The Shrine

Replay wrote:I do not want my tax dollars spent on a tank that soldiers are going to paint "New Testament" on the side of. It's just not going to happen that I will ever want that. This whole Christian-fundamentalist-military thing we have going on these days is, like, the scariest thing I've ever seen.

As many will remember, we couldn't have gotten off to a better start on winning hearts and minds when Lt. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin, on his speaking tour of churches back in 2003, publicly and in uniform proclaimed that the so-called war on terror was really a fight between Satan and Christians, making comments like, "We in the Army of God, in the House of God, the Kingdom of God have been raised for such a time as this," saying that George Bush, who himself had ignorantly called the war a crusade, was "in the White House because God put him there," and, referring to the capture of Somali warlord Osman Atto, "I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol."

Speaking at a Rotary Club meeting in his hometown of Concord, North Carolina in December 2006, one of Boykin's supporters in the aftermath of his comments, former Congressman Robin Hayes (R-NC), pronounced that stability in Iraq ultimately depended on "spreading the message of Jesus Christ, the message of peace on earth, good will towards men. ...Everything depends on everyone learning about the birth of the Savior."

Kupek wrote:American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq are not fighting a conventional war. They are an occupying force fighting an insurgency. If you forgive Replay's hyperbole, I think his point is valid. Convincing the civilians around you that you are there for their benefit and not your own agenda is just as important as fighting the insurgent forces.

If it's not possible to do both, then it's not possible to "win."

Tim Kreider wrote:I have had it with the fucking Christians. And you know who I'm talking about. Not the Good Christians, who actually believe in, like, helping people-feeding the hungry, aiding the sick, housing the homeless, fighting injustice-but the ones in the news and in power these days, who are so keen to judge and punish and so suspiciously obsessed with sex. The ones scheming to overturn Roe v. Wade. The ones downplaying the effectiveness of condoms to teenagers. The ones preaching abstinence in Africa. The ones who believe in Creationism and want prayer in the schools and think George W. Bush is "a godly man." The born-again, angel-believing, fag-hating, eighth-grade dropout Evil Christians.

(...)

Drawing the "real" Jesus turns out to be tricky. The image carries a lot of baggage. We have absolutely no contemporary physical description of the man at all, and for some reason it's very important to everyone what he looked like. He has to be knowing, wise, compassionate, kind, stern, and humorous, all at once. Of course he ended up looking like Gandalf. My depiction is somewhat indebted to Chester Brown's characterization in his adaptation of the book of Mark in Yummy Fur-Christ as a fierce, high-browed, hatchet-faced desert prophet. In a moment of possibly misguided inspiration I gave him one blind eye, in imitation of Modigliani, who in his later portraits painted subjects he admired with one eye blank, turned inward, to suggest inner sight. Of course Christ wouldn't really have had a blind eye, or any other serious injury or deformity, because, duh, he could've healed it himself. The book of John, especially, is full of stories about Christ being mocked and chased away by crowds, so I'm sure we would've heard about the obvious contradiction if he'd had any physical infirmities.