Donald E. Wildmon, founder of the American Family Association, was less flamboyant than Jerry Falwell and Pat Robinson, and he lacked James Dobson's patina of professionalism as he trumpeted faux scientific studies as head of the "Focus on the Family" organization. Wildmon was quieter but every bit as influential with the Christian Right, especially the preachers, who got regular talking points about family values and the evils unleashed on our country by liberals and humanists.
Now his Association is organizing and paying for a day of prayer (? quasi-political rally) that the unannounced, but probable, presidential candidate Rick Perry is convening at a Houston stadium on Saturday. It is to be a day of praying to God to save our country in crisis. Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, and Tim Pawlenty plan to attend.
I'm sorry. I shouldn't laugh. Maybe he's sincere. Maybe. But I just cannot get the picture of Newt Gingrich and a prayer meeting together in my mind at the same time.
OK, it's a free country. We are in crisis -- the biggest crisis, in my opinion however, is from these very people who will gather in Texas. Maybe this is why Rick Perry has delayed announcing his candidacy. If he were an announced candidate, wouldn't this have to be considered a campaign contribution by the Wildmon's AFA?
I suggest that the rest of us pray . . . to whomever we prefer . . . that their God will give them some dramatic sign of disapproval on Saturday. I'm not suggesting striking them dead or anything like that. Just a sign -- but a dramatic one. Maybe an angel with a flaming sword blocking the entrance to the stadium. Or a burning bush right there in the middle of things. Or a thunderbolt that rends the lectern and splits the stone tablets asunder, just like when Charlton Heston was Moses.
Or like Pat Roberston's hurricane. Robertson had claimed on his TV show that the wildfires raging through central Florida and nearing Orlando were punishment from God for the city's embrace of Gay Day at Disney World. The fires were just 50 miles away and headed straight for Orlando, when they suddenly turned and went another way. A couple of months later, Virginia Beach, home of Robertson's headquarters, was hit by a big hurricane. That's the kind of thing I have in mind.
If God needs any suggestions, he can put them in the comments section here.
Ralph
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I really should not be so cynical about Newt and his religious conversion. But with someone so flamboyantly self-important -- and so idiotically wrong at times, and so mean -- it just doesn't compute with what I think of as genuinely religious.
ReplyDeleteIt's so hard for me to see it as other than his trying to play the religious crowd for political gain (or possible to please Callista). Why didn't he just do his "confess and be forgiven" with James Dobson in private instead of on TV? Why does he keep going on TV and giving interviews about it?
What was it Jesus said about the Pharisees who make a big show of paying in public? And he advised his disciples to pray in secret and be humble.
This continues to nag at me -- why I can't just leave Newt and his piety alone.
ReplyDeleteA clarification of saying I couldn't get the two images together in my mind. Actually, the problem is that I can very well imagine Newt at a Prayer Service/Rally.
But the image I get is not of a sincere, Newt humbling himself, and being meditative. I can only imagine Newt preening and grinning, and always vigilant for signs that he is being noticed, always ready to step into the spotlight and get the adulation.
And I can only imagine him calculating the effect of his going. Are they watching me?
Oh boy. Quite a Freudian slip in that first comment, where I wrote about Pharisees who make a big show of PAYING in public.
ReplyDeleteMy conscious mind, of course, meant to write PRAYING in public. Leave it to my unconscious, however, to make the obvious connection that almost defines the current Republican party: the "unholy" marriage of business interests and religiosity.