LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY nebris)

( Grads influential in Justice Dept. )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

I want to thank everyone here who participated in the Blog Against Theocracy- either here or in their own LJs. It was a great success. Here's a link to the main page:

Blog Against Theocracy Update

The Technorati diagram says it all: lots of people participated, and BlueGal is still posting participants. Also, some of the posts were good enough to deserve reposting at First Freedom First. Here's what Beth Corbin writes about that:

Over the next few weeks we would like to include some of these excellent posts on the First Freedom First blog. We will, of course, give credit to the author.

Since there are so many from which to choose, and not everyone has contact information on their blog, is it safe to think that we can do this on an "opt-out" basis?

If you would rather we not consider your message, please contact me at corbin@au.org. Otherwise, our staff will be reading through the posts, and over the next few weeks posting them to the FFF blog.

As Blue Gal says, "The blogosphere is just an amazing place to be."

Beth Corbin
First Freedom First
Project Director - AU

So, there you go. If your blog was on the bloglist, but you don't want your post repeated, you can opt out if you wish. Nice of them to do that.

And I want to welcome the newest members who've signed up to Dark Christianity. I hope you enjoy your time here.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Here's another excerpt from Chris Hedges' American Fascists:

The radical Christian right has no religious legitimacy. It is a mass political movement. It is interchangeable, in many ways, with other traditional political movements ranging from fascism to communism to the ethnic nationalist parties in the former Yugoslavia. It shares with these movements an inability to cope with ambiguity, doubt and uncertainty. It also embraces a world of miracles and signs and makes war on rational, reality-based thought. It condemns self-criticism and debate as apostasy. It places a premium on action. It dismisses those who do not bow down before its god -- and the leaders who claim to speak for God -- as heretics and traitors.

This movement shares with corporatists, who are busy cannibalizing our society for profit, the belief that there are a chosen few who know the truth and therefore have the right to impose it. The citizen, the individual, no longer has any legitimacy in this new world. All legitimacy is assumed by groups, whether they are corporate groups herding us over the cliff of globalization or religious groups that give popular vent to corporate-generated despair through faith in the Christian utopia. In this paradigm -- corporate and religious -- we become disempowered, afraid, passive and easily manipulated.

Apocalyptic visions like this one have, throughout history, cowed populations and inspired genocidal killers. They have enticed societies into collective suicide. These visions nourished the butchers who led the Inquisition, the Crusades and the conquistadors who swept through the Americas converting and then exterminating the native population.

These visions sustained the SS guards at Auschwitz, the Stalinists who consigned tens of thousands of Ukrainian families to starvation and death, the torturers in the clandestine prisons in Argentina during the Dirty War and the Serbian thugs with heavy machine guns and wraparound sunglasses who stood over the bodies of those they had slain in the smoking ruins of Bosnian villages.

Those who promise to purify the world through violence, to relieve the anxiety of moral pollution and despair, appeal to our noblest sentiments, our highest virtues, our capacity for self-sacrifice and our utopian visions of a cleansed world. It is this coupling of fantastic hope and profound despair, along with visions of peace and light and absolute terror, of selflessness and murder, which frees the consciences of those who call for and carry out the eradication of those they have banished from moral consideration.

When leaders of this movement, such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, sanction, as they do, pre-emptive nuclear strikes against our enemies, and therefore the enemies of God, they fuel the passions of terrorists in love with the same apocalyptic nightmares. They march us to our own doom cheered by the delusion that once the dogs of war, even nuclear war, are unleashed, hundreds of millions will die, but because Christians have been blessed and chosen by God they alone will arise in triumph from the ash heap.

Can these people be relieved of their delusions? Is it too late to try to save them from their horrific visions and re-introduce them to the family of humanity? Or are we doomed to die at their feet, as they scream, "Praise the Lord!" while pulling the triggers? Can we convince them that this world- the world they are determined to destroy- is just as holy and precious and worthy of care as the next that they long for?

Can we forgive them their sins of pride and willful ignorance and aggression, even as they hate and fear us for our own?

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY symwyse)

I never wanted to describe myself as a politically minded person, let alone religiously minded, but as of late, I cannot help but become more conscious of both driving factors. Perhaps it's also due in part to “Blog Against Theocracy” week, or maybe because I just get so tired of watching "breaking news" on every damned channel.

( Read more... )