Tag: Conservative Christianity

Fake Arrests of Ohio Ministers Designed to Sell Christian Persecution Myth

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Christian Persecution Myth

Fake Arrests of Ohio Ministers Designed to Sell Christian Persecution Myth

By: Hrafnkell Haraldsson

FakeArrests
Because there is no actual footage of Christians being persecuted in this country – you know, because no Christians are actually BEING persecuted in this country – a group of Ohio ministers had to stage some arrests, employing actual cops to help them.Hint: Groups that actually get arrested don’t have to stage arrests – they can show actual footage. Guess which group that doesn’t include: Christians. Here is a short video of one arrest, just to give you an idea:

Here is the far more gratuitous full version, complete with suggestive blood graphics, set to the song “Bad Boys” – you know, “Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?”

In all, three ministers – the Rev. Melford Elliott, pastor at Greater Bethel Baptist Church; the Rev. Robert Golson, pastor at Prince of Peace Baptist Church; and the Rev. Vincent Peterson, pastor at Providence Baptist Church – were “arrested”  at their churches, in front of their congregations (Pope Francis will no doubt be relieved that none of his flock participated in this foolishness).

All of this was, reports the Akron Beacon Journal, “to make people more aware of what it takes for pastors to defend the Christian faith beyond preaching on Sundays.” Yes, because American pastors are regularly subject to arrest by the government while preaching to their flock. Occupational hazard, I’m afraid. Seriously, they are more likely to be shot by fellow conservatives armed to the teeth by Republican lawmakers and fired up by Fox News. A video of the “arrests” posted on the Internet made a big splash and forced Summit County Sheriff Steve Barry to explain that “the arrests were simulated as a prelude to an upcoming production at the Akron Civic Theatre.” The video, it turns out, was meant to be a marketing tool (it was a production of Larry James, who is general manager of Cleveland-based KAZ Radio Television Network). Barry said, in defense of his actions (two of his deputies were actually on duty and being paid),

“I feel we have an obligation to the community as part of our community policing and community relations. It took nothing away from their assignments and it was a good way to continue building relationships.”

Yes, because paid public employees should participate in activities that present Christianity as a persecuted religion. In fact, the Beacon Journal points out, “most parishioners were unaware that the arrests were fake.” Apologies? None from the sheriff. And Edra Frazier, marketing coordinator for production said only in defense of letting viewers think the pastors were actually being arrested, “We do, however, need to do a more adequate job of tagging the posts with production information.” Right. That’s all they did wrong. As the Friendly Atheist wrote at Patheos yesterday, “Putting on a stage play is one thing. But that church officials are reduced to staging arrests by bad-guy cops (who clearly represent the long arm of government) is the best illustration yet of how absolutely deranged the Christian persecution narrative has become.” Deranged is a good word for it.

Conservative Christianity has never been busier persecuting everything outside itself – women, the LGBT community, Muslims, ethnic minorities, atheists, secularists, Pagans and other religious minorities. We have filled the virtual pages of PoliticusUSA with post after post, tracking their activities across America. The scope of their hostility is truly staggering. They want to outlaw everything they say their Bible doesn’t approve of, they want to legalize their persecution of people they say their Bible doesn’t approve of, they want to withdraw First Amendment protections from other religions, insisting they apply only to Christianity (no matter what the First Amendment actually says). At CPAC – the Conservative Political Action Conference – this year, Media Matters reports that,

[C]onservative columnist Ken Blackwell, who also holds leadership positions at the National Rifle Association (NRA) and Family Research Council (FRC), used health care reform to compare the Obama administration to a “totalitarian” or “authoritarian” regime and conspiratorially claimed that Obamacare was designed to “destroy the family” and “silence the church.”

They claim your having health insurance is a persecution of their religion. They want to forcibly take it away from you in the name of their God. And yet, as they force your children to die for want of medication they won’t let you have, they claim themselves to be the true victims of persecution. As the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) points out, Behind the ‘Religious Freedom’ Attacks on Gay Rights Lurks a Broad Attack on Civil Rights. Yes, they are deranged. But no less dangerous for it. This video, and the activities of these pastors and these deputies, illustrate the depths to which they will sink in order to perpetrate their persecution myth on America.

Further Revelations of Hypocrisy By “Family Values” Manslut Dinesh D’Souza | Pathetic Right Wing Two-Faced Deceiver Dinesh D’Souza

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Dinesh D'Souza, Family Values Hypocrite, Family Values Hypocrites, Family Values Whores, Right Wing Brain Is Dysfunctional, Right Wing Buffoons, Right Wing Crackpot, Right Wing Nuts, Wingnuts

D’Souza Accused Obama of ‘Attacking the Traditional Values Agenda’ Just Before Sex Scandal Revelations
Submitted by Ariella

Last week, conservative pseudo-intellectual Dinesh D’Souza was featured on a conference call for Rick Scarborough’s 40 Days to Save America. D’Souza said Obama is “attacking the traditional values agenda” by supporting marriage equality and abortion rights, arguing that “Obama doesn’t like traditional Christianity because he identifies it with colonialism.” However, D’Souza’s rhetoric about “traditional morality” may be undermined by the fact that at a recent conference he reportedly shared a hotel room with a woman other than his wife, whom he introduced as his fiancée. D’Souza later admitted to getting engaged to his girlfriend even though he is still married, but denies sharing a hotel room with her at the conference.

Why is Obama on the social issues — and I’m thinking here of abortion, I’m thinking here of gay marriage — why is Obama so aggressive in attacking the traditional values agenda? I think the reason for it is because when Obama thinks about colonialism, about the British and the French who went abroad to conquer other countries, or earlier the Spanish and the Portuguese, I come from a part of India that was a Portuguese colony at one time, I think for Obama colonialism is identified not just with the soldiers but also with the missionaries. Remember it’s the missionaries that went alongside the conquerors, the conquistadors, came to the Americas and worked on converting the Indians and later missionaries went to China, India and Japan. So I think this is the problem, Obama doesn’t like traditional Christianity because he identifies it with colonialism. Obama’s own Christianity is more of a Third World liberation theology, a very different kind of Jeremiah Wright type philosophy, summarized in the idea that America is the rogue nation in the world.

Later, D’Souza said that politics are driven by a moral and spiritual divide that only God can change, grateful that we don’t have “an absentee God like Obama’s dad.”

Ultimately there’s a political divide in this country but underneath that is a moral divide, and underneath that is a spiritual divide. I think that the deepest problems facing America and the West in the end are not political, they are spiritual. This is why it makes sense even as we debate policy issues, even as we debate moral issues, to turn to the maker of the universe, this maker of the universe that isn’t just an absentee God like Obama’s dad, a kind of absentee father who got things going and then took off but a God who cares about each one of us and certainly about our country.

Update: In a recent interview with pastor Jack Hibbs, D’Souza reiterated his theory that Obama supports abortion rights and marriage equality because he has a “pathological hatred for traditional Christianity” because it is a symbol of colonialism and that Democrats are eager to discredit his film because if Obama’s worldview is understood, nobody will vote for him:

Update II: The Daily Beast is now reporting that D’Souza has resigned as president of The King’s College, the evangelical school he has led since 2010.

It was not immediately clear whether the board’s decision was driven by the allegations of the affair, or by dissatisfaction with D’Souza’s leadership that had been building at the college for months. At the meeting Thursday, [Chairman of the Board of Trustees Andy] Mills did not discuss the board’s conversation about D’Souza or give reasons for his departure. Representatives for the college did not respond to requests for comment.

According to several sources at the college, members of the King’s faculty and board alike had grown hostile to D’Souza’s presidency over what they saw as a failure to earn his reported million-dollar salary. D’Souza has spent much of the past few months promoting his documentary, 2016: Obama’s America, and his high profile in the media was seen as rarely benefitting the college. It may even have been seen as a detriment: According to a former staffer familiar with the college’s public relations, King’s employees have been explicitly tasked with disentangling D’Souza’s extracurricular activities from the college’s reputation. D’Souza became a non-presence on the college’s official Facebook page throughout 2012, which staffers say was no coincidence.

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Sperm-Donor Addicted GOP Hyopcrite Bill Johnson | The Party of Wankers

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in GOP Wankers, Wingnuts

The Tale of the Obsessed Sperm-Donating Alabama Gubernatorial Candidate

Former Alabama GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill Johnson has left his wife and family and moved to New Zealand, where he’ll be free to donate as much sperm as he wants.

Bill Johnson, a former Alabama gubernatorial candidate, has left his wife and family in Prattville to be with babies he secretly conceived as a sperm donor in New Zealand.

Johnson’s wife, Kathy Hale Johnson, told the New Zealand Herald that Johnson recently returned to live in New Zealand where he donated sperm to at least 10 women without her knowledge.

“He wants me to move over there. He’s not coming back,” she said told the newspaper.

She said Johnson plans to apply for residency so he can stay in New Zealand, and that he intends to donate sperm to additional women.

“He is obsessed with this. He doesn’t want to stop,” she said.

Bill Johnson ran, of course, as a “family values” candidate. Big, big families. Several of them.

Johnson, 52, finished fifth among a field of seven candidates for governor in the 2010 GOP primary, capturing less than 2 percent of the vote. He ran as a conservative Christian who opposed gay marriage.

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