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jack3566The Problem of Pastors
The Reverend Wright issue brings forth an issue regarding why he is an issue, and Hagee is not as big of an issue for McCain. You can wheel out a number of excuses like “oh, McCain wasn’t in church listening to Hagee for 20 years”. Which is true, but I consider that void because McCain not only accepted the endorsement, but also said he was honored to have it. Joe Lieberman also spoke in front of Hagee’s group and gave him quite a bit of praise. So why is the establishment so into the Wright thing, and not the Hagee thing? The answer is quite simple.
Hagee: “All hurricanes are acts of God, because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that.”
And Wright:
Wright: “The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes three-strike laws and wants them to sing God Bless America. No! No No! Not God bless America, God damn America … for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating its citizens as less than humans. God damn America as long as she tries to act like she is God and supreme.”
As Jon Stewart put it so well, Hagee doesn’t want God to damn America, he just wants him to destroy the parts of it he doesn’t like. Hagee puts forth the archaic point of view that God is the cause of all natural disasters. I wonder what Florida did that was so bad a few years back .. maybe because they allow gay day at Disney World? All natural disasters are proven to be natural works of weather, they even occur during certain times of the year, and to say otherwise is living in complete ignorance, in the same manner of those who think the planet is 5,000 years old. Or maybe God is just more wrathful during summer and early fall, so that is when all the hurricanes are?
Wright: “We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because of stuff we have done overseas is now brought back into our own backyard. America is chickens coming home to roost.”
Oh yeah, and on the other end of the spectrum, Hagee believes that we need to attack Iran do bring about the end times and the second coming of Christ, along with a bunch of crap about Israel. Sounds like a smart guy to me.
As for “hate” speech, here is Hagee’s views of Catholicism:
“A Godless theology of hate that no one dared try to stop for a thousand years produced a harvest of hate.”
“Most readers will be shocked by the clear record of history linking Adolf Hitler and the Roman Catholic Church in a conspiracy to exterminate the Jews.”
Does anyone else find it funny that Catholics supposedly caused a “harvest of hate”, but all these legally insane pastors from the protestant faiths have been spewing sermons against other Christian sects, liberals, muslims, homosexuals (maybe they are actually secretly taking notes from Ahmadinejad).
So why then, do ‘conservatives’ not only give a pass to most of these pastors, but actually embrace them, while tearing down the likes of Wright? The only real way to find the answer is to look closely and broadly at the statements I have presented (and others made by Wright and other white pastors).
Notice that Hagee and other pastors strike at specific groups: New Orleans people, homosexuals, Catholics, muslims, etc. Now notice that the comments by Wright that have gotten so much attention are a critique not of a specific group necessarily, but of the country itself, and the establishment, and the state. He doesn’t say “God damn Catholics”, he says “God damn America”, which is an attack on the country and the state. Religious conservatives, who use their religion as a symbolic worship of the state (as has been argued, you may disagree) find that unacceptable, while ignoring pastors who say “fags” need to be killed, the people who died in Katrina deserved it for their sins, etc.
Filed under: Barack Obama, Democrats, Election 2008, Politics
Big difference between taking an endorsement and sitting in his pews for 20 years. As far as endorsements, Obama has essentially picked them up from Ahmadinejad, Chavez, and a certain FARC rebel recently taken by Colombia. I doubt you would expect Obama to be judged by those; I don’t.
As a recovering Catholic, I have to agree with Hagee about the Whore of Rome. Of course, that begs the question why he is a follower/leader of an offshoot of that same religion. Just as Jesus (if such a person actually exisited) intended not on founding a new faith, but of reforming a Judiasm gone astray, Martin Luther was a Catholic cleric who only wanted to nudge his faith back on the right track.
All non-Catholic Christian religions are sects of Catholicism, deal with it. And it follows from there that Catholicism is a sect of Judiasm (they just believe the Messiah has come already), as is Islam. All 3 religions trace their essential roots back to Abraham. The Fundy who tells you Catholics aren’t Christian is as much the fool as the Sunni who tells you Shia aren’t Muslim. (Of course, plenty of Catholics aren’t christian [lower-case 'c'], but that goes for most Protestants as well.)
All of these attempts at “Pastorgate” (on both sides) seem like the inverse of a favorite pithy saying of another of my least favorite faiths, Atheism. It a bit of “Your imaginary friend is more evil than my imaginary friend.”
All because they lack the guts to admit they don’t know something that is beyond the capacity of the human mind to understand.
Actually, there is one argument I have heard that would put Catholicism and Christianity in different boats completely and that is the meaning of Communion or the Eucharist. Not concerning transfiguration, but concerning the Catholic proposition that the Eucharist must be repeatedly taken to absolve yourself from sin. Christians believe that Jesus died once to save you from your sins provided you believe and are repentant. The Catholic approach essentially denies that your salvation was a one time event and instead places responsibility on each believer to repeatedly take the wine and wafer for redemption. At least that is how it was explained to me. Maybe a Catholic who truly understands this can chime in here?