[From the diaries by susanhbu.] Harper’s May Issue (not available on-line) has an excellent story by Chris Hedges called “Feeling the Hate with the National Religious Broadcasters.” In it Hedges quotes Frank Wright, President of the NRB, as telling a convention in Anaheim recently about “a late-night private tour of the Capitol in which he and a group of other pastors stopped and prayed over Hillary Clinton’s Senate floor desk,” and notes the crowd roared its approval.
How dare they! I am so offended for Senator Clinton, whom I believe to be a good woman and a good Senator, and whom I accept as a fellow believer, that my heart aches.
This indignity has got to stop. No one deserves the abusive invasion of having her desk “prayed over” by those who vilify her. …
Who let them in – probably it was Senator Frist who sponsors such tours for a group led by David Barton, a minister who is also vice-president of the Texas Republican Party. See Rev. C. Welton Gaddy’s letter as head of the InterFaith Alliance, to Senator Frist, asking him to stop the tours here:
According to Barton’s website another Tour of the Capitol to be hosted by a member of Congress is scheduled for June 12-13.
This abuse has got to stop. As a lawyer I cannot imagine the indignity of having my desk “prayed over” by people who hate me. As a Christian I cannot imagine doing so to someone and then bragging about it in public. As an American, I am indignant that a place as crucial to our Republic as the very floor of the United States Senate has been desecrated in such a fashion.
It is especially outrageous that when even mail to our Senators is delayed for security concerns these people have extraordinary access to the Senate floor at night.
According to the Senate Website,
“You will also be visiting the Capitol during a period of heightened awareness of security and safety. This concern is not simply for the security of Members of Congress and staff, but the security and safety of everyone who visits here.”
http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/visiting/a_three_sections_with_teasers/visitors_home.htm
I am going to write Cornyn and Kay Bailey, but I am calling Capitol security tomorrow to find out to whom I can most effectively direct my complaint.
Also, if you want more information on the NRB go to http://www.nrb.org/
keep us posted on your conclusions. I am outraged about this, too & will take any action that seems serious or effective.
I called Senator Hutchinson’s office regarding this matter. At first the lady who answered denied ever hearing of any such groups, then she changed her response to saying all Senators have such tours, including Senator Kennedy (of all people) and acted incredulous when I told her I was offended as a Christian by the “praying over” Senator Clinton’s desk. After I mentioned David Barton’s website and the proposed June tour, she promised to pass along that I was offended by “prayer”.
My, oh my. Talk about framing.
I did let her her know that I was not offended by prayer but by the idea of “praying over” the desk and then boasting about it. I also addressed the security concerns and the disconnect with the mail service to the Capitol, but she had pretty deaf ears.
I guess catering to the zealots is just business as usual, at least with one of my Senators.
You’re right, in this case more than others, the frame is everything. Otherwise, we simply won’t be understood. I have no talent for this kind of phrase-making. I wish someone who does would get to work on it.
Yes, keep us posted, O.
ALSO: I assume you’ve seen/heard Chris Hedges before…. He’s another of those people who, when he’s on, I stop whatever I’m doing and listen intently. He was on a panel at the LA Times Festival of Books, and CSPAN2 has it on tape:
Go right here and click on “Watch.” Great panel.
(I’d also be curious what you all thought of Bowden, who wrote Blackhawk Down for the Philly paper and then a book … )
Someone said to me recently — in comparing himself to me — “Well, I have my faith.” And I blurted out, “What? What difference can that possibly make?”
It was as if his possession of a faith in, and practice of, a religion gave him a path to solace and understanding that is not open to me.
What I’m trying to say is that the egotistical assumptions of superiority of these people who pray over Clinton’s desk is what ruins religion.
Bring in an excorcist to deal with Frist’s desk.
Ask a Buddhist monk to see what can be done with it.
Bring in PastorDan to see if he can expunge false and perverted Christianity.
Hit back. Hit back harder.
Follow Ken Salazar’s lead, He retracted the “Anti-Christ” comment but maintained these folks are anti-Christian. Pick up the chorus. These are false Christians. They are Pharisees. Don’t pull your punches. Denounce them with the fervor and wrath of an Old Testament prophet.
Recently, gays and gay-rights supporters picketed Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs. Wouldn’t it be nice to see, say, some Episcopalians doing the same? Or Methodists outside a fundamentalist church telling members that they were imperilling their souls? Quakers nonviolently attacking Liberty University as they once did the Pentagon?
What would Isaiah do? What would Jeremiah do?
But all this is just an outsider’s modest suggestion. I lack the belief gene, though I spent some time studying Christian doctrine.
Nice diary, Othniel. Thanks.
Thanks for invoking Isaiah and Jeremiah.
I take my posting name of Othniel from the first Judge listed in the Old Testament book of Judges, whose story is told in Judges, chapters 2 through 4. I am both a lawyer and a seminary graduate so I needed a name which would express both aspects of my life.
The Old Testament is already on the case.
During the last election my husband and I spent a long day canvassing our neighborhood. We stopped to talk with one of our neighbors who is a lay minister. I knew that she was a registered Democrat so was shocked to hear she was planning to vote for Bush. She explained that she completely trusted Bush <huh?> and felt he was doing a good job <what?>. She then stated she prayed for Bush every day and added that she also prayed for Kerry. I wanted to reply that if Bush wins I hope she prays for the American people (and for that matter the whole planet), `cause we’re going to need all the help we can get. But I didn’t.
I grew up in a very liberal Christian Church and one that many mainstream Christian Churches believed was not Christian (and told us so). As if they had a direct line to God who told them who was legit and who wasn’t. (Oh the arrogance of it all.) Even though I considered myself a Christian at the time, I felt persecuted by other Christians. When I was in high school a Lutheran friend assured me that she could baptize me quickly if, God forbid, we were in a car accident and, double God forbid, it looked like I was going to kick the bucket because, of course, my religion wasn’t enough to get me into the kingdom of heaven. I had many such experiences with friends of other Christian denominations. That was a long time ago and these days many Christians are even more aggressive so it slays me that they act like THEY are the victims of persecution.
I’m no longer affiliated with any church or religious organization but I whole-heartedly support the freedom of everyone to worship as they wish. However, I get rather bent out of shape when others don’t afford me the same right and courtesy, which means those who seek to enact laws based on their faith, not mine, but affecting my freedom of choice.
Sorry, this was a little off topic and rambled to who knows where, but your subject triggered my comments.
Were it my desk I’d drag it out into the front lawn and burn it. Suppose that wouldn’t work for her but something dramatic would be the answer to this one. Having it blessed by the UCC? To drive out the nasty residual evil that must have seeped into it?
I’ve never seen religion used so viciously to attack people before, and I don’t see that it’s going to get better if this can’t be turned around. The majority of Christians that I know don’t want this kind of thing, it makes them look bad and has nothing to do with their religion. We need to somehow force a space in public debate for real, normal religious people.
This has to stop. I am so disgusted with ‘religion’ in any form right now. It seems as though we are already a Theocracy. All of our ‘buttons’ are being pushed yet we seem helpless to really FIGHT any of this crap. I truly do not understand our passivity-are we TOO liberal to pick up guns?? I hate that that is how I am ‘forced’ to think now…
Flash !! Reading your post, suddenly thought: “What a great campaign issue!” Fundies are a minority, after all. The majority of Americans hate and fear the idea of theocracy. Wouldn’t it be great to create a list of flagrant asshat abuses like this & hear, oh, John Edwards, say, or Wes Clark launch an attack against the GOP for this. Even better, why not a coordinated attack on national and local levels, in local, state, regional elections?
I think it’s a winner. As good as the dreaded spectre of “gay marriage” Because these bigots really do threaten every one of us, no matter where we live.
My fantasy: the desk drawer flies open, Linda Blair’s head pops out and spews green puke all over those bastards.
My 3rd entry on a short thread. Sorry if that’s bad manners. I’ve never done it before. But this is a subject that drives me wild & it turns out I have more to say about it than I thought.
3 additional points:
1) strange as it may sound to booman-istas. I actually believe in the power of.. focused energy. No Christian Scientist, I. No fundie. No New Wave afficionado. I repudiate and avoid all such irrational anti-intellectual & anti-Science flummery. However, I admit I meditate, have done so for years. Therefore, the notion that mental energy– as invisible to the naked eye as bacteria — can accumulate (or, even, as recent experiments with expert meditators has demonstrated, be measured) and has power is not foreign to me. Voodoo is bullshit, sure. But, given my own experience, this energetic intrusion on the floor of the Senate is doubly revolting to me. How dare they! Perverse bastards.
2) on dK, on the thread immediately following the breaking news of the lunatic preacher in NC who tried to excommunicate democrats, Pastor Dan remarked that one of the sad things about actions like this is the number of people who are so turned off & revolted, they will never set foot in a house of worship again. IOW, the mainstream religious establishment is a great, natural ally for the Dems on this. And a potentially powerful grass roots force to tap into.
Governor Dean, are you listening?
3) tivo’d Tina Browns gossipfest Sunday & watched it last night. There was a segment about the Kansas evolution/creationist “dispute” A prof from Brown vs. an Oxford-educated fundie from the “Discovery Institute” Infuriating. The professor made a lot of interesting points — his best was that the Intelligent D people avoided debate in the scientific community & that the only people they have any chance of convincing are schoolchildren. The fundie stuck to a single talking point, that legitimate scientists oppose Darwin & that this is a legitimate debate. Stupid but frightening. He was damned convincing. Yuck.
The sooner we get serious and organized about opposing this, the better.
I just have to shake my head, knowing the Christian Crusades have begun again, only this time, without eyes, heart, or soul.
Greed is the driving force for them, and the NeoCons have pumped them full of promise.
The New Dark Ages are upon us.
What “eyes, heart and soul” did the Crusades have the last time around?! Remember the big victory of the First Crusade? They slauightered every single Jewish and Moslem man, woman and child in Jerusalem. There was so much blood and gore in the streets that the city was uninhabitable for months — there simply weren’t enough crusaders to cart the rotting bodies out of the streets.
Let’s pray that the modern crusades don’t come to that!
use advanced techniques that can vaporize the bodies.
my reference was intended to the growth, and understanding mankind has gained since that time, which is being wiped out by our current situation.
In that time period, let’s face it, mankind was in it’s dark ages, as it appears we’ve slipped into again.
I never thought in my lifetime I would see mankind regress to such a degree, after all the decades of fighting for rights, liberties, fairness, etc.
It is truly amazing what greed and power can do, to turn back time, wiping out all that has been endured to progress.
Europe was. Hence the Crusades 😉
valid point, I was being very general in my comment.
GW (the talking head) Bush is overseas now extolling the virtues of democracy and how his policies have set in motion the great democractic revolution in the world. All the while his StormTroopers are doing everything in their power to limit, decrease and eliminate as many of the American peoples rights as possible, in the shortest amount of time. That these Reichwing Storm troopers would have the audacity to pray over anyone’s desk without that person’s permission is reprehensible to me. I am a believer, not a christian, who’s ancestors were eliminated, who’s children were taken from their parents homes and who’s culture and spiritual ways were nearly decimated by so called christians. This Crusade against Native peoples in the America’s would have worked given just another generation and had not the courts, yes an independent judiciary saved the Native Cultures of the America’s. I have been accused of devil worship, satanic ritualism and just been told that I am evil for the way I worship the Great Spirit. I just smile and nod and ask them how the power of their Christ has made a difference in their lives. They have all responded how wonderful their life has become, all the gifts, you know new house, new car, better job, and how they see, yes they have stated how they see anyone who does not believe in the christ is doomed. I then ask them what about inner peace, what about acceptance of others, for their beliefs and culture, what about loving one another because of those diverse differences. NO they reply, their is only one true god, the god of the christ. I laugh and smile and gently walk away. I love my life, I love my country, I love my family, I love my freedom, I can only hope the Reichwingers will be slowed down and finally put back in their place, a small minority, with big mouths who can practice their hatemongering to their heart’s content, without harming the rest of our country.
I wonder if those people have any idea how crass and morally bankrupt they sound when responding to your question of how their christ has made a difference in their lives. Talk about a black hole of spiritual darkness.
I thought your post elegantly written.
chocolate ink,
I have been taught that when someone, something or something that is out of my control, which is just about everything in life except my choices. I should pray for that someone, something or control issue. I have found that releases so much of the negative. I have come to accept that I am less than perfect, that I will continue to make mistakes. I will strive to not make the same mistake over and over again. I can only hope that these so called christians, don’t contaminate those people who truly are christians, those that follow the teachings of the christ and know the joy and grace that comes from living your faith.
I fear for the sentient desk.
Lo, and they have spoken to it, and it gained consciousness, and it was good. Also the chair! O holy chair! And blessed be those that walked among the lawmakers in righteousness, casting blessings upon the Carpet!, the Pens!, the Paper!, even the Microphone!
Blessed be the wind-passers in the dust-storm.
by Karen Armstrong. I’m currently reading it – just started it, but I also heard her speak recently. I highly recommend Armstrong for a better understanding of fundamentalism. Unfortunately, the news is not good, according to her. It’s not an “old” phenomenon that will slowly but inexorably lose adherents as people become more enlightened and modern. It is a “new” reaction to modernism, and is growing stronger.
But we’re going to have to live with it, so the first step is to try to understand it better, if we are to have any hope of preserving our non-fundamentalist values.
The proper Clinton resonse is: “I’ll take all the help I can get.” End of story. Giving these idiots any more press than they already have only serves their ends – not ours. Fundies are a serious problem, but this particular incident is a tempest-in-a-teapot.
Pavlovian response. Throw the bone, watch the doggies run.
Sounds smart: exercising your freedom not to react. Smart & snarky, all that attractive stuff. Only confront them on serious issues like the Filbuster & skip the little things– like being escorted onto the floor of the Senate by the Majority leader– to hold religious exercises.
I wonder… Seems to me if there’s one lesson we might’ve learned from Clinton and/or the last campaign is not to let anything pass– or to assume that any sort of nuance scruple or restraint will work, will win the day.
” Throw the bone. Watch the dogs run” Tell it to Dashle.
Dashle’s race was his to lose. As was Kerry’s and every other Democrat in the country. Do you really think he lost because he didn’t “go negative” early or often enough?
or quickly enough to a flood of distortions, dirty tricks, manipulations and downright lies –either in the Senate or in the campaign.
Passivity, in the form of good manners, of “rising above it” or of “sticking to issues” doesn’t work. The message you communicate is, you won’t fight back.
“Going negative” is a misnomer. The point is not to return slime for slime. Though if I thought that’d work, I wouldn’t necessarily be against it “on principle”
Clinton was very good at defusing a lot of the bullshit thrown at him year after year. He responded quickly, firmly, publicly and, time and again, defused the issue. He didn’t let things ride, hoping they would die of their own accord or that they were too absurd to address. Until Lewinsky, of course. That was his to lose.
Dashle came across as weak, compliant, appeasing. Not as “high-minded”
Fighting back vs going negative. I do understand the distinction. (LBJ’s farm animal reference is “going negative”.) Pardon the miscommunication.
glad we found common ground.
like being escorted onto the floor of the Senate by the Majority leader– to hold religious exercises.
See above. By all means, kill the fly with the bazooka.
I meant for my post to be a response to the diary, not your comment specifically – I hit the wrong link. I do recommend that everyone who is interested in how fundamentalism is affecting our country, and the entire world, read Karen Armstrong. And I think that probably means everyone here.
Her work addresses not just Christian fundamentalism, but also Muslim and Jewish fundamentalism, with side references to Hindu and even, Confucian fundamentalism.
Response to this post of yours – yes, Clinton must not feed the flames here. But it’s also true that we can’t let this kind of thing pass. I think othniel has it about right. She remains a class act, we express outrage that political discourse has descended to the level of implying (nod, nod, wink, wink) that liberal Democrats are actually Evil, demon-possessed (see the freeper characterization of D’s as “demonrats”) – so much so that the inanimate objects associated with them need to be exorcised by praying over them. Someone needs to be pointing out that this kind of nonsense is beyond the pale, over the top, out of bounds, whatever. Should not be tolerated in the venerable institution of the Senate.
Sorry Janet. You’re right about the book, and the effects of the fundies. (I still think the admin’s test for appointment is being one.)
But I disagree with you & tulip: is not to let anything pass. Praying should not be tolerated in the Senate? They shouldn’t have been allowed in? People of all sorts are escorted onto the Senate floor, and/or introduced by members. Also note that it was “a late-night private tour of the Capitol”. What they did may be offensive, but it was not illegal or out of character for the group. Kinda like yelling at the dog for having spots.
Hillary brought in some exorcists to re-sanitize her desk. Fristian prayers = demonic infestation.
lmao