Remember “Jesus Camp”?
by digby
With the rise of Tea Party, which obviously includes the Christian Right, and the controversy about whether or not liberals should be alarmed by their philosophy and goals, perhaps it’s a good time to revisit some of the great work that’s been done in recent years to expose just what these folks are all about. Just a little friendly reminder, as it were:
Todd Bentley has a long night ahead of him, resurrecting the dead, healing the blind, and exploding cancerous tumors. Since April 3, the 32-year-old, heavily tattooed, body-pierced, shaved-head Canadian preacher has been leading a continuous “supernatural healing revival” in central Florida. To contain the 10,000-plus crowds flocking from around the globe, Bentley has rented baseball stadiums, arenas and airport hangars at a cost of up to $15,000 a day. Many in attendance are church pastors themselves who believe Bentley to be a prophet and don’t bat an eye when he tells them he’s seen King David and spoken with the Apostle Paul in heaven. “He was looking very Jewish,” Bentley notes.
Tattooed across his sternum are military dog tags that read “Joel’s Army.” They’re evidence of Bentley’s generalship in a rapidly growing apocalyptic movement that’s gone largely unnoticed by watchdogs of the theocratic right. According to Bentley and a handful of other “hyper-charismatic” preachers advancing the same agenda, Joel’s Army is prophesied to become an Armageddon-ready military force of young people with a divine mandate to physically impose Christian “dominion” on non-believers.
There are lots of these people and they are heavily featured in the Tea Party faction of the GOP.
David Brody: “Are you concerned at all that some of the social conservative issues, abortion and same sex marriage, some of these other issues because they are taking somewhat of a back seat right now at least to the fiscal issues that there are some inherent problems for social conservatives in something like that?”
Senator Jim DeMint: “No actually just the opposite because I really think a lot of the motivation behind these Tea Party crowds is a spiritual component. I think it’s very akin to the Great Awakening before the American Revolution. A lot of our founders believed the American Revolution was won before we ever got into a fight with the British. It was a spiritual renewal.”
…
I think people are seeing this massive government growing and they’re realizing that it’s the government that’s hurting us and I think they’re turning back to God in effect is our salvation and government is not our salvation and in fact more and more people see government as the problem and so I think some have been drawn in over the years to a dependency relationship with government and as the Bible says you can’t have two masters and I think as people pull back from that they look more to God. It’s no coincidence that socialist Europe is post-Christian because the bigger the government gets the smaller God gets and vice-versa. The bigger God gets the smaller people want their government because they’re yearning for freedom.”
Yeah, they’ll be free as long as they toe the Christian Right line. It’s fairly clear that atheists, Muslims and others aren’t going to be quite as “free.” Bring on the Black Robed Regiment.
That’s the fellow who’s angling to become the majority leader of the US Senate if the Republicans win the election, by the way. I don’t think he has a problem with Christine O’Donnell. He endorsed her.
Update: On Fox at 3:26pdt, they just posed a text poll: “How concerned are you about the secularization of society?”
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