What Will Come (Again) From One Pastor's Insanity? Terry Jones' Plan For Good Friday And The Largest Mosque In America

   ISN'T $100,000 A SMALL PRICE TO PAY 

      FOR MURDER AND MAYHEM?

Pastor Terry Jones has had the longest-running 15 minutes of fame in history, and he won't let up: his plans to protest in front of the country's largest mosque this Friday has re-ignited alarms throughout the country. And nowhere in the country is there more cause for alarm than Dearborn, MI:

DEARBORN, Mich., April 19 (UPI) -- Terry Jones, the Koran-burning Florida pastor, says Detroit-area police and prosecutors are trying to silence him by demanding a $100,000 bond.

Jones plans to visit Dearborn, Mich., which has one of the biggest Muslim populations in the country, on Good Friday, The Detroit News reported. Prosecutors filed a motion Friday requesting he put up a "peace bond" and saying he could cause a riot "complete with discharge of firearms."

The Dearborn police said he should put up $100,000 to cover the cost of overtime, Jones said. He called the move unconstitutional and said he does not plan to pay.

So it has come to this: Jones will have his day come hell or ...


The irony of Jones' latest attempt at publicity has not gone unnoticed simply because Jones intended it to be a rather twisted way of declaring Christianity to be superior to Islam: Good Friday is a day for remembering the ultimate sacrifice. Jones has been disillusioned into thinking that HE is making some kind of sacrifice: his taste of power, coupled with death threats made against him, have goaded him into a self-image as a savior of sorts. No matter that even the group that initially enabled him in his efforts pulled out of the event at the last minute: a group called the Order of the Dragon planned to protest at Dearborn's City Hall on Friday, but canceled after they met with city officials. The group is dedicated to protecting "our country from the rise of radical Islam." They withdrew their request to protest after being told that Dearborn did not in any way practice Sharia Law.


Jones certainly cannot take any comfort in the fact that his planned protest has actually brought religious leaders together:

Metro Detroit religious leaders plan prayer vigils Thursday and Friday to show solidarity against Jones. A prayer event is planned Thursday at the mosque, while another vigil is planned at the Ford Community and Performing Arts Center in Dearborn on Friday before Jones' protest.

It is indeed rare when Christian communities come together to chastise one who is seemingly their own: The Interfaith Leadership Council of Metropolitan Detroit has collected almost 1000 signatures on a petition condemning Jones. The petition reads in part:

We, as caring neighbors in southeastern Michigan, stand together in condemning the actions of those who spew hate and fear, and who misuse and desecrate holy books of faith. Instead we call on people to carry out the best traditions of all religious faiths, embodied in the idea of doing to others as we would have them do to us.

Too Little Too Late?

The sentiments of the petition, although sincere, serve to point out the fact that religious groups rarely, if ever, police their own. In this case, it may have been because no one has come to think of Terry Jones as one of their own. The outcry by the rest of America last September came well after Jones and Fred Phelps had announced that they were burning Qurans. The meme of "he's not one of us" was such a poor slap on the wrist to Jones that he must have perceived - in his arrogant righteousness - that God was surely on his side. 

And he continues to think that way. Remember, Jones is a man who, with an honorary doctorate (from an unaccredited college) parlayed a stay in Germany into a cult which eventually kicked him out because of his un-Christian, dictatorial and arrogant ways, a man who "made himself the center of everything." By now, his self-image is virtually impregnable. 

It may seem disingenuous at this time to place responsibility on anyone else besides Jones. Or moot. But I really must point out that the Joneses and Phelpses of the country are home-grown by the very culture that allows its religious leaders to do whatever they want without sanction. Or, I should say, without REAL sanction. Any form of effective excommunication is considered a sin. 

Now, Jones has the nation once again trembling in fear as to what he will do, when he will do it and how he will do it. He evinced little remorse at the mayhem and deaths related to his last incident. His righteous arrogance has him entrenched and immutable. Jones has been entreated by world leaders before and brushed them aside. Jones has determined if and when people will be hurt and killed. 

"Nothing has changed. Nothing will change," Jones said. "We will definitely be there." 

So what do we do now? 

We Don't Have To Be Nice, Ctd: Goodness Is Our Sole Propriety

 

I've always had a problem with the phrase, "It's the Christian thing to do." Somehow I always imagine it being said with a slight air of contempt. It's always said by self-righteous old ladies (English ladies, to be sure) with their noses firmly pointed towards the sky and their eyes looking down at their underlings. To me, it is the most insufferably arrogant phrase in our very difficult, but very precise language and it conveys to the listener that the person saying it, like others of his or her ilk, have a corner on goodness. 

So in the midst of the furor brought about by the Cordoba Center ("Ground Zero Mosque"), I'm wondering when the phrase will be uttered. Oh, it's been bandied about in several ways by that paragon of Christofascism, Bryan Fischer (he of the SPLC-listed hate group, American Family Association), but not with anything even resembling compassion, even condescending compassion. (He said that deporting all Muslims would be "compassionate" but he couldn't be heard thereafter above the laughter).

The Christofascists will certainly have a difficult go of it: the closest they can come to "the Christian thing to do" is to tolerate the building of the Center, but they won't do that since they've been demonizing Muslims so long it would be totally out of character. So here is an instance where "the Christian thing to do," becomes different than "the American thing to do." Again, a stumbling block, but one which Christofascists are certainly more experienced in handling. For years, Christofascists have made equal rights for gays "unAmerican" in their circuitous reasoning, so they will somehow turn the freedom of religion for Muslims into an attack on America's principles. Don't ask me how they will do it, but there will be ads/billboards demonizing Islam and Muslims. Maybe they'll cling to that imaginary string (a leftover from some Southern Baptist minister's sermon) that Islam is not really a religion, but a cult of bloodthirsty thugs. And when they get through demonizing, we'll be glad if the KKK moves in on the spot.

Forget the "insensitivity" issue. It's dead. In it's place will come "evil." Christofascists will talk of evil more than any thing else from now on. They have to use force. Maybe force will be "the Christian thing to do."

Now the GOP has chimed in and said it will definitely make the GZM a talking point in midterm elections. Why? Is it necessary for politicians to take a stance at all? To Christofascists across the country it definitely is, because involving politicians only lends credibility to their stance: more politicians on their side is the "American" bridge they need. It will be "the American thing to do."

Rob Kall of OpEdNews had an interesting take on the situation:

The world we live is no longer so simple, so small that we can speak to one group and assume another group will now know what we've said. It hasn't been for a long time. Yet this is how the opponents of the Cordoba building, which is not being built on Ground Zero, are acting. They need to come out of their caves and wake up to the reality that their small, bigoted response does not stand the smell test, when they claim failed Muslim "sensitivity." On the contrary, their own sensitivity to the threat to America is the problem.

I will agree that Christofascists are zenophobic because they realize the wisdom of taking on one country at a time, but Kall is wrong when he thinks that they will ever "come out of their caves." Many of those "caves" are Fundamentalist congregations owned by the new "Christian" leaders like Tony Perkins, Rick Warren, Rod Parsley and Lou Engle.  And if they come out at all, it will be too late.

America's pop religious icons are coming very close to expelling Muslims altogether, from jobs, from homes, from America. And they will somehow manage to take Bryan Fischer's  "compassion" and fashion it into one big, righteous package: "It's the Christian AND American thing to do." I don't know exactly how or when (or who), but someone like Tony Perkins will re-enact Queen Isabella's expulsion of Muslims and Jews from Spain which, being the "Christian thing to do" allowed people to keep their lives in some warped worldview of compassion and humanity. And of course, it won't be "nice" just "Christian." 

And "good."

We Don't Have To Be Nice Anymore: Is Christofascist Tough Love Gaining Ground?

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This is how evil advances in America - 

one weak-kneed group of kind-hearted, wimpish people at a time. God has not called us to be nice, he has called us to be good, and being good will occasionally call us to stand firm in the face of evil and stare it down.

 - Brian Fischer, Focal Point, 7/21/10 

When Barack Obama dove into the Ground Zero Mosque Debate, he expressed a fundamental  American tenet: to be kind and tolerant of everyone. Of course, he qualified his statement by implying that he didn't necessarily agree with the wisdom of building an Islamic cultural center just blocks away from New York's infamous site, but the sentiment threw the Christian Right into a near-violent tantrum of Islamophobia. Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association pre-empted Obama's statement by saying that absolutely no mosques should be built at all:

Bryan Fischer:

"Permits should not be granted to build even one more mosque in the United States of America, let alone the monstrosity planned for Ground Zero," Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association wrote this week on the AFA website. "This is for one simple reason: each Islamic mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government."

From Renew America:

That's what you get when you elect a man named Barack Hussein Obama about whom you know nothing other than the fawning, worshipful puke served up by the liberal media all through the campaign and for most of his first year and a half in office.

The rhetoric of the Christian Right is getting dangerously vitriolic. Forget the calls for the death of Obama: these were considered to be the squeakings of church mice like James Manning and Wiley Drake (and Pat Robertson's edicts have been on the wane for the last decade). No,  the Lou Engles and covert Reconstructionists of today's Christofascism*  don't put their faith in imprecatory prayers, but instead focus their prayers (sung by rock bands) on a Christian-only nation ridding its country of perceived enemies whether they be Muslims, gays, atheists, feminists ... o.k., it's a rather long list. 

Bryan Fischer's pronouncements - that we should deport all Muslims, that gays are a threat to the entire country, that Christians are commanded by God to be "good" but not necessarily "nice" - are  foolhardy statements that nonetheless reflect the inner core of Christofascism. If people distance themselves from Fischer, it's only because they don't want their true agenda to be known just yet. Sound like a conspiracy theory? Maybe, but even the most far-out theories can have a grain of truth in them.

Today, more and more people are taking on the titles of "theocrat" or "Reconstructionist" with only a slight brush to the side: i.e., they don't take as much offense at those labels as they used to. Yes, I've read The American Spectator article on the misuse of the term "Reconstructionist," but I still think that Sharron Angle is a Reconstructionist ....disguised as a complete ditz.

Love The Sinner

Most Christofascists believe that if you repeat the "Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin" slogan a certain number of times, anyone will believe your intentions are good. The LSHS ideology has been around a long time: it's good PR. But they also know that only a miniscule portion of their adherents believe it, much less practice it. LSHS grates against human nature: which one of us loves the person who stole our food? our shelter? our clothing? 

Pat Robertson, The 700 Club television program, January 14, 1991:

You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense. I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist. I can love the people who hold false opinions but I don't have to be nice to them.

Maybe it comes down to this: the Christofascists of today simply tout their stance as one of "tough love." E.G.: Bryan Fischer said that deporting all Muslims may actually be compassionate, since they would get to be with "their own kind." A monstrous statement, to be sure, but one that had conviction.

The Lies

Another reason I think that Christofascist Tough Love might be gaining ground is that old lies are brought out and brandished with impunity:

Boots on the Ground piece:

The Gay subculture is one of the most violent subcultures out there.  Government studies show gays are 20 times more likely to be abusive or abused in their personal relationships.  This reflects an inherent emotional instability that is not conducive to good order or discipline. 

The author of the piece above was referencing a thoroughly debunked 40-year-old statistic. Whether or not he knows it's a lie is, of course, another story: it's the same old lie repeated in every one of the Family Research Council's donation pleas. Along with it are the "facts": gays have a shorter life-span by 20 years, gays are unstable because their suicide rate is 6 times greater than "normal" people, and gays always have HIV-tainted blood. 

But lies are gaining ground in the fact that, given support (like a moronic congressman), they reach the ears of the general populace:  The Rachel Maddow show (rightly) poked fun at Rep. Louie Gohmert (R., Texas) and his assertion about supposed "terror babies." (See below). We all laughed, but think of this: how many people had to believe in "terror babies" before it came to Gohmert's attention? Where did the story originate? And despite the ludicrous presentation Gohmert made, how many believed him because he was made to look like a fool on Anderson Cooper 360? Sometimes more support is gained when an adherent to the cause is ridiculed by the "liberal" media.  America loves an underdog. 

It may seem contradictory for a religious group based on the teachings of Christ to espouse such potentially violent ideologies: wasn't Christ "good-hearted" and "nice" to people? Aren't we "good" because we are "nice" to people? Doesn't our own Statue of Liberty declare how "nice" and compassionate a country we are? Unfortunately,  "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free" is, day-by-day, becoming an anachronism when compared to a Christofascist's  "tough love" stance on immigration and Muslims. And even occassional shots of "Love the sinner" - given to anaesthetise people from the pain of Christofascist's demonization of gays - are giving way to overt lies and distortions.

Periodically, the cry will go out that the Christian Right is dead or that Christofascists are losing the culture war because their numbers are shrinking. This assertion, however, does not consider the fact that no matter what their number, their hate has become louder, yet more insidious, if that's possible. They have concentrated their strength, condensed it, and  even localized it. Their national screeds and bloviators, like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and Lou Engle of The Call, are spearheads they hope will inflict serious wounds into a diverse democracy. The Values Voter summit, unfortunately, grows every year. Their screams concerning freedom of speech and freedom of religion grow louder with each of their setbacks or obstacles; e.g. October will be a tipping point in the Fred Phelps saga - in as much as they've distanced themselves from Phelps,  they will most certainly support a Supreme Court decision for Phelps. Their kind of freedom  must trump the kind of emotional vandalism Phelps heaped upon the families of war casualties. 


And they will continue to trumpet lies and distortions through people like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh. They will continue to support creationism, homophobia, Islamophobia. They will continue to foster the image of a militaristic Jesus and eschew the "kind-hearted", "bleeding hearts" and "nice" people in favor of the  aggressive, political religious. 

I realize that these last points make me sound polemic, but how can I sound balanced when faced with the biased, the unbalanced? 


How can any of us be patient for human rights and equality when faced with aggression that is threatening to rob us of the "kind-hearted"?

* While some may balk at the term "Christofascism" the Christian Right's politically aggressive stance has lately paralleled fascism too much to be ignored:  overt NATIONALISM, SEXISM, combination of RELIGION AND GOVERNMENT, protection of CORPORATE POWER, disdain for INTELLECTUALS and THE ARTS ... And in the end, the best explanation was by Sinclair Lewis: "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross."