A Christian "Manifesto" claims their god should be your god

[Photo - Archbishop Timothy Dolan, from here]

This from AOL News:

"More than 150 Christian leaders, most of them conservative evangelicals and traditionalist Roman Catholics, issued a joint declaration Friday [today] reaffirming their opposition to abortion and gay marriage and pledging to protect religious freedoms."

What they mean by "religious freedoms," of course, is their right to make laws based on their theology and force you to obey them.

This "manifesto" is formally "The Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience." It contains 4,700 words.

In it these so-called Christian leaders set themselves in opposition to the President of the United States, claiming that Obama's "proposals are likely to increase the number of elective abortions ... 'The present administration is led and staffed by those who want to make abortions legal at any stage of fetal development, and who want to provide abortions at taxpayer expense."

What's funny about the "taxpayer expense" comment is that these clowns live their entire lives at "taxpayer expense." They live in houses and worship in churches that are tax-exempt, meaning that they rest of us have to make up the difference.

So, the "taxpayer expense" crap is a smokescreen. They think they have the right (because they have a direct pipeline of the god of all creation) to rule the world!

It's all about power and control. If these bishops and christianist wingnuts really cared about people, they'd be on the front lines of health care (even if that health care contained a few provisions with which they were not happy - hey, politics is the art of compromise); they'd be anti-war and would have fought G. W. Bush's lies and preemptive invasion of Iraq and they'd be fighting hard to shut down the Afghanistan military operation; they'd be working day and night to see that the laws of this land applied equally to rich and poor and were not geared - as they are now - to benefit the rich; they'd be adamantly opposed to the death penalty; they'd be providing condoms to the millions of Africans who have AIDS and beg forgiveness for all the people of that benighted continent who have died because the Roman Church has led the fight against the use of condoms; they'd ensure that their freaky priests who prey on children were forever banned from the Church and were brought to justice, instead of hiding them in out-of-the way rectories; they'd be marching in the streets to help fight global warming; they'd put their money and their power behind the efforts to preserve the environment and find new sources of energy; they'd step out of their robes and wrap them around the thousands of females who feel called of God to serve as priests and ministers; and they would sell their ornate, gold-infested palaces, and give the money to the poor, just as their legendary Jesus told them to do!

But they don't do any of that. They don't care about anything except power and control. And we know from history that any time religious leaders, be they Christian, Muslim or whatever, gain political control, they impose their beliefs on everyone, often executing those who refuse to accept that control!

The Roman Catholic Church has since its inception believed it has the right to impose its beliefs on the populace. Nothing has changed in 2,000 years except the fact that they have lost the political power to do so. The evangelical wingnuts follow in that same mold but from a different perspective, a perspective which believes they have the right to enforce their version of Christianity on everyone - it's call dominionism. And even though Catholics and evangelicals have always hated each other, they have joined forces on two issues: abortion and gay marriage. Take that away and they'll hate each other again because both sides believes deep down in their hearts that the others are going to burn forever in hell!


Here's a list of some of the signers of this "manifesto": "...15 Roman Catholic bishops, including New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan and Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl; Focus on the Family founder, James Dobson; National Association of Evangelicals president Leith Anderson; seminary leaders, professors and pastors."

Unfortunately, with a couple of exceptions, the mainstream Protestant church leaders remain silent; fearful, I suppose of alienating their declining membership.


Ultimately, though, this is scary! These people are not going away. Each and every day they are planning how they can gain enough power to make your most personal decisions for you, especially in the areas of abortion and gay marriage.

What's even more frightening is that you can be sure if they should ever grasp enough political clout (Congress is full of these fruitcakes, and Palin is waiting in the wings to exercise her dominionist mandate), they will do so. The Constitution will become an historical curiousity.

And all of us will be the losers!