Onward, Christian Soldiers, Marching As To War.

This morning I decided not to write about what I was going to write because it sort of seems like I’m a conspiracy nut.  But, then, voila, this on Huffington Post.

NEWPORT, R.I. (AP) — President Barack Obama on Friday blamed dysfunction in Congress on a Republican Party he said is captive to an ideologically rigid, unproductive and cynical faction, urging like-minded Democrats to show up for November's midterm elections. Darlene Superville, Huffington Post, 8/30/14, GOP hostage to ideologically rigid group

This is my opinion on just who and what this “ideologically rigid, unproductive and cynical faction” is.  This opinion has been formed by both personal experience, natural curiosity, and some research. 

As I was growing up, my parents were what now would be designated as very conservative, although at the time they were pretty mainstream, at least among our contemporaries.  Fortunately they were so prejudiced they assumed it came with the genes, so never really mentioned their absolute dislike of other races, nationalities or religions other than Protestantism.  Consequently, I was not “carefully taught to hate by the time I was six or seven or eight.”  (From the lyrics of a song from South Pacific).  My mother, on the other hand, was pretty general about not becoming friends with anyone who was not like us.  All of their prejudice surfaced, however, when I married a, gasp, Swiss even though his mother was a Scot, and in the Catholic Church besides. They refused to come to our wedding.  Of course, when our eldest daughter was born, their opinion of us certainly did mellow, fortunately.  When our girls were in their early teens my mother asked me if it was all right with me if she explained to our girls that they must marry someone with pure blood, just as if you had a herd of pure bred cows, you wouldn’t want to bring in a bull with bad blood lines.  She evidently had decided Bill was OK.  I told her I didn’t mind at all if she would tell them exactly what she had just told me.  They told me later she never had mentioned it. 

The absolute right of religious liberty is so strong in our country, both by law and by desire, as well as the First Amendment to The Bill of Rights:  “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or the free exercise thereof:” This concept used to be so ingrained in us that when the radical religious right began to surface publically most of us stood back and respected their right to believe as they wished.  I recognized a great deal of what they were saying, since I had been exposed to it from childhood, and for the most part from my perspective it was pretty innocuous. 

Several years ago, though, Rachel Maddow interviewed Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, 2008.  One of the chapters in this book, Jesus Plus Nothing, was really disturbing to me.  I have long loved reading about Catholic Christian theology because the different views by the various theologians, men and women, opened up new and exciting vistas regarding Christian traditions and teachings.  So to read about a system that taught that all one needed was faith in Jesus seemed a tad simplistic, to say the least.  According to The Family, all one needed to resolve a problem, say, was to pray to Jesus and He would tell you what to do.  Although, as Sharlet commented, and I paraphrase, it was amazing how often Jesus agreed with what the person praying wanted to do anyway.  This above point about Jesus Plus Nothing is really important, however, when one considers what to many appears to be just loony-tunes jabbering by some of the groups that have arisen and become more and more prominent in the last few years. 

In a blog of this length it is difficult to sort out the documentation that will explain my point.  So, I will stick to just four.  The first is from: The Public Eye, Summer, 2014, Rumblings of Theocratic Violence, Frederick Clarkson.  In the Public Eye article, Clarkson quotes several prominent among far right circles, individuals who maintain basically that America is no longer a valid government because it has rejected Christianity and supports same-sex marriage, abortion, and obedience to God’s law.  As the heading to the article states:  “Some Christian Right activists, including a high-level GOP operative, have lost hope that a Christian nation can be achieved in the United States, through the formal political process.  They are calling for martyrs and thinking about religious war.”

In his blog, talk2action.org, on 7/25/14, “GOP Leader Questions Candidate About Hate Group That Advocates Death Squads – Updated” This was cross-posted from The Huffington Post.

“The head of Maryland’s Republican Party, Joe Cluster, has called local candidate Michael Peroutka to the woodshed for a “clarification” about his involvement with a high-profile, white nationalist hate group.  At least that’s what Cluster thinks the subject of their 7/25 meeting will be.

But wait until he reads this.

On July 8, as I reported, Peroutka wrote a letter to Michael Hill, president of the League of the South, asking the neo-Confederate hate group to help his campaign.  Peroutka wanted to thank the League, which advocates for secession and theocratic government by and for white people, for its friendship, work, and hospitality.  Peroutka had just won the GOP’s nomination for Anne Arundel County Council, as well as a seat on the Republican Central Committee there, and it made perfect sense that he would reach out to the no doubt many members of the organization on which he once served on the Board of Directors for their support.”

“Perhaps Peroutka was surprised the following week, when on July 15, Hill wrote an essay for the League’s website titled “A Bazooka in Every Pot,” in which he outlines a program for “guerrilla war,” marked by “three-to-five-man” death squads which would target government leaders, journalists, and other public figures for assassination, in order to advance the League’s goals.

“To oversimplify,” writes Hill, “the primary targets will not be enemy soldiers; instead, they will be political leaders, members of the hostile media, cultural icons, bureaucrats, and other of the managerial elite without whom the engines of tyranny don’t run”

Now I realize that this is certainly NOT the views of the majority of Republicans.  And it is NOT the views of the vast majority of Christians, Protestant or Catholic, in this country.  But at the same time, relate to what is being said above to what happened in Arizona at the Clive Bundy ranch.  We had Christians there who thought nothing of aiming a rifle at Bureau of Land Management personnel because in the minds of these demented individuals, the BLM people represented this tyrannical government.  They were and are adherents of the splinter group of Christians who believe it is God’s plan that they control the government of the United States.  They are formally called Christian Dominionists. 

Then think about what happened in Ferguson, MO, and what at least two of the officers there did, and what the rest were ordered to do.  Remember the military vehicles that were on the street, aiming rifles at American citizens who were doing, and as I have done, peacefully protesting what they perceived to be an injustice.  For me, it was protesting the invasion of Iraq, Mitchell Park, SLO.  The SLO PD did not bring out armored vehicles, nor aimed rifles at us.  They were there, and I was glad to see them, standing off to one side, quietly.  They were a comforting presence.  But then we were all of us white.  In Ferguson, two officers behaved in a truly reprehensible manner.  Ray Albers, caught on tape pointing his gun at American citizens and threatening to shoot them, has resigned. 

But Dan Page, the St. Louis County police officer, who was caught ranting during a chapter meeting of the League of the South in St. Louis, and I paraphrase, “I believe that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior, and I am a killer, and I will kill again if you get in front of my gun.”  Now Page has a right to say that even if I think it is reprehensible, shameful, inexcusable, and disgusting.  My point here is that he is saying much the same as many others who espouse this Jesus Plus Nothing, anti-civil government, pro-theocratic government philosophy. 

My problem is at what point does a demand for freedom of religion, and the right to the free exercise thereof, slide over into an invasion of my civil rights and an invasion of my right to a free exercise of my Christian faith?  Our country is walking a really troubled path here, and we need to do the nearly impossible – that is, keep looking at our feet so we don’t stumble while at the same time looking down that troubled path to see where the direction we are pointing our feet will eventually lead us.