Rachel's Interview w Fmr Evangelist Frank Schaeffer: Christian Right Is 'Trolling for Assasins'

[marmar]

from AlterNet:



....(snip)....

Maddow: “Let his days be few; and let another take his office,” “Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.” This is such strong language in secular terms about President Obama. Can you tell me if this means something less threatening to people hearing this in a biblical context?

Schaeffer: No, actually, it means something more threatening. I think the situation that I find genuinely frightening right now is that you have a ramping up of biblical language—language from the antiabortion movement, for instance, death panels and this sort of thing. And what it‘s coalescing into is branding Obama as Hitler, as they‘ve already called him, as something foreign to our shores. We‘re reminded of that. He‘s born in Kenya—as brown, as black, above all, as not us. He is Sarah Palin‘s not a real American.

But now, it turns out, that he joins the ranks of the unjust kings of ancient Israel, unjust rulers, to which all these biblical illusions are directed who should be slaughtered, if not by God, then by just men.

So, there‘s a direct parallel here with Timothy McVeigh‘s t-shirt on the day of the Oklahoma City bombing in which he said that the tree of liberty had to be watered occasionally by the blood of tyrants. And that quote, we saw again at a meeting at which Obama was present being carried on a placard by someone carrying a loaded weapon.

What we‘re looking at right now is two things going on. We see the evangelical groups that I talk about in my new book, “Patience with God,” enthralled by an apocalyptic vision that I go into in some detail there. They represent the millions of people who have turned the “Left Behind” series into best sellers. Most of them are not crazy, they‘re just deluded.

But there is a crazy fringe to whom all these little messages that have been pouring out of FOX News, now on a bumper sticker, talking about doing away with Obama, asking God to kill him.

Really, this is trolling for assassins. And this is serious business.

It‘s un-American. It‘s unpatriotic.

And it goes to show that the religious right, the Republican far right, have coalesced into a group that truly want American revolution. And if it turns out to be blood in the streets and death, so be it. This is not funny stuff anymore. They cannot be dismissed as just crazies on the fringe. It only takes one.

You know, look at “The Boston Globe” article a few weeks ago saying that the threat level faced by the Secrete Service has gone up 400 percent, higher than any other time in 52 years for any president, Democrat or Republican. These are no jokes.

And as I talk about in “Patience with God,” if you trace these origins back to this paranoid, evangelical group, of which me and my father, sadly, were not only leaders, but leaders in the ‘70s and ‘80s, the foot soldiers that people like Dick Armey and others are using now to push their political agenda onto health care, are also people that have within their ranks, people, such as the person who murdered Dr. Tiller and killed three police officers in Pittsburgh because they thought Obama would take away their guns.

....(snip)....

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/rights/144054/rachel_maddow_interview_with_former_evangelist_frank_schaeffer%3A_christian_right_is_%27trolling_for_assassins%27

[SpiralHawk]

1. the k and the r

Dark spirits inhabit the far right. These are the same so-called 'christians' who support torture...and if they had been around 2,000 years ago, they would no doubt have flogged the love-and-care-for-your-neighbor preaching JC