No don't say a prayer for me now, save it til the morning after

(Save a Prayer)

Another Orange Co. minister has spoken out against Rick Warren's Invocation at the upcoming Obama inauguration, but not in the way you hoped:

Southern Baptist Pastor Wiley Drake bashed Saddleback Church Pastor Rick Warren this week, saying "God will punish" Warren for agreeing to give the invocation at President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration next month.

"I pray He is kind to you in this punishment that is coming," Drake wrote in a widely-released e-mail. In it, the First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park pastor criticizes Warren's "recent plan to invoke the presence of almighty God on this evil illegal alien," a reference to Obama.

Who is this idiot? Clearly someone who doesn't support the U.S. Constitution:

In early 2008, while he was the pastor for the First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, Reverend Drake was a vocal supporter of Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign. He sent out a letter personally endorsing Huckabee. However, the letter was on church stationery; thus, to the Internal Revenue Service, Rev. Drake was endorsing a political candidate as a church leader and endangering his church's tax-exempt status.

Rev. Drake's violation of federal tax law was reported to the IRS by an advocacy group called Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU), which had warned him for endorsing Dick Mountjoy for a U.S. Senate race with a Southern Baptist Convention letterhead. Rev. Drake asked his parishioners and others to pray for revenge using an imprecatory prayer for the punishment, shame, and even deaths of AU officials. He defended these actions by saying, "The prayer does call for serious, serious punishment on people. But I didn't call for that, God did," and, "The Bible says that if anybody attacks God’s people, David said this is what will happen to them…." Drake also did not fear IRS investigation, explaining, "They don’t scare me. I don’t give a rip about the IRS. I don’t believe in the separation of church and state and I believe the IRS should stay out of church business."

I'm not sure about who Drake's God is, but it sure doesn't sound like this guy:

Romans 12:19-21
Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay,"says the Lord. On the contrary: "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head."Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Ephesians 4:31-32
Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

Psalm 37:8
Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret—it leads only to evil.

Leviticus 19:17-18
Do not hate your brother in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in his guilt. Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.

How much ignorance, stupidity, and hate can be rolled up in one person . . . Oh yeah, I forget, there's also Rev. Fred Phelps.

Bastards.

Both of 'em.

There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief

(Mr. Hendrix-All Along The Watchtower)

Many liberal bloggers have gone "WTF?" over the selection of Rick Warren to pray at the Obama inauguration ceremony:

Dr. Warren, author of “The Purpose Driven Life,” will deliver the invocation.

It's not all bad news, however:

Aretha Franklin and Dr. Rick Warren, an evangelical minister of the Saddleback Church, are among the select group of people who will participate in Barack Obama’s inaugural swearing-in ceremony on Jan. 20.

Mr. Obama has also chosen Elizabeth Alexander, an African-American poet at Yale University, and some of the world’s premier musicians, including Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma, to share the podium with him.

In honoring the civil rights movement, Mr. Obama has asked the Rev. Dr. Joseph E. Lowery, dean of the civil rights movement and co-founder with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, to deliver the benediction.

That's a fairly diverse group. The musicians are African-American, Israeli-born American, and Chinese-American. And contra Warren, Dr. Lowery understands something about discrimination.

Pastor Dan at Street Prophets wrote a well-considered critique of the Warren invitation. Please read the whole thing, not just the few words I copied and pasted here:

My tingling pastor-sense tells me that he selected Warren because he likes him and feels comfortable with him on a personal level. That's not as much of a stretch as it might seem; Jeremiah Wright and Trinity UCC are both much more evangelical than the rest of the UCC. Warren probably resonates with Obama in ways that somebody like myself never could.

. . . Nobody likes Warren. The Religious Right think he's a flake because he's too liberal, and everybody else thinks he's a flake because he's a shallow idiot. From where I'm sitting, as the victim of an extremely expensive and extremely rigorous theological education, Obama could have gotten a better invocation from Stuart Smalley. It would have as much depth, and at least it would be doing a Democrat a favor.

I have a couple of thoughts on this, and yes, I may be naive.

First, as many have suggested, this may be a genuine attempt to try and attract the reasonable younger evangelicals that are slowly splintering from the base movement of Falwell and Robertson. I think that will have extremely limited success, because for many of those folks, everything starts and ends with Choice v. Abortion. If Charles Manson ran for President, and claimed to be Pro-Choice™, they would vote for him.

Second, Warren will deliver a generic invocation. Obama will likely make some very inclusive statements during his speech, and may even mention gays and/or the LGBT community. If he does this, he pwns Warren, puts him in a box. In a way, it reduces Warren and his bigotry to the role of "the hired help". It's saying "we'll let you come to the dinner, but you still have to sit at the little kid's table".

Third, it may even be a more confrontational calculus: "OK, big shot, you want to be the Next Big Thing™ in evangelical Christiandom, and you want an audience, come speak at my Prom. I'll invite you, but many here among us don't like what you're selling".

Or Pastor Dan could be right in the end:

Mainline Protestant pastors are opinion leaders in their communities, and they tend to appreciate their GLBT friends and not appreciate slick weasels like Rick Warren. I was hardly the only pastor to support Obama, or to stick up for his vision of hope and reconciliation. Obama just spat in our eyes, and it's going to take a while to get over it.

Here's the thing about Warren. The main evangelical movers of the '70s, '80s, and '90s, in terms of TV exposure, were indeed Falwell & Robertson. Clearly they wanted political power. However, the evangelical leaders who were doing the work of 'saving souls' were, among a few others, Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel and John Wimber of the Vinyard. The main difference between the last two names and the first two were that CC and VCF sprouted many franchises, small churches all over the country, in their attempt to bring people to Jesus and salvation.

CC & VCF annointed many new pastors, and sent them out to preach and save people. Other '70s and '80s churches, like Kenneth Copeland in TX, built empires based on a single personality. Joel Osteen in TX has done the same recently. No real attempt at spreading their message to reach more people than the basic, albeit large, congregation.

Warren is the contemporary result of Copeland, and Osteen. He has built a huge campus, spent $$$'s in state-of-the-art audio & video equipment, and packs thousands into several services every Sunday. But he hasn't spread his ministry into franchises. It's all Warren, all the time. His message, his book, his ministry.

And he seems to love his power, even as he clearly favored McCain during Saddleback Church's Candidates debate forum. And Obama may actually like the guy, as many have suggested. But I don't think many on the far-evangelical right will take to Obama, and many of those same folks will see Warren as craven and manipulated.

I hope so. Still, he's a bigoted lying hate-monger.

Bastard.

Well, I believe what you say

Believe in whatever religious views give you comfort. But don't think for a moment that those religious views give you the right to take freedoms away from anyone.

Believe what you want, but leave me alone.

Vote No on CA Prop 8!

I'm on the hunt, I'm after you

Some Palin supporters will dislike this commercial, others won't give a damn:



I find her actions horrid, hateful. But the ones who won't care are Palin's Christianist Dominionst end-times evangelical brethern and sistern(sic), who are firmly caught up in the Biblical idea that we (humans) are stewards of the earth.

But rather than what the word "steward" actually means, many of them believe that, since the end times are near, instead we can plunder, pillage, devastate the earth and most of its inhabitants for our own pleasure and needs.

Even when its manifestly stupid and short-sighted. Drill, Baby, Drill, indeed.

Bastards.

And you never ask questions When God's on your side

Normally I would say, let's not waste time on Sarah Palin. Her main claim to fame is as a skirt for McCain to hide behind, and to use dog-whistle language to excite the Rabid right in this country.

But then stuff like this happens during the Charlie Gibson interview:

"I would never presume to know God's will or use God's words".

Right. Because that's a sin. Except that people, pastors and congregants, in evangelical churches do it all the time.

I heard the leader of one of the largest evangelical churches, based in Costa Mesa, CA, say to his flock, in re: the Second Coming (paraphrasing):

Now, we're admonished to not try and predict when Jesus will return. And I won't. But my reading and study of the Bible leads me to conclude that I have a pretty good idea when it will happen.

Hubris, I guess, when you can listen to what the boss says and still try and spin it your way.

Thing is, Sarah said the Pipeline is God's will":



And she said the Iraq War is God's Plan:



When Charlie Gibson questioned her on this, she demurred (and here's the first quote above):

GIBSON: You said recently, in your old church, "Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God." Are we fighting a holy war?

PALIN: You know, I don't know if that was my exact quote.

GIBSON: Exact words.

PALIN: But the reference there is a repeat of Abraham Lincoln's words when he said -- first, he suggested never presume to know what God's will is, and I would never presume to know God's will or to speak God's words.

But what Abraham Lincoln had said, and that's a repeat in my comments, was let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God's side.

That's what that comment was all about, Charlie.

GIBSON: I take your point about Lincoln's words, but you went on and said, "There is a plan and it is God's plan."

PALIN: I believe that there is a plan for this world and that plan for this world is for good. I believe that there is great hope and great potential for every country to be able to live and be protected with inalienable rights that I believe are God-given, Charlie, and I believe that those are the rights to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

That, in my world view, is a grand -- the grand plan.

GIBSON: But then are you sending your son on a task that is from God?

PALIN: I don't know if the task is from God, Charlie. What I know is that my son has made a decision. I am so proud of his independent and strong decision he has made, what he decided to do and serving for the right reasons and serving something greater than himself and not choosing a real easy path where he could be more comfortable and certainly safer.

Let me explain this in simple terms: SHE LIED!!!! She believes what she said in the church video.

I guaran-damn-tee someone got on Teh Google™ immediately after hearing the quote from the church video, probably typed every combination of "God", "war", "will", "plan" , to see what they could find. And they found the Lincoln quote:

Oops.

It appears that the Lincoln quote is apocryphal. In other words, while I can find the quote everywhere, I can find no solid scholarly reference to it anywhere. It appears to be either made-up, or unsubstantiated. Joe Garofoli at SFGate.com has this:

OK, so which Abe quote is it?

Abe, in his second Inaugural address said:"Neither [side] anticipated that the cause of the conflict [i.e., slavery] might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully.

In any case, it seems to be a wonderful phrase that supports the Christian Right's world view, that everything they decide is God's Work is, indeed, God's Work.

I suppose we should bow down and worship even unto them, for they are Holy and know stuff that we don't.

Better yet, we should tell them to leave us the Hell alone.

The little brown church in the vale

(Saddleback Church video tour-it's huge!)

Some interesting stuff in the news about McStraightTalkExpress and the Saddleback Church love fest. But that's not important right now.

Why was a mega-church, that has its own street and practically its own ZIP code, charging people to attend the Obama-McCain event? It wasn't a fund raiser, and it was a chance to watch historical Democracy in action, yet this rich church charged people.

The Glibertarian OC Register had this to say:

"Church officials said they decided to charge admission for people who wanted a chance to see the Republican and Democratic presidential hopefuls because of the expenses to stage the event and provide television feeds to a host of networks."

This is utter crap. I have done audio tech work at Saddleback Church as I mention a few posts ago, and I've seen their operation.

They have audio & video facilities that would embarrass the L.A. NBC, CNN & CBS affiliates, including high-tech and expensive fiber audio & video links between various parts of the campus, ProTools rigs for recording every utterance that comes out of Warren's mouth, state-of-the-art wireless microphones, a recording studio, complete audio & video post-production, all with the finest equipment available.

This place could handle any Andrew Lloyd-Webber musical with simultaneous satellite up-linking, network distribution, SAP language feed, and a full orchestra without breaking a sweat. They could do that in the main church, while holding a rock concert in one of the other venues, while rehearsing an 80 voice choir in still another building.

This place is more high-tech than the L.A. Music Center and Kennedy Center combined. The only thing that might complicate their "feeds to a host of networks" might be buying a few more $10 BNC cables, available at RadioShack. In other words, it's a complete lie.

In this case, I don't know who are the biggest bastards, the church, or the OC Register.

I'll reach out my hand to you, I'll have faith in all you do, Just call my name and I'll be there

In the "Even a Stopped Clock is Right Twice a Day" category, Lou Dobbs has seemed at times friendly to normal, not-rich non-Republican people. You know, like the working people whose fate he bemoans when ranting about outsourcing and off-shoring jobs.

But if you want any proof where his loyalty lies look no further than the Family Resource Center Voter Values Summit:

Yep, Lou is going to appear with such conservative luminaries as Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, felon Ollie North, David Horowitz.

But wait, who is that swarthy-skinned fellow on the right . . . why, it's Barack Obama. Seriously, Obama may be Faith-friendly, but he's not wingnut-friendly. Note the weasel-words at the top: "Confirmed & Invited Speakers". BO may have been invited, and I'm sure without even looking at the list that Satan was also invited, but I'll bet anyone a dinner at Spago that BO will not be there.

Anyone want in on that action? I thought not. But I'll make the same bet that ol' Lou will be there.

Bastard.