Washblog

And at one point back then on Meet the Press, Dr. Falwell asked James Wallis of Sojourners how, as an ordained minister he could vote for Mr. Kerry, who supportws abortion rights.

"I wouldn't vote for my mother if she were pro-choice,"

Falwell said.

Mr. Wallis replied:

"Yeah. You endorsing George Bush. That's fine. But you also called - you ordained him. You said all Christians could only vote for him. That's ridiculous. There are Christians who voted for deep reasons of faith for both candidates."

The president of Bob Jones University, a fundamentalist school in South Carolina, wrote to the re-elected George W,  Bush to say that his re-election showed that God has given the nation a reprieve from the agenda of paganism.

"In your re-election, God has graciously granted America--though she doesn't deserve it--a reprieve from the agenda of paganism,"

he said.

"You owe the liberals nothing."he said.,"They despise you because they despise your Christ."

On FOX News Channel, Reverend Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition of America, claimed that President George W. Bush won the 2004 presidential election because God preferred Bush over Senator John Kerry.

On the November 4 edition of FOX News Channel's Hannity & Colmes, when co-host Alan Colmes asked Robertson if Bush was "God's choice for president,"Robertson declared that Bush,

"has the favor of heaven"and that,"God has honored him."

When Colmes asked if that meant that former President Bill Clinton was also chosen by God, Robertson replied:

"I think He [God] wanted to bring America to its knees so we'd start praying harder."

Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family proselytized hard for Bush, organizing huge stadium rallies and using his radio program to warn his 7 million American listeners that not to vote would be a sin.

Talking points with spiritual substance

For all Christians who voted in the previous presidential election, we are where we are today because a small cadre of over-the-top conservative biblical literalists have stepped up and publicly assumed they could speak for all Christians without being challenged for their brazen impunity.

We let them get away with it which only emboldened their outrageous assumptions, leaving unchallenged the foolish but logical implications that God has endorsed their God's-mouthpiece credentials and that we must fear the false God they claim to represent.

Truth is, all Christians owe it to the God about whom Jesus taught to insure that not only our Christian-in-the-White-House, but our most prominent and shallow literalist Christian blowhards remain accountable for the consequences of everything said and done to influence future elections.

Part and parcel of the constant sermonizing coming from our pulpits is the notion of moral values.

Not only prominent preacher/political activists like Dr. Falwell, Robertson, James Kennedy, James Dobson and Bob Jones III have opened the door to their accountability for what happens from here on. Local preachers in every congregation in every city and hamlet where it was implied that voting against George Bush was voting against God's will need to seriously face the same accountability.

Now is the time for the demand that all those evangelical celebrities justify, defend and reconcile the statements, declarations and borne witness as to what they insisted was wanted by God.

It is not sufficient to hide behind the tiny billboard of gay-marriage, abortion and school prayers while ignoring the weightier matters of the Gospel taught by Christ.

We need to insist that Jerry, Pat, James, Bob and all those who proclaim self-righteousness and self-serving righteousness put the actions of their God-chosen president in a proper framework of real Christian morality.

In every congregation in America whether its majority supported Kerry or Bush, these same questions need to be asked of all ministers, priests and preachers.

With the current state of affairs in this country and around the world, these questions are vitally pertinent. To not ask them is to look away and pretend that real moral values do not matter.

Ask all of your shepherds these same questions and by all means do not tolerate evasion.

Forget timidity; be a genuinely bold and sincere follower of Christ. Ask and you will do God's will in asserting genuine spiritual consideration of God's ethics - the deeper and more legitimate river of ethics the than shallow end of the literalist biblical swimming hole.

"Dr. Falwell, is it Christian to help the rich get richer at the expense of the poorer?

Does the Bible teach that the poor deserve their lot? Do you preach such as God's doctrine?"

"Reverend Robertson, is it Christian to believe that when taxes must be paid to government that anyone member of society - especially the merchants - ought to be exempt?

Brother Bob, Is there any such thing at any time as killing for Christ?

Dr. Dobson, Can you flat out declare that in God's mind a gay person or couple who adopt a child and raise that child with love and honor will not go to heaven while a TV evangelist caught in adultery will be forgiven and go to the front of the line through the Pearly Gates?'

"Dr. Falwell, Jesus said to beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them and that hypocrites make a public clamor of their own righteousness. Are you the final authority in America on witches and the anti-Christ?"

"Reverend Robertson, Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, `God, I thank thee that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.'

But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, `God, be merciful to me a sinner!'

I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted."

Since you have stated more than once that your endorsement of Mr. Bush is God's endorsement of Mr. Bush. I demand of you a full exposition on why God approves or accepts collateral damage.

Why are the lives of Iraqi civilians of less value in the eys of God than other sheep of the flock?

Brother Bob, When Jesus said "But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither enter yourselves, nor allow those who would enter to go in," wasn't He saying that you have no human right to exclude anyone from heaven and condemn them to hell?

Are you the final arbiter of what it means to honor and not despise Christ?

Why?

Dr. Dobson, Jesus said  'Judge not, that you be not judged.' and ,'Woman, where are your accusers? Has no one condemned you?

Neither do I condemn you; go, and do not sin again.'

By what Christian moral value do you presume to judge and condemn?"

To all four of you:

You and all those evangelicals who take their cues from you owe it to your countrymen to extend your   pretended Christian patriotism to your own and their own families by immediately commencing a recruitment preaching to your young sons and daughters.

Sign yourselves and your kids up today or explain to America why God doesn't want you to participate in war despite your support for a self-proclaimed war president.

You and your children have a moral obligation to do more than make a cowardly vote for war policies and hide behind your pulpits and in your churches.

You owe it to all Christians to put your moral boots on the ground,

you owe it to all Christians to put your moral money where your moral mouths are,

you owe it to all Christians to put your faith in the End Times precisely where your Left Behind point of view leads.

If the End Times are near, then harm's way won't matter because you'll all be taken in the twinkling of an eye ... regardless of whether or not you succeed in cleaning up the global mess of suffering and violence you've helped create.:

You pretend prophets who are filled with no holy ghost of a chance of spiritual honesty owe us the respect of truthful responses. We ask of you a justification for your advocacy of so much that is totally contrary to the literal words of the literal Christian redeemer as recorded in your own evangelically literal Bibles.

Or you absolutely need to shut the hell up,

you need absolutely to get out of the way and let those who truly live lives of Christlike activism get on with bringing the foolishness to an end.

Yours sincerely in Christ and the God of Compassion,

Arthur Ruger,

Liberal and progressive Christian,
Lay Preacher - St John's Episcopal Parish,
Christian Social Worker