By MATT BLICKENSTAFF
The religious right has always had a tenuous relationship with reality, but one area of which they were unflinchingly certain, was the absolute infallibility of god’s words. Biblical literalism, the cornerstone of the American Christian right’s beliefs, has served as a convenient foil against social equality and economic justice.
The prophet of the moral majority, Jerry Falwell, regularly hosted segregationist politicians on his “Old -Time Gospel Hour” radio show, in the midst of the civil rights movement. Bible firmly in hand, he blamed feminists, gays, lesbians and secularists for the attacks on 9/11.
In between apocryphal predictions of the end of the world, Pat Robertson called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez and prayed for the “removal” of three Supreme Court justices.
Luckily, Jesus only gave him two.
While teen pregnancy rates swell, realistic sex education is scrapped for faith-based, abstinence-only policies in denial to every study into the efficacy of such programs. Seven scriptural passages have been wielded as the chief justification for the denial of equal rights to homosexuals. Fundamentalists seek to toss aside the modern age’s best scientific hypotheses, instead desiring Bronze Age texts proffering a 6,000-year-old world where Adam and Eve walked side by side with T-Rex.
Clearly, anachronous biblical assertions have continually trumped enlightened reason and pragmatism, but to the nation’s conservative Christians, even old J.C. is looking a little limp-wristed these days.
Conservapedia, founded by Andy Schlafly, is the right’s answer to Wikipedia and it’s “liberal bias.” Barack Obama’s page on Conservapedia contains some striking examples of this new breed of conservative revisionism. A short caveat behind the president’s name reads “aka Barry Soetoro, allegedly born in Honolulu Aug. 4, 1961.”
The site hosts the Conservative Bible Project, revamping the wimpy Jewish carpenter into something a bit more palatable to today’s conservative sensibilities. Forget god when they can worship the Gipper. The most revered text of Western civilization rests in the hands of an anonymous syndicate of Americentric neocons.
Jesus preached relentless self-sacrifice for others and the lord. He decried worldly possessions and challenged one skeptical follower to give all he owned to the destitute. In Mark 10:25, Jesus proclaims, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”
I wonder what he would say about televangelists Joyce Meyer’s $23,000 solid gold commode? Conservapedia has the answer. Their translation frees the Meyers of the world to discard their excrement as elaborately as they see fit.
The new, free-market-friendly version reads, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a man who cares only for money to enter into the kingdom of God.” In
Conservapedia’s view, this is a “very nice improvement on the imprecise term ‘rich.’” Clearly, Meyer and her ilk aren’t concerned only with money; they simply like to crap in style.
Jesus, the consummate peacemaker, embraced nonviolence, preferring persecution to pugnacity. Tragically, that vintage philosophy lays anathema to the righteous crusades in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In Matthew 5:21, Jesus proclaims, “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment.”
No problem, with a little twisted tinkering, Conservapedia shifts the meaning to something more accepting of depleted uranium bullets and F-22 Raptors:
“You have heard that it was said in ancient times, You shall not commit murder, and anyone guilty of committing murder would be liable for trial.”
Ta-da! Don’t worry about it, collateral damage is totally cool with conservative Jesus. After all, it’s not murder, just a muff -up.
The words of god have already wrought enough strife in their unadulterated form. In the manipulative hands of ultra-conservative disciples, they could wreak more havoc than anything Osama Bin Laden’s cooking up in his hidden lair.
