Vision For America... Fun With Fundies

Vision For America... Fun With Fundies
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So my friend Noel Black's monthly publication The Toilet Paper - straight outta Vaticanburg, i.e. Colorado Springs -- recently ran a satirical essay by Rob Brendle: Associate Pastor of New Life Church.

A bit of background: New Life is the largest church in Colorado. Its founding pastor, Ted Haggard, is president of the National Association of Evangelicals and is an emerging powerhouse in American Christiania. In short, this pastor and his church are a big deal.

Brendle's essay was entitled "Vision For America" and it subtly mocks liberal fears about what the Christian Right is reallyup to. Apparently, the Toilet Paper has been receiving a flood of mail (flood being a relative term for an 9,000 circulation monthly) from readers who took Brendle at face value. Here's a particularly enjoyable snippet that should raise the alarm bell of skepticism: A sort of righteous Gestapo will be necessary, of course, to maintain national purity. Rest easy, parents: these well-trained servants of the King will discreetly follow your teenagers on prom night, so as to ensure there never even approaches a chastity infraction.

I'll admit that I was scratching my head on this till somewhere in the third graph. But then I copped on and the giggles and shits were soon to follow.

Here's another excerpt, but please read the whole piece.

And let's be honest. Nobody really believes in freedom anymore. I simply fight to replace one form of tyranny with another. Depose the evil dictator and enthrone a benevolent one. As a Christian nation, America would serve, yes, but it would serve the one true living God. It would proceed in that singular confidence of obedience and that unique assurance of righteousness.

There's plenty who will point to any number of examples of the rising political power among our homegrown mullahs. Perhaps they'll say that even if Brendle's being tongue and cheek, there's enough on Team Jesus who actually think this way, that it really doesn't matter.

And I can understand the fear. I find SpongeDob, Tony Perkins, Rick "man on dog action" Santorum, Sam Brownback and the rest as terrifying as Crash winning an Oscar.

But I think Brendle is well taken if only because he puts a roadblock into the lesser angels of our intellects, which is to believe in all movements as monoliths. To believe the other thinks as a block. The essay also has some bite and humor, something not commonly associated with the religious right. But hey,that I can understand.... because fundies aren't funny.

Insert vitriol below...

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