Hijacking Christianity . . .

This article sums up nicely the issues that inspired me to start this blog originally: how the radical right wing has hijacked Christianity, the Republican Party and the American Flag. Christian Republican Americans used to be nice people to share the planet with. I don't know what that means anymore but it certainly isn't good.

Excerpts from Hijacking Christianity . . .
By Colbert I. King Saturday, April 23, Washington Post

The American flag was appropriated by the political right wing years ago. Now the Christian right is trying to hijack religion. This time it shouldn't be allowed to happen without a fight.

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It didn't help that some Vietnam War protesters stupidly burned the American flag. But what really ensured the loss of the flag to those who fancied themselves as having a monopoly on patriotism was the failure of equally patriotic Americans on the left and the middle to have any stomach for a fight.

Emboldened by their appropriation of the flag, ideologues on the right have now set their sights on religion, and specifically Christianity, as the means to promote their political agenda. And as the promoters of tomorrow's "Justice Sunday" national telecast have demonstrated, there is no depth to which they won't sink in their campaign to seize the country.

...[Tony] Perkins said that "activist courts, aided by liberal interest groups . . . have been quietly working under the veil of the judiciary, like thieves in the night, to rob us of our Christian heritage and our religious freedoms." That is an unmitigated lie that should not be allowed to stand.

Which judges are out to rob Christians of their heritage? That is religious McCarthyism. Perkins should name them, provide evidence of their attempted theft of "our Christian heritage" or retract that statement with an apology. Don't count on that happening.

Angered by Democratic opposition to some of President Bush's judicial nominees, Perkins's group has also put out a flier charging that "the filibuster . . . is being used against people of faith." To suggest Democrats are out to get "people of faith" is despicable demagoguery that the truly faithful ought to rise up and reject.
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... Where do those on the religious right get off thinking they have the right to decide who is in and who is out? Who appointed them sole promoters and defenders of the faith? What makes them think they are more holy and righteous than the rest of us?

Read the whole thing.
thanks to Citizen Spot for pointing this out.

Another good article in WaPo today points out that the judges being demonized by the radical christian right are not ethical humanists or atheists, but mostly practicing Christians themselves.

What these self-avowed Christians do not acknowledge -- and what the American public seems little aware of -- is that the war they are waging is actually against other people calling themselves Christians. To simplify: Right-wing and fundamentalist Christians are really at war with left-wing and mainstream Christians. It is a battle over both the meaning and practice of Christianity as well as over the definition and destiny of the republic. Secular humanism is a bogeyman, a smoke screen obscuring the right-wing Christians' struggle for supremacy.

It really doesn't matter whether or not you yourself practice any religion. This is still an issue that must be tackled and protested by anyone and everyone who is NOT a radical right wing religious fundamentalist, because these people are shredding our constitution, they are NOT christian and they will cause an internal religious war that just may be worse than any other in history if it's not nipped in the bud. Remember, those fanatics are the ones with all the guns. Ignoring it will not make it go away.