"Thought" du jour - 11 August 2011

“With the economy in trouble, communities in crisis and people adrift in a sea of moral relativism, we need God's help. That's why I'm calling on Americans to pray and fast like Jesus did and as God called the Israelites to do in the Book of Joel.” - Rick Perry

Rick Perry isn't officially in the race for the Republican nomination, but the odds are that he's going to run. Even if he doesn't, he remains representative of what used to be called the "evangelical wing" of the Republican Party, but which can more resembles the "Ayatollah wing", because they're so far too the religious right as to make the old "evangelical wing" look almost quaint by comparison.

I heartily recommend "Army of God" in the most recent edition of the Texas Observer about Perry, his views, and his ties to the far right "end times" movement within American Christianity, which has been growing over the past decade or so, and which has influence in all aspects of American public life, perhaps most worryingly in the military.

I don't know about you, but this incipient American Taliban is the last group I want to be conducting foreign policy (the Crusades) or domestic policy (the Inquisition). In a worst case scenario, one is even forced to wonder if it's safe to let them  have control of the nuclear launch codes, lest they decide that perhaps the End Times need a helping hand to get going. After all, we're told to worry that religious extremists might control nuclear weapons in places like Pakistan. Perhaps we should be just as worried about them controlling nuclear weapons in the United States of America.

Paul Kimball