Truly Scary, Part II: Religious Violence Predicted

"The bestselling status of the Left Behind novels proves that, not unlike Islamist terrorists who behead their enemies, many evangelical/fundamentalist readers relish the prospect of God doing lots of messy killing for them as they watch in comfort from on high," he added. "They want revenge on all people not like them -- forever."

"The scary thing is that there are a number of pastors on record as saying they are praying for the President's death. Can you imagine what some gun-toting paranoid who hears that in a sermon is thinking and might do? And to them the fact that 'the world' likes this black man is reason enough to hate him. You wait. The reaction to Obama winning the Nobel Prize will be entirely negative from the far Religious Right. 'See the world, all those socialists like him that just proves he's a -- fill in the blank -- communist, secret Muslim, the Antichrist, whatever.'"

Frank Schaeffer was the son of Francis Schaeffer, one of THE men who helped shape The Moral Majority and The Christian Coalition. Thanks to Francis (and Frank, to a certain extent) we've got people like Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Rick Warren, Ralph Reed, Ken Copeland, James Hagee and Rod Parsley trying to gain the political upper hand in America. The title of Frank Schaeffer's first book says quite a lot:

Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back

On Obama's controversial Chicago Pastor:

"[W]hen my late father -- Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer -- denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr."

To Senator McCain during the '08 Presidential race:

"If you do not stand up for all that is good in America and declare that Senator Obama is a patriot, fit for office, and denounce your hate-filled supporters ... history will hold you responsible for all that follows."

Violence is almost never attributed to the church. Christendom has never had to atone for the (approximately) 140,000,000 deaths committed by "Good Christians." It was, in fact, Mark Twain who pointed out that "Christians are the most efficient killers in the history of the world. (The Mysterious Stranger.)" In microcosm: it has never atoned for the miserable lives it took advantage of in the Magdalene Laundries* nor the children kept as science experiments in the Canadian orphanages (now termed The Duplessis Orphans).*

Yes, the Duplessis example was more direct in its intolerance for life. Frank Schaffer gives us indirect, cause and effect violence. So what would be worse: if a minister told his flock that there were "evil doers out there" who should be punished and one (or several) persons went out and shot someone, or if a minister takes it upon himself to shoot people "in the name of God"?

Three years ago, in the wake of Katrina, I wrote a piece called "God's Ambulence Chasers." It dealt with people like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell who seemed to relish disasters and plagues so that they could rain Bibles down on people. And indeed, with these disasters, Christofascists get two benefits: a) they can point out their enemies as the cause and b) they can take advantage of a dire situation to proselytize to huge captive audiences consisting of the most desperate people imaginable.

Guns, bigotry, manipulation, rhetoric, proselytizing, paranoia, revenge.

There are all sorts of ways to kill people and the Christofascist Right knows them all. They are armed and dangerous.

*The Magdalene Laundries
*The Duplessis Orphans

Both of the above institutions were among the world's worst child abuse cases involving tens of thousands of children and young adults. Both were built by the Catholic Church to shelter or "reform" children.