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The DNC in Charlotte To Be Ground Zero for Fundamentalist Bigots

By: Hrafnkell HaraldssonSep. 2nd, 2012more from Hrafnkell Haraldsson

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Fundamentalists are working themselves up over the Democratic National Convention. If this surprises you, look at how they reacted to their own convention. Some Christian fundamentlaists are still having problems with Mitt Romney’s nomination by the Republican Party. If they think of Obama as demonic, they do not find Romney to be any better, as ChrisitanNewsWire reveals:

Bill Keller, the world’s leading Internet Evangelist and the founder of LivePrayer.com, with over 2.4 million subscribers worldwide reading the Daily Devotional he has written every morning for 13 years on the issues of the day from a Biblical worldview, 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!

Bryan Fischer tweeted on the 31st with regards to Mitt Romney, “Mormons used words tonight they rarely use: ‘congregation, pastor, clergy.’ Aim: we’re just another Christian denomination.” You know his heart isn’t in the Romney camp. Poor fella is really caught between a rock and a hard place, surrounded by “fake” Christians.

So it should come as a surprise to no one that some fundamentalists were quite concerned that a Sikh was allowed to deliver the invocation at the Republican National Convention, Bryan Fischer prominent among them.

The unfortunate Ishwar Singh is the president of the Sikh Society of Central Florida and letting him give an invocation is better than being surrounded by soul-thirsting Southern Baptists bringing him to Christ.

He was, not surprisingly, the first Sikh to speak at a Republican National Convention and he may well be the last. Fischer tweeted on the 29th that, “A Sikh will pray tonight at RNC. Christians should be respectful, but not bow their heads. Praying to a different God.”

Seems odd. I have no problem bowing my head for Christian prayers. It IS respectful to do so. But Janet Mefferd of the gay pagan hysteria was even worse, saying that people “who don’t have the slightest similarity to us” shouldn’t be allowed to pray at the convention. She was not talking only about Ishwar Singh, but echoes of Bill Keller, Mitt Romney.

On Thursday, a day after complaining about Sikhs praying, Fischer noticed in a tweet that there was “no Protestant on the ticket for the GOP; no evangelical prayers at RNC convention. Two firsts.” I don’t know what he’s complaining about: he’s got his fundamentalist Bartonian platform, David Barton bragging that 70 of 71 of his motions of stupid shit to add to the platform were accepted.

If it seems in all this like fundamentalist Christians are looking for ways to claim persecution it is because they are. And it’s nothing new. We know it’s an old, old trick, one dating back to the early Christian centuries when those seeking martyrdom would do all in their power to get a Pagan Roman magistrate to kill them.

It got so bad in those days that one such exasperated Roman official, the Roman proconsul of Asia, C. Arrius Antoninus, the church father Tertullian relates, shouted, “You wretches, if you want to die, you have cliffs to leap from and ropes to hang by.”[1] Even today, perhaps particularly today, almost twenty centuries later, one has to sympathize with him.

Which brings us again to Christian Newswire, which almost triumphantly reports that the Democratic National Convention (DNC) says that “the Church of Jesus Christ in Charlotte ‘does not reflect its values.’” Instead, they claim, Islam is the choice of religion for the DNC. Muslims, of course, we are told, are busy all over the Middle East chopping off Christian heads and forcing them to convert.

You do the fundamentalist math: 1 + 1 = 666:

The DNC is tolerant of all religions except one – Christianity! Why? The DNC hates the God of the Bible. It hates the God of our Pilgrim Forefathers and Founding Fathers. It hates the God (Jesus) who made America great and made her strong. It simply hates any judge but itself.

The DNC not having anything in common with a particular church (not Christianity overall, mind you, but a particular church), should not be shocking to any Christian who is willing to be honest with himself about Christianity’s own long animosity towards “other” Christianities. And perhaps honesty is the issue here.

The story is that Charlotte714, a so-called “non-political”  group of Pastors and “Christian leaders” who are praying to God “to restore our nation, requested permission to pass out gifts and Christian literature to arriving DNC delegates, they were refused. The reason: ‘…the values of Charlotte714 do not reflect the values of the DNC.’”

An obvious question to ask is why, if Charlotte714 is non-political, they are so excited to evangelize a political convention. Don’t they have, oh, I don’t know…non-political things they ought to be doing?

But they are positively feverish with excitement that the DNC is coming to town: “We thank our God that He has brought the DNC here.”

Sounds pretty political to me. But then, these clowns also think they’re being persecuted.

And they don’t like that the Charlotte Observer is talking about their plans.  ”‘Charlotte714,’  is the brainstorm of brothers David and Jason Benham. It gets its name from Scripture. In 2 Chronicles 7:14, God says he will forgive his people’s sins and ‘heal their land’ if they ‘shall humble themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways.’”

Wow, imagine that. A passage from the Old Testament and not the words of Jesus. Can you see my surprise? Can you? Look closely.

But in accordance to the precept that “there is no crime for those who have Christ”  the Benham brothers are particularly upset by this revelation, if I can use that word:

The Benhams, both former professional baseball players, are the twin sons of Flip Benham, the controversial minister and anti-abortion activist headquartered in Concord.

Flip Benham is the national director of ‘Operation Save America.’ Last year, he was convicted of stalking a Charlotte doctor.”

(Note: the doctor was not stalking (e.g. persecuting) Benham.)

He [Flip Benham] reported was part of a group that interrupted services at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Charlotte when openly gay Bishop Gene Roberts spoke there in February.

Again, this is something Pagan Romans became familiar with, the phenomenon of the “hissing Christian” who disrupted Pagan rituals in order to make Pagans made enough at them to give them a good martyring. If the Roman government did not persecute these disturbers of the peace, Pagan mobs were more than willing to administer rough justice.

That is all Flip Benham was doing – fishing for persecution – and that is all his sons are doing by prodding the DNC. As I said, it’s a game fundamentalist Christians have been playing for 2000 years. Bryan Fischer is doing it too:

The Democratic National Convention can expect to be portrayed as a Demonic soirée. Right Wing Watch noticed that Bryan Fischer has already announced that it will be a “three day death camp.” “HotAir blogger Ed Morrissey who called the DNC ‘abortion-palooza,’ Fischer said the DNC will be a “three day Auschwitz.”

We have to take all this with a grain of sand coming from supporters and participants of the Republican Liathon in Tampa. Seriously.

Bryan Fischer apparently spoke for many fundamentalists though obviously not all when he tweeted yesterday:

Mefferd was less charitable, saying “I’m not saying people from different religions can’t vote Republican, but what this really is is a syncretism that is kind of seeping under the door like a gas.”

Most would call it a big tent: for Mefferd it is syncretism. I’d tell her that she’s 2000 years too late to shut the door on syncretism but facts don’t actually matter to people like Mefferd, and really, the point is that if the Republicans are going to take this kind of heat, Democrats shouldn’t be surprised that Bachmann’s “spiritual hurricane” rips into Charlotte.

 

[1] Tertullian, ad Scap. 5.


The DNC in Charlotte To Be Ground Zero for Fundamentalist Bigots was written by Hrafnkell Haraldsson for PoliticusUSA.
© PoliticusUSA, Sep. 2nd, 2012. All Rights Reserved

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