Capitol Circus: Religious Right Leaders Plan D.C. Prayer Rally For `Evil' America
Rob Boston printable version print page     Bookmark and Share
Fri May 04, 2012 at 11:48:05 AM EST
On May 8, a group called Come Pray With Me plans to hold a prayer service in Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol.

This is kind of a big deal. Statuary Hall isn't some sort of public facility that anyone can use. Groups have to get permission from the congressional leadership to hold events there, and it's not often granted.

So what is Come Pray With Me, and why does it merit this honor?

I've been looking into that. The organization was founded by a man named Dan Cummins, pastor of Bridlewood Church in Bullard, Texas. Come Pray With Me is described as an organization that exists to encourage people to pray for the country and its leaders. That sounds harmless enough. Americans pray for their nation all of the time.

But, as is often the case with the Religious Right, there's more going on here. When I visited Come Pray With Me's website to get information about the May 8 event, I immediately noticed that all of the speakers are far-right zealots.

They include Jim Garlow, a California pastor active in Republican politics who has openly endorsed candidates from the pulpit; Bishop Harry Jackson, a Maryland preacher known for anti-gay activism; Alveda King of the extreme anti-abortion outfit Priests for Life and David Barton, the Religious Right's favorite pseudo-historian.

Then I watched a video of Cummins speaking in Tyler, Texas, in April of 2011 and noticed that  it was the usual combination of Religious Right fringe politics mixed with fundamentalist theology. Cummins' rant was a bizarre cocktail of crazy, mixing assertions that America is a "Christian nation" and attacks on legal abortion and marriage equality with assaults on the Supreme Court's school prayer decisions and topping it all with a dose of birtherism.

I noticed that Cummins had written a book titled The Church: In a State of Separation. It was available for free on the church website, so I downloaded it to take a look. Let's just say it was "enlightening." In fact, my brain is still spinning from this kooky tome.

Here are some of the things that are in this book:

  • King Saul from the Old Testament was a socialist.

  • The Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the 2008 stock market crash and the 2011 earthquake in Washington, D.C., that damaged the Washington Monument were warnings from God, who is angry and trying to warn Americans to "turn from our evil ways."

  • The Americans with Disabilities Act is an example of government overregulation because it mandates where people can park their cars.

  • Pastors who talk about political issues in church can be jailed.

  • Separation of church and state is a communist concept. People who call themselves "progressives" are really communists. (For all his talk of communism, Cummins' research leaves some things to be desired. He reprints a list of alleged "communist goals" that were debunked years ago.)

  • The early church councils that hammered out the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church were in fact promoting paganism, and they might have been under the control of Satan.

  • Satan will appear as a politician; he will establish a one-world government. Satan also endorses separation of church and state. And oh, he is also "the ultimate [George] Soros, the puppet master, the Great Oz, pulling all the strings" mostly of a certain political party. (Guess which one.)

  • President Woodrow Wilson advocated "Fabian socialism." This concept, along with the theory of evolution and false teachings about the end of the world, might have been "part of a three-pronged attack by Satan upon America to separate the Church from the State by hitting church, education and government all about the same time."

There's more; I had to stop before my eyeballs exploded.

Here's what amazes me about guys like Cummins: They claim to love America and make a big show of their alleged patriotism. It's always flag waving, the Pledge of Allegiance and "God Bless the U.S.A." with this crowd.

Yet even a glance at his book shows that it just drips with contempt for this nation and the people who live in it. We're all a bunch of dupes for the communists and the Fabian socialists who can't wait to tear down the nation; we're "evil" and easily misled. We've turned our backs on all that is good and decent. Ultimately, we're so stupid we've been sucked into doing Satan's bidding - even some of our churches are in on it!

At one point in his book, Cummins blasts the Democrats for entertaining "such a diverse immoral circus under its liberal big top." After reading his hateful book, I've concluded that the only guy with a circus is Cummins. He's its chief clown, and I see no reason why he should receive an invitation to set up his sideshow tent in the U.S. Capitol.  

Speaker John Boehner, do the right thing and kick these birds out of Statuary Hall.




Display:
IMO, they're projecting themselves onto the rest of us... and that says a lot about what they really are.

I've heard about "One World Order" since before I was a dominionist... I remember rants about it (thought they were crazy) from before I moved to this God-Forsaken dominionist-overrun area.  Yet what is it that they want?  A one world order, with themselves at the head.  You can also hear echoes of the other things they claim to fear... the mark of the beast?  Well, what about having to prove you're a "Good Christian" to be accepted?  I could go on and on, pointing out the similarities between the Dominionists and the thing they claim to fear... the "Anti-Christ" and the "Church of the Anti-Christ".

Isn't it funny how their "Jesus" is unrecognizable to the rest of us - judgmental, harsh, legalistic, and even cruel?  A Jesus and God who punish the poor and reward the rich?  (In complete opposition to what is actually in the Bible.)

They're moving closer and closer to the centers of power in this country, and I see this as evidence of that move.  

Funny thing... I had a dream a few months ago where God showed me that throughout history, there has been a "Church of the anti-Christ", as in being an inverse of what Jesus taught (not a church focused on a demonic living being, the "Anti-Christ" as envisioned by the dominionists), since long before Christ walked this earth.  That "Church" has been the source of misery and suffering for a long time, and Jesus Himself fought against that ideological framework (as has many other notable people throughout history).

The hallmarks of that "Church"???  Top-down hierarchical structure, micromanaging of people's lives, ideology more important than people, legalism, hatred for the Other, harshness and cruelty towards the poor and those that suffer, and things along that line.  All of the things we see in Dominionism.

by ArchaeoBob on Fri May 04, 2012 at 06:10:00 PM EST

At his 2008 Argentina IINT conference, Ed Silvoso waxed enthusiastic about the project of creating a "New World Order" - which Silvoso seemed to envision as a utopia on Earth.

by Bruce Wilson on Fri May 04, 2012 at 07:00:39 PM EST
Parent

...it seems strangely archetypal, a vision within which (as I take it) the prevailing power system order is ever "anti-Christ".
One could call that a gnostic vision, and there's also a strong neo-gnostic strain within the NAR -- but the difference, as I would see it, is that the captains of the NAR have for the most part aligned themselves with the powers that be. They do not challenge power. Rather, they court power and seek to turn it to their own ends.

by Bruce Wilson on Fri May 04, 2012 at 07:07:59 PM EST
Parent
if it was so much the prevailing world system (maybe it represented the modern "system"), as much as a seductive ideology that created misery and tempted leaders - it was easy to fall into and seemed to represent the antithesis of freedom and fairness (and everything we take as good), but masquerading as "good".  I always seemed to see it as something that people fell foul of... either were victims of it or became part of it, but that there were many people who didn't.

My impression throughout the dream was that things didn't have to be that way and that people (and governments) could resist - that there was always a better choice (although those choices weren't always an easy path).

That, of course, was my impression of that "Church" in the dream.  I know my own beliefs were tied up in the way I perceived it.  Like so many things, it's hard to put in words the perceptions, emotions, and so on that took place.

by ArchaeoBob on Fri May 04, 2012 at 10:53:44 PM EST
Parent



As an atheist I find nothing more appropriate in responding to these people than scripture itself. "Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. Truly I tell you, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. But suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself, `My master is staying away a long time,' and he then begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Matthew 24:45-51 - New International Version

by Villabolo on Sat May 05, 2012 at 12:27:50 AM EST
Parent
I'm not quite sure how this relates to allowing religious dominionists to use government space to conduct a religious ceremony.

Maybe Matthew 6:1-7 would be a better choice.

by monarchmom on Sat May 05, 2012 at 02:29:19 PM EST
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I know that one strike against a venture like that would be our tendency to stick to facts, which doesn't cause the controversy needed for eyeballs on the site, but this meet-up had Congressional leadership approval, and yet I haven't read any responses to criticism about this. No media outlet has gone to Boehner or Turtle-boy and confronted them about Cummins' written diatribes, as they would if Reid or Pelosi had agreed to Farrakhan or Wright speaking in the same venue.

by trog69 on Mon May 07, 2012 at 09:28:09 PM EST


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