What's Really Killing Religion

I have to post this.

Quick back story; D is a very religious guy I respect.  After reading about the latest African American southern church to get burned down, I went to his Facebook page to read his condemnation, only to be stunned there was nothing.  Nothing from the guy who has insisted there is a mythical or theoretical war on Christianity for the last 6 plus years.  Nothing, even though this is a horrible, undeniable, straight up attack on the Christian faith by the racist far right.

Here is a message I sent D today about the burning of southern churches:

"D(ed.), it bothers me that you, after six plus years of insisting their(sp.) is a war on Christianity, when churches are actually being attacked and burned to the ground, you're not waving the banner of outrage.  That is an attack on the church being coordinated through far right wing racists.  This doesn't bother you places of worship are being burned to the ground?  It IS an actual war on Christianity."

The picture below was his initial response.

I did crop this photo to clean it up.  I've been informed this is probably a fake image, photoshopped by the Christian Right to condemn gays and gay rights (as one photo 'expert' told me, the kid on the shoulders has clearly been added to the picture), but regardless it doesn't matter.  I clearly was asking about the burning of churches in the south, and this was his first response.  

He then tried to tie this to President Obama and Al Sharpton, insisting the south's racial problems were not bad before the President made them so.  I lived in Georgia in the Reagan 80's.  They were horrific then, with multiple near death beatings of black people in my area, southern Lake Lanier, by whites.

Black Churches in the south are being burned to the ground and, for some inexplicable reason, the majority of the Christian Right just can't condemn it.  They just can't.  THIS is destroying Christianity!!!  Why you can't just say, "Wow, the burning of churches is horrible."

If this was the burning of a white Christian church in the suburbs, the religious right would have called for armed guards at all places of worship, yet with the 7th southern black church burned to the ground, many of the Christian right insist on trying to blame gay marriage and the President.

Racists are burning black churches in the south because they are trying kill and intimidate African Americans.  There is a long tradition of southern racists doing this, starting much further back than 2008.

What makes people run away from religion is the way the Republicans and the Conservative right have usurped it, throwing away 95% of the Bible, to focus on an extremely distorted remaining 5%, which in turn fuels the foot soldiers the political right needs to keep any power at all.  Everything has to be pushed through this conservative sieve, and tied to whatever the GOP is attacking this week.  For goodness sake, the Pope is being openly criticized by these people as being too liberal.  THE POPE!

When even a good Christian can fall prey to this broken thinking, a man, who after hearing me condemn the burning of churches without making it political, turns me into nothing more than a liberal Satan, trying to trick and deceive all simple minded fools, and implying I'll be the one who's sorry when Judgement Day comes, when that guy falls to the artificial Christianity created by Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, unable to hear the insanity coming from his own mouth and keyboard, it's a sad day for religion indeed.

God bless us, all of us, including D.  I pray he wakes up to the lies he's been told.  I pray he stops just following the distorted Republican Party bible, and I pray he'll condemn the burning of churches without trying to tie it to something completely unrelated.