Year: 2010

Right Wing Watch asks a similar question in a statement and blog post earlier this week.

Mr. Fischer has blamed the Holocaust on homosexuality and thinks Muslims should not be given citizenship and many more things, some of which I have written about. These are radioactive positions that would ordinarily send politicians running the other way.

Pass the popcorn.

I think the RWW post is worth the read as they are not making things up about Mr. Fischer’s views. They are extreme and regularly leave me scratching my head.

From where I sit, these kind of skirmishes are preliminary to what the next two election cycles will look like. The GOP appears to set to fragment with social and fiscal conservatives fighting for dominance for the tea party movement. Could 2012 be a Ross Perot kind of season where a Sarah Palin or Mike Huckabee is denied the GOP front runner status but goes off in third party direction?

At any rate, moderate voters disillusioned by the hope and no change reality of 2010 may well be frightened back to Obama and the Dems in 2012 if the Values Voter heavyweights (e.g., Romney, Huckabee, Pence, Gringrich) ignore or endorse the policies advocated by Fischer. However, it will be hard for them to do anything but show up and smile because the whole shooting match is being co-hosted by Fischer’s employer, the American Family Association.

More signs that the GOP may fail to take advantage of the mid-term malaise.

Bryan Fischer has discovered the secret to a safe and secure nation:

If you want to know why America has been kept safe since 9/11, I believe we have professional baseball, football, and basketball owners to thank for giving Americans the opportunity to engage in consistent corporate intercession for the safety of this nation.

Thanks to those corporate ministers of goodness and light, those deacons of deliverance – sports teams owners, fans can drink warm beer, eat bad food and deliver the nation because…wait for it

The singing of “God Bless America” has been a staple since 9/11 in virtually every major league baseball stadium, and, inspired by baseball’s example, is now a consistent part of pregame festivities at NFL games and NBA games, as well as college football and basketball games.

It is scriptural after all, I think the verse goes like this:

If My people, who are called by My name, will mindlessly mumble a prayer set to music at contests involving people who are paid obscene amounts of money, then I hear from heaven and keep evil people from blowing up your land.

I think that is in the OT somewhere.

On a serious note, I feel sure that the very patriotic Irving Berlin would be thrilled to know that his song is inspiring to many. He might also point out the roots of the song to his Jewish mother, if Wikipedia’s quote of the Economist is to be believed.

While he was growing up on the Lower East Side, she would say “God bless America” often, to indicate that, without America, her family would have had no place to go. The Economist magazine wrote that by writing “God Bless America”, Berlin was “producing a deep-felt paean to the country that had given him what he would have said was everything. It is a melody that still makes his fellow countrymen want to stand up and place their hands over their hearts.

Greensburg, Indiana is the scene of another suicide involving anti-gay harassment.

 

In contrast to some advice givers, I would say Greensburg schools need to talk about sexual orientation related harassment in their schools.

Tonight my local school district rolls out a bullying prevention program. I am on the committee charged with making it work and I have already heard concerns that the exercise is just some kind of left-leaning pro-gay thing. My reply is that my children in elementary school have been called anti-gay slurs. I live in a small town full of truly caring people and we still need to discuss respect for all. They do in Greensburg. I bet they do in your town too.

(Hat tip to Timothy Kincaid)

TalkToAction asks this question using different words.

This information is important to help evaluate the rise of Lou Engle and Cindy Jacobs in Republican politics during the last decade.

For our Ugandan friends worried about American intervention in your nation: Check it out, Uganda, Hawaii and Alaska – The United States of the New Apostolic Reformation (USNAR).  

These efforts to win political entities (states, nations) rest on what I believe to be a faulty understanding of God’s OT covenant with the nation of Israel. In short, the NAR folks take the covenant God made with Israel to apply to the Church. One of the key verses identified in the TalkToAction post is Deuteronomy 28:13:

The LORD will make you the head, not the tail. If you pay attention to the commands of the LORD your God that I give you this day and carefully follow them, you will always be at the top, never at the bottom.

Even though the ministry of Jesus was to usher in a new covenant, the adherents of NAR want the old one to apply prescriptively to the present day. They seem to believe Christians can take these promises to the cosmic bank if they take over the nation (state, city, etc.). Likewise, listening to Lou Engle, it becomes clear, he believes that the problems America faces derives from failure to follow the law of Moses.

However, none of these promises or threats of curse apply to anyone but Israel as is clear from the first verse of the next chapter (Deut. 29:1):

These are the terms of the covenant the LORD commanded Moses to make with the Israelites in Moab, in addition to the covenant he had made with them at Horeb.

I do not think the United States of America as a nation is referenced in the Bible. In my view, viewing these promises and curses directed toward Israel as applying to the US or any other nation is egocentric thinking.

All of this may seem like theological inside baseball, but given the continuing merger of NAR religious leaders and some elements within the GOP, understanding these theological foundations will be key to understanding at least the next two elections.

Buy some votes?