There is a new book coming out - a good one, I hope - about the rise of Christian Nationalism - I've been writing out a standard reply to critics of the book that I know will spring up. - The book is coming but the author writes for Salon and the book is reviewed here

Do these people know their opponents? - Let me help ya a bit.

spent a few years in Fundamentalist schools and colleges during my formative years - I was socially awkward growing up and latched onto a church near my house who had a 100 person school where we were housed in seperate dorms, had a 10pm curfew, and believed sex before marriage unchristian - I shook with fear at rumors of renegade Homosexuals and Devil Worshippers taking America down the path that was clearly not a Christian Nation - I was there in 1992 as they watched fascinated at the first Gulf War while I shook thinking - "Why are we backing this war?" - but I suspect as time went on I converted - In fact, I followed the Republican voting line up to 2000 - primarily on an issue that was pounded into our heads over and over again - Abortion.

Nothing will sum up the Right's opposition to the Democratic party like Abortion - it will be a topic brought up almost every week in a sermon somewhere in a town's churches.

After two years I transferred to a slightly larger campus of 1000+ kids where Billy Graham once served as an impromptu President before he started the Crusades. I was in this a Christian College Television Lounge the night Clinton won and you'd have thought someone told them that the Da Vinci Code was true - LOL - The fact he attended church, was a Baptist, and a self-proclaimed christian meant nothing to them - he wasn't a Conservative Christian..

Despite all this, I still call myself a Christian, but after 4 or 5 years of not liking the Religious Right's version of the Gospel, I went over the wall.

been reading Sojourners and Martin Luther King Jr. a lote more lately, trying to reconnect with the Jesus I read about - the one who preached love and mercy and even meekness and non-violence. Mostly I just go back to the Bible and reconnect - things seem clearer to me now, like the proverb about how with much knowledge comes much sorrow - I didn't know what the fuck that meant in 1992 - I do now.

This article sums up for me nicely the rumors and rumblings I've been hearing from the few fringe contacts I have in the Religious Right - the troops are getting ready to do battle - and people I didn't think I would have considered Christian Nationalists - people like James Kennedy, - and Evangelicals willing to back the party of "mammom" like James Dobson and Gary Bauer - men I almost admired once.

The faithful will truly believe they're doing God's Will - The current unholy alliance, between the leaders of the Religious Right and Republicans resembles very closely the deals cut between the Religious and Political leaders of Jesus' day - to perpetuate serious Un-Christian behavior you need the two working together -

They have no excuse either - it's very clear in the Bible - the love of Money is the root of all evil, and know what? - I gotta tell ya - the more and more I look the more I'm starting to agree.

Jesus told them to be as gentle as doves and as clever as serpents - and it's like they're either clever as doves or gentle as serpents.

Now let me tell you why I'm worried. Why they worry me maybe more then you.

Some of the prophecies that they believe are interpreted as being that the Messiah/Armegeddon will return before the generation that saw the re-creation of Israel completely passes away. - that counts to most of them as 1947.

that gives us almost 60 years so far and 20-30 to go - you get enough of them believing that a war in the Middle East will usher in the misery and agony needed to bring back the joy of the Messiah, and you got some serious issues - Shit I'm almost scared to write on paper -

We know that the Religious Right will turn a blind eye to wrongs if they believe it's God's will - the Israeli killings of Palestinians, while abhorant, to them, is just them protecting what God says they can do. In their world, the Christian God gives permission to kill, despite everything he preached while on Earth.

These guys would let a war start if they thought it fulfilled Biblical prophecy - just saying....and you know their Allies in the Republican party can find a fiscal reason to start a war there - oil -

but then I thought - after all, if God IS COMING back and the 2nd coming is a day of Reckoning, then it would signal the end of his patience -

If I were God, a bunch of fucking numbnuts claiming to do my will while starting a "Holy War' for Oil vs. Islam - yah, I could see where that would piss Jesus off enough to come down and bust heads. - That's not exactly "Love One Another as I have Loved You" in action there, folks.

We live in interesting times friends - interesting times, and they will get more so.

RB