Strange Easter Messages from the Religious Right

Easter is the most joyous holiday of the Christian faith. Usually, Easter sermons are about the story of resurrection, redemption and hope. Christmas had a rockier start because the Jerusalem Church never taught that Jesus was born of a virgin. That church was led by Jesus brother James, who said that someone misinterpreted Isaiah. And maybe he would know. But Easter is the first holiday of Christianity celebrated very shortly after the crufixtion and resurrection story.

But if you want to know why young people are running away from Christianity, you don't have to look farther than the Religious Right in this country, perhaps the most harmful factor to any religious faith in our society. Far outstripping any secular temptations.

It amazes me that none of these people ever consider biblical injunctions against "bearing false witness."

Here's Franklin Graham, son of Billy, who appears on television to say he was unsure whether President Obama is an American. No wonder his father kept him out of the meeting with the President.

Then we have Mike Huckabee . a former Baptist minister, attacked Planned Parenthood, calling it Planned Barrenhood and coming out against contraception. Forget abortion, let's do away with contraception now. For investigative reporters, it is curious that all of Huckabee's sermons vanished in a church fire as well as thousands of files on hard drives when he was governor.

Pat Robertson said that progressives want straight women to "abortion their babies" to "put lesbians on a level playing field."

Rod Parsley simply came out to say that Planned Parenthood is leading an "onslaught of evil". It is the "carefully calculated conspiracy of fallen angels called demon spirits."

When the Alan Grumacher Institute found that 98% of Catholic women use contraception, the Catholic Church attacked Alan Grumacher, someone who has been dead for 75 years.

Then we have Newt Gingrich speaking at John Hagee's Cornerstone Chuch. First, Newt is a newly minted Catholic and here he is talking to a violently anti-Catholic preacher, so anti-Catholic that John McCain had to denounce the man's endorsement of his candidacy. Newt repeated his famous claim..." by the time my grandchildren are my age they will be in a secular atheist country, politically dominated by radical Islamists." You have to catch how authoritatively he says this on www.rightwatch.com

Newt should be aware that thousands of years of analysis of Jesus' sayings have come down to the conclusion he was absolutely against divorce and he really meant it when he said a rich person couldn't get into heaven.

Pseudo-Christian, pseudo-historian David Barton said on Easter week that Obama--not President Obama--has " a worldview that is devoid of God". I guess when he reads Reinhold Neihbur he omits all references to God. Obama is a secularist, according to Barton, who wants to get rid of "In God We Trust" as the national slogan. Since Eisenhower bowed to fundamentalist pressure in the first place in 1952, maybe it is time to get rid of it. Ungrateful bums.

James Dobson says that God prevailed "over the "forces of hell" to save the National Day of Prayer. He is referring to the unanimous Seventh Circuit Court having upheld its constitutionality. He then went on to bemoan Franklin Graham not being allowed to preside over the Pentagon's Day of Prayer. It was because Franklin Graham rather gratuitously attacked Islam, while our armed forces are fighting in these countries.

Boy, what a joyful faith! Where do I sign up? Oh, the Easter Bunny came to the United States from the German immigrants in Pennsylvania. A Bunny laying eggs was a throwback to a German fertility cult. Yes, it has a pagan origin.