(As ever,many thanks to my friends at The Sinner’s Guide To The Evangelical Right)
Yes, it’s been another productive week here in America Jesusland. What with the War on Christmas © in full swing, you can hardly turn on your television without being reminded of the reason for the season…and from what I can tell, it sure ain’t celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. With Bill O’Reilly running off at the mouth at full throttle, you’d think that us Liberals were the ones who crucified Christ. Nah, we’re just the ones who decided that we needed a holiday to prop up the retail sector of the American economy.
Even with the War on Christmas © in full flower, there were plenty of instances of uber-religiousness silliness during the past week. So, without further ado…here’s the latest episode of “This Week In Jesusland”:
NJ Teacher Tells History Class They Will Go To Hell : A public high school teacher lectures his history class that they will go to hell if they don’t accept Jesus….During lectures in September teacher David Paszkiewicz, who, according to local news reports, also works as a Baptist youth pastor at a local church, told students that evolution is not scientific and claimed that there were dinosaurs on Noah’s ark. He also told them that if they did not accept Jesus, they belong in hell. Uh, doesn’t this seem redundant, warning kids about going to Hell? After all, they live in New Jersey.
How White Was My Savior? Why has the portrayal of Jesus in art drifted far from the likelihood he was a brown-skinned Semitic Jew?: While we can never be exactly sure of what Jesus, Mary and Joseph actually looked like, we know they were not fair-skinned, flaxen-haired Europeans. And, though an emerging fringe of historians would argue otherwise, it’s fairly certain they weren’t black Africans. In all likelihood, what they were was something in between: olive-skinned, dark-featured Semitic Jews living in Israel. Yet depictions of them as such are exceedingly rare compared to the countless number of images that have proliferated through the millennia portraying them as Caucasians.…. Let’s face facts, shall we? We want to worship a Savior who looks like us. No one is going to want to worship a Savior who looks as if he might a member of Hamas or Hezbollah. It’s simple human nature, really; people will be much more likely to follow the teachings of Christ if he looks like he’s from Manhattan Beach. It’s all about the packaging, no?
Inquiry Sought Over Evangelical Video: Defense Department Asked to Examine Officers’ Acts Supporting Christian Group: A military watchdog group is asking the Defense Department to investigate whether seven Army and Air Force officers violated regulations by appearing in uniform in a promotional video for an evangelical Christian organization. In the video, much of which was filmed inside the Pentagon, four generals and three colonels praise the Christian Embassy, a group that evangelizes among military leaders, politicians and diplomats in Washington. Some of the officers describe their efforts to spread their faith within the military.…. Hey, what do you think “Onward Christian Soldiers” refers to? After all, if you listen to Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader, you’d understand that the war in Iraq is a holy undertaking endorsed by the Almighty. Who would Jesus bomb??
Forcing religion on consumers is anti-Christmas: Only America’s Religious Right is able to find controversy where it does not exist. There is nothing more anti-Christmas than forcing American businesses and employees to say Merry Christmas. And only in consumerism-run-amok America is it important to force retail workers who make minimum wage to wish every shopper, “Merry Christmas.” Humbug to those phony Christians who think Christmas is all about minimum-wage employees uttering vapid niceties to gluttonous shoppers in mega-store foyers and checkout lanes! If the Religious Righteous want to demonstrate their commitment to the Christmas spirit, let them start by boycotting the big-box retailers who refuse to pay their workers a living wage and family-sustainable benefits. The Religious Right, in its zeal to make every American conform to a specified form of speech during Christmas, is not much different than the Roman Empire requiring its citizens to say “Hail Caesar!” or the Third Reich requiring Germans to greet one another by uttering “Heil Hitler!”…. THANK YOU!! Finally, someone has the moral courage to remember and point out the real “reason for the season”: propping up the retail sector of the American economy.
Merry Christmas greeting reflects the reality of the Christian holiday: Conservative pundit and recreational nutjob Jay Sekulow has a bone to pick with all y’all PC types: [T]he Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the Establishment Clause neither requires nor allows government hostility toward religion. In 1984, the high court held that the Constitution “affirmatively mandates accommodation, not merely tolerance, of all religions, and forbids hostility toward any.” Still, that doesn’t stop the rising tide of political correctness — especially at this time of year. In Chicago, city officials and event organizers amazingly concluded that a movie about the birth of Jesus Christ had no place in a Christmas festival. City and festival organizers booted the movie The Nativity Story as a sponsor of the German Christkindlmarket — a Christmas festival in downtown Chicago. The city said it was concerned the movie might be offensive to non-Christians. The fact is that by removing The Nativity Story as a festival sponsor, it is many Christians who were offended. And, in a one school district in Tennessee, the ACLU has gone to court and is challenging what it calls “unconstitutional religious activities” at a school. That “unconstitutional” activity includes students singing Away in a Manger and Joy to the World at a Christmas event.…. Remember, when it comes to the War on Christmas, if you’re not with Bill O’Reilly, you’re with the ACLU (which, truth be told, is code for “Red-baiting, America-hating pond scum”).
Pastor resigns over homosexuality: In a tearful videotaped message Sunday to his congregation, the senior pastor of a thriving evangelical megachurch in south metro Denver confessed to sexual relations with other men and announced he had voluntarily resigned his pulpit. A month ago, the Rev. Paul Barnes of Grace Chapel in Doug las County preached to his 2,100-member congregation about integrity and grace in the aftermath of the Ted Haggard drugs-and-gay-sex scandal. Now, the 54-year-old Barnes joins Haggard as a fallen evangelical minister who preached that homosexuality was a sin but grappled with a hidden life.…Damn, is it raining men in Colorado or what??? Then again, why does admitting to who you truly have to be a source of shame and ignominy? We can’t we all just be who we are without having to conform to some artficial dogma that brands a portion of mankind as evil and unworthy?
Christians Take Jesus With Them…Literally: Jesus went to the mall and a movie Saturday.…. He would have gone to the Gap as well, but He’d left His credit card at home.
Top conservative news site says soy products make you gay: I don’t know what’s on God’s menu these days, but you can sure as Hell bet it ain’t soy products…. There’s a slow poison out there that’s severely damaging our children and threatening to tear apart our culture….The dangerous food I’m speaking of is soy. Soybean products are feminizing, and they’re all over the place….Unfortunately, when you eat or drink a lot of soy stuff, you’re also getting substantial quantities of estrogens. Estrogens are female hormones. If you’re a woman, you’re flooding your system with a substance it can’t handle in surplus. If you’re a man, you’re suppressing your masculinity and stimulating your “female side,” physically and mentally….Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That’s why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today’s rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products.….Jesus wants a hamburger….NOW!
Would serial killer Dahmer have been an evangelist?: He murdered 17 young men and boys in a sexually driven orgy of necrophilia and cannibalism. Then, in prison, Jeffrey Dahmer found God. Now the minister who presided over his jailhouse baptism and conversion says Dahmer’s 1994 beating death at the hands of a fellow inmate while serving multiple life sentences cut short a faith-spreading mission Dahmer would have carried to others behind bars had he lived….’He was growing (in faith) and he would have been a great influence on other inmates. He would have had a tremendous impact,’ said the Rev. Roy Ratcliff, a Church of Christ minister who baptized Dahmer in a prison whirlpool tub in May 1994.…. Or would this have meant Dahmer would simply have been biting off more than he could chew? (nyuknyuknyuk….)
Evangelicals debate: who will decide God’s politics?: The Christian Coalition must tread carefully. This year chapters in Alabama, Iowa and Ohio severed ties over concerns that the organization was abandoning its core values. Such schisms illustrate the ideological fault lines that have long rumbled and shifted throughout the feistily independent history of evangelical Christianity. As evangelicals have become more closely associated with politics, those lines have grown more pronounced….…. Hmm…how ‘bout a steel cage death match? That oughta settle things…. :0)
