Friday, June 27, 2008

Slaughter 'em all

Not only is Hugh Hewitt terribly afraid of the Islams and Obamas, he's also terribly fond of the brutality of football and eager to watch his team "slaughter" another team in the sport.

But isn't Hewitt supposed to be a "Christian" kind of conservative? Is the kind of "Christian" society Hewitt wants to impose on us all one in which we go around "slaughtering" our enemies, literal and figurative, real and imagined (mostly imagined)?

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Bible Bamboozlement

Have you ever noticed that although conservative religious folk whine incessantly about how supposedly persecuted they are, how they aren't being allowed to practice their faith to the fullest extent in the public square, how somehow they and their faith are slighted by elites abroad in the land in academia, in the media, in Hollywood, etc, that when someone actually refers directly to what the Bible literally says, these same uptight, conservative fundies just blow their stacks, as if quoting from their holy book is intolerable?

After referring to the book of Leviticus's condoning and provision for slavery (the book of Exodus blesses it, too; take a read through chapter 21), for the buying and selling of human flesh, for created human beings, the Christianist brigade goes into overdrive complaining, bizarrely, that Obama is "deliberately distorting" the Bible and "dragging Biblical understanding through the mud."

But what is Obama distorting? He's merely quoting from the Bible, which they falsely claim to rever.

What the Dobsonites really mean is that it is unfair for Obama, or anyone, least of all the sheeples in the pews, to dare to interpret the Bible for themselves, to read it just as it is written. Rather, it is insinuated, there is a grand tradition of evangelical Christian thought that is the only proper intepreter and guardian of the scriptures, and that unless we are party to this elite consensus on the holy book, then our views, our readings, are invalid. Only religious elites like Dobson can explain the Bible for us. This is an old argument, at least as old as the Reformation when the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy first tried to prevent the widespread printing and distribution of the Bible and then when that became impossible, amped up its supposed prerogatives to infallibility, meaning that for the simple lay person, they could read the Bible, but couldn't decide for themselves what the texts meant or how to apply them. But as literacy and education have spread, and just as importantly, as people have become more healthy and prosperous, the would be dictators in the Roman Catholic Church, Southern Baptist Convention, Mormon church, and in Colorado Springs lose more of their hold on the public imagination. The same old tricks don't work any more.

Put simply, Dobson and his ilk believe only they are fit to interpret the Bible. The rest of us are supposed to follow mindlessly like the most rabid ignorant fanatics.



Dobson and his FOTF are a Joke

This is amusing.

Speaking of faith matters, Obama said:

"Which passages of scripture should guide our public policy?" Obama asked in the speech. "Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount?

"So before we get carried away, let's read our Bible now," Obama said, to cheers. "Folks haven't been reading their Bible."

He also called Jesus' Sermon on the Mount "a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our Defense Department would survive its application."

In response, Dobson's camp issued this declaimer:

...Obama should not be referencing antiquated dietary codes and passages from the Old Testament that are no longer relevant to the teachings of the New Testament.

Get that? The OT is just junk, according to Dobson. It's "antiquated" and "no longer relevant."

But then later, the FOTF chieftain through is PR minion issues this smarmy, contradictory statement:

"Evangelicals are people who take Bible interpretation very seriously, and the sort of speech he gave shows that he is worlds away in the views of evangelicals," he said.

Get that? "Evangelicals...take Bible interpretation very seriously." No, they don't. Just after throwing three quarters of the Christian holy book (i.e. The Old Testament) under the bus, Dobson's munchkin has the gall to claim that "Evangelicals....take Bible interpretation seriously."

But even if you allow Dobson and his crew to claim that when they want to impose Biblical morality on the country they really only mean the New Testament Bible, there's still that matter about the Sermon on the Mount and Obama's linking of those famous injunctions to the presence of the U.S. Department of War (er, Defense), which Dobson's mouthpiece didn't bother reflecting on.

So, when it really comes down to it, when you get through with Dobson's Christian Bible, what you have left is basically the covers.

Dobson and the Christianist, theocon community are a ridiculous joke.