Lately the backing of Democratic hopeful Barrack Obama by the Reverend Jeremiah Wright has been a major focus in the media. Rev.Wright used to be Obama's pastor back in the day, and apparently he has been saying some things that are really easy to spin out of proportion in order to give Obama a black eye. According to Fox News (a station which needs to lose the whole 'Fair and Balanced' moniker) and other media outlets, Wright gave a speech in which he talked about former Ambassador to Iraq, Edward Peck, in an interview he did with Fox News shortly after September 11th. He quoted Peck, who in turn was quoting Malcolm X, when he said that 'America's chickens are coming home to roost', implying that our foreign policy was coming back to bite us in the ass.
He went on in his sermon to talk about how America was founded on violence and genocide, something that Martin Luther King had actually said a ways back before he was assassinated, but you didn't hear a lot of noise then. He uses examples of how we took the country from the Indians through terror and violence (which we did), how we took Africans away from their tribes and homeland and enslaved them in fear (which we did), and how our bombing in other countries has killed countless hundreds of thousands of civilians (which it has). The media was able to do a good job at spinning his sermon out of context, but they missed the part at the end where he preached about the importance of family and the need for social transformation. Then at the end he told the congregation he loved them, and had them tell eather other they loved one another. This guy sounds awful!
In one part of his sermon where he spoke about social transformation, he said:
But what about Pastor John Hagee or Reverend Rod Parsely? Has anyone heard of these two men? I doubt that you have, because their sermons don't talk about the struggle of the African American, or America's broken foreign policy. Instead, they preach about how "God created hurricane Katrina to punish New Orleans for its homosexual sins".
Here are a few gems from wholesome Rod Parsely:
It didn't go entirely unnoticed however, as one Catholic Interviewer confronted McCain about Hagee's comments, especially where he calls the Catholic church conspirators with Hitler to exterminate the Jews, is a great prostitute, and a cult. He takes the safe route and says he repudiates any antisemitic comments Hagee may have made, but that the pastor assured him that it was all taken out of context, and tells the interviewer that we should talk to Hagee about the comments, not him. Though as far as I know, no one has confronted him on the preachings of Rod Parsely. Will McCain be held accountable for these two looney tunes? Probably not.
He went on in his sermon to talk about how America was founded on violence and genocide, something that Martin Luther King had actually said a ways back before he was assassinated, but you didn't hear a lot of noise then. He uses examples of how we took the country from the Indians through terror and violence (which we did), how we took Africans away from their tribes and homeland and enslaved them in fear (which we did), and how our bombing in other countries has killed countless hundreds of thousands of civilians (which it has). The media was able to do a good job at spinning his sermon out of context, but they missed the part at the end where he preached about the importance of family and the need for social transformation. Then at the end he told the congregation he loved them, and had them tell eather other they loved one another. This guy sounds awful!
In one part of his sermon where he spoke about social transformation, he said:
"Maybe we need to declare war on AIDS. In five minutes the Congress found $40 billion to rebuild New York and the families that died in sudden death, do you think we can find the money to make medicine available for people who are dying a slow death? Maybe we need to declare war on the nation’s healthcare system that leaves the nation’s poor with no health coverage? Maybe we need to declare war on the mishandled educational system and provide quality education for everybody, every citizen, based on their ability to learn, not their ability to pay. This is a time for social transformation."I don't know about you guys, but that sounds like a pretty good idea to me. Imagine what we could do if we pulled our military back and simply protected ourselves, and threw hundreds of billions of dollars at fixing our infrastructure and improving our education system, instead of paying contractors to do a substandard job and allow them to overcharge for it. In any case, a lot of the controversy was over someone who stated that the Reverend had said "God Damn America" in his sermon, but if you go back and look at the sermon, he never said anything close to it.
But what about Pastor John Hagee or Reverend Rod Parsely? Has anyone heard of these two men? I doubt that you have, because their sermons don't talk about the struggle of the African American, or America's broken foreign policy. Instead, they preach about how "God created hurricane Katrina to punish New Orleans for its homosexual sins".
Here are a few gems from wholesome Rod Parsely:
- Islam is an Anti-Christ religion that intends through violence to conquer the world.
- America was founded in part with the intention to see this false religion (Islam) destroyed.
- Muhammad received revelations from 'demon spirits'.
- Planned parenthood is a racist nazi organization.
- We need to start a first strike nuclear war against Iran along with Israel in order to start armageddon.
- Believes the head of the European Union is the Antichrist.
- Believes those that cannot/will not work, or are just plain poor, that you should starve.
- "Death is better than compromise. Forsake your family, and follow me." Sounds a little like radical Islam to me.
- The State Department has disobeyed God by trying to diplomatically end the fighting around Israel and that God will allow the terrorists to kill us because of this.
It didn't go entirely unnoticed however, as one Catholic Interviewer confronted McCain about Hagee's comments, especially where he calls the Catholic church conspirators with Hitler to exterminate the Jews, is a great prostitute, and a cult. He takes the safe route and says he repudiates any antisemitic comments Hagee may have made, but that the pastor assured him that it was all taken out of context, and tells the interviewer that we should talk to Hagee about the comments, not him. Though as far as I know, no one has confronted him on the preachings of Rod Parsely. Will McCain be held accountable for these two looney tunes? Probably not.
Posts
