Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Q: Why Can't Right-Wing Christians Police Their (Embarrassing) Own? A: Because They're Policing Everyone Else!




Idaho Lady Tries To Beat, Choke Jewish Woman Into Personal Relationship With Jesus

Yes, it's OK to distance yourself from the crazies, but sometimes distancing is not enough. So many Christians cry "we're not like that" while silently condoning the actions of the embarrassing few. Every day we see people who embarrass Christianity by using it to the extreme, l
ike the case of the homeschoolers who tried to sell their daughter in marriage
International Cops For Christ 
You have the right at any time to stop this preaching to repent of your sins and to confess Jesus Christ as your Lord and Attorney – Romans 10:9-10. If you do not confess Christ, you will be convicted of sin before the Divine Court of Law and face an eternal sentence in Hell – Revelation 20:12-15. Do You Understand?

In a political landscape that has religious freedom as its mantra and "religious persecution" as its great social concern, the force of evangelism goes unnoticed: International Cops for Christ is just one of the organizations that promotes what some people might consider forced conversions.

Project ROSE is a Phoenix city program that arrests sex workers in the name of saving them. In five two-day stings, more than 100 police officers targeted alleged sex workers on the street and online. They brought them in handcuffs to the Bethany Bible Church. There, the sex workers were forced to meet with prosecutors, detectives, and representatives of Project ROSE, who offered a diversion program to those who qualified. Those who did not may face months or years in jail.
In the Bethany Bible Church, those arrested were not allowed to speak to lawyers. Despite the handcuffs, they were not officially “arrested” at all.

In Montgomery, Alabama, a similar program, called Operation Good Shepherd, is explicitly designed to bring young women under the power of local Christian leaders. “What we want to do is combine the religious community and the Mont­gomery Police Department, and we want to unite those as one,” explained police corporal David Hicks. No non-Christian religious groups are allowed to participate in the program.

Grass roots conversion conspiracy? Perhaps. But policing souls is what many evangelicals see as a calling, forgetting such things as separation of church and state and the individual's right not to be coerced into any form of religion. 

NALT

"Not All Like That" is a project that affirms the Christianity of gays and lesbians. That's fine, but does NALT have any actual power in policing the ones they are distancing themselves from? No. "Not All Like That" is a nice group - in other words, a group of nice people who are scorned by most Evangelicals. They are also exclusively associated with the gay community. So how about Jews? How about prostitutes? How about atheists? Do they have any Christian groups accepting of them? NALT may be a step in the right direction, but it is a baby step, not the kind of forceful leap needed to shake up the "Christians" embarrassing the rest of Christianity.

Would that a non-denominational Christian tribunal existed to strip embarrassing "Christians" of their Christianity, or at least their association with Christianity. An excommunication of sorts - one enforced through social media - might seem vengeful and drastic, but embarrassing people who are in themselves embarrassments would be fitting. Their websites, publications and rallies would be declared "no-go zones" for Christians. 

A Christian tribunal. We can dream, can't we?

Of course, a problem presents itself in the fact that anyone can declare themselves "Christian" and get away with most anything non-Christian. Such is a society with freedom of religion: people are free to use religion in any way they want. And according to Evangelicals, they are free to use people any way they want in the name of religion. 




The Embarrassing Criminals:

Everyday, we experience people who, in professing their love of Christianity, unmask themselves by being un-Christian.

Benny Hinn - The domino (Let the Bodies Hit The Floor) healing of Benny Hinn is certainly entertaining, but it's also embarrassing to serious, reasoning Christians. Hinn's lavish lifestyle is also a testament to greed resulting from the gullibility of desperate people. His shills are never ashamed to look as if they are wired together with high voltage cable. 

Cindy Jacobs - Jacobs cannot be cast as a charlatan simply because people are dumbfounded that anyone believes her. But some people do, since her "ministry" rakes in cash enough to keep her in ridiculous outfits. 

Ann Coulter - "Christianity drives everything in my life." However, her eschatology ("love thy neighbor" is a minor, incidental tenet) and self-admitted mean-spiritedness undermines all her claims to Christianity. In fact, the only reason that the gold cross she wears hasn't burned a hole in her chest is because her righteous arrogance oozes out of every pore, forming a force-field through which Jesus Christ's teaching could never get through. 

Victoria Jackson - To associate with Victoria Jackson (who recently claimed that Obama is most certainly a Muslim) is to have your I.Q. syphoned out of you by a black hole of reason. The only guest on her show to make her look intelligent was E.W. Jackson and that's saying quite a lot. 

Bryan Fischer - Changing positions for Bryan Fischer at the American Family Association has done nothing to undo the hatred he continues to spew. The man seems to thrive on ostracism, since he wasn't a featured speaker at the Values Voter Summit last year. 

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone - In his latest skirmish with his unhappy parishioners, Cordileone was forced to "reconsider" wording in his now-infamous morals clause for teacher contracts. Considered the "anti-Francis" in his obsession with morals and opposition to gay rights, the archbishop was chastised by California lawmakers who threatened to probe schools for civil rights violations. 

His case brought up a significant point: must embarrassing clergy be policed by the state in order to draw attention to their un-Christian attitudes? 

Scott Lively - In yet another case of clergy being called to task for un-Christian activities, Lively has been hit with a "crimes against humanity" lawsuit concerning his involvement in Uganda. He continues to crow about his associations with Russia and Uganda and their acceptance of his rhetoric. 

Off Bounds

The crazies, the charlatans, the mean-spirited pundits should be exposed and declared off-bounds to a reasoning, loving Christian community. In affect, they have been time and time again, but people still contribute, still believe, still read and support them. They manage to survive scandals and congressional investigations. They manage to amass fortunes and (in the case of Cordileone) authority. 

Maybe their followers should be policed for being embarrassing to Christianity as well.  



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