Gentle Fudge: Black and Blue and Red All OverGentle Fudge

Gentle Fudge

religion, politics, current events, and other fashionable dinner conversation.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Black and Blue and Red All Over

Will these people please get off my side? Or at least stop pretending to know what I stand for?

I read a column written by Susan Estrich who was reviewing Ann Coulter's latest book Godless. (First, some grammar, Ms. Coulter... please use the small g.) It is Ms. Coulter's stance that "everything liberals believe is in elegant opposition to basic Biblical precepts." (Again, Ann, small b.) And then she goes on with other tasty soundbites about how the Methodist church is barely a church, runs off a list of people she would like to see killed or poisoned or blown up, and that Islamic militants love American more than than the hell-bound Liberals. I'm sure she'd be up to an abortion clinic bombing if the mood hit her.

Of course I'll have to borrow the book and get a fuller picture with my own biases.

But I'm lost here. Ms. Coulter and the Vast Religious Right Wing claim to uphold biblical principles. I'm missing the part where G-d's generously doling out the lightening bolts to those who vote against him and his earthly kingdom established in the god-given land of America, those who have gone against these biblical teachings. After all, we're now talking about an entity who sits passively in the clouds, looking down on us to catch us doing wrong, and who has no desire to hear confessions of regret and sorrow because we'll just be at it again tomorrow. Rather Grecian, doncha think?

Let's revisit some ancient history for a moment. This Christ that these xtians claim to follow hung out with the people the uppity and smug wouldn't even consider sharing an elevator with, let alone sit on their Gucci padded pews inside their sterile houses of "worship". He ate at the homes of people who willingly lied and cheated for a living. I'm sure he knew the food was stolen. He touched the contagious, unafraid that G-d might not allow him to escape potential infection. He loved [and spent time with] the worthless and hopeless, the whores, slave owners, slaves, homosexuals, the abused, abusers, addicts, skeptics, the curious, politicians, business owners, the deformed, homeless beggars, pagans, the irreligious, foreigners, renters, landowners, murderers, victims. But the people that he got miffed at were the religiously self-rightous; those who had all the answers and refused to learn and bend.

Hmmm...

I'm missing the verse about manifest destiny, where "our" way is The Right Way (no pun intended) and The Only Way and those opposed are godless, soulless, and heartless heretics of the most Anti-Patriotic stench and the only solution is public humiliation peppered with a few violent outbursts until the infidels [read: American liberals] are whipped back into passive submission. Suddenly, we find we have wrapped our delusional brain around an eternal, omniscient and omnipresent spirit and we know all there is to know about it. So when did we become G-d?

The good news is I'm not the only one who's pretzel is in a twist over this new theology. There is a startling number of books that have come out within the past few years discussing the place of politics in religion and revisiting the teachings of Christ. Rather prophetic.

The strange thing is that many progressive ideals came about because people did try to live these xtian ideals of equality and basic human goodness. Freedom of religion was established with a safety net so the government couldn't impose rules for worship or rule through the church and the church couldn't establish a national religion or rule through the government. Slavery was abolished, even though many say it was "on its way out" due to economic instability. Women received the right to vote, own property, and other basic rights. Civil rights were demanded for all races and sexes, though we aren't quite there yet. All this when we could get along, identify what was truly evil, and work together to fix it. There is more to life than building bigger barns, people.

And now we're back at each other's throats. Progressive, conservative, liberal, republican. "If you are not for us, you are against us." It's no wonder we are in more trouble than we think.

Labels: Ann Coulter, liberal, politics, right-wing

posted by Sara @ 2:34 PM

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