Tuesday, August 07, 2007

They Could Always Write In Jesus

OK, back to the Des Moines Register and their hard-hitting expose of evangelicals who can’t find a Republican presidential candidate whose views are as narrow-minded and provincial as theirs. Here at the Runes, our official position on this issue is “Tough bongos.”

Why? Because in their hurry to elect one of their own kind, the evangelicals failed to notice their candidate was a man of no character and less intelligence, a man beholden to no one but the super-rich. In the past six years, how many man-on-the-street interviews have included some variation of the line “All I know is Bush is a Christian, and that’s good enough for me”?

That’s pathetic. That’s the rapture mentality for you: Earthly things don’t matter to me cause I’m a-gonna be lifted up to heaven.

There’s a running theme through that Register article, and it should give a good dose of the willies to anyone who’s serious about the political process and making the country stronger. Let’s see if we can detect that theme:

[Members of the Central Assembly of God Church] are turned off by poll-driven and single-issue candidates who are ignoring their top priorities—abortion and same-sex marriage.

[The senior pastor of First Federated Church of Des Moines said] “The war with Iraq is on everybody’s mind. Right to life and gay marriage, which are important to Christian conservatives, aren’t as big with the general public.”

“We seem to be losing traction,” said [a Central Assembly of God member]. “The pendulum seems to be swinging in the other direction.”

Everyone who said the theme was “Our obsession with other people’s lives is far more important than the interests of the country at large,” give yourself ten points.

Ignoring the fact that we can’t technically be at war with Iraq because for all practical purposes we are Iraq, let’s try to figure out why the deaths of 3000 American soldiers and the continued health and well-being of a hundred thousand live ones just might be a tad more important to the general public than the nuptials of Chuck and Larry in Massachusetts.

The question answers itself. The general public (as defined by the senior pastor above) understands the human cost of war, grieves for the families of the dead, and is mature enough to realize that with every death our national defense grows weaker by a power of one. The evangelicals can’t be bothered with that. They’re too busy freaking out over two men kissing.

It takes a sanctimonious soul and a callous heart to claim that preventing same-sex marriage is a higher priority than ending the fiasco in Iraq. Most human beings recognize those qualities as character flaws.

Maybe that’s why the evangelicals are losing traction.

3 comments:

No Safe Words said...

Oh man. My coffee hasn't kicked in yet. I read the title of this entry and assumed that the Christian Fundamentalists had come up with a new written language with which to communicate. "Jesus." Like... ASL but no doubt much less complex.

Anonymous said...

Funny picture.

My inaugural address at the Great White Throne Judgment of the Dead, after I have raptured out billions! The Secret Rapture soon, by my hand!
Read My Inaugural Address
My Site=http://www.angelfire.com/crazy/spaceman

Anonymous said...

I'm 'all about' The Willies in Country being stronger...