One of the best outcomes of this election season just may be the “outing” of preachers who spout hate in the name of religion. Not that this is anything new. For thousands of years, religion has been used by the power-hungry to justify horrors inflicted on others and to whip up fervor against “outsiders” and “non-believers.”
Recently, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Sen. Barack Obama’s former pastor, has been stirring the pot of hate. One of his quotable comments: “God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human.”
The Rev. James Dobson, head of Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family, has said stem-cell research was like the Nazi Holocaust. He’s been an enthusiastic gay-basher, supporting the words of such anti-gay preachers as Rev. John MacArthur, pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, Calif.
MacArthur said this about Episcopalian Bishop Gene Robinson, who was ordained in 2006: He “is a blatant and outspoken homosexual who is a licentious, lascivious, ungodly man. . . . (T)he unwitting, stupid and ignorant visible church has ordained him.”
The good reverend also makes Islam a fixture of his contempt, saying, ” ‘Allah’ is not another name for God. It is another name for Satan.”
Not to be outdone is the Rev. John Hagee, pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, who declared his support for Sen. John McCain. In an NPR interview, Hagee said that “All Muslims are programmed to kill and we can thus never negotiate with any of them.”
Hagee also enlightened us about Hurricane Katrina. “God caused Hurricane Katrina to wipe out New Orleans because it had a gay pride parade the week before and was filled with sexual sin.”
Then there’s the ever-quotable Rev. Pat Robertson, who takes on women as well as gays, Muslims and other disagreeable groups. “The feminist agenda,” he said, “is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”
These aren’t kooks spewing venom about other human beings and religions. They are preachers who have huge audiences in their churches, radio and television programs, and national speaking tours. They continue to influence American politics despite their claim, as Rev. Dobson made recently, that they are not political.
These “men of God” do us a great disservice by trying to mask their hatred in the garb of religion. Rather than focusing on solving problems, they try to whip up fury among their listeners by savagely attacking those who think, act and believe differently from them.
Rev. Wright is not alone. We need to look just as closely at the words of other ministers who preach contempt and hate. In this election year, maybe America will begin to hold all vicious preachers accountable for their loathsome words.
