~ The Presidential Preacher Wars ~

Get yer semi-religious swag from Betty Bowers for WhiteHouse.org

http://www.cafepress.com/bettybowers/627903


“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”
Seneca, Roman Philosopher, mid-1st Century AD

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Wherein your Demon Opines that the Holier-than-Thou Plague in Presidential Politix has Finally Reached its Most Absurd and Completely Logical Apex ~ so let's have a Holy-Roller smackdown~

In the things your Demon would sorely like to see Department today~ a face-off, a royal rumble, an official smackdown featurin' those freaky, whacky, hate and brimstone-spewin' Presidential Preachers! Let's have a contest to see whose personal conception of God would despise, vilify,demonize and kill for no particular reason the greatest number of people on the slimmest of theological pretexts! Enquiring minds wanna know!

Leading the pack by two to one, John McCain has 2 Certifiably Crazy Holy Rollers in his camp, the 1st being Reverend Hagge in one corner, calling the Catholic Church a "cult" and the Whore of Babylon, but he doesn't have the sense to stop there, oh no! He also prays for Armageddon so the Christ-hating Jews will all go straight to hell, where they belong. Just a taste:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uViQ0hVV57Q

In the second corner, also for John McCain, we have a Reverend Parsley, who believes Allah was a demon spirit and that America was founded on the notion that Islam should be wiped from the face of earth (a "charitable" and "Christian" view, hey?) that Keith Olbermann is forced to debunk himself when McCain refuses to respond.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcaYNSZlnWY

Update: Is McCain really a Christian? He seems to have evaded baptism for 15 years according to his home-state pastor:

"McCain...was raised in the Episcopal Church but has been attending Yeary's church for about 15 years. Yeary declined to comment on McCain's reluctance to finally undergo a baptism ceremony, a key ritual of the faith. 'John and I are having continual dialogue about his spiritual pursuits,'" Yeary said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080322/pl_nm/usa_politics_mccain_pastor_dc_2;_ylt=ArwBUM2CnUiFFsqH6vR1EWvzj9AF

But none of that seems to be really remarkable, nor are McCain's holy-rolling preachers getting the attention they deserve over the past week, compared to the scorn and opprobrium heaped upon Obama's reverend for claiming that Jesus was a black man, and that white people were really, really, really mean to black people historically. Which, as to the latter, if you're African-American, seems a perfectly reasonable and plausible hypothesis. But right-wingers who have difficult relationships with historical fact resent it being thrown in their faces prefer and seem to prefer to view it as a matter of blacks having the proverbial chips on their shoulders or "reverse racism" and fear, if truth be told, that if a black man is ascendant politically, they'll be made to suffer somehow in retaliation.

Reverend Wright's experience in historical context: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/032208F.shtml

Reverend Wright's "Chickens Come Home to Roost" sermon in CONTEXT:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOdlnzkeoyQ

If in fact Obama is really Christian at all ~ he does have that middle name "Hussein," after all.

Update: Not to be out-religioned in the Holier-than-Thou Culture War, the Nation has an article on Hillary Clinton's relationship with the Lord, or at least those who purport to have a direct feed to Him. A former acolyte name of Sharlet reports:

"Sharlet generously attributes Clinton's involvement to the under-appreciated depth of her religiosity, but he himself struggles to define The Family's theological underpinnings.

"The Family avoids the word Christian but worships Jesus, though not the Jesus who promised the earth to the 'meek.' They believe that, in mass societies, it's only the elites who matter, the political leaders who can build God's 'dominion' on earth. Insofar as The Family has a consistent philosophy, it's all about power--cultivating it, building it and networking it together into ever-stronger units, or 'cells.' 'We work with power where we can,' Doug Coe has said, and 'build new power where we can't.'"

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080331/ehrenreich

~ Tip o' the tinfoil hat to Paul ~

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“On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind.”

~ Thomas Jefferson

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“Of all religions, Christianity is without a doubt the one that should inspire tolerance most, although, up to now, the Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.”

~ Voltaire

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“The tendency to turn human judgments into divine commands makes religion one of the most dangerous forces in the world.”

~ Georgia Harkness