A new email newsletter from James Hutchens and his "Jerusalem Connection" Christian Zionist outfit directs me to "A Prophetic Warning" from Pastor Steve Foss. Foss (a protégé of Morris Cerullo) apparently received a message from God in 2000 that George Bush would just about scrape home for his first term, and that there would be an economic crash at the end of his second term. Now that it's all come true Foss has chosen to tell the world what God revealed to him, including what's in store next:
God spoke to me that after George W. Bush, America would elect its most ungodly president ever.

That is, unless Christians intercede in some unspecified way - like, for example, voting against a particular candidate:
...I had a vision earlier this year. I saw Barack Obama in this vision. He was speaking to a large crowd and being broadcast on television. He was speaking incredible words of unity, peace, and bringing all sides together; the words were elegant, the words were comforting, and the words were inspiring.
But while he was speaking I saw all a powerful spirit of violence coming out of his spirit feeding into the spirits of those that were hearing him. That spirit of violence was directed at anybody who opposed what he was saying. Those who heard his words and received it had the spirit of violence being implanted inside of them. It was a rage like I have not seen before.
It was the rage that would be unleashed against those who oppose and stand in the way of Barack Obama's agenda. We are already seeing the beginnings of this spirit manifested here in America. The vicious attacks against Sarah Palin have been unlike anything we have ever seen before. The sheer hate for this woman from people who knew nothing about her, and who claim to stand up and protect the little people, and women, has been shocking. 

Posted SwanDeer Project at 12:14 PM PDT

Updated: Saturday, 1 November 2008 12:16 PM PDT

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Senator John McCain told the conservative evangelical audience Saturday night that if elected, he would be a "pro-life President and have pro-life policies"

Really?

That wasn't religious fervor in his eyes last night. That was religious hypocrisy.

If we are going to incorporate public demonstrations of religious self-righteousness based on literalist Biblical values, let us begin and end with a literalist reading of the Sermon on the Mount, The Prodigal Son and The Good Samaritan.

Those scriptural passages are all we need to know if we want to have a better society than what we have now.

What we have now is a parsing of spiritual values in the same manner as we have parsed America's "core values." We parse our core values in order to justify or look the other way when our country behaves as a self-interested take-no-prisoners global imperialist.

We can't spread love by spreading hate.

We can't spread tolerance by spreading intolerance.

We cannot consciously stop judging and condemning others by spreading judgmental thinking, condemnation and self-righteousness.

But we can transform ourselves by following the real teachings of Jesus and not the lies of morally bankrupt self-bloated hypocrites. You know of whom I speak. Loudly posturing bible-waving moral midgets like John Hagee and CUSI who would have you believe that Jesus applauds when innocent human beings are collaterally killed in order to further foreign-policy stupidity,

Do any of us believe that human beings can be destroyed righteously? Do American Christians in a technologically advanced military society actually assume that God is pleased that airborne bombers can fly in a formation resembling a cross as they kill innocent mothers, fathers and children?

Can we accept this form of global abortion and call it good?

Can we sit in our churches once a week and walk about with a pious smile pretending to be like Jesus?

If you think such brings a smile to the face of the Prince of Peace, you need to stop spending so much time in your churches and more time in the real world.

Where Jesus walked.

Posted SwanDeer Project at 12:40 PM PDT

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In combination with the theology around Atonement and Redemption, Jesus offered a practical means for letter-of-the-law human beings to transition into a compassionate and forgiving society. He pressed for a society liberated - at least spiritually- from the either/or governance of God as managed by Jewish leadership and either/or civil obedience as managed by Roman authority.

There IS one conservative viewpoint we as Americans must sustain - spiced however with more activism. It's our Christian traditional way of looking at the teachings and role of Jesus as perhaps the most compassionate human being who ever lived.

In truth, such is the ultimate fundamentalism and evangelical literalism that must be the sole basis for a call to traditional values.

When Jesus asks that we take his gospel to all nations we take a message that has to do with our relationship to God and not God's compulsion by extortion as a tactic rather than a theology.

The current religious political agitation will not result in the resolution of who is right over who is wrong. It could, however, result in a victory based on politcal scheming by one side over another... certainly not the way of the Master. Such would be a false victory in that both sides would lose, America would lose and would continue down the path toward curse and byword for the rest of the world at large.

The success of the historical Protestant Reformation might be best described as a win/win circumstance in that God did not repudiate one point of view at the expense of the other. Both Catholics and Protestants survived. Both remain powerfully connected to Christian tradition and beliefs today.

However, the weakness of that victory displays itself among Catholics and Protestants who remain steadfast in their insistence that the other does not have total truth or authority. The Pope's recent declaration of Protestant invalidity by not being the original true church while narrow-visioned Protestants with their merchant-like (must have it in writing) obsession with authority who ignore Catholic wisdom as coming from a false or un-authorized source.

Protestant literalists seem to forget that all Luther did was yank the Bible out of the hands of his Catholic superiors while keeping for the most part the same theological assumptions that drove Catholicism with it's insecurity about its own power and led to the Dark Ages.

The ultimate consequence from such absolutist thinking is of course the assumption that God is a nit-picker with note-taking angels from whom he will arbitrarily and without mercy or compassion declare who is good and worthy and who is sinful and deserving of punishment.

Right.

At issue is not whether the United States was founded with intent that America ultimately becomes a Christian nation. At issue is that we have more than 225 years of experience living under a Constitution that, in its own way, is one of the most successful historical documents ever.

In our history we have seen the evolution of a multi-faceted society based not only on religion and philosophy, but on cultural diversity without which our positive American mythology of a melting pot could not be such a uniting part of our national psyche.

Under our Constitution we have seen the growth of a habitual way of looking at things - an automatic stance if you will - that allows for diversity of opinion and the freedom to express opinion. It is hard to make the case that deterioration of those aspects of society that each of us have deemed "deteriorating" - according to our own sense of common good and the idea of public decency - is the fault of the Constitution and can be remedied by taking its proven formula of success and modifying it into something that codifies a specific viewpoint.

We absolutely have no need of religious reins-taking of our political process as a path to America's personal and global salvation.

New theologies - whether they be about “Prosperity“, “Dominionism“, “Spiritual Warfare” or the “End Times” - ought not be the basis for seeking government power at the expense of society as a whole. If we are to reform moral and ethical practices in this country, we need to define Jesus’ Good Samaritan, Prodigal Son and Sermon on the Mount in relationship to our power as a diverse society,

to our prosperity as a tool of reform,

to our lost influential position on a global scale as an instrument of advocating peace,

to our lost spiritual and cultural values as a means toward compassion toward one another.

There is a need for resurrection.

We all know what kind of restorative process I'm talking about.

Posted SwanDeer Project at 12:01 AM PDT

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... the world can be divided into worthy and unworthy and that any human being has a right to judge another on a spiritual level. - Noemie Maxwell on Washblog

It is a sad time when politics draws judgmental religious thinking into an arena where inflammatory sermons without fail do more harm than good.

Lietta and I are reading Frank Schaeffer's bio "Crazy for God." Schaeffer's father (Francis Schaeffer) is credited by most as being the theological father of the late 1970's and early 1980's evangelical insertion into activist political dialog. The father'ss focus was almost exclusively on opposition to abortion. For example, Operation Rescue's Randall Terry openly credits Francis Schaeffer as his inspiration.

The later chapters of the son's book address Frank's own deteriorating attitude regarding religious celebrities who speak on political issues. I recommend Frankie's book to anyone with an interest in the history and growth of evangelical political agitation. (For more specifics, go to the The Yurica Report: The Despoiling of America)

Unfortunately, the gates to political preaching were opened 30 or more years ago when purely greedy televangelists recognized an opportunity for greater fame, greater audiences and corresponding cash flow (or notoriety) by taking cues in hate-mongering and anger-mongering from the likes of Limbaugh.

Actually, one could even go further back for inspiration in modeling one's own pulpit political content based on the political activist preaching of Dr. King. King's preaching and speeches gave us the healthiest form of religious/political rhetoric - probably because it stuck to the liberal compassionate philosophy of Christ as found in the New Testament.

Sadly, it now seems commonplace for ignorant and poorly-read political biblicist candidates like McCain to attempt to make hay or lure supporters of the ilk of John Hagee and Rod Parsely. These are those whose indignation seems to be more patently and deliberate grandstanding as opposed to the assumed sincere and righteous indignation unleashed in Reverend Wright's fire.

In addition, although Hagee's literalist devotion to the end-times fantasy comes across as naive ravings of Donald Duck, there are evangelicals who still naively and passively assumed that the political manure dragged by preachers into their sermons is the same god-talk that Jesus talked.

The underlying problem to all of this which now seems a permanently-embedded aspect of political life in America (a more effective way to knock down any wall of separation than some constitutionally mandated formality) is how one party using manipulation and newspeak has inserted this kind of nonsense into public discourse.

Traditional and presumably non-self-righteous parties and candidates are nevertheless forced to talk the talk and walk the walk of religious rhetoric whether they want to or not. Politically, Fake Consultant's words about America's own role in generating the creation of emotional global "IED's" of resentment and downright hatred of this country are on target.

Writings like Chalmers Johnson's books and William Blum's "Rogue State" are not refutable unless you are so blindly nationalistic and full of the limitations of jingoism that your proclamation of "America: Love it or Leave It" becomes the unspoken arrogance of your own ignorance as well.

Undeniably, American global imperialism is why the most insignificant of American citizens cannot travel abroad without the need for serious consideration of personal safety, not to mention the need for much more CASH.

We have the extremely inferior and failed Corporate Free-Market Government-Bail-Out-Supported system to thank for that. (Would Jesus have bailed out Bear who more than likely ruthlessly refused to forgive it's on economic debtors?)

As a members of a global community we Americans are both economic and religious global imperialists. Honest evidence and observation makes that statement is almost impossible to rebut with the use of lying and self-serving rhetoric. ... unless you are a political and religious bigot taught by shallow contemporary corporate conservatism to believe the at all costs, what is good for American business is good for the whole planet regardless of American Corporate tactics and strategy.

It's the ultimate answer to the growing negative response to an old American cliche: "Would you buy a used car (do business) with this guy?"

Posted SwanDeer Project at 10:13 AM PDT

Updated: Monday, 17 March 2008 6:36 PM PDT

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     As a prerequisite for any other right, the right to life is the great civil-rights issue of our time. It is what slavery and segregation were to generations past. Our response to this issue is the measure of our fidelity to a defining American principle: “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life.”

    You have asked me to vote for you. In turn, may I ask you three simple questions? They are straightforward questions of fact about abortion. They are at the heart of the debate. In fairness, I believe that you owe the people you would lead a good-faith answer to each:

    1. The heart whose beating is stilled in every abortion — is it a human heart?

    2. The tiny limbs torn by the abortionist’s scalpel — are they human limbs?

    3. The blood that flows from the fetus’s veins — is it human blood?

    If the stopped heart is a human heart, if the torn limbs are human limbs, if the spilled blood is human blood, can there be any denying that what is killed in an abortion is a human being? In your vision for America, the license to kill that human being is a right. You have worked to protect that “right” at every turn. But can there be a right to deny some human beings life or the equal protection of the law?

    Can we become a society that does not sacrifice some people to help others? Or is that hope too audacious? You have said that abortion is necessary to protect women’s equality. But surely we can do better. Surely we can build an America where the equality of some is not purchased with the blood of others. Or would that mean too much change from politics as usual?

    Can we provide every member of the human family equal protection under the law? Your record as a legislator gives a resounding answer: No, we can’t. That is the answer the Confederacy gave the Union, the answer segregationists gave young children, the answer a complacent bus driver once gave a defiant Rosa Parks. But a different answer brought your father from Kenya so many years ago; a different answer brought my family from Egypt some years later. Now is your chance, Senator Obama, to make good on the spontaneous slogan of your campaign, to adopt the more American and more humane answer to the question of whether we can secure liberty and justice for all: Yes, we can.

I suppose that among those discriminating moralists who elevate abortion above any other consideration, this is a pretty speech Sherif being young and a Rhodes Scholar and all.

Don't know if this Senior Philosophy Major Rhodes Scholar has a religious affiliation, but I'm assuming so. Either way, if one is to throw the Book at Obama or anyone else as a scriptural critique, one should be willing to address one's own moral worthiness as well.

So I'll write an open letter to Sherif Grgis, Senior at Princeton,

2008 Rhodes Scholar,

and apprentice rhetoretician.

Sherif,

Do you believe the all-encompassing aspect of the Sermon on the Mount - that it encompasses and includes every human being on the earth? Do you believe that also?

If you do, as much as your advocacy for the unborn is laudable, so long as you leave out any advocacy for all other human beings at risk and in harm's way on this planet, could we not say that your letter to Mr. Obama is nothing more than preening; a grandstand performance with an eye single to who is impressed rather than whether or not Mr. Obama is convinced by your literary flourish?

If as you say, the right to life is the great civil rights issue of our time, how say you regarding those who have been murdered in Darfur, Iraq and other scenes of ugliness more obscene than a detached surgeon wielding a D&C weapon?

Do you have on your conscience a vote or two for a President who has killed more people in Iraq than he upon whom he places blame for the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq?

If you take a pious and compassionate posture, Sherif, ought you not take a pious and compassionate posture regarding ALL human atrocity and not just the most politically publicized?

Do you not risk diminished credibility if you are willing to risk your reputation for some but not all of those who suffer?

As for your 3 simple questions, I'm not asking for permission to ask of you 4 similar questions. I'm asking them regardless of whether you approve or not.

1. The heart whose beating is stilled in every act of war — is it a human heart?

2. All  limbs torn by the warrior's bombs — are they human limbs?

3. The blood that flows from the Iraqi child's veins — is it human blood?

4.  Is there any difference between the abortion opposed by self-righteous believers and the killing of a pregnant mother in Iraq or Darfur - a genuinely more horrendous abortion in the eyes of genuine compassionate Christians?

Your own words need to be expanded in light of my 4 questions? How would you answer your own questions below?

    Can we become a society that does not sacrifice some people to help others? Or is that hope too audacious? You have said that abortion is necessary to protect women’s equality. But surely we can do better. Surely we can build an America where the equality of some is not purchased with the blood of others. Or would that mean too much change from politics as usual?


    Can we provide every member of the human family equal protection under the law?

I seriously doubt that the Master will be impressed by collegiate credentials that constitute a limited definition of what it means to be a genuine religious humanitarian.

Now is your chance Sherif.

If you can hit it out of the park with a scholarly and philosophical reply that keeps your cherry-picking personal morality elevated above that of Mr. Obama,  human being who has genuinely moved your generation, show me your stuff.

Sincerely

Arthur Ruger
BA International Relations,
University of Houston, 1976
BA International Relations, Russian Studies

American Veteran, Opinionated

Posted SwanDeer Project at 5:29 PM PST

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To all practicing Christians in Willapa Country,

if this man is held high in your regard I want you to realize that you hold God in no higher regard that Reverend Hagee. You'll be hard-pressed to deny that Hagee's God is your God.

That is unless you recongize Hagee as a kindergarten pretender with no real grasp of scripture.

John Hagee portrays God as so repugnant, judgmental and punitive - he preaches a God who in reality is nothing more Hagee's own portrait of himself.

The idea that God has to carry out what Hagee's imagination interprets from the myth writing of the Old Testament is Kindergarten silliness at its ultimate.

Posted SwanDeer Project at 6:16 PM PST

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Most Americans who sustain any sort of personal spirituality are not as intense in their opposition to Chrisitan politics and beliefs as Bill Maher. However, the objections and criticism people like Maher make are not the rare exceptions to the rule, but are in fact the common sense conclusions that most people arrive at - especially if the religion of their childhood did not include total immersion in the imaginary reality of fundamentalist literal thinking.

D.L. Hughley isn't off the mark when he remarks that many American Christians behave as if they believed that Jesus was born in Kansas. 

 At one point, Dan Savage is talking about the selective reading and selective usage of Biblical verses to justify attitudes. He describes the Bible as a book of ancient tribal prejudices.

The single most powerful prejudice - and it is the entire basis of the Christian internal mental construct - is that God and God's kingdom is literally a kingdom run by a tribal chieftain.

If not a tribal chieftain, then a monarch patterned after the historical monarchs who by virture of conquest rendered tribal chieftains subservient and therefore inferior to monarchy.

Contemporary Christianity sustains - in that part of our imagination that  effectively imprints reality on the mind - an image of God as a Pharoah or an

That's a version of God the majority of Christianity - consciously or unconsciously - buys into. It's a kingdom ruled by divine edict, strictly written and rigidly enforced law. It's a kingdom modern preachers and Christian lobbyists have found to be quite the fountain of profit.

Getting away from that notion was what Jesus was doing. But nowadays Jesus seems to have been conscripted by biblical literalists and end-times preachers into this ancient false reality upon which modern judgemental prejudice is founded.

It is a false reality.

It's the reality of child-like or adolescent minds in contemporary adult Christian bodies pretending that unproven and never-established absolute innerancies are what God is all about; 

... that absolutes are the only legitimate function of reglion.

We need more Christians to stay home on Sundays until their spiritual adolescence matures and their wallets are no longer the bookmarks in the scriptures they ponder.

We need fewer Christian churches that have no different function on Sundays than that of stadiums, arenas and auditoriums where  entertainment and refreshments are both for sale in generous mind-altering abundance.

We need far fewer preachers telling the gullible that wealth and prosperity is the natural and ultimate validation of personal piety. 

We need religious lobbyists to encourage goodness and ethics which are legitimate and natural impulses

... and to stop urging some sort of institutional morality that takes no prisoners. 

We need far fewer preachers telling God what to do and the people how to behave.

Posted SwanDeer Project at 6:34 AM PST

Updated: Monday, 28 January 2008 6:41 AM PST

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Recently, candidate Romney attempted a public declaration of his religious position vis-a-vis church and state. This in the tradition and hopeful replication of the Kennedy speech on the same subject in 1960.

Romney's effort fell far short. Not his fault though because his audience was seriously unwilling to hear the Kennedy concepts of separation of church and state.

This reduced Romney to claiming that his personal Christian priest-hood approach to governing would have a morally judgmental style more in keeping with America's obsession with moral gossip than say candidate Huckabee or those godless types like Giuliani who seem to be hiding from wearing their religious beliefs on their sleeves.

Among Democrats who have a more minor history of dragging God into the policital arena, there are still those willing to proclaim a spirituality that implies that God might be the same political junkie beloved of many republicans and the constituency to which they pander.

Turn on any preacher cable channel and watch for a while - especially when they begin their public praying episodes. Before they start, get out your New Testament, assuming that you have one. If not, google it and get it ready on line.

Watch and listen then as each of them - some even tearfully - step beyond the notion of pleading with God as if he/she were stubborn but still convincable supremicist. Listen that as the braying ... oops, I mean praying ... preachers presume to tell God what to do while third party listeners like as are told by the prayerful phrases who we are to behave.

Then read chapters 5,6 & 7 of Matthew. Read about praying to God in private rather than wearing your big mouth personal morality on your sleeves or your head like a gigantic blood-red fireman's hat.

Read about praying in secret in your closet in hopes of God seeing what you do in private and rewarding you openly - according to the socially redeeming value of your request.

They're -as Watts wrote "telling God what to do and the people how to behave."

Would you want to permanently reside in a kingdom where the boss is a gullible despot subject to the partisan bleating of self-promoting false moralists?

Is that the America toward which many foolishly radical political Christians want to shove us?

Is that the America we want?

Is that the America we need?

Is that the America that would stop imperialising the world?

... or worse, turn America into diety's personal crusader complete with waving banners, blood-red crosses and knights brandishing swords, lances and atomic catapults?

Posted SwanDeer Project at 7:12 AM PST

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Bill Berkowitz at Talk to Action writes this month about [excerpt below]

"Dr. James Dobson and Dr. John MacArthur, two influential evangelical family counselors, 'blame' battered women for their plight, says Christian evangelical author Jocelyn Andersen.

Writing based on her own experience, Andersen maintains that for far too long too many evangelical pastors have tried to sweep the problem under the rug. According to Andersen, the problem of physical, as well as emotional and spiritual abuse, is being exacerbated by the outdated teachings of several high-profile conservative Christian pastors.

In the introduction to her new book "Woman Submit! Christians & Domestic Violence" (One Way Cafe Press, 2007), Andersen points out that "The practice of hiding, ignoring, and even perpetuating the emotional and physical abuse of women is ... rampant within evangelical Christian fellowships and as slow as our legal systems have been in dealing with violence against women by their husbands, the church has been even slower."

Actually the single most powerful aspect of most domestic violence that occurs within families of active and practicing Christians is consciously or sub-consciously driven by literalist fundamentalism that in and of itself worship's patriarchy.

Patriarchy is the false notion that God has mandated a patriarchal system of family governance based on Himself as the commanding head of a man's life and the man as head of his wife and children - not unlike a first sergeant who takes orders from the commanding officer.

This is kindergarten religion in one of its ugliest lights but seriously practiced and preached by shallow-water pulpit-pounders who mistakenly counsel families that God trusts the man to govern women and children - and that it's all Biblicly ordained.

Right.

1 Timothy 2:12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.

Posted SwanDeer Project at 7:48 PM PDT

Updated: Wednesday, 1 August 2007 8:37 PM PDT

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Dear Concerned Women of America

RE: Your request for my consideration of your group for my "strategic financial support"

Congress is about to take another step towards implementing universal government healthcare, or as it's better known, "Hillary Care," when it reauthorizes the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) or Children's Health and Medicare Protection Act (CHAMP) as it's called in the House.

The vote on SCHIP in the House and Senate could occur as early as next week! Both the House and Senate versions unfortunately expand spending on the program as well as directly impact pro-family concerns.

So Mrs. LaHaye of the "Left Behind" Lahaye's who has yet to declare that spending on warmaking is something about which Concerned Women of America don't have to be concerned, is now bellowing about expanded spending on healthcare for children with or without direct impact on  pro-family concerns.

Are you kindergarten evangelicals so much like kittens without eyesight that you would reject healthcare for children because self-important and self-appointed mouthpieces for kindergarten religion say ideology supercedes common sense?

Jesus never taught that kind of foolishness and in fact attempted to convince those kinds of  people to learn to swim, take off their literalist life-jackets and venture into the wider and more meaningful deeper waters of life. 

Plainly stated, the liberals' goal is to boost spending on SCHIP to cover as many children and even adults in the U.S. as possible. This expansion is an unaffordable and unmistakable step toward socialized medicine.

Plainly asked, if CWA considers it un-American and un-Christian to 

"cover as many children and even adults in the U.S. as possible."

 tell us WHY? Don't hide behind simple misleading statements never defended, explained or justified. 

 "This expansion is an unaffordable and unmistakable step toward socialized medicine."

Again ... a statement for who CWA considers dumbed-down Christians unable to think for themselves. A statement totally contrary to legitimate Christianity and the highest ultimate good advocated by Jesus Christ, who was not in any sense the conservative capitalist ideological fool contemporary and so-called busybody radical Christians make him out to have been.

I ask in the name of Christian honesty and a desire for legitimate moral credibility from you folks ... that if you are going to lay eggs in my yard, you defend the statements about them and justify yourselves.  

Sincerely,

The Legislative Department
Concerned Women for America

P.S. As always, we thank you for also considering CWA for your strategic financial support. With you, we're fighting on key issues like embryonic stem cells, abortion, "gay marriage" and pornography. We need you. If you can help us today, please go to http://www.cwfa.org/support_cwa.asp and enter your most generous donation.

You will never get my dollars until you actively compare and rationalize your thinking that embryonic stem cells, abortion, gay marriage and pornography somehow exceed or supercede war, military destruction, social apathy, families without medical coverage and global warming are not more important than your priority list.

You have no credibility if you cannot or are unwilling to justify your thinking.

Arthur Ruger,

I've published this response on both of the following sites.
The American Christian: http://arthur-ruger.blogspot.com/
Willapa Magazine: https://coastalrain.tripod.com/willapa/

Posted SwanDeer Project at 9:06 AM PDT

Updated: Saturday, 28 July 2007 9:17 AM PDT

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