Mindless Minions: How the White Religious Right was used

The Word of Truth Ministries

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Mindless Minions: How the White Religious Right was Used
Published in Gibbsmagazine.com
December 2004
Frank A. Jones, PhD

The Bush Campaign Camp sent out a memo to campaign workers on how the church should be used to reelect the president, and were they used! Many a mindless, non-thinking church members marched to the polls at the behest of church leaders to elect, as it were, a new Emperor Constantine of Rome. The use of the church is not new; historically, mindless believers have gone anywhere in the name of religion, when pronounced by church leaders.

Yet, according to the Bible, the thinking and questioning Christian is considered nobler, than the mindless minions. The Apostle Paul, the most learned of all the apostles, and the most prolific writer of them all, wrote to the church at Thessalonica, saying, prove all things and hold tightly to the things that are good. (1Thes. 5:20-21) This was after he saw the people of Berea in their devotion to truth; they did not simply accept what he said without thought--they searched the scripture to ensure whether what he taught was correct. Furthermore, Dr. Luke, a medical doctor and writer of the Acts of The Apostles, recorded Paul’s thoughts, when he wrote, “The Bereans were more noble than the Thessalonians, for they received the word of God readily and searched the scriptures to see if those things were so.” (Acts 14) These Christians were not mindless minions. Indeed, they represent the type of people God wants and desires Christians to be. As far back as the book of Hosea, God said, “My people are destroyed because of a lack of knowledge.” (Hos. 4:6) Ignorance or ignorant behavior is never applauded by God as obedience to his word or as faith. Satan has greatly confused many Christians about this fact!

Contrary to popular belief, God is not interested in mindless minions who will not honestly question and credibly reason the efficacy of their actions. But the current crop of so-called moral majority Christians are a lazy breed; they prefer others to do their thinking for them. And Karl Rove and other campaign strategists will do their thinking for them and send marching orders from the White House. But this type of Christian is not a Christian at all, though they tout themselves as Christians. God said, “…Because thou has rejected knowledge, I will also reject you.” (Hos. 4:6)

The great Apostle Paul teaches that Christians are not to be children, tossed to and fro by deceptive men and teachings of men, but that they should be mature and prove all things. (Eph. 4; 1Thes. 5:20) God is nurturing mature, mindful Christians, not mindless creatures who march to any mind-bending madness that comes along in ill-fitting sheep’s clothing.

Elsewhere, I have written about the Culture of Ignorance that is being spoon-fed to many Black Christians by ignorant religious leaders who know neither biblical teaching nor solid reasoning. That same scenario of ignorance and deception is true among mindless white Christians as well. The great 40% functionally illiterate population across this nation is broad and widespread throughout America. A vast number of these are white, mindless Christians who, in all honesty, thought they were doing God’s will by rushing to the polls and voting for Bush because he says things that comport with scriptural beliefs. But a sense of history would be very important for Christians so that they not fall into the same deceptive traps that have been used before on them.

As far back as 313 AD, Constantine supposedly had a religious experience that brought about his conversion: while traveling along, he saw a flaming cross in the sky that had writing that read, “By this sign shall thou conquer.” And that was his Pauline conversion to Christianity. But far was it from a true conversion. It was a charade that was used to help him overcome Maxentius, in becoming Emperor of Rome. He promised Christians, that were multiplying greatly, that if they stood beside him for emperor, he would cause all religious persecution of them to cease. The Christians thought that they had found a true yokefellow and stood with him politically, and he became Emperor of Rome. Thereafter, he took over the church, brought his pagan friends into the church by decreeing that no one could hold an office in his government unless he was a member of the church.

After becoming Emperor, he and his friends changed Christian customs, teachings, and generally corrupted the church. But the Christians initially thought that they had found a true Christian yokefellow, yet he died with his pagan name carved on his tomb. Because a sheep-cry is made, it does not mean a sheep is making it. This is the great fall of many who call themselves Christians. They have been intoxicated by the Bush Administration and did not use their own Christian reality, teaching, or their own history as a guide.

A poor brother-friend called me from Las Vegas, Nevada and said he was going to vote for Bush because his pastor said that it would be a sin to vote for someone like Kerry who believes in gay rights and the use of Stem-cells for research. This poor soul would follow a politically naïve pastor who thinks, even as the 19-Black Oakland ministers who held a special news conference to announce their decision to vote for Bush because he is for a constitutional amendment against gay marriage, that Bush is godly sincere. In sports terms, Bush’s meager effort to get a constitutional amendment against gay marriage was nothing more than a political head-fake. Such an amendment effort has no legs, cannot stand up, and will not get off the ground; Bush’s camp knew that, and the Christians that supported him should have known that too. But they didn’t, and that is tragic; it shows that the culture of ignorance is alive and in force in churches across this nation. All they would have had to do was to look at the Bush Administration: The real person making the decisions in the White House on crucial matters, like whether to start a needless, adventuresome war, is Dick Cheney. If Bush is against gays, he would have gotten rid of Cheney in his administration. That is common sense. Cheney’s daughter is gay, and Cheney has said that he believes in equal rights for gays as well as straights. How could the Christians have thought that Bush was moral with the company he keeps? The Prophet Amos asked rhetorically, “Can two walk together, save they agree?” (Amos 3:3) Is this not in their Bibles? Does this not give them insight? Bush and Cheney walk together!

God’s people are destroyed because of their knowledge gap. Is this not a willful lack of knowledge or deliberate ignorance of truth? These Christians who marched off to vote for Bush in great numbers and those 19-Black ministers who stoutly stated that they would vote for Bush defy biblical teachings concerning carefully discerning truth, and they went for a head-fake. But is it just a head-fake or something else as well?

It seems as if the Republicans have taken the correct symbols and names from Democrats. They call themselves the Political Right, and those religious politicians [Ministers] they have hired out call themselves the Moral Majority. But these conservatives are far from morally conservative—many of them are using this religious term to cover evil acts, just as they did during antebellum days; many are actually amoral and some even immoral and evil, yet they masquerade under the cloak of the Moral Majority. Their religion is this: winning at all costs. The Moral Majority is neither moral nor majority; look at the religious right, they are embroiled in scandals of homosexual and heterosexual corruption, financial corruption, infidelities of every type, fraud and duplicitous conduct, etc. Look into most of these national televised ministries and you will see corruption after corruption!

This is not to say that Democrats are not similarly situated; it is to say, however, that the issue of morality is properly a matter left to the family, the church, temple, synagogues, etc., not politics. But the Republicans, with their Log-Cabin Republican wing, the open and unabashed lesbianism of the Vice President’s daughter, vulgarity uttered on the Senate’s floor by the Vice President and his statement that he felt good after saying it, have still captured the church vote with head-fakes and deceptions.

Church members, being ignorant to their own history, could not see that they were used, even as Constantine used the church years ago to wreak havoc and confusion in church teaching and dogma, and to take over the church as not only Emperor of Rome but supreme head of the church. His legacy remains a part of Christianity today. A vast majority of Christians are easily deceived and made to overlook matters of their own teaching because of words that fancy the ears but are merely clouds without rain, smoke without fire, and heat without light emanating from the White House, signaling, so Christians believed, that Christian favor is here in America.

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