As Hillary Clinton is being criticized for running a commercial against Barach Obama featuring Osama Bin Laden, a church in South Carolina has put up a sign “Obama, Osama, hmmm, are they brothers?” It is only the latest intervention of a church in the election in violation of federal law and perhaps the most moronic. Pastor Roger Byrd of the Jonesville Church of God insists that he will not take down the sign, which is less of a problem. It is the tax-supported church behind the sign that need to be changed.
In Jonesville, S.C., this passes for provocative thinking. Byrd says that he just wants to get people thinking. Thinking about what? “It’s simply to cause people to realize and to see what possibly could happen if we were to get someone in there that does not believe in Jesus Christ,” he said.
Of course, Obama has denied the rumor. But Byrd insists that a lifetime of church going, baptisms, and a controversial minister is not enough. “I don’t know. See it asks a question: Are they brothers? In other words, is he Muslim ? I don’t know. He says he’s not. I hope he’s not. But I don’t know. And it’s just something to try to stir people’s minds. It was never intended to hurt feelings or to offend anybody.”
Never intended to offend anybody. I am less concerned that this man is the spiritual leader of people in South Carolina than I am that he actually gets to vote.
Byrd efforts to revive the Osama/Obama connection follows this new ad from the Clinton campaign featuring Obama.
Yet, after years of faith based politics, discussed here, ministers are now openly campaigning in their churches in direct violation of the federal tax code, here and here.
For the full story, click here.
I’m thinking that the only remedy for this is simply to make public sport of their silly signs.
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And tonight, Byrd got the “Worser” award for “Worst Persons in the World” on COUNTDOWN this evening! Thank you, Keith, and a big thumbs up. 🙂
Mespo,
I’m really thinking about a horror novel called: EVIL PRAYER CHAIN. It’s why people really die!
Jill
Jill:
That’s why you have to gently, or maybe not so gently sometimes, point it out when you see it. Public ridicule motivates us in many things we do or don’t do. For example, we don’t throw trash from our car windows into the street, and smokers usually ask before they light up indoors. Fifty years ago these little annoyances were common, but public pressure relegated them to cultural history. That is exactly the approach Dawkins, Harris, and other secular critical thinkers are taking to address the religiosity of the know-nothings that pass for religious intellectuals today.
Patty C.
Does Bush’s higher father have a heart problem? How high is he, and what is he on?
Seriously though, there is an enormous lack of critical thinking in this society. Ideas don’t seem to be open to evaluation. I just got back from visiting my friend in the hospital. Her sister is a highly educated unitarian and was telling me that the prayer chains were working and that’s why my friend was alive. Meanwhile a fellow patient, also on a prayer chain, was dying. Was that guy’s prayer chain a “killer prayer chain”? I had to pray really hard to “whom it may concern” not to say anything, because her sister is in bad shape and this is no time to argue a point. But I do find it disturbing that we don’t think through the implications of what we are saying often enough.
This is a nice forum because people here do make you think things through–OR ELSE!
Just a ‘shout out’ to the First Amendment. You are so beautiful, but you are definitely high maintenance.
Zactly, mespo.
No mention of Jesus, though – just the ‘higher’ Father 😉 😉
“Does God Speak to Bush?”
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Somebody’s talking to him and I have it on good authority he’s not infallible. We used to believe that if you talked to God you were pious, it God talked back, you were crazy.
“… Bush said he did not remember asking the question of his father, former president George H.W. Bush, who fought Iraq in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. But, he added that the two had discussed developments in Iraq.
“You know he is the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength. There is a higher father that I appeal to,” Bush said.”
Does God Speak to Bush? Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of American Nonviolence: The History of an Idea, and is currently working on ‘Monsters to Destroy,’ a book about religion and the neoconservative war on terror
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1008-29.htm
It’s easy to manufacture fairy tales about candidates you disagree with, when you preach fairy tales every Sunday. Byrd obviously accepts and unequivocally believes in the virgin birth, the rapture, speaking in tongues, water into wine, and the elevation into heaven, but the fact that Obama is not Muslim, despite manifest proof everywhere, puts him into a deep quandary as to the truth. Any wonder we have a wall of separation; it’s the same reason that they had a iron gate and brick wall around Bedlam Royal Hospital in London.
AMEN Sister Susan!
Jill
JT, I strongly doubt that we’ll see anyone in government going after these churches that violate this federal law as long as George II is in the White House. After all, he’s the President who said, “Jesus is my advisor” or something equally ridiculous.
It’s no surprise to me that we’re seeing more christian religionist preachers like Pastor Byrd putting out signs like this one. I’m thinking that the only remedy for this is simply to make public sport of their silly signs.
I don’t know what would happen if, “..(we) possibly were to get someone in there who doesn’t believe in Jesus Christ” but I’ve been completely informed of what happens when we do!
Praise Jesus and pass the ammunition indeed!
Yes, darn all those Reverend Wright style preachers and their political speeches from the pulpits….
Oh, excuse me.
This was about a church putting a sign out.