A few months ago when I diaried about a wingnut movement to rewrite the Bible to make it "less liberal", I thought that I had pretty much plumbed the nadir of such silliness. Among other things, the folks at The Conservative Bible Project recommended the removal of:
"Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."
This quotation is a favorite of liberals but should not appear in a conservative Bible.
Well, Glenn Beck, being the competitive guy he is, decided to one-up them: he wants to purge the entire New Testament!
Glenn Beck set out to convince his audience that "social justice," the term many Christian churches use to describe their efforts to address poverty and human rights, is a "code word" for Communism and Nazism.
Of course, we've long understood that conservative "Christians" have a number of issues with Jesus' message, particularly the bits about rich people having a hard time getting to heaven, and if you're mean to the lowest members of society like the poor and the outcasts and such, you're being mean to Jesus himself. If one were so inclined, one might even call such ideas, oh, I don't know, social justice.
I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!"
Shorter Beck: if your Christian church starts preaching the Gospel of Christ, run!
Later, Beck held up cards, one with a hammer and sickle and other with a swastika. "Communists are on the left, and the Nazis are on the right. That's what people say. But they both subscribe to one philosophy, and they flew one banner. . . . But on each banner, read the words, here in America: 'social justice.' They talked about economic justice, rights of the workers, redistribution of wealth, and surprisingly, democracy."
You know, in a way I'm glad that conservative "Christians" are finally dropping all pretense of being "followers" of someone that they actually don't follow one damn bit. They have commenced stripping their churches of whatever vestigial fragments of Christianity still cling to them, and are tossing the Gospel into the trash, where it's arguably better off than in their hands. Maybe soon they'll stop calling themselves "Christians" altogether, which will no doubt come as a relief to the many decent people who wear that label.
The word is out in Wingnutistan: Jesus Christ out of the Bible!
H/T to Vita Brevis, who also diaried about this last night.