Christian right intensifies attacks on Obama
By Eric Gorski and Rachel Zoll - AP Religion Writers - Sat., Oct. 25, 2008"Terrorist strikes on four American cities. Russia rolling into Eastern Europe. Israel hit by a nuclear bomb. Gay marriage in every state. The end of the Boy Scouts.
All are plausible scenarios if Democrat Barack Obama is elected president, according to a new addition to the campaign conversation called "Letter from 2012 in Obama's America," produced by the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family Action.
The imagined look into the future is part of an escalation in rhetoric from Christian right activists who are trying to paint Obama in the worst possible terms as the campaign heads into the final stretch and polls show the Democrat ahead.
Although hard-edge attacks are common late in campaigns, the tenor of the strikes against Obama illustrate just how worried conservative Christian activists are about what should happen to their causes and influence if Democrats seize control of both Congress and the White House.
"It looks like, walks like, talks like and smells like desperation to me," said the Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell of Houston, an Obama supporter who backed President Bush in the past two elections. The Methodist pastor called the 2012 letter "false and ridiculous." He said it showed that some Christian conservative leaders fear that Obama's faith-based appeals to voters are working.
Like other political advocacy groups, Christian right groups often raise worries about an election's consequences to mobilize voters. In the early 1980s, for example, direct mail from the Moral Majority warned that Congress would turn a blind eye to "smut peddlers" dangling pornography to children.
"Everyone uses fear in the last part of a campaign, but evangelicals are especially theologically prone to those sorts of arguments," said Clyde Wilcox, a Georgetown University political scientist. "There's a long tradition of predicting doom and gloom." But the tone this election year is sharper than usual and the volume has turned up as Nov. 4 nears.
Steve Strang, publisher of Charisma magazine, a Pentecostal publication, titled one of his recent weekly e-mails to readers, "Life As We Know It Will End If Obama is Elected." Strang said gay rights and abortion rights would be strengthened in an Obama administration, taxes would rise and "people who hate Christianity will be emboldened to attack our freedoms."
Entire article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27369927/
Does anyone else in here find the grotesque misapplication of the word "Christian" to these right wing groups terribly painful? How can these people look seriously at the actual teachings of Jesus and then employ the tactics they do? If this is how they prefer to operate, so be it. But why are they allowed to get away with the use of descriptors like "Christian" and "evangelical" and "moral" when their actions make it so gallingly clear that the terms utterly do not apply? Didn't Jesus call us to humility, self-sacrifing love, and the Truth? I must confess these groups exhibit a mode of identification and action that I simply do not comprehend.
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posted by TheOldMan @ 12:42 PM
