Televangelist Joel Osteen, a well-known megachurch pastor who has been associated with the ‘prosperity gospel’
Credit: JoelOsteen.com
Back before 9/11 indelibly linked Islam with terrorism, back before the top association to “Catholic priest” was “pedophile,” most Americans—even nonreligious Americans—thought of religion as benign. I’m not religious myself, people would say, but what’s the harm if it gives someone else a little comfort or pleasure.
Back then, people associated Christianity with kindness and said things like, “That’s not very Christian of him,” when a person acted stingy or mean; and nobody except Evangelical Christians knew the difference between Evangelicalism and more open, inquiring forms of Christianity.
Those days are over. Islam will be forever tainted by Islamist brutalities, by images of bombings, beheadings and burkas. The collar and cassock will forever evoke the image of bishops turning their backs while priests rub themselves on altar boys. And thanks to the fact that American Evangelical leaders sold their congregations to the […]
While no Christian, I think it is clear these right wing ‘Christians’ worship something quite different from anything Jesus is reported to have described. In fact what they worship is closer to something out of HP Lovecraft:
1. It claims to have once killed almost everything on earth, including fetuses, because it did not feel sufficiently honored.
2. It demands absolute submission on pain of eternal damnation unless you utter a magic phrase. Even so it will often torture you to “test your faith.”
3. It promises to kill almost everyone on earth in the near future. Including fetuses.
4. These people worship it.
It seems to me better to call them demonists than to link them with anything of value.