Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Religious Right's Support FOR ISRAEL BY GLENN GREENWALD and More

Poll from BloombergPolitics:
Pastor John Hagee at his annual Pro-Israel Rally  CUFI (Christians United For Israel )

Glenn Greenwald argues in this recent article at the Intercept that the Religious Right has a specific set of beliefs which are a threat to America which are based in the Evangelical Fundamentalism adherence to dispensationalism which refers to the coming End Times and America and Israel's role in this apocalyptic vision which hails the second coming of Jesus and the end of the world as we know it and how the True Christians and Jews will work to make this happen. By acting the Religious Right believes it can hasten God's design for the End Times and save themselves from being damned to Hell or whatever.

 These Christian dominionists believe the rise of ISIS and Iran's threat to Israel and in their view Obama's anti-Israel policies are signs of the End Times and that True Christians must rise to crush Islam and all heretics, pagans and unbelievers including liberal christians who are not real Christians since they have fallen away from the preachings of Jesus and the Holy Bible as they interpret it.




RELIGIOUS FANATICISM IS A HUGE FACTOR IN AMERICANS’ SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL
BY GLENN GREENWALD @ggreenwald The Intercept, April 15, 2015


"  Almost half of all Americans want to support Israel even if its interests diverge from the interests of their own country. Only a minority of Americans (47 percent) say that their country should pursue their own interests over supporting Israel’s when the two choices collide. It’s the ultimate violation of George Washington’s 1796 Farewell Address warning that “nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded. … The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave.” 
It is inconceivable that a substantial portion of Americans would want to support any other foreign country even where doing so was contrary to U.S. interests. Only Israel commands anything near that level of devoted, self-sacrificing fervor on the part of Americans. So it’s certainly worth asking what accounts for this bizarre aspect of American public opinion.
The primary reason evangelical Christians in the U.S. are so devoted to Israel is simple: their radical religious dogma teaches them that God demands this. In 2004, Pat Robertson delivered a speech entitled “Why Evangelical Christians Support Israel” and said: “evangelical Christians support Israel because we believe that the words of Moses and the ancient prophets of Israel were inspired by God,” and “we believe that the emergence of a Jewish state in the land promised by God to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was ordained by God.” He added that “God’s chosen people” — Jews — have an obligation to God to fight against “Muslim vandals” so that Israel remains united in their hands:

If God’s chosen people turn over to Allah control of their most sacred sites-if they surrender to Muslim vandals the tombs of Rachel, of Joseph, of the Patriarchs, of the ancient prophets-if they believe their claim to the Holy Land comes only from Lord Balfour of England and the ever fickle United Nations rather than the promises of Almighty God-then in that event, Islam will have won the battle. Throughout the Muslim world the message will go forth-“Allah is greater than Jehovah.” The promises of Jehovah to the Jews are meaningless.


alsos see Theocracy Watch.org for instance for a definition of "Dominionism":

The Rise of the Religious Right in the Republican Party at Theocracy Watch

In a September 1994 plenary speech to the Christian Coalition national convention, Rev. D. James Kennedy said that "true Christian citizenship" involves an active engagement in society to "take dominion over all things as vice-regents of God." Kennedy's remarks were reported in February 1995 by sociologist and journalist Sara Diamond, who wrote that Kennedy had "echoed the Reconstructionist line."

More than anyone else, it was Sara Diamond who popularized the term "dominionism," using it to describe a growing political tendency in the Christian Right. It is a useful term that has, unfortunately, been used in a variety of ways that are neither accurate nor useful. Diamond was careful to discuss how the small Christian Reconstructionist theological movement had helped introduce "dominionism" as a concept into the larger and more diverse social/political movements called the Christian Right.

Dominionism is therefore a tendency among Protestant Christian evangelicals and fundamentalists that encourages them to not only be active political participants in civic society, but also seek to dominate the political process as part of a mandate from God.

This highly politicized concept of dominionism is based on the Bible's text in Genesis 1:26:

"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." (King James Version).

"Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth and over all the creatures that move along the ground.'" (New International Version).
The vast majority of Christians read this text and conclude that God has appointed them stewards and caretakers of Earth. As Sara Diamond explains, however, some Christian read the text and believe, "that Christians alone are Biblically mandated to occupy all secular institutions until Christ returns." That, in a nutshell, is the idea of "dominionism."

and: CIVIL LIBERTIES ISSUES AND CAUSES The Religious Right

and: The Religious Right A Short Timeline History

Christian right undermines marriage equality with religious supremacism – LGBTQ Nation via Religious Right Watch.com

Religious-supremacism In his LGBTQ Nation op-ed, Frederick Clarkson looks at how Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council (FRC) thinks Christians who support marriage equality are not really Christians and that religious freedom is only for those who hold to what he calls "orthodox" views. Excerpt:

It...helps to clarify that when Christian Right leaders talk about religious liberty—they often really mean theocratic religious supremacism.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, took to the airwaves after the filing of UCC’s suit to claim that the church is not really Christian, and that those who support gay rights don’t have the same rights as conservative Christians—because ‘true religious freedom’ only applies to ‘orthodox religious viewpoints.’”

Perkins’ blunt statements are a sobering reminder that theocratic factions of the U.S. Right have long sought to regain the religious and political hegemony they lost when the Constitution was ratified in the 18th century

and note: The disturbing truth about the founding of the Religious Right in America in the 1970s was not as the leaders claimed a concern over abortion but rather a concern over a pocket book issue that of segregation and tax excemption and government funding of religious institutions. If these institutions continued to exclude non-whites they would lose the government grants and tax excemption for their institutions .

The Real Origins of the Religious Right
They’ll tell you it was abortion. Sorry, the historical record’s clear: It was segregation.By RANDALL BALMER May 27, 2014, at Politico.com/


added 5: 34 PM April 22, 2015

For another glimpse at GOP and Christian Supremacy see a recent article at Daily Kos :


GOP Officially Embraces Christian Supremacy
byTroutfishingFollow , Daily Kos.com, Jan. 31, 2015


Today, Saturday January 31, 2015, the Republican Party officially becomes the party of Christian nationalism and Christian supremacy: the Party of God.

Why ? Well, today roughly 1/3 of the leadership of the Republican National Committee has flown to Israel, on a nine-day all-expenses paid junket paid for and organized by the American Family Association - whose longtime spokesperson Bryan Fischer claims Hitler and top Nazis were gay and that non Christians (e.g. Muslims, Jews, and atheists) should be barred from political office.

Leading the trip is pastor David Lane, who has urged Christians to commit acts of martyrdom to force nonbelievers to either acknowledge Jesus Christ as their ruler or else "begin drinking holy blood". In 2012 Lane stated his refusal to vote for Mitt Romney because Romney is a Mormon who worships a "false god."

Reince Priebus and the RNC are now openly partnering with such people. In PR and marketing terms, it's known as co-branding.

Under the leadership of Reince Priebus, the RNC has now co-branded itself with a group (the AFA) and a pastor (David Lane) that, for their rhetorical and ideological extremity, are as far out on the fringe as the Ku Klux Klan or the American Nazi Party were in their heydays.

Indeed, the AFA and pastor David Lane target and vilify many of the same societal groups historically targeted by the American Nazi Party and the Klan.

The AFA has been venting its virulently hateful anti-LGBT, nativist, religious supremacist, and arguably racist rhetoric across America’s airwaves for years. Hate speech from the AFA’s nationally syndicated radio show targets a wide range of minorities: LGBT citizens, African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Native-Americans, Muslim-Americans, Muslims (generally), Mormons, Jews, and more.

And so it goes,
GORD.


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