"Spiritual" Leaders

Much has been made lately of Barack Obama's former dark church. His former preacher *gasp* said something to the effect that a country such as America cannot spread terror around the world and not expect it to come back to them. Pundits diarrhea -ed inches and inches, and hours and hours of comment explaining their outrage at this black man who dared say something truthful about America. But what about the white-conservative spiritual leaders? Why are these preachers necessary in a political campaign? What are their political views?

Firstly, I find most medium to large churches, and any church that discusses national politics very creepy. So basically, I am not going to pretend to be a fan of Rev. Wright or of his church. In fact, the latest scandal, is this slightly disturbing clip of a priest speaking in Obama's former church:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWigzBClEk8

As weird and inappropriate as this is, Father Pfleger and Rev. Wright do not come close to how disturbing the conservative's spiritual advisors are. I hate to generalize, but they seem fairly consistent: they feel comfortable with government sponsored terror, rub elbows with Jewish leaders while simultaneously being privately very anti-semitic, hate gay people, hate Catholics, hate Muslims, hate Bush for being too liberal, hate hate hate hate hate. Let's take a look at McCain's spiritual advisor Parsley, Rev. Hagee who's support McCain actively pursued and got, Rev. Fallwell who McCain originally criticized then pursued, and all around nut bag Pat Robertson.



http://youtube.com/watch?v=tViqufbk7I8



http://youtube.com/watch?v=ErC1IJeHnyc



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-CAcdta_8I

I couldn't say it any better than Olbermann:



http://youtube.com/watch?v=AhODLYUDzCs

The message the main stream media is sending, is that it is more outrageous to criticize US foreign policy than it is to spit hate at Jews, Gays, Catholics, Pagans, and so on.

I think the biggest problem with all of this is not that Obama or McCain has secret religious beliefs that they will use in the White House, for I think both are probably relatively quite secular people. The problem is that politicians have to prove their faith in the first place. Why must our President have to have supernatural beliefs as a prerequisite to power? If we want our Presidents to be moral and ethical, we are batting .000 as a nation. I think our litmus test is a little flawed. I pine for the day when a presidential candidate can speak as candidly about religion as Thomas Jefferson did: "I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see nothing but the latter in the being worshipped by many who think themselves Christians."