jesus in this way. We might believe that God was also man, but we picture him with an ever-present halo over his head.

Yes, that’s pretty much the way I pictured Jesus, thanks to Heinrich Hofmann and essentially a fundamentalist upbringing. But Moore had more:

The real Jesus had dirt underneath his fingernails and calluses on his hands. He probably smelled badly from sweating profusely in the Judean sun on his long hikes to Jerusalem…

This dirty, sweaty Jesus is not the Jesus you meet in Sunday school, at least in the churches I attended. He’s been cleaned up for American consumption, and for American exploitation, ultimately for Republican-American exploitation. The Jesus of the evangelical right, which was once my Jesus, and the one who presumably endorses the GOP platform, is not a farting Jesus.

Oddly, in his portrayal of a gritty savior, Moore let this slip:

He was the teacher from a small town who knew and understood the economic insecurity that was common in the first century.

Ah. Economic insecurity. Jesus knew and understood that, says Moore. And thus it’s fair to ask, since economic insecurity is also common here in the twenty-first century, does Jesus still know and understand it?

Liberty University, the place where Johnnie Moore works—he is a “professor of religion and vice president”—invited Mitt Romney, a man no one would seriously argue understands economic insecurity, to speak at last year’s graduation, right in the middle of a presidential campaign, despite the fact that the theology taught at the university clearly excludes Mormonism from the ranks of Christianity. Why would the university welcome him to speak?

But more than that, why would a Jesus-loving, Bible-thumping Christian university invite Donald Trump to address their Jesus-loving, Bible-thumping students last September? In fact, why would any university worthy of the name invite him to speak on any topic?

But speak he did, after he was reportedly introduced by Jerry Falwell, Jr., as one of the “greatest visionaries of our time.” I’m sure that made both Trump and GOP Jesus very proud.

Trump did not disappoint. Toward the end of his speech he told the more than ten-thousand gathered youthful Jesus-worshipers:

Don’t let people take advantage. Get even. And you know, if nothing else, others will see that and they’re going to say, ‘You know, I’m going to let Jim Smith or Sarah Malone, I’m going to let them alone because they’re tough customers.

“Get even.” You know, in a weird sort of way, Trump has stumbled upon a great truth. “Get even” is God’s message in the Book of Revelation. But I digress.

After Trump’s remarks were criticized by offended true believers, some of them students who actually believe Liberty University stands for something spiritual, who actually believe that Jesus stood for something other than revenge, Trump’s spokesman, Michael Cohen, told ABC News:

I conferred with Johnnie Moore at Liberty University and questioned whether Jesus would ‘get even.’ The answer is ‘he would & he did.’ Johnny explained that the Bible is filled with stories of God getting even with his enemies, Jesus got even with the Pharisees and Christians believe that Jesus even got even with Satan by rising from the dead. God is portrayed as giving grace, but he is also portrayed as one tough character – just as Trump stated.

So now we know what Johnnie Moore really meant by his “dirty Jesus” claim. Not only did Jesus have dirt under his fingernails; not only did Jesus take a messy poop now and then; not only did Jesus get mad at the money changers; he actually got even with his enemies and, well, he apparently was a lot like Donald Trump!

Thus, here in twenty-first century America, we can see why Mitt Romney and Donald Trump were invited to speak at a fundamentalist university in an election year. The kids had to be introduced to the Jesus who endorses predatory capitalism, who endorses revenge, who endorses the contemporary values of the Republican Party.

And what better way of doing that than by introducing the kids to a couple of Republicans—both claiming to be Christians in good standing—who just happen to be very rich and who just happen to be unable to know or understand what Johnnie Moore said the biblical Jesus knew and understood: economic insecurity.

But the Republican-American Jesus knows nothing of that economic insecurity. He doesn’t sweat all that much, except at the gym. His fingernails are clean. There are no calluses on his hands. He is comfortable in board rooms and in corporate suites, the kinds of places where high-powered people meet to plan their next vulture capitalist adventure. He’s okay with folks who slander our black President as not being an American.

And when this Jesus farts, he often does so in bathrooms in buildings with TRUMP stamped all over them.

He too is a “dirty Jesus.” He just has a different kind of dirt on his hands.

by R. Duane Graham on January 13, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on January 13, 2013

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2013/01/13/farting-jesus/

“The Holy Grail Of Liberalism”

I heard Mitch McConnell, who spent four years as the leader of Senate Republicans trying to undermine Barack Obama’s presidency by undermining the economic recovery, say this today:

The only reason Democrats are insisting on raising rates is because raising rates on the so-called rich is the holy grail of liberalism. The holy grail of liberalism. There aim isn’t job creation; they’re interested in wealth destruction. Not job creation, but wealth destruction.

Like the Holy Grail related to Jesus, which mythically found its way into the hands of tidy-white Europeans for safekeeping (uh, but they seem to have lost it anyway), the myth that McConnell and other conservatives believe about liberals, you know, that we hate rich people and want to take all their stuff, is a persistent myth.

It is so persistent that a prominent leader of the Republican Party—right in the middle of what are supposed to be serious discussions on the budget—thinks nothing of standing on the floor of the U.S. Senate and proclaiming it to the world.

But is it really just a myth? Are liberals really “interested in wealth destruction” ? Really? Of course we are! Why? Because we want everyone to be poor! We want everyone to suffer and starve and die! That’s what we want. We want to destroy the rich so everyone can die in misery and pain equally. Yep, that’s what we want.

And the first step in doing that—our holiest of grails—is to put those onerous 39.6% Clinton tax rates back on the backs of the rich so they will just give up and quit. So they will just surrender all their money to us. So we can then take their money and give it to lazy slobs, mostly lazy slobs of color, who don’t want to work, who don’t want to do anything but live off the efforts of others, who want nothing more out of life than to sit around the house and suck the life out of the wealthy, those productive folks who Republicans tell us create all the jobs.

Jobs? Did someone say jobs? Who the hell needs jobs when we can destroy the wealthy!

Yes, that’s what we want; that’s why we exist.

And after all the wealth is gone, after we get our holy grail, and get our jollies on all that “wealth destruction,” then we liberals can sit back and watch everyone croak.

All thanks to us! Long live liberalism!

by R. Duane Graham on November 29, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on November 29, 2012

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/the-holy-grail-of-liberalism/

Is Mitt Romney The White Horse?

Since I am almost as fair and balanced as Fox “News,” I will give some free pub to, uh, Jesus:

I have wondered out loud whether “Evangelicals Hate Obama More Than They Love Jesus.” As a former evangelical Christian, my curiosity is the result of knowing that most, if not all, conservative evangelicals have been taught that Mormonism, the religion of Mitt Romney, is a cult.

And some folks take such things seriously:

The author of this funny-but-serious stuff is a televangelist named Bill Keller, a man who got a degree from Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University while cooling his heels in prison, the result of getting caught doing a little insider trading.

Keller says:

This election is NOT about politics, but a choice between two son’s of Satan, and the fact that this choice is nothing but a furtherance of God’s judgment on this nation for our sin.

A “news” distributor, Christian Newswire, featured this article in August:

Republicans Pray to Satan at the GOP Convention as Romney and His Surrogates Lie to Make Mainstream the Mormon Cult

The article begins:

Bill Keller, the world’s leading Internet Evangelist and the founder of LivePrayer.com, with over 2.4 million subscribers worldwide…was horrified as he watched a Mormon cult member lead mostly Biblical Christians at the Republican Convention last night in a prayer to Satan, since Mormons do not pray to the God of the Bible, but to a mythical “god” they believe who was once a man!

No one knows just how many evangelicals out there take Keller seriously (there’s no way to verify the claim on the Vote for Jesus website that over a million folks pledge to, well, vote for Jesus) and feel so disgusted by Mormonism that they will stay at home rather than vote for Romney-Satan (a recent Pew Forum poll found that 19% were “uncomfortable” with Romney’s faith), but I did find something interesting on the site, something I admit I was not familiar with in detail:

If Mitt Romney is elected, he will be the fulfillment of his cult’s polygamist, pedophile, racist, con artist, murdering founder Joseph Smith’s “White Horse” prophecy that Romney and all Mormon’s believe. That prophecy says that the United States will facing great economic and social unrest, a Mormon will be elected President, declare a national emergency and set aside the US Constitution and enact a Mormon theocracy. That may sound impossible, but ever since he was at BYU, Romney was called by his inner circle “the chosen one” to fulfill their cult’s prophecy.

Mitt Romney is known as “the chosen one”? And what the hell is the “White Horse” prophecy”?

It turns out that Brigham Young’s great-great granddaughter, Sue Emmett, has addressed this weird stuff about that weird prophecy. Emmett, who left the Mormon church because she considered it harmful to women (another issue that needs exploration), did an extensive interview with The Daily Beast, which revealed:

Regarding Romney and the presidency, Emmett cites a bit of Mormon lore called the White Horse Prophecy that has floated around since the time of Mormon founder Joseph Smith. It suggests that Mormons believe a time will come when the U.S. Constitution is eroding and Mormon leaders will save it and usher in a new theocracy with Mormons in charge. Emmett’s great-great-grandfather talked about it. In a discourse from 1855, Young wrote that “when the Constitution hangs, as it were, upon a single thread, they will have to call for the ‘Mormon’ Elders to save it from utter destruction; and they will step forth and do it.”

Romney has said that he considers the White Horse Prophecy just a matter of speculation by church members. “I haven’t heard my name associated with it or anything of that nature,” he told The Salt Lake Tribune in 2007. “That’s not official church doctrine…I don’t put that at the heart of my religious belief.”

But Emmett begs to differ. “I can guarantee you that there are millions of Mormons who believe this prophecy and see Romney as potential fulfillment of it,” she says. “As a Mormon, you grow up hearing about this prophecy. I think Mitt believes he has a mandate from God to become president so he can help move this along. I don’t know if it’s a conscious thought, but it’s in his subconscious.”

So, there are “millions of Mormons” who believe the White Horse Prophecy about an eroding Constitution and who believe Romney is its fulfillment. Well, the so-called erosion of the Constitution has been, of course, a constant theme of the Republican attack on Barack Obama. Rush Limbaugh summarized this attack:

The Constitution doesn’t matter to the [Obama] regime. The regime is simply saying, ‘To hell with the Constitution. We’re gonna implement this regardless what the Constitution says!’

Is it possible that the reason Romney is so willing to lie (“lying for the Lord” is justified in much Mormon thinking), to obfuscate, to abandon his principles and then embrace them again only to abandon them once more, is because he has a view of our Constitution that sees him, a Mormon, as its rescuer? And anything said or done in service to saving the Constitution is legitimate?

It so happens that the Mormon church, through its scriptures, explicitly states that our Constitution was not just a document created by men, but “a sacred document,” one that was, according to James Rogers, “established by God by men whom God raised for that purpose.“

Is it so far-fetched that a man so dedicated to his church, so loyal to its principles (if you doubt this see the video posted below and watch the fierceness with which he defends his church), would, along with millions of Mormons, see himself as The One who could save America and its Constitution?

I won’t pretend to know or won’t claim that Romney sees himself that way. I don’t know, and judging by his multiple positions perhaps he doesn’t know, what is in his mind at any given moment. But Mitt Romney said in February of this year:

I happen to believe that the principles and the values of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence are not just foundational and defining but they’re powerful. And they’re either inspired by God or they were written by brilliant people or perhaps a combination of both those things. But we have in those documents the way forward for America.

And then a few minutes later:

This is really a battle for the soul of America. It’s essential, it’s essential that we win this election and we get Barack Obama out of the White House and we get America back on course. I think the President is slowly but surely changing us into a European-style welfare state. That is not the kind of America we’ve known; that’s not the kind of America that my grandfather came…here for and that’s not the kind of America my dad was able to build his success in. And it’s not the kind of America that will allow your children and their children to have prosperity and freedom. We need America to remain as a merit society, an opportunity society. We need the principles of the Declaration and the Constitution to continue to be strong and guide America.

What does “a battle for the soul of America” mean to a committed Mormon, whose church believes that the Constitution is a sacred document given to us by God? Whose church continues entertaining a “White Horse Prophecy” the core of which is: “a time will come when the U.S. Constitution is eroding and Mormon leaders will save it and usher in a new theocracy with Mormons in charge“? What does that mean to Mr. Romney, who said the prophecy was not “at the heart” of his “religious belief.” If not the heart, then where is it? Perhaps someone should ask him.

James Rogers’ article I cited above is fascinating and includes this appeal to reporters reluctant to ask Romney about his religion:

The upshot to this credo is that LDS politicians serious about their beliefs have a significantly different understanding of the relationship of their religion to the U.S. government than almost any other religious politician in the U.S. I do not at all suggest that this disqualifies LDS members from holding political office. But it does raise honest and legitimate questions about unique implications of LDS scriptures for the U.S. Constitution, the American project, and the vocations of LDS politicians. What’s more, because of the highly political nature of these beliefs, these questions cannot be waved aside as unrelated to public life. Campaign reporters need to ask Romney to expand on LDS political theory and its implications when he suggests his belief in the LDS doctrine that the Constitution is divinely inspired.

Yes, reporters should do that. Now, who among us believes any of them ever will?

_________________________

Watch Mittens battle with WHO radio’s Jan Mickelson of Des Moines about his Mormon faith:

by R. Duane Graham on October 14, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on October 14, 2012

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/is-mitt-romney-the-white-horse/

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