Make the silent heard and the invisible seen.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Today in the land of right-wing neo-con evangelical geezers

The day (01-13-10) began with a headline in The Globe and Mail reporting on crackpot criticism from an odd assortment of interest groups, other than filmgoers, towards James Cameron's blockbuster Avatar. One denouncement came from the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano. Its film reviewer complained the movie's story about the planet Pandora - where its tall, blue, nature-loving Na'vi species is set-upon by resource-marauding humans:
“gets bogged down by a spiritualism linked to the worship of nature... (and) cleverly winks at all those pseudo-doctrines that turn ecology into the religion of the millennium.”
As a student with a major in Religious Studies, I would argue that an environmental "pseudo-doctrine" is better suited to today's planet-in-peril than one that is interpreted by an out-of-touch Pope who, the day before, called gay marriage an "attack on creation." Well, your Holiness, fundamental Catholic creationism is an attack on reason and common sense.

The day ended with alarming nonsense from a pair of notorious US blowhards weighing-in with deplorable comments on Haiti's heartbreak. Evanglical Pat Robertson teamed-up with right-wing radio heavyweight Rush Limbaugh to show how conservative-Christian morality stands in shocking contrast to the respect and thoughtfulness of the liberal-minded. According to Robertson, the Christian mouthpiece, and Limbaugh, the Republican loud-mouth, light-skinned and dark-skinned Haitians made a deal with the Devil.

What is more devilish is that evangelicals and Catholics, alike, are among the Christian missionaries who volunteer for aid agencies in impoverished countries, like Haiti. When disaster strikes, wealthier nation governments, such as Canada, through branches such as the Canadian International Development Agency, channel emergency aid through these faith-based NGOs so they can buy poor, uneducated converts for their fundamentalist religious agenda.

See you in church.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks Dave for saying like it is!!!

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  2. Reply to a comment on my Facebook page www.facebook.com/davebrindle:

    Not all Evangelicals are part of the neo-con Christian Right in the US, and some Evangelicals are actually politically liberal or progressive.

    However, 70 million American adults are devoted to the Evangelical lifestyle. Not surprisingly, almost half of all Evangelicals are Republican partisans. Also, the term "war," as in culture war, is repeatedly invoked to describe the fighting spirit embraced by 30 million US Evangelicals.

    The movement is diverse. Groups as disparate as black Baptists and Dutch Reformed Churches, Mennonites and Pentecostals, Catholic charismatics and Southern Baptists all come under the evangelical umbrella.... See More

    It is important to emphasize that many in the Christian Right tend to get their information—and thus their political worldview—not from major corporate media, but from alternative media produced within the large Christian Right subculture, such as Pat Robertson.

    Protestant churches with socially conservative agendas, that also require a high level of participatory commitment, are the fastest growing sector of religion in the United States. These churches are embedding their missionary work in many African, central and south American countries.

    See: Religion and Politics in the United States: Nuances You Should Know
    http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v17n2/evangelical-demographics.html
    Evangelical Christians in the U.S.: Lifestyle, Demographic and Marketing Trends, 2007
    http://www.marketresearch.com/product/display.asp?productid=1495106&xs=r&SID=73844501-468258808-529516781&curr=USD&kw=&view=abs

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