It's Not All right!

There is a real danger, when attacking extremists, of maligning the whole Christian community. Even if the biblical Christ seems not to have envisioned a ‘Christian Church’, it is a fact of life. More to the point, despite throwaway lines like ‘moral majority’, the vast number of adherents are at worst benign and at best, a positive force in the wider community.
The mainstream church community, and for that matter many who fill the seats at evangelical meetings, are not given to political activism. There is no scriptural warrant for imposed ‘morality’ or religious belief.
The Christian right is well known for its secretive aspect as well as its adoption of otherwise sociable language to camouflage its real intent. As it happens, they are extremists and lack the patience to really maintain the secrecy. Instead the lies pile on top of lies, much as their use of language is a lie.
The long suffering ‘mainstream’ church has been caught in a trap of their own making with these zealots. Indeed, many of the ‘mainstream’ actually believes in true Christian ideals, an inhibiting factor when it comes to taking the fight up to the usurpers of their faith.
Other inhibiting factors have been the fear of driving away seekers by exposing the rotten and corrupt elements inside the church community; and the great fear of schism. Failure to take a stand has had the same result. The extremists aren’t so squeamish. They will happily portray the righteous as corrupt, and just as happily destroy the church for their own twisted ends.
This cancer within the church seems to have its seeds in the particular brand of terrorism from which the USA was wrought. That nation, it seems, can never simply accept that they won that war and their freedom from British rule. The simple, backwoods notions which sustained them through their war for independence and later squabbles has, in itself, become a religion; pasted over the top of the old Christian religion they brought with them to the Americas.
The words, the terminology, particularly of the Old Testament, fit well into the culture of nationalist zealots. The melding of political thoughts and religious notions might require suspending disbelief, but that has never been a problem for extremists anywhere.
Creating a good strong sense of paranoia is the classical method of maintaining the suspension. That is easy to do, just find the most vulnerable in the community and make them victims of hate. Everyone needs someone to despise, it seems.
That is all very well for the USA where mainstream churches would have had an uphill battle anyway. It doesn’t answer for the spread of this malicious cancer to other, more relaxed countries.
Surely, having witnessed the effects of their non action, the mainstream churches need to stir and reclaim their heritage for all our sakes. Perhaps they should be waving the Cross in the face of these usurpers, and drive them off like mythical Draculas. The one thing they seem to fear more than anything else is the presence of a real Christ.
Drive them back to the caves! Pick up those decent if misguided followers and give them something they can really follow with joy, not fear. And save the rest of us from Taliban style Christian theocracies.