5 May 2010 Who gets to be the next Emperor

5 May 2010 Who gets to be the next Emperor?


Franklin Graham wants very badly to win a war that he’s all too willing to start; and that he’s already lost.

“In an interview with Newsmax TV, Franklin Graham said the Pentagon's decision to rescind his invitation to Thursday's National Prayer Day event was "a slap at all evangelical Christians" and he blamed the Obama administration.

The "slap" is "absolutely part of a pattern of hostility toward Christianity in the federal government," Graham said. "And I don't know if it's exactly from President Obama, but I'm certain that some of the men around him are very much opposed to what we stand for and what we believe."

Graham was removed from his slot at the Pentagon’s “National Day of Prayer because he made statements about Islam that might well have increased the risk to U.S. military personnel serving in Islamic nations. The Pentagon, which is not supposed to support or champion any religion, explained the official position quite clearly. Graham, who wants badly to become the de facto evangelical leader for the theocracy he is all too willing to create, chose to claim the Pentagon had delivered a personal insult to him. He fails to understand that the entire National Day of Prayer is illegal and un-Constitutional. He claims personal insult when he should be asking for enlightenment.

His statements about Islam have some modicum of truth. Its fundamentalist adherents are often violent, are often intolerant, and are in need of joining the 21st century.

So, too, are the fundamentalist adherents of Judaism, who cling to the traditions of the Pale, and who claim the divine gift of “Greater Israel,” those lands under Jewish rule in the very brief periods of the Davidic monarchies and the 1st & 2nd Temples. The most fanatical among them will neither recognize nor defend the modern state of Israel. They are a danger to Israel today and to Israel’s future as a continuing nation.

Graham stands in a long line of evangelists and fundamentalist Christians who think that Christianity is excluded from the 1st Amendment’s establishment clause. They are all eager to rewrite the Constitution so that it gives them secular power to equal their numerical representation in our population. They fail to understand that they are owed no power, no presence, and no rights but those afforded every citizen. Their faith and that of their fellow travelers is of no concern to the non-evangelical citizens.

Graham and company cite large numbers of adherents. They claim that their religion commands them to convert everyone around them. They may well believe that but such dogma has no hold on the rest of us and should be purged from the political body of the United States, particularly our military.

Lest Graham be allowed to hide behind charitable deeds to mask his hatred of Islam and his father’s hatred of Judaism, consider how his charity actually deals with people in need.

“Samaritan's Purse has shown a lot of love for its neighbors, including its Muslim neighbors. The ministry has established humanitarian relief efforts in such predominantly Muslim countries as Somalia, Sudan, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq -- drawing much praise but also some criticism for requiring people to sit through Christian prayer meetings or talks before receiving aid.”

How much Christian love and charity is to be found in a church which requires hungry people to sit through indoctrination before being fed? Judaism prohibits such lack of charity. So, too, do many of the moderate Christians I know. And I believe Islam teaches the same practice. The depth of Graham’s hypocrisy is damning. No honest conversion to any philosophy or faith comes from torture. And preaching to people who only show up for food is a form of torture. True, it leaves no marks, causes no physical injury, but it brings mental anguish. Just as the Moors converted the Mediterranean to Islam under penalty of death; before them, Constantine converted the Roman world under similar threat. And after the Moors were ejected from Europe, the Inquisition created false Christians who prayed to avoid torture and death such as that dealt out to Jews and Moslems at the hands of the Church.

I see no spiritual merit in Graham, in Robertson, or any of the evangelicals who lust for power in numbers of followers. They are no better than the Inquisitors, no better than the Taliban. There real danger to this nation lies in the refusal of moderate Christians to stand up and shout the evangelicals down, to point out their hypocrisies and to remove them from political power until they lose their hold on the political processes in this nation. Their numbers, these evangelicals, do not justify their chokehold on the GOP. That level of control speaks all too loudly of the GOP’s willingness to use religion when it can. But religion is destroying the remaining merits of the GOP.

We need to be aware of the risks coming from the religious right. They are too willing to ally with no-nothing populism and racism in order to gain political presence. They’ve been courted by the GOP since the Nixon years and it is time for such practice to stop. We must avoid yoking our nation to a fundamentalist/evangelical harness. We left state churches in Europe for the best of reasons. We don’t want to elect a Holy Christian Emperor to rule over the U.S. as the Vatican did over Europe for centuries. We’re much closer to having such an empire than we know.