Here are some of the week’s most notable quotes culled from news reports from across Texas, and beyond.
Richard Land, president of the conservative Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, on a slew of previously apolitical pastors who are increasingly heeding a call to speak out on politics.
This is the congregational version of the ‘tea party.’ Pastors who in the past would dodge my calls are calling me saying, ‘How can we be involved?’
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Florida evangelical leader John Stemberger, on why he’s throwing his support behind Gov. Rick Perry instead of Gov. Mitt Romney.
The issue [is] not that he is a Mormon. The issue is that he wasn’t Mormon enough.
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New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, on recent attacks on climate science by Republican presidential candidates Gov. Rick Perry and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann.
Thanks Mr. Perry and Mrs. Bachmann, but we really are all stocked up on crazy right now.
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Gov. Rick Perry, criticizing U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann for making a claim about the HPV vaccine that is not backed by science.
I think that was a statement that had no truth in it, no basis in fact.
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Susan Tortolero, the director of the University of Texas’ Prevention Research Center in Houston, on school districts that are moving toward “abstinence-plus” sex education.
We’re getting calls from all over the state. It’s like we’re beyond this argument of abstinence, abstinence plus. Districts want something that works.
With regard to the pastors and politics story, It just amazes me how blind these people are to being drawn into a system of evil that just boggles the mind. They focus their whole being on just one, two, or three political issues that they think are Biblical—by the way issues that most Republicans do not give a flip about in real life—and ignore the whole rest of the Bible without realizing that the people they are supporting are the antithesis of what the rest of the Bible has to say on a broad spectrum of issues. If they bothered to ever read the Bible rather than just thump it, they might understand that this “pied piper” approach to getting things done is one of the chief deceptions that the force of evil in this world uses to work its magic.
However, I am warning you all right here. Travel down this path and you will destroy yourselves, your families, our economy, the real moral fabric of our society, and this nation. Jesus warned them that they would reap whatever they sow, and they are now sowing trouble on a grand scale.
When Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are gone, Pastor Demastus will have a rude awakening. One day in about 20 years, just as he is about to enter retirement, he will get a couple of telephone calls from a doctor and the billing office at a hospital. It’ll go something like this:
“Pastor Demastus. Your sister Evelyn has just had a massive heart attack. She needs some really expensive surgery right now and a great deal of follow-up care. We have seen cases like this before, and we anticipate that the cost will be somewhere around $380,000. She says that she has only $30,000 in her savings account, no retirement accounts, no insurance, and no home because she rents an apartment. As you know, Medicare and Medicaid no longer exist, so someone is going to have to pay for this surgery, or she will be dead in a matter of days. Since the Republican revolution of 2012 and the nationwide policy of total personal responsibility, we no longer take any charity cases here at the hospital. No one does. Your sister says that you are the only living relative she has. Normally, in cases like this pastor, we expect either the patient or family members to pay the entire bill out of pocket. I am sending a courier over to your house with a standard hospital form to sign. The form says that you agree to pay all of Evelyn’s medical expenses, whatever they might turn out to be. As a down payment, we expect you to send us a cashier’s check for $150,000 within the first three days after signing this form. Have a great day pastor, and thank you for sending your family members to Tender Mercy Hospital!!!!”
Pastor Demastus (after the phone hangs up and breaking out in a cold sweat): “B-b-b-b-b-b-b-b. I don’t have enough money to pay her hospital bills. I worked all my life as a pastor for a small church. I never got paid much, and $150,000 is my whole life’s savings for retirement. There is no such thing as Social Security anymore. Whatever on Earth will Evelyn and I do?”
Yes, Pastor Demastus. That is the big-nosed Karl Malden question, now isn’t it? “Whatever on Earth will you and Evelyn do?” Of course, that is the REALLY BIG problem with the conservative church today—a powerful reluctance to model and value the principal of mercy towards one’s fellow man that runs so true throughout the pages of the Bible. Mercy? What’s that? One thing is for sure, their conservative Republican political handlers never even heard of the word. Their Gods are power and money—and there is no such thing as mercy in their world.
Conservative Christians claim that the Bible requires families alone to take care of the needs of all their family members. They should never expect that anyone outside of the family, except maybe a few people who bring in macaroni and cheese from the church, would help them because that is not God’s way. Therefore, if someone needs expensive medical treatment and the members of the family cannot afford to pay for the treatment, then the person just dies or the family goes bankrupt in a merciless world—and God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are okay with that. They may even smile and applaud. That’s the message I get from the conservative church.
Never mind that the passages of the Bible that covered such things were written for a bunch of bare-butted Hebrews who tended sheep and goat herds in a desert climate. Medicine was more primitive than that of Theodoric of York (Medieval Barber). Sure!!! If someone got sick back then, the family was required to take care of the sick family member. However, what you have to remember is this. The person got sick on Friday night. The standard treatment for the illness, goat dung tea, was administered on Saturday, and the patient died on Sunday. A huge number of extended family members in the herding band rotated to keep the person comfortable for only three days. The goat dung tea was free. The patient was gone from this world and no longer a problem on Sunday. In other words, it was more practical back then. No way nowadays.
Even in my wildest imagination, I cannot see Jesus approving of these merciless plans that conservative Republicans have up their sleeves—plans that will deny simple mercy to millions and bankrupt nuclear families from one coast to another. I do not care what label you slap on it. I see only one label, and it is marked EVIL in big letters.