March 23, 2012
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Tags: church and state, hate mail, Religious Freedom, Religious Right Watch

From the Hate Mail Bag

A new Christian-themed specialty license plate, approved by the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles board last December, went on sale this week. Here’s what we told Fox News about our concerns:

“I think you want to be very careful when you give government the authority to favor a particular religion in an official way such as this,” Dan Quinn, communications director for the Texas Freedom Network, told FoxNews.com.

“That’s what bumper stickers are for,” Quinn said of religious decorations on vehicles. “We support religious freedom for everybody. The question is: Do you need government approval for that? We don’t want government having that authority.”

The group had previously blasted the plate as “disrespectful,” saying in a December press release on its website that “It’s become pretty clear that our governor [Rick Perry] is dismissive of religious beliefs other than his own, and now his governmental appointees have voted to send a message that Texas is unwelcoming to the religious faiths of some of its citizens.”

Our hate mail typically spikes when we’re quoted by Fox. (Go figure.) In any case, the writer of the following email apparently checked out our website, including the section on our Texas Faith Network. He doesn’t like us:

Saw your site and the proclamation of “progressive clergy”?

“Progressive clergy” is just another way to say sell out clergy.

No Christian, at least a true Christian, is tolerant or accepting of other religions.

In fact, God’s Holy Word the Bible tells Christians to flee evil ….. not to even talk of the evil that they do.

Unlike your ““progressive clergy” proclaims, we are not all the children of God and we do not serve the same god.

True Christians are the only children of God and true Christians serve the one and only true God …. God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

Your “progressive clergy” are the false prophets that the Bible teaches us about. The purveyors of false doctrine ……. the servants of Satan and his minion.

This is a nation based upon Christians beliefs.

To God be the glory and may His judgment fall upon this nation that it, through your evil kind and your “progressive clergy” across this nation, has called upon it.

As the Bible says, the rain falls on the heads of the just and unjust …….. we, the true Christians, the born again Christians, the true children of God will bear it for His Name’s sake.

15 thoughts on “From the Hate Mail Bag”

  1. I thank God I am one of those progressive clergy. I am sold out- sold out to a God who is love; a God of justice, mercy and compassion. More than that, I am sold out to a Christ who died for love. I am proud to stand with TFN.

  2. I’m getting tired of hearing that the US is a nation founded on Christianity. Just because many of the early settlers and founding fathers were Christian (though many were not), does not mean they intended for the government to be the same. On the contrary, the whole reason many came to this country is to flee religious persecution.

    Have these people never read Thomas Jefferson or any Supreme Court rulings that address the separation of church and state? What about the Treaty of Tripoli? It was VERY clear about the US not being founded on Christianity and was signed by then president John Adams and received unanimous ratification by the U.S. Senate. From that document:

    “Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen,—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

    Isn’t that pretty clear?

    Daniel Patrick Moynihan said it well: “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.”

  3. Rick Perry has never believed in the separation of church and state. He is an ego-maniac that inherited the office of governor when Bush was elected president and how he has been re-elected again and again is beyond me. He is rubbing up on the conservatives legs to, I don’t know, garner a sympathy vote since their own party and possible candidates do not which way is up?!? This state would have a massive heart attack if there were Muslim license plates or Buddhist license plates. These plates are the “Look at how Christian I am!” reassurances certain people need to feel complete. I would think that having confidence in themselves and their own beliefs would be enough, apparently not.

  4. Christians need to remember this country was founded on the idea of FREEDOM OF RELIGION not just Christianity. I like how the person above deems all non Christians “evil”. These people need to read “their” own book! Love thy neighbor. Judge not. Cast not the first stone. All of these passages seem to be lost on the modern x-stians. Hell, they fact that there are so many different sects of x-stianity is enough to let me know it’s all just a power trip racket. No true religious advisor would ask for money! Material possessions are supposed to be the ties that bind us to the heart and keep us from entering heaven. Yet, everyone wears their best designer clothes and drives their Cadillac escalade to the giant megga church that is adorned with gold to sing along with the little bouncing sheep on the jumbo-tron and throw piles of cash into trays for their priest to buy new suits, Botox, big hair and titts for their wives and a giant ass house!
    maybe I should alter my own license plate with pentagrams and tripple sixes since I know the state won’t approve any other religions design!

  6. “As the Bible says, the rain falls on the heads of the just and unjust …….. we, the true Christians, the born again Christians, the true children of God will bear it for His Name’s sake.”

    Here in Scurry County, we, the atheists, will cheerfully bear some rain for the cotton’s sake. And Lake Thomas’s sake, too.

  7. “That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”

    What the hate mail fundie fails to notice—usualy because people like him are thumping their Bible rather than reading it—is that it says nothing about rain falling on heads or even on people per se. It could be an unjust man’s field that is producing no crops for lack of rain or for some other reason—like the fig tree that would not produce. Neither does it say that rain is bad or a punishment. It can be good to one who needs rain. Jesus is simply saying that rain falls on the crops of the just and unjust. One evil man might see it as a blessing because of his crops are too dry. A good man might see it as a curse because his crops have been too wet. An evil man may not like getting wet in a storm. A good man may love to sing in the rain.

    The point is that God is just—trying to be loving, merciful, and evenhanded. When was the last time anyone ever saw a fundie being loving, merciful, and evenhanded? Most of us could count the times on a hand with several amputated fingers.

  10. I’m afraid that what we are witnessing is the development of the Taliban in Texas. Different religion but the same precepts amounting to a total domination of the masses, basing governance on dubious interpretations of the bible and in many cases out right fabrications. The religious right is all over this idea and have waited years for the opportunity. If you have listened to any of the utterings from the republican candidates you realize how much they pander to the religious right and their financing. Even though their tea party faction talks of returning to the constitution, they seem to mean a ficticious republican/religious right version of the constitution which would return us to a pre-independence period. Not a very pleasing outlook for Texas or our nation. We deserve and should demand better representation from our government.

  11. Google Dominionism. Note the similarity between Christian dominionism and Islam.

    “The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance. …The plain lesson is that study and learning – not just of science, but of anything – are avoidable and even undesirable.”
    –Carl Sagan,
    “Demon-Haunted World, Science as a Candle in the Dark”