I’ll add my thanks to Elizabeth’s. That was a well-written column that both explained Anderson’s beliefs and put them into perspective.

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Here’s how I started:

Not so long ago, it’s likely that the Rev. Steven Anderson would have lived and died known only to a small circle of friends. Instead, for the past couple of weeks, he’s become one of the most famous pastors in America.

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Let’s examine what Joe.My.God. and his readers are so excited about:

You’ve got one pastor at a small independent church praying for Obama’s death.

One former second vice-president of the Southern Baptist Convention who admitted praying for Obama’s death. When notified of Mr. Wiley’s controversial prayers, the Southern Baptist Convention said:

Sing Oldham, vice president for convention relations with the SBC Executive Committee… said that while Drake served one year as second vice president of the SBC, he is not now nor has ever been a spokesman for the convention.

“Mr. Drake does not represent Southern Baptist actions, resolutions, or positions in his interpretation and application of ‘imprecatory prayers,’” Oldham said. “Any comments made by Wiley Drake on this subject represent his personal views, not those of the Convention.”

Oldham said most Baptists view the imprecatory prayers found in the Psalms as private, heartfelt conversations between oppressed people and God, and reflect confidence that God will eventually vindicate the innocent. He said they generally close with a conscious decision not to bear malice and leave final judgment up to God.

“I think it is fair to say that the vast majority of Southern Baptists reject any call to pray imprecatory prayers of death over any individual,” he said.

Yeah, it sounds like his views are real common among Southern Baptists.

Then we have the latest, Pete Peters:

Since 1977, Peters has been pastor of the LaPorte Church of Christ, a Christian Identity church with fewer than 100 parishioners in LaPorte, Colorado, a community on the banks of the Cache La Poudre River northwest of Fort Collins. From the pulpit, Peters has expounded prolifically on Identity’s biblical views, which include the belief that Jews are spiritually degraded and pose a threat to civilization, that blacks and other people of color are inferior to whites, that homosexuals should be executed and that northern European whites and their American descendants are the “chosen people” of scriptural prophecy.

It’s fair to say that Mr. Peters’ racism has much more to do with his views of Mr. Obama than anything that he might know from traditional Christianity. Christian Identity is seen as heretical by almost everyone that identifies themselves as “conservative” Christians. None of that gets mentioned on Joe.My.God’s website, of course.

That’s 3 out of approximately 50 million people who might describe themselves as conservative Christians. Hardly indicative of a whole class of people.

Joe.My.God and his commenters are free to cherry-pick stories out of the press to justify their hatred (just read the comments). I hold CNN and the rest of MSM to a different standard. When they present an extreme point of view as indicative of a trend, even when their own expert says that there’s no such trend, I smell a rat.

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I’d like to know if there are left wing “nutters” out there. There is a history of left-wing craziness in America, also, but I suspect that recently (unlike the 19th cent.), much of it hasn’t had a religious theme — or, if it is religious, isn’t being covered by the mainstream. It’s a fine line!

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I think Dale’s wrong, obviously. And I for one am grateful that someone thinks that “Christian”* right-wing nuttery should have some ink spilled to inform the rest of us what’s out there.

*scare quotes provided to indicate that I understand that praying for the death of anyone is counter to the actual teachings of Christ.

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http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2009/09/another-preacher-prays-for-obamas-death.html

One function of the specialized presses is to cover items of interest to their communities. Thus, the Jewish press covers anti-semitism, the Black press covers racism, the Hispanic press covers anti-immigration and the Gay press covers right wing religion. At the checkout lane, I notice the Hispanic press continues to cover Fr Cutie in great detail. People Magazine’s Spanish edition for September devoted 8 pages to his marriage, more than to Michael Jackson. The MSM should be monitoring these venues, but apparently is not.

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How representative is he of anyone? Read his website. He leads a small independent church. He belongs to no denomination. He has no college education or other formal education as a pastor. His qualification for leading his church is that he has memorized 100 chapters of the Bible. Why does this qualify his opinions to be spotlighted by CNN?

I’m glad that the Secret Service is watching him. But if we had news items about every single nutcase who made morbid comments about the president, that’s all that would be in the newspapers.

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Knock off the snark (OK, Julia, I admit Dalea’s was good, but he really got us started). I’ve already had to edit and delete.

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The MSM reminds me of a primitive tribe that has not figured out the seasons and is constantly astonished when cold white stuff falls on their heads.

That’s one of the best snarky lines I’ve read in a long time.

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To ignore a pastor who calls all gay men child molesters and calls for anti-gay mass murder in the name of your religion makes you complicit.

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Christ Himself had some fairly harsh things to say to hypocrites who prayed loudly on streetcorners and made sure everyone knew how pious they were. One can easily imagine what He’d make of our current crop of Falwells, Dobsons, Haggards, Phelpses, Andersons and Robertsons.

There are a lot of them, and perhaps the best thing for a real conservative Christian to do at this point is to make abundantly clear that they do not speak for him, and never did.

Good day.

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Gay men are just like everyone else in that they can be wonderful or awful, and sometimes both at once.

Bingo. My point exactly, and it applies to “conservative” Christians, too. Take a large group of people, and you’re going to have those who do bad things. To highlight an exceptional few is a distortion.

It’s not from “the gay press”, whatever that is. He just complied them, and there seems to be a lot to compile.

I’m not the one who introduced the term “gay press” into the discussion—that was dalea, who seems to think it’s a better source for information about “conservative” Christians. Oh, and there’s a lot to compile about the bad behavior of gay men, too. But, unlike you, I’m not here to conduct a smear campaign.

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Tempting as it may be, I won’t respond with a list of horrible things done by gay men, of which there are plenty.

Dale, that just be would be off-topic and silly. Gay men are just like everyone else in that they can be wonderful or awful, and sometimes both at once.

Note that the links from JoeMyGod are links to MSM coverage of crimes committed by clergy. It’s not from “the gay press”, whatever that is. He just complied them, and there seems to be a lot to compile.

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Talk about a parade of horribles. ….

Tempting as it may be, I won’t respond with a list of horrible things done by gay men, of which there are plenty. As for the idea that the gay press and bloggers are reliable sources for information about what conservative Christians are really like, that’s just as absurd as expecting Focus on the Family to present an unbiased picture of gay men. It’s advocacy press, folks, and selective reporting about individuals in a large population (either gay men or “conservative” Christians) is particularly vulnerable to manipulation and mudslinging.

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