[Dialogue] Dubya's Christianity

[opossum2@att.net]

Colleagues:

Just to add a comparison to this thesis:

Let us not forget that in the antebellum South many pro-slavery advocates saw slavery not only as an economic institution, but believed that we were "saving" these savages by bringing them into a life of slavery in a Christian country.  Also, there's Kipling's "White Man's Burden".  I am constantly disgusted when I interact with relatives up in NE Texas who have married into the Southern Baptist whatever who cannot understand why, when my wife and I have travelled overseas so much, it has not been on "missions".  Their only concept of why anyone would leave the US is either to convert the heathen via missions, or to kill them in the military.  If Marx was right, I'm not sure which way history is being repeated this time, but it is defintely either tragedy or farce or both.

Praying for peace,

Steve Rhea
Houston, Tx. 


-------------- Original message from "jim rippey" <jimripsr at qwest.net>: -------------- 


> Today's AlterNet has a fascinating analysis of how the President's "born again" 
> status explains much. The title is "Keeping it Simple, Stupid," by Stephen 
> Pizzo. The full story is at http://www.alternet.org/story/23183/ 
> 
> Below are my excerpts: Jim Rippey in Bellevue, NE 
> 
> For those of the evangelical bent, there is always only one true way. This is 
> precisely the mindset we put in the White House when we elected George W. Bush. 
> The press has misinterpreted it, calling Bush's behavior "stubborn." No -- 
> that's not it. He's not "stubborn." Nelson Mandela was stubborn. Winston 
> Churchill, Rev. Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Gen. George Patton, Rosa Parks... 
> they were stubborn. George W. Bush is simply "right." And I mean "simply." 
> Maintaining simplicity has been George's salvation. After years of quiet 
> desperation, a rich frat boy, a certifiable putz and a drunk Bush was "saved." 
> Until that moment, life's plethora of choices, conflicting options, moral and 
> personal issues overwhelmed poor young George. Then someone turned him on to 
> Jesus... the one-stop, one-track, one-size-fits-all solution. For young George, 
> the Bible became his life's owner's manual. 
> 
> ..... We see George's evangelical proclivities most clearly in his proselytizing 
> on the glories of democracy to what he views as "heathen regimes" around the 
> world. Undemocratic governments are, to George, the equivalent of unrepentant 
> sinners. They shall be saved. (Resistance is futile; they will be assimilated.) 
> Here we clearly see the "damn the facts" behavior of the evangelical mind. 
> First, when George says another country should become "democratic," he means it 
> the same way he does when he suggests non-believers should become Christians. He 
> doesn't mean they should become Mormons, or that they should join the Greek 
> Orthodox Church. He means they should become Bible thumping, Lord-praising, 
> born-again, like him. Ditto with democracy. George is not interested in hearing 
> about other forms of Christianity, or democracy. There is only one right form of 
> both: his, and his. 
> 
> .... Bush gets particularly excited when he talks about Lebanon, which he sees 
> as a born-again democracy candidate. But he also sees Satan at work there in the 
> form of undemocratic Syria. Bush is demanding Syria stop meddling in Lebanon's 
> internal affairs. Iconvenient fact: Even as George Bush lectures Syria on 
> interfering in Lebanon, he commands 200,000 heavily armed US troops in 
> Afghanistan and Iraq, where they are actively trying to remake both countries 
> into his democratic vision. Somehow George sees no contradiction there -- that 
> Syria's behavior constitutes interference, while US policy doesn't. That nuance, 
> he surely believes, is just one of Satan's many traps. 
> 
> 
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