More focus on the fundies

Did you see the Washington Post story about the Muslim DoD employees who are upset that Franklin Graham was invited to hold a Good Friday service at the Pentagon? Graham, the son of Billy Graham, has called Islam "an evil religion." (Another story.) He's also the head of an aid group champing at the bit in Jordan, waiting to get into Iraq to deliver aid and incidentally evangelize the population.

For a larger perspective, here's an excellent article about fundamentalist Christian influence on the Republicans (and vice versa -- really it's just a bunch of conservative shits like Karl Rove and Ralph Reed who are manipulating evangelical Christians to serve as a power base for their own greed and ambition). Writing from the perspective of a Southern Baptist who feels his denomination has been hijacked by politics, the author explains the links between the GOP and the Southern Baptist Convention. Excerpt:

The separation of church and state, long central to Baptists, is of little interest to the fundamentalists: In 1998, Richard Land, at a strategy meeting with Republicans and members of the religious right, told the Republicans, "No more engagement. We want a wedding ring, we want a ceremony, we want a consummation of the marriage."

George W. Bush, former heavy drinker and alleged cocaine user, claims to have been brought to God in 1986 by Southern Baptist evangelist Billy Graham. His 1993 pronouncement to an Austin-American Statesman reporter that non-believers will go to hell infuriated a lot of non-believers, but cemented his now nearly infallible reputation among Southern Baptist fundamentalists – a group that, perhaps more than any other, helped Bush rise to power in Texas.

In the '80s, Karl Rove advised nearly every Republican campaign in Texas, before then a Democratic stronghold. A large factor in Republicanizing Texas politics was the courting of the religious right, a specialty of Rove. He is a Christian of some sort, but he refuses to discuss much of anything with reporters, especially the specifics of his faith. Those specifics would clearly reveal much about the man often dubbed "Bush's brain."