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Demanding Religious Tolerance But Not Giving It
(4 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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So for the first time, the Senate had a Hindu guest Chapalin, Rajan Zed, delivering the morning invocation in the chamber. Before the poor guy can even begin speaking, hecklers in the crowd start shouting out things like: "Lord Jesus, forgive us father for allowing a prayer of the wicked, which is an abomination in your sight" and "No Lord but Jesus Christ! There’s only one true God!". Yeah. They seemed to mistake the Senate chamber for their church. Maybe they walked into the wrong building?
These people were from a group called "Operation Save America", yet another gathering of people under the mistaken impression that America is anything but a secular nation, and that the Deist and Freemason Founding Fathers would want us to drive all religions except Christianity out of the country. It’s these kinds of groups that want Christian prayer in schools, want Christianity invovled in laws, whine and cry about imaginary oppression and spread mistruths about how their religion is kept out of the public eye by twisting stories of their own misbehavior to make themselves out to be the victims (which, true to form, they’ve done with this situation.)
They want their religion plastered all over America, but the second someone of another religion just wants to step up to a microphone and say:
"Let us pray, we meditate on the transcedental glory of the deity supreme, who is inside the heart of the Earth, inside the life of the sky, and inside the soul of the heaven[s], may he stimulate and illuminate our minds, lead us from the unreal to the real, from darkness to light"
they go batshit. Incidently, Zed’s prayer could apply to alot of gods, he wasn’t specifically naming one, and it was far more eloquent than any Christian prayer I’ve ever heard
The fact groups like this are blind to their own blatant hypocrisy is astounding. As usual, they think freedom of religion applies only to their religion. They want everything their way. They don’t want anyone criticizing their religion. They tell stories about how their religion is supposedly kept out of the public but don’t want to see or hear about any other religions in a public setting. Some of them just want everyone to just shut up and believe their religion. And they bitch constantly about religious tolerance, and yet they refuse to tolerate anyone else’s.
As a deist myself this appalls me. Urf. The religious sorts are so infuriating. The ambiguity of that prayer makes it accessible to all. Had they been given the text and not been told it was from a Hindu I doubt they’d have a problem with it.
Incidentally, have you seen Jesus Camp? It’s a documentary about evangelical children who attend a religious camp and are taught evangelical beliefs. (The lulz? The camp is called Kids on Fire and it’s in a town called Devil’s Lake.) I know you dislike the right wing Christians and this may be entertaining/angering/create another blog entry.
@Meg I’ve heard of the documentary, I’ve seen previews for it, but I’ve yet to be able to find a time when I feel like I’d be able to sit through it.
you know, i JUST ranted about this, and I went ‘i wonder if Sai ranted about it too’ and you did!
my friend actually showed me it and said the poster who posted it on a Godzilla forum said they were his parents. (which i doubt. i mean, come on, GODZILLA)
and he said:
“And yes I am proud of my parents for doing that. It was the right thing to do. All they did was pray guys, they didn’t attack the guy, call him names, or even say anything bad about him. We are Christians, and we see Hinduism as a affront to God. ANd we saw it as our obligation to do that.”
ughhh.
@Lissie Oh god I hope he wasn’t serious. But it’s hard to tell sometimes. “All they did was pray guys”, yeah and that’s all this guy was doing too.
Lol and of course its not saying anything bad about him to call him “wicked” and say him doing the invocation was an “abomination”. You know if it was a trio of athiests heckling a Christian it’d be called hate. But somehow its hate to NOT let a trio of Christians do it to somebody else.
Jesus Camp is a little hard to start with because a lot of people come in with a bias one way or another, but it’s a really interesting look at the lifestyle. What was the most eyeopening for me though was watching the film with the directors’ commentary. The two women who directed it approach their subjects without any obvious bias and that stunned me.
One you start the film though you really get into it. I highly recommend you try and see it sometime soon.
@Meg - Well I just know seeing the brainwashed children is going to make me really sad, it already made me sad with just the commercial seeing all these small children crying and being told theres enemies all around them. It’s just awful.
And the people’s ideology is just going to angry up my blood XD also since Ted Haggard (who got some hilarious divine justice I know, but still) is in it I know theres going to be alot of “gay people want to destroy the American family” etc. which isn’t always easy to listen to.
It WAS on youtube however, I was watching a guy who had it uploaded, but he got suspended
Enough. Enough. I give up. When will they realize that nobody is destroying America but them?
Dear God, make everyone die. Amen.
“Not one Senator had the backbone to stand as our Founding Fathers stood. They stood on the Gospel of Jesus Christ!
How many times must you tell these people, THERE IS NOTHING IN THAT SUGGESTS THE FOUNDING FATHERS WANTED TO FOUND A CHRISTIAN NATION. Last time I checked, on of the reason the American declaration of independence is admirable is the lack of the importance of GOD. And even if the Founding Fathers were crazy Christian fanatics, them being the founding fathers would be correct. A Christian that says: “You are not allowed to enter this country because you are not Christian” is different from a Christian that says “I will let these people enter this country because it is the Christian thing to do”. The second one, is a TRUE Christian and upholds Christ’s philosophy of love for they neighbour.
Seriously, GOD probably don’t like you if he didn’t strike your ‘oppressors’ with lightning. He LET you get arrested for a reason.
Also maybe the reason why Christian prayers aren’t as beautiful is because of ‘censorship’ of non-direct and controversial passages.
Ted Haggard’s drug and gay hooker bust made me so happy. I loved how the Daily Show approached it too. “You know how when your dad catches you smoking he makes you smoke a whole carton? Well take the same approach to the gay sex…” Not a mental image I needed but it made me happy.
It’s a depressing film but it’s so damn intriguing. I started by screaming at it (I was also watching the beginning with a group of friends, so that had a bit to do with my initial reaction) but at the end? Stunned silence. These people fry my brain, but learning about them is fascinating in a very morbid fashion. For college one possible option to fulfill a requirement is a course about religion in America. I’m seriously considering it, even though I will probably leave the class even more biased against evangelicals than I already am.
@Black-Allison: Unfortunately with the way these people think anything bad that happens is the work of the devil, not god smacking them up’side the head. They only bring up god when things go right for them.
@Meg: Well I did finally watch it, I’ll do a blog post on it… soonish. I don’t want to do two on religion in a row so I think I’ll do politics next, haha.
I did wish I could sit in on one of that crazy lady’s sermons though, and just shout out questions. Or that creepy pedophile-looking guy that talked to the kids, talking about abortion and saying thousands of children are killed and god’s dream for them never fulfilled. I was thinking to myself “How do you know it wasn’t god’s will that they get aborted?”. The bible does show god is pretty pro-baby killing.
I’ll try and find it when I get back from Europe. (Leaving on Monday, gone for 10 days. Italy and Greece. I have friends and parents going “Meg. Don’t kill the pope. Or TP the Vatican. Please?”)
The abortion guy caused a lot of debate amongst my friends after they watched it, although we all mutually hated the guy. I think the major complaint was “They’re giving those little plastic fetuses the features of a near born baby. FETUSES DON’T WORK THAT WAY!” As far as the Bible and baby killing, well, as long as it isn’t God’s chosen people or people who aren’t pissing God off, then it’s okay. (I could get into an entire tangent about Torah authorship here but for the sake of my brain and everyone else’s, I won’t. This is what I get for reading textbooks for fun.)
Fisher was…interesting. But by far the most terrifying part of that film for me was the drumming sequence towards the beginning of the film with the kids in military face paint dancing in a fairly war like manner. I saw that and quite simply went “…buh?!” Freaked me out beyond all reason. One of the most interesting and terrifying parts of the entire evangelical movement for me though is how they use such military language for what they’re doing. And because of the language they use, it makes the movement sound much more like a real threat. And the part where Fischer was directly addressing liberals watching? *shudder*
@Meg - I kind of laughed at her ignorance at that part. Where she was saying basically: “Liberals are shaking in their boots. They’ll look at the intensity of these kids and say ‘wow, i didn’t think this was possible, what will these kids be like when they grow up?’”. I agree. But not for the same reason she’s thinking.
lol then she says “God hears the cries of children, makes me want to cry”, makes me want to cry too. And if these is a god, and he isn’t the violent-ass crazy one from the bible, hopefully he’ll hear the cries of these children and save them from that crazy bitch.
I would actually like to see what happens to these kids when they grow up, to be honest. In a way they’re very sheltered from the real world and a lot of it’s problems due to how they’re raised and the conflicts they encounter would be pretty damn interesting. And maybe that stupid Levi kid would GET RID OF HIS FLIPPIN’ MULLET. My GOD I wanted to shake him and chop that mullet off him in the worst way possible. Wrrrrrry?!!!111
WIN at the last part. I hope so too. Her camp was actually shut down after the film was released, ironically enough. Then again, I still can’t get over the irony of a camp called Kids on Fire in a town called Devil’s Lake, so we already know I’m going to Hell in a delightful pink hand basket. (And I quite like it that way.)
@Meg - even though she got shut down, the willingness of some of the parents in attending to bring their kids to that place and then sit and watch as they’re called filthy sinners and phoney hypocrits by some strange woman means they approved of these teachings and are still going to teach it to them.