News Hounds promises to watch Fox so we don’t have to, and I was certainly not going to spend the evening while on vacation July 1 watching a discussion on the “state of religion in America.” Here is a portion of their report of the show:
On July 1st Beck had a discussion about the “state of religion in America” with “an incredible panel of religious leaders and experts” who are straight out of the American religious fringe – in other words, those “Christians” who feel that it is their sacred duty to rid the country of Satanic things like gays and abortions. They, like Beck, want to bring prayer back into the public schools. It goes without saying that there were no Jews or mainline Protestants represented. The only Catholic was a rabid conservative and not your average parish priest who, while being anti-abortion/gay marriage, might be just a tad too librul on immigration issues. Along with David Barton and John Hagee were the following: Ralph Reed, who was paid by lobbyist Jack Abramoff to fight casinos competing with Abramoff’s clients (there’s a plot line on “Big Love” that seems to draw on this); Jim Garlow, who is head of Gingrich’s “Renewing American Leadership;” Richard Lee who has edited a “Patriot’s Bible;” Robert George, a Catholic professor at Princeton (Woodrow Wilson scholar LOL), who is the founder of the homophobic National Organization for Marriage (Which advocates one man one woman for as many times as ya want!); and Steven Broden who hates the IRS and Darwin.
These “BFF’s” of Jesus talked about the same old, same old meme that evil librul America needs to get right with Jesus crap that is the bread and butter (certainly “bread” as $ for these types.) Are we surprised that Barton talked about the Christianity of the Founders? While he did note that there were Jewish “Founding Fathers” (The gender inclusive “Founders” is not popular with Glenn’s posse), he didn’t note that there is criticism that the Founders had very little respect for Jews. Are we surprised that “social justice” is connected to Marxism? Barton claimed that he had stats saying that when “social spending” goes up, church attendance goes down. (So, Dave, you keep people poor to keep them in the pews?) George spoke of the Catholic tradition of social justice, but then qualified it by noting that it has been “corrupted” to support a welfare state. He advanced the right wing meme that the Nazis were socialists. Hagee, who is on heterosexual marriage #2 said that the problem with too many Christian churches is that they are too soft on sin and that God gave Israel a property deed.
