The New Exodus from Oppression
By Mel Seesholtz
Created Oct 9 2006 - 8:29am
On October 6, 2006 The New York Times featured an article [1] titled
"Evangelicals Fear the Loss of Their Teenagers." The opening sentence said
it all: "Despite their packed megachurches, their political clout and their
increasing visibility on the national stage, evangelical Christian leaders
are warning one another that their teenagers are abandoning the faith in
droves."
Life - especially for a teenager - should be celebratory, not filled with
the doom and gloom, fire and brimstone evangelicals love to rain down on
everyone, including their own kids. As the muse Serendipity said in the 1999
film Dogma [2], some Christians - especially bible-thumping,
everything-is-a-sin, we're-right-all-others-are-wrong evangelical
Christians - don't celebrate spirituality, "they mourn it." And rightfully
so, since they've killed it with their concocted anti-human dour dogma.
So what did the evangelical elders blame for the teens' mass exodus?
Certainly not themselves or their message of intolerance, hate and bigotry:
I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to
let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good...Our goal is a
Christian nation. We have a Biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer
this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism.
- Randall Terry, currently a Republican candidate for the Florida state
senate
Certainly not their own hysterical preaching that everyone who disagrees
with their extremist agenda is innately evil and the cause of all the
world's evils:
The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a
socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave
their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy
capitalism, and become lesbians.
- Pat Robertson
I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists,
and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an
alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way - all of them
who have tried to secularize America - I point the finger in their face and
say "you helped this happen. ... [God allowed] the enemies of America to
give us probably what we deserve."
- Jerry Falwell on the cause of September 11, 2001
Certainly not the preposterous anti-knowledge, pro-ignorance claims made by
prominent leaders of the evangelical Christian Right:
The Bible is the inerrant...word of the living God. It is absolutely
infallible, without error in all matters pertaining to faith and practice,
as well as in areas such as geography, science, history, etc. [italics
added]
- Jerry Falwell
They blamed "a pervasive culture of cynicism about religion, and the casual
'hooking up' approach to sex so pervasive on MTV, on Web sites for teenagers
and in hip-hop, rap and rock music." Ho-hum. How predictable.
Perhaps these self-righteous evangelical leaders should take a closer look
at themselves and their "morality" that was so well represented by Jim
Bakker [3], Jimmy Swaggart [4] and, of course, murder advocate [5] Pat
Robertson.
Randall Balmer, professor of American religious history at the Barnard
College of Columbia University, recently asked the poignant question:
Where's religious right's outrage now? [6]
Where is the "moral majority" when we need it?
In 1979, Jerry Falwell formed an organization called Moral Majority, part
of a larger initiative to register politically conservative evangelicals who
would bring their "Christian values" into the public arena. The mobilization
of these voters, who became known as the religious right, contributed,
perhaps decisively, to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Ever since,
the leaders of the religious right have been unsparing in their
pronouncements on everything from abortion and welfare reform to Mideast
policy and homosexuality.
But on the defining moral issues of our day, the war in Iraq and the Bush
administration's use of torture against those it has designated as "enemy
combatants," these "voices of morality" are strangely silent.
The war in Iraq claims more than a hundred civilian casualties a day and
consumes $250 million daily in taxpayers' money - funds that presumably
could go toward rebuilding Iraq or New Orleans, hunger relief in Africa, or
the revitalization of public education, especially in neighborhoods mired in
poverty. And yet, although the Bush administration led us into war under
pretext - the supposed al-Qaeda connection and weapons of mass destruction -
leaders of the religious right have yet to question the morality of the war
in Iraq.
Professor Balmer was correct, mostly. But at least one of the most
hate-filled, rabidly Republican [7], pro-war, anti-gay [8] leaders of the
Christian Right - and a Jack Abramoff beneficiary [9] - advocates not only
concentration camps (which he euphemistically called "cities of refuge
[10]"), but "Rev. Louis Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition [11] is
so in favor of torture he told [John] McCain that the senator either
supports the torture bill or he can forget about the evangelical Christian
vote. I'd like to see an evangelical vote on that one. I don't know how
Sheldon defines traditional values, but deliberately inflicting terrible
physical pain or stress on someone who is completely helpless strikes me as
.... well, torture" [link added].
Syndicated columnist Molly Ivins [12] was right about Lou Sheldon's
immorality [13], extreme homophobia, advocacy of torture and the hate that
underwrites all three.
Like his hero [14] Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia [15], Sheldon
doesn't believe that every American - every human being - deserves civil
rights, a concept the vast majority of America's youth have grown up with
and consider "a given." Perhaps that's another reason they're leaving the
evangelical fold. They see through the sanctimonious veneer of its leaders
to the rotting bigotry beneath.
--
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Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
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