For decades, the media and the urban, sophisticated elites have taken a condescending view of traditional Christianity. By traditional Christianity I mean the belief that Jesus Christ is the Divine Son of God and the Savior of the world, an ultimate battle between good and evil and moral values connected with such beliefs. In this election year, though, "devout Christian" has become synonymous in the mainstream media with "kook", "backward", "homophobic" and "racist". Attacks on Governor Sarah Palin and, more recently, Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann use their religious beliefs to claim that they hold frightening prejudices that need to be relegated to fringe.
Pundits who dislike Governor Palin are horrified to learn that she belongs to a church that believes in a "literal" Rapture. That is a frightening prospect to the secular sophisticates because, as a an article at Counterpunch.org stated, "A believer in the Rapture with his or her fingers on the nuclear trigger might even be tempted to bring on the Rapture." In other words, anyone crazy enough to believe in the Rapture of believers is crazy enough to try to start a nuclear war to make it happen quicker.
Never mind that nowhere in the Bible are Christians urged to do anything to try to bring on the Rapture. In fact, the Apostle Paul took Christians to task who stopped living their lives and working in hopes that the Rapture was right around the corner. In II Thessalonians 3:6 he said, "In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers, to keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you received from us."
Christians who believe in the Rapture also believe that those left behind when the Rapture occurs are almost certainly damned for eternity. Therefore, if they have any family members or friends that are unbelievers, Christians aren't likely to try to rush the Rapture because of the consequences to their loved ones. Of course, the secular sophisticated elites don't think about that. They would rather look at Christians as no different than Jim Jones' or David Koresh's followers. That is the view perpetrated by the mainstream media with barely more subtlety than one would expect from Bill Maher.
Another false claim that the sophisticated elites make against Christians is that they want to keep women subjugated, "barefoot and pregnant" if you will. Of course, that makes no sense since two of the most outspoken Christians running for office also happen to be women. I'm sorry, a woman isn't much of a woman who believes that she needs the "right" to kill her unborn child in order to feel liberated. The Left, though, and the secular world is committed to abortion. Nancy Pelosi has even gone so far as to lie about Catholic teaching in order to justify legalized abortion.
If McCain/Palin loses, the media elites will claim that Governor Palin's views are so far out of the mainstream that she harmed the ticket. By the same token, Barack Obama's religious views of "tolerance" and collectivism will be hailed as the new standard.
Barack Obama spent twenty years in a church led by a pastor who subscribes to "black liberation theology". Black Liberation Theology is an offshoot of Marxist liberation theology that sprang up in Latin America in the 1960s. Marxist theologians created a Jesus who was no longer divine, but was a homeless, proto-Marxist activist. The biblical teachings of individuals providing charity to other individuals was replaced with empowering government to TAKE, by force, from one class to give to another, supposedly more deserving, class.
James Cone, the architect of black liberation theology carried it even further. He said:
Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the
goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people,
then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is
to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community ... Black theology will
accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white
enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the
power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at
their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must
reject his love.
We are to believe that Barack Obama sat under this theology for twenty years, and yet, absorbed nor believed any of it. The mainstream media accepts that answer. Millions of voters seem to accept that answer. Sarah Palin's potential belief in a literal Rapture is scary, but these beliefs are irrelevant.
Conservative Christians are castigated for supposedly wanting to set up a "theocracy", yet from day one, Barack Obama has been praised in messianic tones as a "transformational figure" someone who can "change the world", photographed in every imaginable divine position, with halos while seeming to ascend above the crowd. Even he has said that we would look back on his ascendancy as the moment, “...oceans stopped rising and the planet began to heal”.
Kids sing about Obama changing the world while wearing shirts emblazoned with the word "Hope". Yet, it is we, the conservative Christians, who are treated as cultists.
If Barack Obama wins, it will be an affirmation of a secular socialist messiah who believes that government can save mankind. After the attacks that we have seen on Governor Palin and Congresswoman Bachmann, Christians will be extremely reluctant to step out on the national stage.
I'm sure Bill Maher and the New York Times think that's a good thing. Do you?
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