He had a nice PVC frame and the sign must have been about five feet wide by four feet high. On it was a gruesome picture of a person in tattered and burned clothing standing in a pool of blood dripping from all over him. Sitting in the foreground of the picture on a raised seat was an image of Jesus, a stern look on his face with an outstretched finger pointed accusingly at the other figure.

There were, as you can imagine, some words about hell and damnation, but I can’t remember them specifically. Having grown up in the funeral business (and having been a funeral director in the past), I spent my fair share of time in churches of every description, and I’ve certainly heard hell-fire and brimstone sermons. I even remember some “revivals” in my day with some pretty strong and damning language.

For some reason I was really struck on this day by this man’s sign. I realized I felt sorry for him. Sorry that his experience was one where one becomes a Christian (is saved) out of fear…where Jesus is the Grand Inquisitor. Unfortunately, that is the experience of so many people, especially those on the extreme Christian right. If you listen to their theology and their sermons, and get them to admit their real reasons for professing Christianity, it’s not because they want to live a better life. It’s not because they believe it’s a way to help them be better more caring people. It’s because they have been scared into believing that not believing sends one to a hellish afterlife, sentenced by an angry God.

They have this apocalyptic theology based primarily in the book of Revelation, but it is also in that book we find in Chapter 3 Verse 20 these words, “Look! I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends.” (New Living Translation) My personal favorite verse is Micah 6:8, “He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” And this from a book in which the prophet warms of the wrath of God on the Jewish people.

Where was God’s anger directed in Micah? The prophet sums it up for us in chapter 3, verse 11: “Its heads [its rulers] give judgment for a bribe, its priests teach for hire, its prophets divine for money; {Mic 3:11a RSV}..” Throughout the Bible, God’s anger was directed at leaders who fail to care for their people, and see to their well-being. And his condemnation for the rest of us is directed at those of us who turn a blind eye to “the least of us.”

Read the two verses above. The angry God of the Old Testament invites us to walk with him, and the Jesus of the New Testament gently knocks, and asks to share a meal as a friend. This is not the God of the ultra-conservative right-wing Christians. They live in fear of God and possible condemnation, and soothe themselves not by caring and sharing, but by trying to make everyone else appear even less worthy than they.

What a sad state of affairs for those people, and what a sad state they create in our world with that view. Me, I prefer the idea of a Jesus who is a friend. Someone who cares about others, and calls us, as he did, to take care of one another. It is the piousness that usually brought about the wrath of God.

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First, on a point of clarification, Barnes is wrong is when he says about gays in the military, “This is not a popular issue.” A recent CNN poll finds that 79% of Americans believe that gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly, and Zogby poll from 2006 finds that 73% of service members are comfortable with gays and lesbians. (These and other related poll results here.)

The left side of the blogosphere is all in an uproar over the comments. I don’t like that this happens to be a true statement, but it is true that McCain will win friends from the krazy kristian kooks by bashing gays. This has been a winning issue for Republicans for a while now (there’s yet no real price to pay for homophobia), and the recent California ruling can certainly be used to inflame that important Republican base. So the fact is, (while I don’t like it) it’s going to happen, and it’s just a matter of time.

On the other hand, Juan Williams makes a good point as he keeps asking, “who else are they going to vote for?” The fact is, McCain doesn’t have to play the GLBT card, as the krazy kristians certainly are not going to vote for Obama, and unlike what Barnes says, they are not going to sit home and allow a black man to move into the White House. They will come out and vote for McCain just because he’s already said once that he supports Arizona anti-gay marriage amendment…that’s all it takes.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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And now they’re trying to kill the hit show “Desperate Housewives.”

You’ll recall that this is the same group that “boycotted” Ford, then lost, after we exposed the organization as gay-hating, having a terrible record of anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim writings, AND the fact that the AFA actually promotes the “Nazi Germany era” science of known hate groups on their Web site.

It’s hard to believe that any American company, or politician, would want to be associated with such fringe haters.

Let me share with you, and the folks who run Desperate Housewives, the exact message the American Family Association is promoting:?

Does a “Jewish upbringing” lead to a life of crime?

In the March issue of American Family Association Journal, a publication of Donald E. Wildmon’s right-wing evangelical activist group, the American Family Association (AFA), author Randall Murphree suggested that a Jewish upbringing leads to hatred of Christians, and by extension, a criminal lifestyle.

Were gays the real evil behind the Holocaust?

Scott Lively, California chapter director of the AFA, is co-author of a book titled, The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality and the Nazi Party, in which he claims that ?homosexuals [are] the true inventors of Nazism and the guiding force behind many Nazi atrocities.? Lively makes explicit links between his claims about the Nazi party and the modern gay equal rights movement, claiming that ?From the ashes of Nazi Germany, the homo-fascist phoenix has arisen again, this time in the United States.?

Is Europe “infested” with Muslims who breed “faster than we do”?

“The problem we have with Europe is that [it] is infested with the Muslim population. The reason why is because they multiply at a much faster rate than we do,” she says. “When we Christians get married, we have two, three, maybe four children — after they’re born, we start thinking about what college we’re going to send them to, what education we’re going to give them. The Muslims, on the other hand, are allowed to marry up to four wives at a time,” she says, noting that terrorist Osama bin Laden had 27 children.

Is AIDS a “gay plague”?

Some time ago, you see, Thacker called AIDS “the gay plague,” which everyone knows but no one will admit, particularly homosexuals and their friends in the Bush Administration.

Are gays responsible for the “end of times”?

The president of one pro-family group feels the battle in Massachusetts over legalizing homosexual marriage is a clear example of the struggle between good and evil as the end times approach.

Are Muslim-Americans trying to “take over our cities”?

Muslim newcomers are engaging in what area realtors call “block busting.” In other words, he says, “They came in, paid outrageously high prices for some of our homes that you wouldn’t give $20,000 for, paying 60 and 70 thousand, which then entrenched a number of [Muslim families] on every block.” Golen believes this is part of a “concerted effort” on the part of Muslims to use their financial power take over the city, and he says, “they’re doing a heck of a job because nobody’s standing up to them.”

Are gays “deviants”?

“…an immoral, deviant lifestyle.”

Are gays a “public health” threat?

As a family physician, I?ve seen first-hand the devastation that homosexuality brings into the lives of patients that have chosen to live this way…. To promote homosexuality and even consider the sanctioning of it through ?marriage? is irresponsible and is a danger to the public health of the entire country, spiritually and physically.

Do Jews control Hollywood?

The AFA Journal has long served as a platform for anti-Semitic theories and innuendo. For instance, Wildmon warned of Jewish control over popular culture, an old anti-Semitic canard, in a January 1989 article, “What Hollywood Believes and Wants.” “The television elite are highly secular,” Wildmon wrote. “The majority (59 percent) in the Jewish faith.” In a separate article in the same issue, titled “Anti-Semitism Called a Serious Problem,” Wildmon, a longtime opponent of gay rights, pointedly remarked that “Jews favor homosexual rights more than other Americans.”

Are gays diseased perverts who die early? – I’m not even going to quote this crap from AFA, read it for yourself and then tell me how any American company or politician would ever want to listen to these people.

I’m starting to think we may need a new word for these religious right groups: Christian supremacists.

You can find more American Family Association homophobia here.

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I am told, on ‘The 700 Club’ show on 11/6, Pat said: ‘By choosing to disrupt this national event, these Hollywood elites have clearly invited God’s wrath. Is it any surprise that the Almighty chose to strike at a town on the opposite side of the country?’

Ok. Beatty, Bening, Arnold–all Hollywood elite. They have a minor incident in San Diego. So God throws thunderbolts at…..two Red States?

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WASHINGTON (AFP) – Prominent US preacher Pat Robertson said that recent natural disasters around the world point to the end of the world and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.

"These things are starting to hit with amazing regularity," Robertson told CNN, remarking on the coincidence of a major earthquake that killed thousands in Asia Saturday and recent killer hurricanes slamming the United States.

Those disasters come less than a year after a massive tsunami levels huge portions of South Asia, killing more than 31,000 people and leaving some a million left homeless.

Devout Christians believe that the "last days" will be marked by political and geological upheaval, and Roberts said recent events show that those days might have arrived.

Citing scripture from the Bible, the conservative Christian broadcaster said the latter days would be marked by "the birth pangs of a new order, and for anybody who knows what it’s like to have a wife going in labor, you know how these labor pains begin to hit."

"What was called the Blessed Hope of the Bible is that one day Jesus Christ would come back again, start a whole new era, that this world order that we know would change into something that would be wonderful that we’d call the millennium," Robertson said.

"And before that good time comes there will be some difficult days and there will be likened to what a woman goes through in labor just before she brings forth a child."

Asked if the world was reaching this moment, Robertson said: "It’s possible. I don’t have any special revelation to say it is but the Bible does indicate such a time will happen in the end of time. And could this be it? It might be."

Hurricane Katrina has left more than 1,200 people dead in the United States, while nearly 20,000 people have died in the South Asian earthquake disaster this weekend.

As I noted….A God that needs to announce his return via death and destruction does not deserve our worship.

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