If you want to get a picture of how fundamentally sick and twisted the New Apostolic Reformation is at bottom, I offer as an example a video recently released by Rick Joyner.

Yesterday, Joyner released a "webinar" with another prominent NAR leader, Bob Jones (no relation to the guy who founded Bob Jones University).  Both Joyner and Jones are reckoned as "prophets" in the movement.  Jones repeated what is apparently an article of faith on the religious right--that Hurricane Sandy and the nor'easter that came behind it were God's way of punishing the Northeast for legalizing same-sex marriage.  He sarcastically characterized Sandy as a "blessing."  And he and Joyner actually laughed about it.  That's right, LAUGHED.  People for the American Way got a clip (they start laughing at about the 45-second mark).

 

Watch the whole thing (if you can stand it) here, and pile up the dislikes.

I've seen some pretty outrageous stuff from the religious right.  But this is the first clip in awhile that literally has me shaking with anger.  There are thousands of people still without power.  In some parts of New York, the damage is so severe that ConEd won't even turn the power back on unless the house has been certified safe by an electrician.  And these bastards have the nerve to laugh about it?  Charlotte may be a big city, but I don't think there's anywhere in this town where you can buy cojones that big.

Crash Joyner's Inbox at info at morningstarministries dot org.

Last Sunday, Rick Joyner told his flock at MorningStar Fellowship Church in Fort Mill, South Carolina (only 20 minutes south of me--gag) that if Obama is reelected, he plans to set up "the worst, most terrible form of tyranny there has ever been seen on this earth."  

Joyner is being just a little bit--OK, very--disingenuous.  You'll recall that Joyner and others of his ilk believe that the only way Jesus can come back is if they take over the world and suppress all who dare to oppose them.  In this world, all "evildoers" will face a stark choice--convert or be killed.  Indeed, Joyner himself said back in 2007 that the regime he wants to set up is going to look a lot like a dictatorship.  And yet, Joyner accuses Obama of being a dictator--and does so with a straight face.  The mind reels.

Joyner also ticked off the usual fundie shibboleths about Obama.  He claimed that no Christian can in good conscience vote for Obama because he is "the most anti-Christian" president we've ever had, and that you have to be "deluded" and "seriously deceived" to think Obama is really a Christian.

The sermon is split up into three parts on Joyner's YouTube channel.  Watch Part 1 here, Part 2 here and Part 3 here--and pile up the dislikes.  If you want just the highlights, People for the American Way got a clip.

Boston University religion scholar Stephen Prothero has been one of the mainstream media's "go to" religion scholars - all the more notable, his CNN Belief Blog column My Take: Billy Graham and Ralph Reed are putting politics before God, in which Prothero, evincing astonishment at Billy Graham recent, controversial endorsement of Mitt Romney's presidential candidacy, walks up to the tacit admission that his assessment of the religious right has been incorrect:

I used to believe that the purpose of the religious right was to infuse American politics with Christian politicians and Christian politics. I no longer believe that. The purpose of the religious right is to use the Christian God for political purposes. Why any Christian, conservative or liberal, can say "Amen" to that is beyond me.

I am perfectly happy to see Reed stump for Romney in Ohio and Graham plump for Romney in an ad in The Wall Street Journal. Just don't tell me they are doing so as Christians. They are doing so as shills for the GOP.

Of course, at the end there Prothero does fall into the all-too frequent trap of believing that the GOP and the religious right are two distinct groups.

But even there, his expression of the misconception is better than usual too - whereas, in the What's the Matter With Kansas model the foot soldiers of the religious right are merely dupes of the supposedly secular GOP (and they lack captains, it would seem), in Prothero's construction they at least get a more active role, as "shills".

I offer a short critique and rebuttal of Thomas Frank's Kansas hypothesis here. I'll be writing on the theme more in coming months.

This truly inspired graphic from a Daily Kos website contributor divides various controversial Republican statements on rape into easy-to-grasp categories, "Gift-from-God Rape", "Legitimate Rape", "Honest Rape", and so on. Enjoy.

I tried my own version of this, which was an essay on recent GOP rape statements (Mourdock Inflames The GOP's "Divine Rape" Problem) but I think the graphic, below, does a better job.

Reducing Christianity and American civic engagement to the things that happen in our underpants is terrible Christianity and even worse citizenship.

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This past weekend, the America for Jesus 2012 rally took over Independence Mall in Philadelphia.  A quick perusal of YouTube hasn't turned up anything really outrageous from that rally--which is surprising given that it was heavily influenced by the most extreme elements of the religious right.  Its leadership team was made up mostly of major players in the New Apostolic Reformation, the out-and-out fascist wing of the religious right that actually believes it can bring about the Second Coming by taking over the world.  

However, a look-see at America for Jesus' Facebook page reveals that it may have succeeded in hoodwinking Philadelphia's City Hall and one of the few sane Republicans left in the Pennsylvania State Senate into endorsing the rally, per a press release pasted there.

State Senator Stewart Greenleaf noted that America was founded by God-inspired individuals like William Penn, telling the crowd, "Today has been designated by the Pennsylvania State Senate as William Penn Day, and we pray that our nation will continue to be a beacon to the world."

Deputy Philadelphia Mayor Richard Negrin brought greetings from City Hall saying, "You are standing on holy ground. In that building behind you, there are three words, 'We the people.' We have a right to worship...to exercise our religion, our free speech and all our rights in the Bill of Rights. Today you stand here with faith in your heart and a burning desire to worship just like William Penn did all those years ago."

I wonder if Negrin and Greenleaf have been willing to appear at this rally if they'd known more about the people behind it.  Like Cindy Jacobs, who believed the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" caused birds to fall from the sky dead, has declared war on separation of church and state and believes this country is going to be in major trouble with God unless it elects more conservative Republicans.  Or Harry Jackson, who believes Christians need to form a "fifth column" in order to roll back anyone standing in their way--thus aping a strategy employed by the borderline fascist Francisco Franco.  Or the rally's national chairwoman, Anne Gimenez, whose husband John organized the "Washington for Jesus" rally 32 years ago--a rally that helped launch the modern-day religious right?

Live your life as if there are no miracles and everything is a miracle.
- Albert Einstein

Crisis in Religion
A spate of bestsellers--The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins; The End of Faith by Sam Harris; and God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by the late Christopher Hitchens--argues that religion, as we've known it, no longer serves the needs of our scientific, cosmopolitan world.

Books like these appeal to a public put off by science deniers, repulsed by clerical abuses, and alarmed by fundamentalist zealotry. Contemporary religious leaders, painfully aware of the relationship between public participation and institutional viability, know that empty pews, like empty theaters, herald obsolescence.

If religion is serious about restoring its public reputation, it could do so by partnering with science. I know that sounds naive, but hear me out. Religion heralds "peace on Earth, goodwill toward men." Science gives us reason to think we can vanquish famine, disease, and poverty. What would it take for these venerable antagonists to emulate Rick and Louis in Casablanca and form a beautiful friendship?

By way of introducing my answer to this question, I'd like to acknowledge that, despite its current ill-repute in some quarters, religion has in fact gotten some very big things right.

Samuel Rodriguez recently sat down with Charisma magazine to discuss this weekend's America for Jesus 2012 event in Philadelphia.  For those who don't know, it's being spearheaded by Anne Gimenez, the widow of the guy who was behind the infamous "Washington For Jesus" rally in 1980, John Gimenez.  Rodriguez has very close ties to the New Apostolic Reformation--in fact, he is a former board member of the Oak Initiative, an NAR-tilted think tank run by so-called prophet Rick Joyner (based just south of me in Fort Mill, South Carolina--gag).  America for Jesus' leadership team is chock full of NAR bigshots--including Cindy Jacobs, Lou Engle, Ron Luce, Harry Jackson and Jim Garlow.

Rodriguez makes no bones about what he wants to see this rally accomplish--to alter the outcome of the presidential election.

I believe that God has a purpose for this rally. I believe it will serve as an ignition point for the church to really light up. There's an election coming up in November. There are decisions that a Christian has to make. I hope this rally will engage the Spirit of God in each and every Christian to go beyond political ideology and to start holding Biblical worldview and go biblical about it. And I hope the church understands that the only thing that can save America in the end is not the donkey or the elephant but the agenda of the land. But we need to act according to that agenda in the name of Jesus.

Anyone who has followed these dominionists knows exactly what Rodriguez means by "going biblical"--taking over the the seven forces that shape our culture (business, government, media, entertainment, education, family and religion) in order to "reclaim" them for God.  Seen in this light, Rodriguez' vision perfectly dovetails with a piece Charisma published earlier this year by Jackson in which he called for Christians to form a "fifth column" in order to help take back the country. 

And now for a break from the usual programming...

Woohoo! I'm so excited! Well, not really, but for a while now, I've been wondering what is going to replace the Mayan-inspired 2012-is-the-end-of-the-world craze that is due to expire in three months time.

We've had Y2K, an obvious bust, and 2012, which is about to go out with a whimper, but what's next? The only date that I could think of is around 2030, which would be the 2,000th anniversary of the Jesus's ministry and/or death and resurrection--approximately, of course, but there will be no end of people who will claim to know the exact dates in the years ahead, mark my words.

Now, that's still around 18 years away, and such a long lead time might not be good for the apocalypse business, but I'm at a loss for an intermediate date (preferably around 10 years from now, not too far, but not too near) that would mark a significant event that could double as the end of the world. The next computer-related date that makes any sense is 2038 when time runs out on the old 32-bit Unix clock (well, ticks over to zero), but there probably won't be any 32-bit Unix systems left by then anyway.

So, for the moment, we're stuck with 2030, which will undoubtedly be a big draw for conservative "Bible-believing" Christians everywhere, especially those of an eschatological bent.

Anyway, that was my own conclusion a few months ago, and I had to laugh earlier today when I actually heard someone on the radio confirming my hypothesis. Now, this was not on a religious radio station--it was one that specialize in crackpot conspiracy theories related to the New World Order, including 9/11 being an inside job--but the presenter was babbling on about some nonsense to do with increasing earthquake activity (an old, long debunked favorite of the religious right) which segued into talking about the End Times and his theory that it would happen within the next 20 years, to coincide with--you guessed it--the ministry and death and resurrection of Jesus!

Jackpot!

Of course, this is not the most pressing problem related to the religious right in America, not by a long shot, but it will be interesting to see what happens in the months and years ahead. I suspect the pattern will be this:

1. The lunatic fringe -- those who are not particularly religious, probably not even churchgoers, but who specialize in stuff like Nibiru (Planet X) and "earth-changes", i.e. the same folk who have been peddling the Mayan calendar 2012 connection -- will be the first to start marketing this as the next end of the world. They need something new to start writing books about and making their living on right away, and I've come to understand that while they don't really share the same beliefs and passions as the religious right, they are more than willing to accept Christian history and conservative Christian mythology as valid source material for their nonsense theories.

2. The fringe religious right -- i.e. the one's who are not currently at the center of the political fight over who runs the country, will latch on to it and publish their own detailed timelines of the End Times, pinning down the date to between around 2028 and 2033.

3. Finally, probably not for a few years yet, the belief will become widespread within the conservative religious community. The continuing "horrors" of socialism and rampant homosexuality in America will convince them that the End Times are approaching (as always), and finally, there will be a date near enough that most of them can look forward to seeing it (but not too close to shut up shop just yet). But I doubt there will be a huge bout of public date setting (too easy to be wrong). The fringe element will do that, but the rest will probably stick to "soon," at least in public, while they continue to lap up theories about the date in private.

Thinking about it, perhaps the late 2020s isn't too far away for it to be the next big date in the calendar of apocalypse-delayed. I wouldn't rule out an earlier date (around 2020) just yet, but if nothing else crops up by the end of next year, I think it's all but certain that around 2030 will be our next appointment for the end of the world.

The way things are going environmentally, let's just hope we all get to live long enough to see that one get canceled too.

There is a symbiotic relationship between the Christian-Right and the Islamophobia industry. Each needs the other in a mutual way. The Christian-Right needs reassurance that it’s fears are real and the Islamophobia industry needs money (as all industries do in order to survive), and gets this cash by selling this reassurance. 

 

Look no further than the recent Values Voter Summit for evidence of this relationship. Michelle Goldberg of the Daily Beast reports:

“If there was one dominant theme at this year’s Values Voter Summit, the right-wing confab organized by the Family Research Council, it was that President Obama is endangering the United States by coddling radical Islamists. “[W]hat we’re watching develop before our eyes today are the direct consequences of this administration’s policy of apology and appeasement across the globe,” Michele Bachmann said of the attacks on American embassies and consulates in the Middle East.”

 http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/15/right-wing-islam -obsession-at-the-values-voter-summit.html

 

cross-posted at dKos

Earlier today, People for the American Way's Right Wing Watch caught wind of just how far the Romney campaign is going to appease fundies.  On Friday, his wife Ann is due to speak at the first day of the Values Voter Summit.  Nope, this isn't snark--check out the schedule for yourself.

The Values Voter Summit is pretty much a who's who of religious right muckety-mucks.  Among those due to speak are Michele Bachmann, Gary Bauer, Glenn Beck, Michael Farris, Tony Perkins, Tim Wildmon and Mat Staver.  It's cosponsored by the American Family Association, Liberty Counsel and Family Research Counsel--three groups which, PFAW points out, are listed as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.  What makes it even more incomprehensible is that Paul Ryan is already scheduled to speak there.  

Two of the scheduled speakers, though, should really raise eyebrows--Jerry Boykin and Harry Jackson.  Boykin is not only one of the nation's leading Islamophobes, but is also a leading member of the New Apostolic Reformation.  Jackson is also a leading member of the NAR, and is also the leader of the effort to roll back marriage equality in DC.  Back in April, he wrote a column calling for Christians to form a "fifth column" in order to stop the supposed rollback of Christian influence in this country.