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Gordon
don't question god! who knows what he had in mind. maybe he just wanted to kill 1 person that day the rest is collateral damage.

Mc Cain is making a big mistake in ditching Rev Hagee. The good Rev has offered incontrovertible proof that God is a Republican!
According to Hagee the Almighty aimed Katrina at New Orleans to display his wrath at a planned gay pride parade. Lo and Behold! In His ruthless zeal to smite evidoers He did laregely spare the libertine French Quarter but did visit great misery upon the Ninth Ward!

I am not an Obama supporter (although it looks like I will be in Nov) but I think it is fundamentally unfair to compare the pastor situations. Although Obama clearly had a closer relationship with his pastor than McCain did with these guys, I still have to cast my lot with the Obama crowd on this one. It has to do with the implied threat of comments that might be considered racist. Historically far more black people have been hurt or killed by racist violence than white people so when I hear racist hate speech coming from a white person, I feel that the threat is by definition greater than the same coming from a black person. Consider the black Israelis that rant almost daily in Times Square. People just walk by. If the KKK set up like that I think it would be a huge deal and rightly so.

Yes Wright says that blacks and whites have different styles, different music, different styles of worship, things like that. That is not racist, that is observationally true (of course with exceptions but these are generalizations). It becomes racist if he says one is better or worse than the other, or one is right and one is wrong etc. But he does not do this. You must imbue the relative value, or assume he is saying one is less than the other.

david!
u too! but Brian doesn't want us to say Happy Memorial Day!

Well, my office is closing early today. Happy Memorial Day, everyone!

Chris O, I think it was at the NAACP when he compared marching bands. That was blatantly racist, as he was portraying different styles based solely on race.

Leo 2 -- So have most religious sects, including orthodox jews, or aren't we supposed to notice?

African Americans will attend whatever church they feel comfortable in, without benefit of kibitzing from outsiders.

I agree that Obama's situation and McCain's situation cannot really be compared. That also said, I am an Obama supporter. I'm just not willing to say that Hagee and Wright should be treated as the same. Neither of these two right-wing pastors were McCain's close friend and "mentor". And obviously, he didn't know much about where either of these men stood on anything. Is it a black mark for McCain? Maybe. But the situations are not comparable.

Liz, Again, it shows you don't go to church often. probably a Catholic church - Children are normally not part of the service - Children attend bible classes as their parents attend the service.
This is the norm in non-catholic churches - You again do NOT KNOW all of the work that the United Church of Christ does - it's not about the personal views of a pastor - The church teaches self-respect and self-help under Christian teachings.

David, I did not see the NAACP but I saw the Press Club event and don't recall any racist statements. I recall him being provocative, juvenile, unprofessional, confrontational, bitterly critical of the media, but I don't recall racist statements. What exactly are you referring to?

Exactly, Wright is controversial, provocative, etc. but to call him racist is... (ok I won't say racist) ... misinformed. He is a pastor at the United Church of Christ, a predominantly white denomination - not that this settles it but come on.

I don't know about Wright's sermons, but his speeches to the National Press Club and NAACP were most certainly racist.

Marco, you are an idiot. . Wright's sermons were not racist and you dismiss all of the good work that the church does -
The catholic church in this country, as well as the Baptists have been Obscenely racist. -
where should African Americans attend church?

Not a racist Marco, more of a realist..

interesting to learn that Israel and AIPAC are happy to honor people who say that Hitler was the primary agent behind the creation of Israel

Wright did a lot more than endorse Obama. Obama brought his children to Wright's church and exposed them to his twisted world view. If he really doesn't agree why let your children hear it.

Brian, Rev. Wright didn't endorse Obama and Obama didn't seek his endorsement. Macain actively lobyed for the endorsements of these pastors.

The McCain Obama situation is not the same since Obama was a close friend to his pastor and called him his mentor. He also attended his congregation. McCain on the other hand had no connection to this guy and didnt even know his first name.

RA, you're absolutely right. And I think that the pro-Israel crowd has only accepted the support of the millenialist evangelicals because they think this end times stuff is malarky. Which works out pretty well because if they reject this worldview, it means that they'll have the support of the evangelicals forever because they'll always think "the end" is just around the corner.

where are these end times. i'm so not ready for them.

Besides, isn't religious people's answer to EVERYTHING bad that happens that it's "god's will"? Now we're going to say that's not okay anymore? Then what will you tell your kids when they ask you why bad things happen to good people? Eh? Oh! Maybe you'll just have to be honest about it, and say that's just the way life is? And maybe raise level-headed, common sensed children?

Catholics don't seem offended by the 'Great Whore' comment - What scares Ethnic catholics is that there might be a non-white person as the US president.
Shows how corrupt Catholicism is that it has justified slavery, the degradation of women, the abuse of children, but heaving forbid if a non-white person achieves a dominant status!. It's the opening of revelations!

16--just a point of accuracy: neither of these people is McCain's pastor. Hmmmm, who is McCain's pastor?

what does it say about evangelicals that this guy is a leader of theirs? what does it say about the Zionists that they truck with the very people who hope to see them eviscerated in the "rapture"?

John Hagee and others of his kind may profess to love the Jewish people, but the reality is that their love for Jews and staunch support of Israel extends only insofar as it results in bringing about the end-times -- a time when the Jews will be wiped out as a people, and those who aren't killed will be converted to Christianity. This is anti-Semitism and I don't know why more people don't recognize this and call it out for what it is.

Endorsement is one thing....sitting in a church run by a racist for 20 years is something else.

Will McCain go through what Obama went through because of his pastor?

no.

The reason he didn't separate from him after the Catholic remark is because in America, criticizing Catholics is sport. Always has been. Saying something which SEEMS on a strictly shallow level to condone Hitler, is unacceptable because anti-Semitism is taken much more seriously.

Good question hjs. I think fundamentalist muslims believe those not like them are infidels and will go to hell. fundamentalist christians, on the other hand, believe those that are not like them are sinners and will go to hell.

#4--hjs, not much, just the names that you use to fill in the blanks

When are we going to slow down and realize that pastors and other religious leaders are all pretty much loose canons that nobody is supposed to take letter for letter? They're people who have to come up with something to say every week or more, they pull stuff out of their (heads, let's say), and throw it out there. They're creative people, and they're not all equally talented or equally sane, or equally conventional.

What are we all, four years old? Why does every little thing that someone says have to trigger such strong reactions? Someone's friend says something and now we have to hate that person who knew that person who said or believed the wrong thing?

I'm an Obama supporter, but I'm sorry, this little incident is not what's making me not vote for McCain. (I have enough reasons not to like McCain.)

Why is this so shocking? Does God or does God not allow the things that happen in the world to happen? How is salvation achieved (dicey word there) according to Christianity if not by the acceptance of Christ as one's savior? How are Judaism (and any other religion that does not accept Jesus as Christ) and Christianity not totally inimical as such?

This comment is inline with the philosophy of many of these evangelical groups - They support Israel because they feel they are doing the work of God by trying to speed up the prophesies in Revelations - They care about Jews so far as it helps Christians in helping with the second coming of Christ in which Judaism disappears.
They 'LOVE' Israel to death! - These Christians DO take the book of revelations seriously.
What's astonishing is that Lieberman supports these groups!! - so that Jews can be killed by Jesus or they have to denounce their religion in order to be 'saved'

Brian, McCain also rejected the endorsement of Pastor Parsley last night as well after it surfaced that he stated that America was founded to destroy Islam.

McCain wasn't in church that day.

If McCain is going to solicit support from right-wing extremist clergymen, how many will he find who are not at least as deranged as the two he has just ditched? And if he quits soliciting that kind of support, what can he expect from voters who belive believe every statement of those clergymen unquestioningly?

Well, if you think God wanted the Jews back in Israel, then arguing that Hitler was God's way of accelerating the process isn't a terrible thing to say. Nothing happens without God's OK if he's an all-powerful being. Of course, if you think that's all a load of crap, then it just sounds crazy.

Interesting that the pastor is virulently anti-Catholic and McCain did nothing.

I guess we Catholics can see where we rank with John McCain

what's the difference between fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist Muslims?

OK - I am not Jewish but I don't see the great offense in creating some narrative that Hitler was part of God's plan to create Israel. Does anyone doubt that the Holocaust played a big role in helping create Israel? And these Bibilical people believe everything is part of God's will (and that includes crazy stuff like Hitler, Pol Pot, Katrina, etc.).

So it is only natural he would say something like that yet it is this comment that leads McCain to break with Hagee. This just sounds like typical crazy religious stuff but calling the Catholic Church the "great whore" seems much more provocative. No?

I just checked out Chris Hedges' "I Don't Believe in Atheists" from the NYPL. I've only read about 1/4th of it, but his premise is that the real evil is fundamentalism, and that the "hard core" atheists are just as bad as the "hard core" religious right.

It's a good read so far, although Hedges seems to be repeating himself much more than he did in his earlier book about the religious right.

aren't these the 'agents of intolerance' mccain spoke of in 2000? is his age a factor in his forgetfulness?

(i almost forgot about mccain because no one has been talking about him)