'I Quit the Evangelical Movement in Disgust': Former Evangelist Fears Right-Wing Lunacy Will Lead to More Murder

By Frank Schaeffer, AlterNet. Posted July 1, 2009.

• In the light of the rising tide of right-wing terror, if leaders on the right were serious about standing against violence and acting responsibly you would see:
• Pro-life leaders in front of abortion clinics to protect doctors from violence.
• People like radio talk host Ingraham -- who has been sounding an anti-immigrant drumbeat incessantly -- at the funeral for the little girl gunned down in Arivaca and begging her far-right listeners to not commit acts of domestic terrorism against immigrants.
• Letters from the NRA to its membership refuting its own scaremongering, anti-Obama election tactics and saying that Obama is not going to take Americans' guns away.
• Republican senators and representatives giving speeches calling on their followers to accept and work with the president in a truly loyal opposition and denouncing Dick Cheney for saying the president is making us "less safe."
• Evangelical Christian and Roman Catholic leaders telling their congregations to stop believing insane Religious Right lies, like the one about Obama being a Muslim, and/or the Antichrist ...

Instead, the rising tide of violence is met with silence and/or pretended horror by leaders on the right and yet even more hateful words amounting to outright provocation -- "I hope Obama fails," or, "Obama is making America less safe," or, "We regret Tiller's murder, but after all, he murdered 60,000 babies..." or, "Illegal immigrants must be stopped!" and so on.

Who on the right-wing radio shows, among the Republicans in Congress and in far-right media such as Fox News, will now try to cure the sickness of their right-wing followers -- before it explodes again? Or don't they care?

So far, the insanity continues including (according to Time magazine) the New Bethel Church's highly publicized "open-carry service." Assemblies of God church (Sarah Palin's old denomination) in Louisville, Ky., having a service to celebrate carrying weapons, wherein NRA and other members of gun groups were invited and a video was shown of a Marine being asked what he would do if asked to "disarm Americans." More hysteria, more craziness, more religious leaders -- locally and nationally -- ramping up the Obama-will-take-your-guns threat.

Right-wing domestic terrorism committed by a few unhinged people who take the crazy talk (and nutty "open-carry" church services) seriously is a test of the patriotism of the so-called mainstream right-wing leaders. If the mainstream right doesn't stand up to try to tamp down the fear levels in its very own lunatic fringe, and if it doesn't lower the pitch of its anti-Obama rhetoric, then it is complicit in whatever comes next.

See more stories tagged with: republicans, pro-life, evangelicals, obama, conservatives, glenn beck, right-wing, domestic terror, laura ingraham, sarah palin, sarah palin, right-wing media, abortion clinics, open-carry church service, assemblies of god

Frank Schaeffer is a writer and author of 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.

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