Start Taxing the Goat Barn Megachurches

 

“Don’t stay away from church because there are so many hypocrites. There’s always room for one more.” 

-Arthur Adams

A California church was recently ordered to turn over records to the IRS for an anti-war sermon delivered in 2004 which should evoke the very important question on whether the Bush administration is using the agency for Nixon style harassment of it’s critics. Just what in the hell kind of a down the rabbit hole, through the looking glass, bizarre country do we live in where a sermon denouncing war and violence can have the church in which it was given in face the treat of losing tax exempt status for engaging in politics while the reactionary religious right flagrantly act as nothing more than a subsidiary of the Republican party and not only are not held to the same standards but are actually encouraged through the funneling of tax payer funded graft under the guise of the administion’s prized Faith Based Initiative programs.

As the biblical parable states, Jesus will divide his sheep from the goats amongst them, he also dispenses some very good wisdom about prayer:

“And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say to you that they have their reward.”

“But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly”

That’s Matthew: 6, Verses 5; 6 – so go and look it up.

While I not a theologian, I do understand very clearly that the true message of Jesus Christ does not happen to include advocating for greed, bigotry, war, murdering brown skinned children or neglecting the poor which are all not coincidentally some of the traits of the mutant fundamentalist version of Christianity that is pimped by false prophets in three piece suits and a card in Karl Rove’s rolodex. Christ seemed to think that it was not necessary to be seen amongst others in order for the worship of the lord to be legitimate, in fact the verse that I referred to above states exactly the opposite.

But in America today it is obvious that those goats that brayeth the loudest have replaced the humble sheep in the grazing order, especially when it comes to feeding at the public trough and most specifically in the taxpayer subsidized ‘goat barns’ that are the huge mega-churches that are popping up along thy fruited plain nearly as rapidly as Wal Mart superstores.

Of course in order to get the money for one of these great and shiny temples where concerts and light shows extol the ‘virtues’ of God, capitalism, militarism and nationalism there as always is a quid pro quo. They must in return disseminate and perpetuate the message of Republican party propagandists in order to keep the flock focused on the true task at hand which is to attack phantom enemies like gays, judges and liberals while acting as a proxy army for corporatism and the agenda of the wealthy.

This brings to mind the following dialogue from the movie Pale Rider between Clint Eastwood’s ‘Preacher’ who champions the poor local miners and the corrupt town boss ‘LaHood’ (obviously a Republican) who is trying to screw them by initially trying to swindle them and then ultimately hiring his thugs to force them to leave their gold rich land so that he could bring in his strip mining operation.

LaHood: “It occurred to me it must be difficult for a man of faith to carry the message on an empty stomach, so to speak I thought why not invite this devout and humble man to preach in town? Why not let the town be his parish? In fact why not build him a brand-new church?”

Preacher: “I can see where a preacher’d be mighty tempted by and offer like that.”

LaHood: “Oh, indeed.”

Preacher: “Then he’d be thinking about getting himself a batch of new clothes..”

LaHood: “We’d have them tailor made”

Preacher: “Then he’d start thinking about those Sunday collections.”

LaHood: “Hell, in a town as rich as this one that preacher’d be a wealthy man.”

Preacher: “That’s why it wouldn’t work, can’t serve God and mammon both. Mammon being money”
 

America’s mega-church moguls have no such qualms over taking mammon, in fact the more mammon the more message that the GOP can expect from the grand temples that serve as political halls. Unlike Clint Eastwood’s humble preacher the pastors and preachers of the religious right and it’s affiliates perform astride stages in venues the size of small arenas to the accompaniment of light and special effects shows that would be the envy of a heavy metal rock band on a world tour. They adorn themselves with the finest in tailored finery and wallow like hogs in pools of taxpayer dollars funneled in by Bush’s programs. If more on the right had some consistency in their ideology they might come to call this for what it is: Christian Socialism.

This politicizing of the churches ends up driving the smaller houses of worship out of business due to their inability to compete with the extravaganzas presented by their competitors in the well-heeled and not coincidentally much whiter suburbs. The ones that suffer most are the residents of the inner cities and the poor whose lives depend on the organizing power and moral examples of the small churches that truly seek to perform humanitarian deeds in the name of the lord while preaching the real gospels of Christ and don’t demand their congregation to make calls or write letters to their congressmen threatening retaliation if they don’t discriminate against others or take stances that further contribute to the corrosive corruption and coarsening of our society.

Well, here’s a great idea to cut into massive national debt as well as to allow all who benefit from citizenship to have the great feeling of contributing their fair share: start taxing the churches. Not all churches of course but the `tax cheat’ false churches that serve as political organs of the Republican party need to be immediately stripped of their tax exempt status. By using their pulpits as a forum for polemics, making congregation lists available to party operatives, laundering money and waging war on the concept of the separation of church and state, therefore becoming political organizations and they should render unto Caesar that which is his or if we are to believe that we still live in a functional democracy more precisely ours. Tax breaks for biblical theme parks like the massive abomination called Holyland where according to a St. Pete Times story one can experience:

“A biblical theme park in Orlando where guests pay $30 admission to munch on “Goliath” burgers and explore reproductions of 2000-year-old tombs and temples could get a property tax exemption written into state law”

 

The owners of these all too common turnstiles to apostasy also need to be kicked off of the government dole, how hypocritical that the same moneychangers who seek to eliminate the hated welfare state sing a different hymn when the entitlements are being funneled into their pockets and not the pockets of the poorest and the most disadvantaged amongst us who Christ himself championed.

And I would like somebody to tell me just how biblically correct that chowing down on a fucking Goliath Burger is.

Republicans Vs. Jesus

“He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone..”

Jesus Christ

Quite possibly the only thing on the planet that is more gut-wrenchingly nauseating than seeing an endless parade of Republican chickenhawks painting their fucking fingers purple, wrapping themselves in the flag and braying their approval for sending poor bastards off to die ostensibly in the service of their country in a foreign land (while most of those gutless scum ever even bothered to wear the uniform themselves) it is their sheer blasphemy and callous disregard for exploiting Jesus Christ himself to mount their jihadist terrorist assault on the United States of America. The idiots in Congress are only the standard bearers for those who are the far more nefarious puppeteers behind the movement to replace democracy with theocracy.

The Republican party and the religous zealots who effectively control it have hijacked the Christian religion and have transformed Jesus Christ into a ‘new and improved’ product that can be sold to the flocks of consumers who regularly pack their goat barns or as they are more commonly known, their mega-churches. This label comes from the biblical parable puts it that Jesus will divide his sheep from the goats amongst them, he also dispenses some very good wisdom about prayer:

“And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say to you that they have their reward.”

“But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly”


That’s Matthew: 6, Verses 5 and 6 by the way, look it up. I am not exactly a biblical scholar or theologian but it seems to me that Christ is alluding to the fact that it is not exactly necessary to run down and join your neighborhood mega-church in order to curry favor with God, you can actually save a bit of coin on the gas and retreat to your own cramped closet at home to offer up prayers. I know that the militant fundamentalist ‘Christians’ have this connotation that closets somehow are equated with homosexuality which according to their radical clerics must be eradicated but it just seems to me that Jesus is actually calling out those who gather in temples of worship to be seen is a form of hypocrisy. It’s a shame that the true teachings of Jesus Christ the prophet, liberal and he who preached compassion towards the downtrodden is so often eschewed in favor of the vengeful, materialistic, warmongering character that the fanatics of the Religious Right have transformed him into for their own benefit. I mean when was the last time that James Dobson, Timothy LaHaye, Jerry Falwell or for that matter George W. Bush took the time to wash the feet of a poor man?

GOP Jesus, the gay-hating, free-market preaching, Social Darwinist avenger who now pilots a fighter jet because his more traditional donkey was unable to carry enough incendiary devices or precision guided bombs to drop on brown skinned children rules the mega-churches. He is a staunchly pro-American warrior and those who proudly display their little yellow ‘support the troops’ ribbon magnets on their gas guzzlers as a tribute to GOP Jesus are legion, hell I even saw a sticker the other day with an angry looking Christ with blazing eyes and a broadsword, what in the fuck ever happened to “blessed are the peacemakers”? Probably the same thing that happened to the blessed meek who were to inherit the Earth, the dogma of GOP Jesus is summed up by the harlot of hate Ann Coulter who once said: “Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours”.

GOP Jesus also disdains the causes and care of the poor and downtrodden who were the biggest concern for Jesus Christ for the praise of the wealthy who delight in the accumulation of earthly treasures which are all the better to show how successful and blessed by God that they are to their fellow ‘goat barn’ members. Earthly possessions are not a burden to holiness as Christ seemed to indicate when he said in the book of Matthew (3:19-3:21):

Lay not up yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

The religious right instead has a far more Calvinist style view in that God bestows favoritism through materialism, this meshes very nicely with capitalism and it’s no wonder why the GOP’s holy warriors who serve as the palace guards for the elite who remain cloistered in their gated communities and Wall Street ivory towers have such a cozy, symbiotic relationship.

The coming holy war leading up to the November elections will be viciously fought and no quarter will be given, not with the providence of the Bush kingom of God on the line, Israel on the attack and the Middle East aflame, the rapture clock is nearing the long awaited moment. No, there is too much at stake now to not use the goat barns as garrisons for the soldiers of the army of GOP Jesus.

I can practically hear the shrillness of cornered animal Karl Rove desperately barking orders:

“Mobilize the Base! I want the abortion clinics and gay bars stormed, I want to see rubber fetuses on pitchforks, what the fuck is wrong with you people…don’t you understand what is at stake here?”

When it is all coming apart there is nothing like whipping up the masses of ignorant activist thugs with plenty of free time on their hands. These are the ones who comprise the standing army of the party base of the legions of hate. Millions of venom spewing, poisonous, regressive little toads who have been duped by megalomaniac televangelists and sleazy political operatives into supporting a party that conscripts them into a war against a phantom enemy and forces them to sell their souls as well as the very future of their children in order to wage total jihad for a cause that is the very antithesis of what Jesus Christ actually stood for.

The moral rot and corruption of the Republican party is anything but a just cause and it’s message much like Hitler’s proclamation of ‘Got Mit Uns’ distorts religion in order to pander to the basest of the evils and fears of humanity so as to allow them to justify anything in the name of what they have been fraudulently sold as the will of God.

The rise of the radical religious right in America and it’s takeover of the Republican party has a been the equivalent of watching a trainwreck in slow motion, unable to avert your eyes from the horrible scene.
The majority of our population of sheeple go about their daily lives while completely oblivious to the growing danger of the increasingly malignant cancer of radicalized fundamentalist religion that continues to metastasize through the body of secular, democratic society. The media being the craven corporate monolith that it is remains firmly in the corner of the administration, the neocons and the theocratic jihadists, fearful of any legislation favorable of monopoly being stalled or of any further deregulatory standards that would impede their profits being derailed. The media is also terrified of the sort of mass, well organized boycotts against their sponsors that would result in a loss of profits so they won’t touch the menace posed ty the theocrats with a two hundred foot long pole. The bastardized nature of their illicit union with the sad remnants of what was once the party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt is as shameful as it is unholy.

And how preposterous it is for one of the world’s major religions to proclaim a mandate of superiority at the expense of others, to preach to the ignorant the gospel of providence. Does it not occur to the pathetic wretches that no one, person or religion has exclusive rights to God? The evangelical Christian movement in America uses good old fashioned jingoism and nationalism to reinforce their message of theocracy and exclusion, of hate and illusion. Christ warned about the danger of following false prophets who would be as goats among sheep as well as the ultimate fate of trees that bear bitter fruit but this does not hinder a movement indoctrinated to a particular militant translation of the gospel and scriptures

Then again, this movement is not about God, it is not about morality, it is not about Christ, it is about raw institutional power, to ever believe anything else is foolishness. A good look at the Texas Republican Party platform is a glimpse at the Mein Kampf of our modern times. It is a playbook that Karl Rove will be using almost exclusively in the coming days as he launches a scorched earth campaign to distract and deceive and chart a course out of the wilderness for the unholy administration of emperor Bush and his besieged minions. Make no mistake, these people are the enemy within and are determined to overthrow the legitimate government, re-write the constitution through legislative terrorism and judicial fanaticism and enforce their cruel extremism on all who are not members of the cult.

Rove is now massing his army for an all out assault and the hell with whatever the damage ultimately may be, then again when in the hell have the America haters on the extremist right ever cared?

Were Christ to return to earth tomorrow he would be decried as a treasonous liberal by the GOP state controlled media, would be denounced as a long haired, anti-American peacenik who supports the terrorists, hates freedom, is a commie and is unpatriotic. Then after the electronic crucifixion would be arrested as an enemy combataant and would be just another Middle-Eastern man in an orange jumpsuit locked up in a tiny cell in Gitmo.

You see, GOP Jesus and today’s Pharisees and moneychangers have successfully chased Jesus of Nazareth’s ass out of the temple and he sure as hell ain’t ever coming back as long as they have anything to say about it.

“We will fuck him. Do you hear me? We will fuck him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever fucked him!”

-Karl Rove